by: Egidijus Andreika
The effectiveness of an internet marketing campaign can be summed up in three words: search engine ranking. The higher your website’s position is in search engine results, the more popular it is. Popularity means two things – increase in revenues and greater traffic. To bring these good fortunes into your website, you need to pinpoint the keywords that bring customers and potential new clients to your website.
See these examples: “Snag PGA-standard Golf Shoes at Half Price Now!” vs. “Avail of Golf Footwear like the ones used by Players in the PGA at discounted prices!” Which is more effective and delivers the most impact? If you go for the latter, you must seriously reconsider your banners and ads. Both deliver the same message but the first ad is more likely to draw in a lot of clicks. Why? It uses strong words and a focused keyword. You can use SEO campaigns and pay-per-click advertising services in order to boost your sales and traffic but how do you find which keywords reel in the money? Here’s how:
Measuring click-through rates
Click-through rates are simply the number of times people clicked on your advertisements. Where is the keyword in this scenario? Do not forget that the life of your banners and other advertisements is built on words but not just any word. Banners and advertisements reel in potential customers by being targeted and focused.
There are two ways by which you can measure click-through rates: PHP and ASP Scripts and CGI Script.
There are plenty of CGI Scripts for tracking click-throughs available online. Install the script in your website but make it invisible so that visitors will not feel that they are being watched or something. You can also opt to have a CGI Script custom-designed for your website if you have extra cash. You can also inquire about CGI tracking scripts from your web host.
If a CGI script is passé for you, you can opt to go for PHP and ASP scripts in tracking your keywords’ click-through rates. Ask your web hosting service provider if it supports the script you want. You can also inquire about server-side scripts to find out which is more compatible for your website.
Online tracking services
If scripts are too technical for you, there are online tracking service providers you can sign up with. These providers usually let you try the free version of their tracking client so you can shop around for the best deal before upgrading to a paid version. Paid versions are generally more useful since the providers let you have automated reports detailing click through rates and other important information you can use to beef up your internet marketing campaigns.
You can also sign up with internet marketing and affiliate networks like Click2Sell.EU for a marketing campaign. Affiliates can use your own advertisement materials to ensure consistency and quality in your ad campaigns. By using its own software, the network can provide you with updated reports about your traffic, click-through rates, lets you track keywords and sales each keyword bring and even lets you manage your affiliates for maximum efficiency.
Tracking which keywords bring you the money lets you streamline your internet marketing efforts so you can focus on the keywords and methods that produce results.
Harness The Power of Membership Websites
by: Jeremy Gislason
Look through the eyes of your members and you might be surprised. You might find new ways to meet their needs. You might find new ways to offer benefit. Heck, you might even be able to anticipate there needs – there’s no better money maker than that!
What do members want?
The best way to answer that question is to ask yourself. What do you want from a membership site?
Take a moment and write down 10 things that you want from the membership sites that you belong to.
Go ahead...we’ll wait.
Okay, you have your list? Let’s see if it matches any of the items that we came up with.
Presumably you want:
A trusted source of information, products, and resources.
A wide variety of resources that meet your needs with multiple price points
Easy to use website
Easy to process transactions
Membership policies that make sense
Subscriptions that are worth their price
Subscriptions that are easy to renew or cancel
Updated content
Updated resources
A way, or many ways, to communicate with members and website staff
An efficient customer relations protocol
An easy way to return products
Clearly established terms of use
A website that protects your privacy – and doesn’t sell your information
Communications, via email or newsletter, that are frequent enough to keep you in the loop but not so frequent that you feel hassled.
A website that is fitted specifically to meet your needs
Does that cover it? Not likely. That’s just a short list of the things you probably want from a membership site that you belong to. You may also want to be able to use the site, products, and contacts that you make to generate profits. You certainly want to belong to a membership site that you can be proud of and that is recognizable – this means you’ll more likely be a loyal and frequent visitor if not a frequent purchaser.
Now comes the second question…
What can you do to make your membership site meet the needs listed above, and any others that you came up with?
