Marketing

4 ways branded products can help improve your business

Branded products are excellent for spreading your name. Customers and clients will more readily recognize your brand if they view it daily on their pens and calendars; perhaps more importantly, this will also help your business stay at the forefront of their minds during longer buying cycles. Here are a few ways that branded products can improve your business this year.

4. Highly Used Items are Highly Visible

People love to receive free items: from frisbees to t-shirts, coffee mugs to promotional calendars, people love collecting free gear at conventions, meetings, and offices. By handing out free stuff, you can make immediate friends, gain loyal customers, and help your brand reach maximum exposure.

A free t-shirt or pen will be used eventually. The customer might wear it to a store where hundreds of other customers will see it, or pull out your pen to write a check in a busy bank. Everyone who sees it will slowly begin to recognize your brand. And the ones who already recognize it will be subtly reminded of it.

3. Recognition Helps You Become a Household Name

Building name recognition means that everyone exposed to your branded products could eventually refer to your brand as a household name. Think about Coke or Pepsi: how much free stuff have you gotten with their logos over the years, and how willing are people to buy their branded products because they are loyal? [Read more…] about 4 ways branded products can help improve your business

A bloggers guide to Twitter

By Christian

In this article, I’m going to talk about why Twitter is important, how to grow and manage your account and also how you can use it to earn you some money. As a blogger, I’ve grown to love Twitter, it’s a useful way to share your content and attract new readers. In fact if you’re running a business and haven’t incorporated the use of Twitter, then you need to stop writing letters and join me in the 21^st century. Twitter’s been around for some time now, but only in recent years has it amassed such a huge flow of users that have now propelled it to one of the top 10 visited websites worldwide.

Social Networking has become a major part of blogging, and nowadays people will rate the quality of a blog based on Twitter followers, Facebook likes etc. as well as its readers, page rank, domain authority, page authority and traffic. If you’ve only just begun blogging or perhaps only just started using Twitter, growing your followers from nothing can take time and effort. With the ability to drive traffic to your site or share content with a single tweet, surely it’ll be worth it in the long run?

Growing your followers

Growing your followers naturally is the best possible way to maximize the potential of your Twitter account. What I mean by naturally is with no help from external sources, which I will talk about in the next section. The best way to grow a community is by simply posting quality and relevant information. If people enjoy what you write, what’s the reason for them not to follow you? To further increase your following, linking back to your Twitter often and getting retweets from your current followers is a must.

If growing your followers naturally isn’t good enough for you, there are other ways to boost your follow count and cheat yourself to a better social proof. The first website I’m going to talk about is Twiends. Naturally, I’ve been able to grow my Twitter following by about 100 new followers per month, nothing fancy but I’ve only been running my blog for a short period of time. Over three days I managed to boost my follow count by almost half of my original followers after using Twiends.

To begin using Twiends, if it’s your first time visiting the site simply sign in using your Twitter account, and authorize the application. You won’t receive any spam from the website and you’re free to remove your account at any time.

Once logged in, you may not be able to follow others just yet because of your ‘Twust’ score, a percentage which measures your account trust. This can easily be improved by producing a few tweets, changing your background, adding a location to your profile, getting listed by a friend etc. Basically, if you’re account is brand new, expect quite a low ‘Twust’ score. Once you’re allowed to follow others, you’re ready to go. [Read more…] about A bloggers guide to Twitter

How Does Reputation Management Work?

By Christian

Internet marketing may be cheaper compared with radio television advertisements, but it does not mean that you should immediately make use of the internet as a tool in order to promote your products. Before doing so, you should first be aware of the problems or issues you might face when launching the campaign in the internet.

When using the net for marketing purposes, two of the problems that you might face are low website rankings and receiving negative publicity or comments from your customers who are not happy with the quality of the product that they have purchased. You may be able to resolve the first problem through different Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques that may make your website more visible in search engines. Meanwhile, you may be able to deal with the second problem by seeking aid from people who are skilled when in the field of online reputation management.

It is concerned with handling all the negative information being thrown against you online in a way that they will have minimal or no effect on your business, specifically on the number of your product sales. You may be able to regain your client’s trust and save your online image by doing the following:

Analyze the problem and determine how big or small it is. Before taking any action in order to resolve the problem, you should first do research in order to know how serious the problem is. If you were able to know the severity of the issue, then you will have an idea on what reputation management techniques you should use to put an end to it as soon as possible.

Interact with your unhappy clients online in order to address their concerns regarding the product. By doing this, clients who are not happy with the quality of the product will feel that you are taking the problem seriously.

Communicate with you former clients and ask if they can post comments containing positive information about you and the products they bought from you before. This will show that many people are satisfied with your performance as an entrepreneur and with the product that is in their possession.

Immediate Promotion with Flyers

By Christian

There are numerous methods to promote a company, but approaching a customer directly and handing them a flyer is extremely effective. It allows businesses to satisfy new customers, offer information about their company, and adds a personal touch to the campaign.

The location for passing out flyers is crucial. Since flyers come with an average response rate of 1.5-2%, businesses will want to boost the total numbers of people receiving flyers. To do this goal, flyers need to be distributed in densely populated areas. Large areas like shopping malls, apartment complexes, and parking lots are perfect.

The kind of products may also influence where you can advertise. For instance, if the business sells sporting goods, a retirement home would not be a great spot to advertise. Locations that could be optimal are parking lots to keep fit gyms and shopping centers, and residential areas. The advertiser has to consider who will use their product and what types of places they would frequent. Once that has been determined, they are able to start marketing there.

