Building a Cult Brand is something that must be done deliberately, and by catering to your niche. Every cult brand has emerged from the pack by thinking differently, putting customers at the forefront of their business plan and developing a product that no one necessarily “needs”, but it easy to want because it appeals to [...]
Much like our own lives, when it comes to the lifespan of a product or service, the transition to end of life can be a tough one. People grow attached to brands and to specific products and services. Humans, by their very nature, resist change. Consumers, by their very nature, really resist change unless there [...]
Paypal is a form of payment, often associated with eBay, that gives your customers even more choices when paying for your products or services. Once set up, paypal is a simple and quick pay to pay for auctions or items on websites, buy services, transfer money or otherwise do business.
Some advantages of offering Paypal on [...]
Everyone with computers eventually needs support, and here’s a quick guide to getting enough support and being sure the support you are getting is qualified. I’ve been on both sides of this fence, being an Information Technology as a technician/engineer/administrator for many years and also providing support to many small businesses as a contract worker.
When [...]
Do customers trust my online store?
Why aren’t more people buying online?
Why do I have so many abandoned carts?
What is stopping customers from using my cart?
I hear these cries of concern from business owners quite often, and with good reason. You have to ask yourself one fundamental question about your website, and thus your cart, before [...]
Media Kits are a great way to put a face and a collection of information about your company in the hands of your prospects and customers. A good media kit should inform about your products and company, explain benefits of your products and services, list your credentials and any testimonials that are relevant and leave [...]
It’s true – Times are tough all over. But while many companies cut back, tighten their belts and work to conserve their position, there are other – a very few – who recognize that times like these spell opportunity.
Although we may not welcome the closure of businesses, tough economic times are a form [...]
Can you imagine a world in which there is no competition? or limited competition? It’s a strange feeling, but it’s one you’re going to have to look forward to in the coming months and years. I see industries collapsing under their own weight these days. The american auto companies, even with their bailout, are going [...]
I could write a whole book on this. I seriously could. It’d be an epic somewhere near the length of War & Peace, the scope of Lord of the Rings and with the delivery of a young William Shatner. To say the least, it would be a thundering response to all the OVERLY CAPPED EMAILS, [...]
I’ve noticed that in a lot of respects, people are like ants. They go about their lives serving the purpose they know best. Some are workers, some are queens, some are gatherers, some are builders. There’s nothing wrong with this mentality as long as it’s not the tunnel vision by which you measure the whole [...]
A new year brings new opportunities, and we as marketers have to be smart enough to embrace the new, discard what didn’t work last year and look at our business with a pair of fresh eyes. Here’s a five resolutions you should be making to improve your marketing plan for 2009.
Embrace new technology. With the [...]
These are interesting times to those who make our living getting messages to customers to influence purchases. With the banks collapsed, the auto industry collapsed, the U.S. Dollar essentially worthless and unemployment at the highest rate since the early 80s, this is a tough economical climate to weather.
Add to that the post-holiday financial lull that [...]
To improve or not to improve? That is the question.
One might think that every product has room for innovation and every service has room for improvement. Is this really the case? Is this really necessary? Many companies feel like they are doing a service to their customers by attempting to make a better wheel, but [...]
I’m posting this in both our Marketing Your Business and Quality Process blogs, because I deem it that important to your company. When it comes to how a company can most improve itself and make itself a viable commercial entity, especially in hard economical times and in a very competitive marketplace, the best place [...]
One of the oldest and most confusing facets of marketing on the web is the decision to use– or not use– keywords. With the constant changes in search algorithms and the desire to be placed as high as possible in the search engines, everyone from SEO professionals to joe-average-business-owner are looking for the right key [...]
Product Placement has very much become the bane of my existence. In the last 10 years or so, I don’t think I’ve been able to take in any media that wasn’t overrun with a poorly done marketing insert or a lazily displayed artifact of our culture.
Who hasn’t seen that ridiculous moment in a movie when [...]
Like all things in life, products have life cycles. Ideas are born, prototypes are developed, products are manufactured, products are put to market and eventually, products die out. It doesn’t have to be the end though.
Products tend to die out for one of a few reasons:
They have outlived their usefulness.
A better product came about.
The product [...]
I’ve been recently bitten by the Twitter Bug.
http://twitter.com/home
Twitter is a site that allows you, as either a person or a business, to instantly update your friends and customers as to your thoughts, whereabouts or other as-it-happens information. While the business application for twitter is a case that may be difficult to make in some circumstances, [...]
CRMs, or Customer Relationship Management systems, are programs or sets of programs that help you manage customer data, interact with customers, launch marketing campaigns and examine history of what has and hasn’t worked for both individual customers and your customer base as a whole.
There are several reasons why your business should be using a CRM [...]
Age is one of the greatest, and easiest to prove, demographical marketing methods you can use to get your product into the hands of those who will want it. Along with sex, income level and educational background, using age as a marker will help separate casual users from frequent users to complete non-users.
When you’re marketing [...]
If you’ve been doing your job or running your business for a while, you know what it’s like to be counted on for your expertise and knowledge. Maybe your internal workers come to you because you’ve done something a thousand times and can show them exactly how it’s to be done. Maybe your clients come [...]
Now that you know why product codes are important, it’s even more important to implement codes that make sense, are easy to follow and make working with (and around) them an effortless and seamless process. If done right, your product codes will not only work for you but will speed up your existing processes and [...]
If you sell a product of any kind, and even with services for that matter, product codes are crucial. Whether you call them SKUs or Item Numbers or PullCodes, a product code is the most critical factor in determining accurate and reliable inventory, organization, sales tracking and quality control.
I’m writing this article in two parts. [...]
Youtube isn’t just for rock bands and funny cats anymore. It’s a place where serious business can take place.
Like any social network, the ability to put self created content out for others to interact with and share is vital to the new world of marketing. Youtube is especially powerful because you’re no longer faced with [...]
With the dog days of summer upon us, many businesses are changing. Some businesses dry up during the summer, perhaps as a consequence of working in a tourism town or a college town where much of the population leaves for summer. On the other hand, some businesses notice an influx of new business in the [...]
If you’re selling products on the internet, you need to be involved with Google Base:
http://base.google.com/
What is google base, you ask? It’s the only free, as far as I know, product search engine on the internet. For the good web marketers amongst us, you probably knew it previously as Froogle. These days, Google Base has found [...]
There’s so much taboo when it comes to marketing your business over e-mail. Over a decade has passed now since spammers began polluting our communication streams with tales of penile virility, get rich quick schemes, weight loss miracles and other garbage. As avid email readers, all of us have learned to sift through this [...]
When it comes to marketing in a small business, you don’t often have the time or resources to be a full time marketing person. In companies of all sizes, you tend to live beyond your title. In small businesses, this is even more true.
By my title, I’m the marketing director. During daily operations, I find [...]
As 2008 approaches, I am reminded of what I love about marketing. The new year brings new opportunities. Budgets renew. New company goals are set. Trade shows start back up for the season. Now is the perfect opportunity to reexamine your marketing goals, plot our new courses of action and prepare yourself for what’s to [...]
With all of the hype surrounding the internet, social networks and other ways that we communicate with our customers, prospects, suppliers and even competitors, it’s sometimes easy to dismiss trade shows as being a relic of a business strategy gone by.
That’s very far from the truth. The more connected we become through technology, the more [...]
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