Many of the needs are fairly easy to fill. Customer relations can be automated. Billing, renewals, and auto responder thank you messages can be automated. Content, much of it anyway, can be outsourced. Terms of use and policies can be posted on your website and handed out in the form of a report when members subscribe. Affiliate programs and other wealth building tools can be automated. That leaves a few things: making sure that your customers know that you’re an upstanding site with their best interests at heart, keeping the quality content, resources, and products up to date and quality, and tying all of their needs together into a cohesive website. Not too hard, right?
It doesn’t have to be. Use the resources that you have, such as those at http://MembershipMillionaire.com, to make your membership site the absolute best that it can be for you and for your members.
Look through the eyes of your members and you might be surprised. You might find new ways to meet their needs. You might find new ways to offer benefit. Heck, you might even be able to anticipate there needs – there’s no better money maker than that!
What do members want?
The best way to answer that question is to ask yourself. What do you want from a membership site?
Take a moment and write down 10 things that you want from the membership sites that you belong to.
Go ahead...we’ll wait.
Okay, you have your list? Let’s see if it matches any of the items that we came up with.
Presumably you want:
A trusted source of information, products, and resources.
A wide variety of resources that meet your needs with multiple price points
Easy to use website
Easy to process transactions
Membership policies that make sense
Subscriptions that are worth their price
Subscriptions that are easy to renew or cancel
Updated content
Updated resources
A way, or many ways, to communicate with members and website staff
An efficient customer relations protocol
An easy way to return products
Clearly established terms of use
A website that protects your privacy – and doesn’t sell your information
Communications, via email or newsletter, that are frequent enough to keep you in the loop but not so frequent that you feel hassled.
A website that is fitted specifically to meet your needs
Does that cover it? Not likely. That’s just a short list of the things you probably want from a membership site that you belong to. You may also want to be able to use the site, products, and contacts that you make to generate profits. You certainly want to belong to a membership site that you can be proud of and that is recognizable – this means you’ll more likely be a loyal and frequent visitor if not a frequent purchaser.
Now comes the second question…
What can you do to make your membership site meet the needs listed above, and any others that you came up with?
Many of the needs are fairly easy to fill. Customer relations can be automated. Billing, renewals, and auto responder thank you messages can be automated. Content, much of it anyway, can be outsourced. Terms of use and policies can be posted on your website and handed out in the form of a report when members subscribe. Affiliate programs and other wealth building tools can be automated. That leaves a few things: making sure that your customers know that you’re an upstanding site with their best interests at heart, keeping the quality content, resources, and products up to date and quality, and tying all of their needs together into a cohesive website. Not too hard, right?
It doesn’t have to be. Use the resources that you have, such as those at http://MembershipMillionaire.com, to make your membership site the absolute best that it can be for you and for your members.
Strategies to Get Your Membership Site Noticed Fast
by: Jeremy Gislason
If you want to make money with your membership site, you have to get it noticed. The faster the word gets out, the faster you’ll begin making money. Here are five strategies to get you noticed faster than a streaker at a soccer game.
Provide Free Information. This is a superior strategy to get folks to your web site, however you have a fine line to walk. Too much free info and there’s no benefit to joining your site. Not enough and you don’t give potential members enough of a complimentary preview.
Of course, if you don’t offer quality information then you’ll lose potential members anyway. So make sure that the information you offer is fantastic. You want your free information to be so good that visitors pass it along to others.
Give folks a peek inside with a free trial membership. Trial memberships hook readers! Not only do they instill confidence, once customers get an inside look at all that you have to offer they will want to sign up immediately. Consider also, making certain items on your website available only to ‘permanent subscribers.’ This type of feature works as a tease. Of course, don’t overdo it. You want trial members to be able to access a lot of your site.
Viral Marketing Miracles. Give free reports and even ebooks to affiliates to give away. This report will include the affiliate’s unique ID and any sales made through that report will be credited to the affiliate. It’s a great way to get people to spread the word about your membership site.
