Archive for category Marketing Strategies

Sharp Shooting Marketing

Sniper MarketingCompanies are finding it increasingly difficult to reach their potential customers. Finding your way through the social media and online marketing jungle is not an easy task. That is why, it is crucial for a company or an individual to specialize and focus on a niche market.

I remember when I first started my design business I took calls like: “Can you make me a website with 40 pages for under $200?”, “How about a logo? Can you manipulate my photos and put me next to Pamela Anderson?” My answer was always “yes” regardless if I was able to do any of it or not. I figured I have to “blast” them with my knowledge and show that I am an “all stop shop” for everything design related. I even got requests to create architectural drawings and redesign homes!

Needless to say I was the “jack-of-all-trades; master of just a few”. My life was chaotic and barely had time to catch reruns of “Family Guy”. Even more disturbing was the fact that my business was not even growing. That’s when I realized that this “shot-gun blasting” approach was not quite the one I was looking for.
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How Not To Treat Your Clients

Each day we are bombarded with 3700 marketing and sales offers. Each and every day! For the most part, we ignore almost all of them. Why? Because they are boring.

Here’s a TV commercial that is not boring – the Korean Air Global Campaign – The Color of Perfection:

Notice the use of black & white cinematography along with softly painted aquamarine; the soothing music in the background. Everything moves in slow motion almost giving you the feeling of a weightless, romantic spa up in the sky. They don’t use airplanes in flight but flying is implied with images that recall a dreamy experience.

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How to Attract Clients with a Marketing Brochure

Marketing BrochuresMarketing brochures are one of the key elements in order to promote your product and/or services to consumers; to attract potential buyers or manufacturers that might want to license or buy your invention.  

This article is designed to give you an overview of some of the key considerations in developing a successful marketing brochure. Printing and distributing on and off line marketing brochures can do wonders for your bottom line. 

A well-designed, well-written marketing brochure design is an opportunity to capture the attention of prospective clients and win them with an effective positioning statement, differentiating your products and services from those of the competition.

There are 3 major elements of a successful brochure:

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How to Create Functional Web Forms

Once you “convinced” the web visitors to click through your website, you want them to land on – you guessed it -”your landing page”. There you should have a short and sweet form that will ask them a minimum number of questions so they can move forward as fast as possible and download the piece of information or whatever else you previously promised them.

Functional Web Forms

Functional Web Forms

Do not make the mistake of displaying an email address. It shows 3 things:

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Seduction or Marketing?

The world is full of descriptions and attempts to mold the definition of marketing, but so far I haven’t found a clear characterization of this escaping concept we face every day. To me – marketing is present in everything that we do on a daily basis; promise a surprise to your children to convince them to dress warm and – bang – you just did some marketing without even knowing it. Launch a new product and do whatever necessary to make the market react positive about it and you delivered yet another marketing punch.
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Seduction or Marketing

Seduction or Marketing

Everything that we do, from the mundane to the most exciting has in some way a direct or indirect connection to the concept of marketing. Even now, as you read this article, you are unknowingly participating in my marketing efforts of promoting knowledge through this blog. 

So..what is Marketing then?
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10 Things You Should Know Before You Hire a SEO Company

SEO Top 10

SEO Top 10

You can do a lot of things that require effort and time in order to optimize your website or blog. Of course, you can always leave all this effort and time, for a cost, to specialized companies that do this for a living. They are called SEO companies.

Before you ask for help, I suggest a list of items you should ask these companies when you engage in setting up a connection with them. Based on their answers, you’ll be in a better position to decide if this is the real deal or another fly-by-night who will only bruise your Google rank and they disappear in the digital sunset with your money.

They are the ones who attempt to unfairly manipulate search engines results, only for a short lived high ranking position for your company.

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Year 2012 – Are You Worried?

Survival Kit for the 2012 Marketer

Survival Kit for the 2012 Marketer

Around the world, a large number of people tend to believe that this Mayan Calendar event is very real and the world will end on December 21st, 2012.

So are you going to do? Sit around and wait or gather water and clothes, weapons and other items every survival kit should have?

As for me,  I don’t know… I like to see the world through rosed colored glasses and this 2012 sounds a bit far fetched.

 

 

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Stop Chasing White Whales – Ahab!

Concentrate on small to medium size companies rather than large clients

Concentrate on small to medium size companies rather than large clients

Or How Not to Take a Nose Dive with Your Big Client Wrapped Around Your Neck

Years ago, while doing some IT work for a large home building company in Michigan, I came with the idea of starting my own web design and marketing company. The owner of the construction company encouraged me to pursue the dream, knowing I would save him a bundle by selling my services directly to him.

The next 3 years I was happy as a clam, making over 100K per year from this client alone. Of course I wanted to grow my young and promising company but I kept on looking for the big fish only; just like the client I started with. In my case, I was, in fact chasing whales.

In 2007, the home construction industry took a dive and my biggest client was terminally flopping in a knee deep puddle of bankruptcy. I was so tightly connected to the client that their free fall almost took my little company into the dark deeps of despair and lost revenue.

Luckily, I had a couple of “smaller fish” from which, even today, I get steady revenue.

Conclusion:

Include in your portfolio a variety of small and medium size companies and don’t get side tracked by hunting only the whales. If your client base consists of only one or two whales you risk sinking with the ship faster than you can say “Moby-Dick”.

Of course if you happen to hook a large fish that doesn’t mean you have to throw it back. Just don’t get all ‘Ahab” on this practice. Cater to smaller ones too and you’ll be well fed.

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James Bond & the Secret of Successful Marketing

James Bond Like Marketing Tip

James Bond Like Marketing Tip

ETA – 2 hours to the meeting with the new prospects.

You go through the check list as M asked you back at the HQ. You have the car, the suit and a million dollar dazzling smile, but did you really scope all the vantage points, James?

During the weekend, Q from IT delivered a PowerPoint presentation so peppered with gizmos it would make a Swiss Army knife blush. The question is: Will it hold the audience captive in awe or will they drown in endless bottles of EVIAN? Shaken not stirred.

Prior to adventuring into unknown territories – aka The Big Sales Presentation with the Clients, any agent knows that gathering as much information possible about the target is crucial to his survival.

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Are You Selling the Product or the Dream?

Marketing Products of Dreams

Marketing Products of Dreams

Consumers don’t care and don’t want to know what electronic parts go in an iPod. All they care about is if the little devil will make them look cool on the treadmill while listening to their favorite music collection.

They could have bought any other musical storage device, but then again – can any of these other spin-offs help them plant the flag of cool on the mountain of “Supreme coolness”? I think not. The market shows the same.

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