Other suggestions to consider are target markets as well as their income potential. It is vital to understand if the good or service is going to be widely appealing and affordable to all types of people and income levels. If the method is created for affluent men, it must be marketed differently than if it’s being targeted at middle-class women. Additionally, ethnic groups can also create a distinction in the type of advertising that is done. Marketing to some number of Russians ought to be not even close to the advertising that is performed for African-Americans. Element in all possibilities after which deduce where and how the campaign might be best suited.

If flyers are going to be left instead of distributed, then, that too, requires a befitting location. Places must have high visitors along with a wide selection of people arriving and out. Service venues such as laundromats, barbershops, beauty salons, and doctor and dentist offices really are a prime illustration of pertinent areas. Other sites which have a continuing influx of individuals are bus, train, airports, or subway stations, and fast food restaurants. Flyers could be hidden in inconspicuous places for example in magazine pouches or on chairs as well as in booths. Similarly, marketers could tuck ads in book pouches at the library or perhaps in bathroom stalls and make contact with booths.

Direct marketing is about the locality. Research should be conducted prior to committing ones’ time, money, and efforts in to the campaign. Discover who the prospective audience is and how and where they’ll be bewitched with the advertisement. Get the best locations and use fall off or face-to-face methods to market the product.

Use Orbital Campaigns To Enhance Your Marketing Effort

By Christian

Marketing though digital media such as TV and online has become incredibly popular over the last few years. A once flagging television advertising industry has recovered in part, thanks mainly to its incorporation of some of the viral techniques that have made online advertising so successful.

In business though, it is not enough just to have people talking about your advert, it’s conversions that matter. One way of improving conversions is to increase the ways in which consumers can interact with your brand, using a related campaign that encourages those who had their attention caught by your advert to take more notice of the company behind it.

So how do you do this? Orbital campaigns can consist of many different aspects that all use the theme of your advert to feed back into your company. A popular advert is nothing if nobody knows who produces it, so feeding off the buzz created by your ad is essential if your campaign is to be considered a success. Here are some ways of doing this:

Create a Specialist Website

You might be able to create a great buzz from your campaign, but if the product you are trying to sell isn’t something that people would want immediately (insurance, for example) then they aren’t very likely to follow it up by clicking on to your website. If you create a special website that is specific to your campaign however it can be an effective way of driving consumer interest towards your brand and keeping you in their minds even after the end of the campaign.

This can then help to drive a secondary viral online campaign that will have your brand buzzing around the internet, not only securing more potential customers but also doing wonders for your internet marketing efforts.

Social Networking

Social networking has become a great way for businesses to interact with customers, and sites such as Facebook and Twitter provide companies with an effective way of connecting the marketing campaign with the brand. Pointing your customers in the direction of your business Twitter and Facebook accounts is as close as it comes to providing physical contact with your company over the internet, forging a community of people who have one thing in common, your brand. By getting people to “Like” you on Facebook, you will also be getting them to tell all of their “Friends” about your company and your campaign, opening yourself up to potentially thousands more people who will interact with your company.

Promotional Products

If you have created a campaign with memorable characters or catchphrases, using relevant promotional products and promotional gifts can be an effective way of capitalising on the success of your campaign. It is providing potential customers not only with a further interaction with your brand, but putting something physical into the hands of consumers who have only had a virtual relationship with your company up until that point.

Improving the interaction between those who are interested in your advertising campaign and your brand is a key way of increasing conversions. A popular advertising campaign is a great start, but orbital campaigns are vital if those who are interested are going to be convinced to buy from you.

When you are looking at your next big marketing and advertising campaign, make sure you go orbital to improve your chances of success.

Marketing Intelligence

By Christian

Constant Improvement

Always be on the lookout for ways to improve your marketing intelligence. When you make adjustments along the way, change only one variable at a time, so you can determine which variable made a difference.

One way to test and measure your marketing results is to conduct a marketing audit. Ask your customers for some honest (and brutal) feedback regarding your business. Find out where they think your business excels and where some improvement wouldn’t go astray.

“Negative responses are good”

What! – NO WAY.

Yes they are… it means that your customers want you to do better otherwise why would they bother? It’s important to develop a strong rapport with your customers so they feel comfortable telling you how it really is.

Intelligent Direct Mail.

“Is there any other kind?”

When using direct response marketing always test the headline and the body copy. Write a number of variations of each and record the responses that come back. Over a period of time, you’ll find that one particular message works better than all the others.

So use this one & trash the rest… but don’t stop there.

“Testing & measuring is a work-in-progress thing and you need to keep on doing it & doing it & doing it”

Keep accurate & up to date records of the costs & success rate of every strategy. This information will prove to be invaluable in the future & will ensure that you don’t tread old ground.

When comparing the costs to the marketing results, consider both the tangible and intangible results. Increased sales, a tangible result, and enhanced business credibility, an intangible result, are both important to the growth of your business.

Looking at overall costs can help you determine which tactics are putting a strain on your finances without reaping any benefits.

Ah Yes… A Web Site.

Internet based marketing is also a great marketing intelligence tool for tracking results.

Set your Web site up to track how many visits are made by consumers each day. You can include customer information forms on your Web site for those interested in more information.

Comparing the conversion rate of visits to the number of submitted information forms can give you an idea of how effective your marketing is and you can then adjust it to suit.

Keep track of how many new and repeat customers your business has.

Ask your new customers how they heard about your business and keep a record this information, as it will reveal your strongest marketing tactics.

An extended period of slow activity may indicate that your marketing techniques need to be adjusted and a decrease in repeat business is a certainly a clear sign that something’s not working.

Through a strategic approach to marketing intelligence, you’ll keep your fingers firmly on the pulse of your business.