Remember that if you want to drive traffic to your site, the ebooks and reports that you give away MUST be excellent.
Article Marketing Mania. Article directories are a wonderful way to drive traffic to your membership site. They help to establish your credibility and they give potential subscribers a peek inside the offerings at your site. Also use article marketing to help build a top notch opt-in list. Always include a link back to your website or sales page.
Fabulous Forums, blogs, and chat rooms. Forums, chat rooms, and blog posts are a good way to get the word out quickly about your membership site. Most forums, chat rooms, and even blogs will allow you to place a link back to your website in your signature link. Consider that many of the people you speak to in these venues may not be ready to purchase but they will be a good resource in the future – if you collect their information.
If you want to make money with your membership site, you have to get it noticed. The faster the word gets out, the faster you’ll begin making money. Here are five strategies to get you noticed faster than a streaker at a soccer game.
Provide Free Information. This is a superior strategy to get folks to your web site, however you have a fine line to walk. Too much free info and there’s no benefit to joining your site. Not enough and you don’t give potential members enough of a complimentary preview.
Of course, if you don’t offer quality information then you’ll lose potential members anyway. So make sure that the information you offer is fantastic. You want your free information to be so good that visitors pass it along to others.
Give folks a peek inside with a free trial membership. Trial memberships hook readers! Not only do they instill confidence, once customers get an inside look at all that you have to offer they will want to sign up immediately. Consider also, making certain items on your website available only to ‘permanent subscribers.’ This type of feature works as a tease. Of course, don’t overdo it. You want trial members to be able to access a lot of your site.
Viral Marketing Miracles. Give free reports and even ebooks to affiliates to give away. This report will include the affiliate’s unique ID and any sales made through that report will be credited to the affiliate. It’s a great way to get people to spread the word about your membership site.
Remember that if you want to drive traffic to your site, the ebooks and reports that you give away MUST be excellent.
Article Marketing Mania. Article directories are a wonderful way to drive traffic to your membership site. They help to establish your credibility and they give potential subscribers a peek inside the offerings at your site. Also use article marketing to help build a top notch opt-in list. Always include a link back to your website or sales page.
Fabulous Forums, blogs, and chat rooms. Forums, chat rooms, and blog posts are a good way to get the word out quickly about your membership site. Most forums, chat rooms, and even blogs will allow you to place a link back to your website in your signature link. Consider that many of the people you speak to in these venues may not be ready to purchase but they will be a good resource in the future – if you collect their information.
Choosing a Network Marketing Company
by: Troy Rocavert
Choosing a network marketing company can be a difficult task. There are Literally hundreds of network marketing business opportunities to decide from and you could spend hours, even months finding the best one. Many people who search for a network marketing business will not get past the first step as the amount of opportunities and misleading information presented on the Internet is confusing.
We support you to keep strong, go after your dreams and keep on your journey to finding a home business that is right for you. The optimum way to keep on-course is to read through this article and apply our simple six step process.
1. Where to start?
The Direct Selling Association (DSA) web site is a great place to start when choosing a network marketing company. The Direct Selling Association (DSA) is the national trade association of the leading firms that manufacture and distribute goods and services sold directly to consumers. In fact, you will find 70 different categories of products and services, and over 200 different companies you can potentially choose a home based business from. These categories contain everything from financial services to Animal Care industries.
This means you automatically have a list of 200 companies and 70 different products and services that you could potentially partner your self with. You are not just limited to this list either. There are many more companies in network marketing who are not members of the DSA and there is a good reason for this. So we strongly recommend that you choose a company who is a DSA member for your own good.
2. What do you love to do?
One of most significant criteria when choosing a home based business opportunity is; will you love it? The most successful people in the world become successful because they really love what they do. Donald Trump, for example - property investor, over 60 years of age and still working, not because he needs to but because he loves to, there is a major difference.
