Friday, June 27, 2008

The Date of the Birmingham Seminar is Set

Big Business Marketing for a Small Business Budget will be the first in a series of seminars set up to take your marketing efforts to the next level. Please visit the attached link to sign up for the seminar. You do not want to be left out of this one!

Early Bird Pricing Now Available!

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Who is NOT your target market?

This is excellent posting by Rohit Bhargava, Senior Vice President for Digital Strategy and Marketing at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence. I could not of said it any better about the importance of knowing who YOUR target market is and is not. We spend so much time finding out who we need to target that we do not take the time to think about who we should NOT target. Many times, as small business owners we are so busy and we need to choose wisely how we spend our time. Targeting the wrong consumer is not how we should spend our time.

Bohargava said the following:

Last week when I was in NY, I passed a street vendor selling sunglasses for $5 a pair. They were clearly copies of best selling designs from top designers, and had fairly obvious quality flaws. It would be a miracle if any of those sunglasses lasted more than a couple of weeks. And yet several people were still buying them. Why? Was it an impulse buy walking down the street? It is a choice because they lose or break sunglasses so often that it's not worth paying a lot for them? Probably all of the above - which points to an interesting lesson: for some people, good sunglasses just aren't worth paying for.

How much of your marketing is focused on selling the features and benefits of your product or service? You are probably illustrating how to set it apart and why it fills a need. The problem is, if a consumer doesn't believe products in your category are worth paying for, you are unlikely to convince them to make an exception for you. Someone who is used to paying $5 for a pair of sunglasses may buy two or three pairs every month. Of course, the truth is over time they will end up paying as much as they may for a single good pair ... but that doesn't matter.

Instead of asking if your marketing is selling the right messages, you really need to ask if you are targeting the right customers. The real question isn't whether you can compete with the guy selling sunglasses on the street ... it is whether you should even be trying to.

Trace Back URL:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/393855/30051972

Rohit Bhargava's Blog:
http://www.influentialmarketingblog.com/

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Have you included Social Media into your Marketing Mix?

Social media is a facet that many in business may ignore. Some see social media as a vehicle for teenagers to communicate. This is not the case. Social media sites are an excellent place to catch people online in an environment that they are not trying to tune out constant advertisement.

Depending on the type of individual that you are attempting to target, you can pretty much create an inexpensive way to socialize with your potential customers. MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube are some of the most popular tools that one can use. There are also more targeted social sites such as LinkedIn, ITtoolbox, and Minyanville Exchange (a financial social networking site).

Developing a strategy to obtain a holistic approach to your marketing and media campaign could change the volume of business that you do in less the one year.