Archive for the ‘Web Marketing’ Category
Putting Out The Welcome Mat
For communities, regions and states, the revenue generated from tourism and travel, both leisure and business, can often be perceived as a marketing “catch 22.” It is a classic example of needing to spend money to make money.
To attract tourists a destination must have activities and amenities. While most of these are funded through private investors and entrepreneurs, municipalities must do their part to provide an infrastructure and environment that makes the traveler feel welcomed.
I first started working with destination marketing back in 1976 and continue to do so today. As a result, when I travel, I pay attention to how regions and destinations present themselves to visitors. With the economic vitality available through tourism, it is puzzling that so few Read more »
Radical Change
Mention General Electric (GE) and the name that comes to mind most often is Jack Welch. Rarely, if ever, will you think of Lawrence Bossidy. Bossidy was a contemporary of Welch, but never garnered the same degree of fame. It was Bossidy, however, who guided the growth and success of GE’s financial division, GE Credit Corp. As the COO he doubled the assets to $16 billion in one five-year period.
Bossidy operated on the premise of, “Show me a great company and I’ll show you one that has radically changed itself and is looking forward to the opportunity of doing so again.” He embraced adaptability.
Adaptability should be at the core of your marketing strategy for 2010.
To be a leading brand in your market or product category will require Read more »
The Snake Oil Syndrome
In the 1800s, when marketing was very personal and done at the local level, itinerant purveyors of goods would travel from town to town, holding product demonstrations with promises of wondrous benefits to be had by using their wares. Frequently the hype far exceeded the results and the term “snake oil salesmen” came to mean quacks and frauds. “Snake oil” came to represent anything sold through exaggerated marketing claims.
It is now two centuries later and the method of snake oil marketing is alive and well. It has just been transferred from small towns to the global community of the Web. The media has changed, but the promises of greater wealth, health and beauty remain. However, the snake oil salesman is much more elusive in this global media than the fast-talking salesman who fast-tracked it out of town when customers got rowdy.
For those who sell products and services without exaggerated promises there should be concern about some of the marketing being practiced on the Web. Disillusioned Web customers will Read more »
Doing the Unexpected
Open a copy of Entrepreneur magazine and you’ll see ads for business opportunities. Flip through the pages of Vogue and you’ll find ads for designers, perfumes, and cosmetics. Most people would agree that matching the message to the media and the reader is common practice and good advertising.
After all, what better place is there to sell golf clubs than in a media source that is read, watched or visited by people who play golf?
That is giving people what they expect. Dig deeper into the research of behavior and psychology, however, and you’ll start to uncover this fascinating truth. If you Read more »
Mastering the New Media
Nikola Tesla, Philo Taylor Farnsworth and Tim Berners-Lee are three names not typically associated with advertising. Each, however, is credited with the invention of a new form of communication and technology, each of which eventually became an opportunity for merchants to hawk their wares to an increasingly bigger and broader marketplace, changing the face of advertising.
Advertising is the opportunity that knocked with the invention of radio (Tesla), television (Farnsworth) and the World Wide Web (Berners-Lee).
As with all new technologies, it took many years for the mastery of each to be developed as a source of advertising. We can Read more »
Get the Customer to Find You
In the first quarter of 2009, U.S. Consumer spending actually increased 2.2%. The challenge is to get consumers who are spending to spend it with you.
This is where some different thinking is required.
Traditional marketing and branding still have the power to keep your name and message in front of consumers so you are foremost in their minds when they are ready to spend. Which is why you must continue to advertise even though the return on your investment is not as high.
But the way consumers receive and relate to advertising, and the way they shop, is changing. The consumer is Read more »
“Searching” for Results
The number of consumers performing online searches increased 20% in 2008 to more than 11.8 billion searches in the U.S. alone. In the worldwide market there were 82.8 billion searches in 2008. These figures will continue to increase in 2009.
As you strategize about where to spend your marketing budget, be sure you are allocating a portion to optimizing your results from Internet/Web searches.
This is especially important if you are marketing business-to-business. And it is why more than 26% of small B2B companies (those with fewer than 100 employees) are beefing up their online spending this year while making cuts to the overall marketing budget.
In just over ten years the marketplace has 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 »
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