Imagine a MLM business where you can wake up in the morning feeling energised and thrilled to go to work. Most people that are searching for a home based business do not enjoy their current employment, under paid or would prefer to be at home with their family. Whatever the reason, you must love what you do.
3. Look for a trend
In addition to working out what you love to do, you must look into the service or product the company has to offer and in particular the opportunity it has to grow. If you do some study into this topic you will find that one of the driving forces behind many of the economic trends over the past 60 years was directly related to the baby boomer’s spending. Why you may ask? Well, the baby boomer period accounts for one third of the world’s population and two thirds of the world’s spending. Leading economic forecasters have used these trends to predict where the baby boomers will next spend their dollars, namely Health and Wellness, and Financial Service industries.
4. Compensation Plan
What you need to look for is a lucrative Compensation Plan that allows anybody to succeed and succeed equally, not just those who are at the top. Personally we are big advocators of the Binary System, not because it is the most lucrative of compensation plans, but rather because it is the fairest compensation plan. If you been in the industry for numerous years and you are a power house, which only accounts for 1% of the network marketing population, then the Stair Step Breakaway plan will be the most lucrative for you, but for the rest of us regular people, we suggest that you stick to the binary system.
5. Choose a solid company
If you are going to put all your blood, sweat and tears into a MLM business, you want to choose a company that is going to be around for the long term. Research suggests that 90% of all MLM companies FAIL within their first 2 years, slightly stronger than a traditional small business where 80% will fail within their first year. There would be nothing worse than putting four or five years into a home business for it to fold, leaving you with no business and no residual income. So we strongly recommend you choose a MLM company that has been around longer than 5 years and is still growing.
6. The Product
There is two criteria that your product must meet, (1) your product must be consumable and (2) would you use it yourself? If the product meets these two requirements then the MLM Company receives a tick in this section.
Once you have finished this six step process, you will observe that you will be able to abolish 99% of the MLM companies and make your decision quite easy. But always remember, even the best MLM deal in the world will not make you wealthy without consistent hard work. We wish you all the best in your journey.
Choosing a network marketing company can be a difficult task. There are Literally hundreds of network marketing business opportunities to decide from and you could spend hours, even months finding the best one. Many people who search for a network marketing business will not get past the first step as the amount of opportunities and misleading information presented on the Internet is confusing.
We support you to keep strong, go after your dreams and keep on your journey to finding a home business that is right for you. The optimum way to keep on-course is to read through this article and apply our simple six step process.
1. Where to start?
The Direct Selling Association (DSA) web site is a great place to start when choosing a network marketing company. The Direct Selling Association (DSA) is the national trade association of the leading firms that manufacture and distribute goods and services sold directly to consumers. In fact, you will find 70 different categories of products and services, and over 200 different companies you can potentially choose a home based business from. These categories contain everything from financial services to Animal Care industries.
This means you automatically have a list of 200 companies and 70 different products and services that you could potentially partner your self with. You are not just limited to this list either. There are many more companies in network marketing who are not members of the DSA and there is a good reason for this. So we strongly recommend that you choose a company who is a DSA member for your own good.
2. What do you love to do?
One of most significant criteria when choosing a home based business opportunity is; will you love it? The most successful people in the world become successful because they really love what they do. Donald Trump, for example - property investor, over 60 years of age and still working, not because he needs to but because he loves to, there is a major difference.
Imagine a MLM business where you can wake up in the morning feeling energised and thrilled to go to work. Most people that are searching for a home based business do not enjoy their current employment, under paid or would prefer to be at home with their family. Whatever the reason, you must love what you do.
3. Look for a trend
In addition to working out what you love to do, you must look into the service or product the company has to offer and in particular the opportunity it has to grow. If you do some study into this topic you will find that one of the driving forces behind many of the economic trends over the past 60 years was directly related to the baby boomer’s spending. Why you may ask? Well, the baby boomer period accounts for one third of the world’s population and two thirds of the world’s spending. Leading economic forecasters have used these trends to predict where the baby boomers will next spend their dollars, namely Health and Wellness, and Financial Service industries.
