Archive for the ‘Target Marketing’ Category
Not What it Seems
Yesterday in my mail I received a “pre-approved guaranteed” $5,000 from a finance company. It wasn’t the misleading offer that got my attention. It was the address on my mail.
Nearly 20 years ago I was married to someone with the suffix Jr. on his name and we had a joint credit card account. When the account was dissolved, the credit card company erroneously appended my name with Jr. The finance offer in yesterday’s mail was addressed to Carol Aubitz Jr. That erroneous suffix on my name is still entrenched in data banks after nearly 20 years. I have moved three times and am no longer married to the “ex Jr.” yet the suffix on his name continues to follow me.
That is the problem with information in data banks. The person isn’t always what he or she seems to be. Marketers use the information over and over, multiplying the error so many times it is impossible to extract it and permanently correct the records. While most of the data collected about us is entered and stored accurately, there are many ways that the data Read more »
A Discount Recovery
In the last two weeks of August, a muse article called “The Discount Dilemma” was the third most popular topic read by thousands of people who visited the Muse page on our Web site.
Discounting continues to be a topic of interest, especially as we are about to enter the busy 4th quarter retail season. What will drive holiday shopping? How much discounting can you expect as a consumer and will you do as a marketer?
Since I am on vacation this week, I thought it would be beneficial to take another look at “The Discount Dilemma.” So once again, as you look at price-cutting as an answer to slumping sales, or a way to gain a competitive edge over others in your market, consider the ways discounting can Read more »
The Power to Persuade
As Washington continues to allocate funds to financial sectors and select corporations, and as it supposedly puts money back into consumers’ wallets through the stimulus package, I can’t help but observe the greatest oversight of all when it comes to stimulating the economy.
And that is advertising.
There is not a penny put in any package to stimulate advertising.
Yet advertising is the single most important industry that needs to survive if Read more »
Low-Cost Ways to Boost Cash Flow
Feeling the pinch? Looking for ways to keep your brand alive and healthy during a sick economy?
To fight the blight of a tight market, it’s time to pull out guerrilla marketing strategies. With guerrilla marketing, instead of the big-budget, splashy ad campaigns you might use when cash is flowing, use stealth marketing to motivate consumers without looking like advertising as usual.
Quite simply, guerrilla techniques are the unconventional, innovative and imaginative approach for reaching customers in ways and places that are Read more »
Think Like a Customer
In December 2000, Paramount Pictures released the movie “What Women Want.” Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt starred as competing advertising execs working within the same agency, challenged to come up with a campaign idea for Nike, targeted at women.
Through a freak accident, Gibson finds he can suddenly hear what women are thinking but not saying. He uses the women’s secret thoughts to develop ad ideas and slogans that connect with women. In the process, he realizes how off-target he was in the way he used to think when developing ad campaigns.
The result is, he starts to think like the customer.
It is one of the most important lessons a business can Read more »
How You Can Cash In with Direct Mail
In his first book, Confessions of an Advertising Man, David Ogilvy wrote that the principles for his success came from watching what was being done by direct mail advertisers.
Since that time direct mail has gone through many changes. High-powered ad agencies that once wouldn’t be caught dead doing direct mail started buying up small direct marketing agencies and opened “direct” shops. Businesses of all kinds, from self-employed consultants to Fortune 500 companies started “doing direct.”
Problems came, however, when results didn’t. Direct mail often didn’t work because too many thought of it as a delivery system rather than a marketing technique and sent out mail without doing it right. But when done right, direct mail is the most profitable Read more »
Micro Marketing to Boomers
We are no longer a nation of mass consumers. Although we consume massive amounts of products, goods and services, our connection to what we consume is increasingly at a very individualistic decision.
Where we once strived to keep up with the Joneses, now we don’t even want to be like the Joneses. We are celebrating our uniqueness. Nowhere is this more evident than with the Baby Boomers.
To lump them into one demographic group is of no value to businesses wanting to tap into the enormous amount of wealth and spending power that is settling into the hands and bank accounts of those born between 1946 and 1964.
The safest way to enter into a marketing relationship with boomers is Read more »
What Makes Direct Mail Work
Christmas is almost here. So is New Year’s. And with them comes another reason why, in marketing, this is the most wonderful time of the year. I first learned about this magical season more than 30 years ago.
I was working on my first direct mail campaign. Well, actually, I was working on four separate direct mail campaigns. Four different products. Four different mailing packages. But with one thing in common. They absolutely, positively, without exception needed to be put in the mail on December 27th.
That’s when I learned that the best week of the year to have a direct mail campaign arrive in homes and businesses is always the first week of January. To guarantee your mail gets there that first week, it has to go out between Read more »
Thinking Small Can Be Really Big
By the beginning of the 1960s 88% of American homes had television. There were three networks. Consumers had only three choices of what to watch at any given time of the day or evening before the programs ended until the next morning.
For advertisers it meant that by just placing their commercials on the three networks they could get their message in front of 88% of the country. It was the era of mass marketing.
In today’s market, however, the most lucrative opportunities come from Read more »
Marketing to the Wealthy
One thing about the very wealthy, even when the economy takes a plunge, they still have a lot of money to spend.
So you might think that if you just get your advertising in front of the people with money, you’ve reached the solution to maintaining sales when the marketplace is in a slump. But do you know how and why marketing to the very wealthy is different than marketing to other consumer groups?
Yogi Berra, when commenting about a restaurant in Manhattan, said, “It’s become so popular that nobody goes there anymore.” That Read more »
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