4. Compensation Plan
What you need to look for is a lucrative Compensation Plan that allows anybody to succeed and succeed equally, not just those who are at the top. Personally we are big advocators of the Binary System, not because it is the most lucrative of compensation plans, but rather because it is the fairest compensation plan. If you been in the industry for numerous years and you are a power house, which only accounts for 1% of the network marketing population, then the Stair Step Breakaway plan will be the most lucrative for you, but for the rest of us regular people, we suggest that you stick to the binary system.
5. Choose a solid company
If you are going to put all your blood, sweat and tears into a MLM business, you want to choose a company that is going to be around for the long term. Research suggests that 90% of all MLM companies FAIL within their first 2 years, slightly stronger than a traditional small business where 80% will fail within their first year. There would be nothing worse than putting four or five years into a home business for it to fold, leaving you with no business and no residual income. So we strongly recommend you choose a MLM company that has been around longer than 5 years and is still growing.
6. The Product
There is two criteria that your product must meet, (1) your product must be consumable and (2) would you use it yourself? If the product meets these two requirements then the MLM Company receives a tick in this section.
Once you have finished this six step process, you will observe that you will be able to abolish 99% of the MLM companies and make your decision quite easy. But always remember, even the best MLM deal in the world will not make you wealthy without consistent hard work. We wish you all the best in your journey.
How To Find Free Internet Marketing
by: Mark Walters
New ecommerce businesses are caught up in SEO and web optimization. They view Google as the holy grail of making profits via the internet. Their internet marketing budget is sank into buying traffic, optimizing pages, and establishing major PayPerClick programs with the major search engines. All the work, and expense, involved in following the pack, is virtually unnecessary in today’s ecommerce world.
Marketing the Website
Submitting to search engines is only the first step toward a strong Internet Marketing campaign – it should never be the full focus. There are several ways to market a website.
- search engine optimization
- Pay Per Click
- Search Engine Submission
- Generating Inbound Links and increasing Page Rank
- Building Content
- Adding Social Networking Tools such as forums
Each one of these tools have a benefit. Recently a blog community went from PR0 – PR4, and receiving 300 000 hits a month with a budget of $50 a month. The blog community invested $20 a month in a PayPerClick program to ‘boost’ their exposure on Google and be accepted and ‘ranked’ faster.
www.communati.com submitted the website to more than 3000 search engines, free, using www.webceo.com. Despite the ‘old’ search engine hype, this should only be done once or twice a year. They embarked on an article writing, forum promoting, and encouraging members to ‘put the word out.’ The inbound link campaign increased their Page Rank to PR4 within 5 months, an incredible feat.
Next, communati added social networking features like points and a chat. The important ‘trick’ to remember is that search engines give more rank to pages inside the website, not the index or home page. Building links to the home page is becoming a waste of time. Five articles with specific topics that contain high keywords, links to the rest of the ecommerce website, and ‘hooks’, will generate more PR than links to a buy now page, the index page, or a page with heavy images and graphics.
Marketing the Blog
All websites should include a blog. Not because a blog is necessary, or because people read them. The number one reason for putting up a blog is to increase keyword density, but keep in below the 5% ‘red flag’ level. It also generates dozens of extra content pages, increases the number of ‘in house’ links which are also important to increasing page rank.
A blog can also be submitted to blog directories. The best way to submit is using a service. When an Internet Marketing manager submits a blog to a directory, they must include a backward link. When they use a service they can submit to about 1000 directories without back links. The price ranges from $200 - $500. http://www.lazyurl.com/, http://www.submitcomfort.com/
One advantage of a blog is that it is submitted to the blog directories every time someone writes a new post. Web sites that are submitted more than 4 or 5 times a year may find themselves banned. However, a blog can ping the search engine several times a day without risk of being banned.
In turn, the blog search engines ‘ping’ the big search engines who give the ‘new’ content high page rank for the first few hours.
Marketing The Podcast
No podcast on your ecommerce website? Why? Submitting it to the podcast directories is another way to generate free exposure. The podcast only needs a few streaming or downloaded files to qualify. Podcasts can also be listed on dozens and dozens of free services, each building links to the main site, as well as increasing the exposure to the website. AmigoFish.com, Digg Podcasts , Podcast Pickle , www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts or http://podcasts.yahoo.com.
The most popular podcatcher software is iTunes, which is available as a free download from www.apple.com/itunes/download.
Promote Video
Does your product Appeal to younger people? Then load video at facebook, youtube, etc and then submit those videos. Don’t make a dry workshop or seminar style tutorial, but make it interesting. It is amazing how many younger people click in keywords, and then use the ‘search video only’ link to view relevant videos instead of reading articles.
The list continues. Submit your newsletter, forums, and chat directories. A single article can be submitted to more than 50 000 article submission ‘free content’ sites. No cost involved, except time, and the exposure will create a ripple effect sending your message farther across the web than a $100 000 SEO, traffic buying, and search engine submission campaign.
New ecommerce businesses are caught up in SEO and web optimization. They view Google as the holy grail of making profits via the internet. Their internet marketing budget is sank into buying traffic, optimizing pages, and establishing major PayPerClick programs with the major search engines. All the work, and expense, involved in following the pack, is virtually unnecessary in today’s ecommerce world.
Marketing the Website
Submitting to search engines is only the first step toward a strong Internet Marketing campaign – it should never be the full focus. There are several ways to market a website.
- search engine optimization
- Pay Per Click
- Search Engine Submission
- Generating Inbound Links and increasing Page Rank
- Building Content
- Adding Social Networking Tools such as forums
Each one of these tools have a benefit. Recently a blog community went from PR0 – PR4, and receiving 300 000 hits a month with a budget of $50 a month. The blog community invested $20 a month in a PayPerClick program to ‘boost’ their exposure on Google and be accepted and ‘ranked’ faster.
www.communati.com submitted the website to more than 3000 search engines, free, using www.webceo.com. Despite the ‘old’ search engine hype, this should only be done once or twice a year. They embarked on an article writing, forum promoting, and encouraging members to ‘put the word out.’ The inbound link campaign increased their Page Rank to PR4 within 5 months, an incredible feat.
Next, communati added social networking features like points and a chat. The important ‘trick’ to remember is that search engines give more rank to pages inside the website, not the index or home page. Building links to the home page is becoming a waste of time. Five articles with specific topics that contain high keywords, links to the rest of the ecommerce website, and ‘hooks’, will generate more PR than links to a buy now page, the index page, or a page with heavy images and graphics.
Marketing the Blog
All websites should include a blog. Not because a blog is necessary, or because people read them. The number one reason for putting up a blog is to increase keyword density, but keep in below the 5% ‘red flag’ level. It also generates dozens of extra content pages, increases the number of ‘in house’ links which are also important to increasing page rank.
A blog can also be submitted to blog directories. The best way to submit is using a service. When an Internet Marketing manager submits a blog to a directory, they must include a backward link. When they use a service they can submit to about 1000 directories without back links. The price ranges from $200 - $500. http://www.lazyurl.com/, http://www.submitcomfort.com/
One advantage of a blog is that it is submitted to the blog directories every time someone writes a new post. Web sites that are submitted more than 4 or 5 times a year may find themselves banned. However, a blog can ping the search engine several times a day without risk of being banned.
In turn, the blog search engines ‘ping’ the big search engines who give the ‘new’ content high page rank for the first few hours.
Marketing The Podcast
No podcast on your ecommerce website? Why? Submitting it to the podcast directories is another way to generate free exposure. The podcast only needs a few streaming or downloaded files to qualify. Podcasts can also be listed on dozens and dozens of free services, each building links to the main site, as well as increasing the exposure to the website. AmigoFish.com, Digg Podcasts , Podcast Pickle , www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts or http://podcasts.yahoo.com.
The most popular podcatcher software is iTunes, which is available as a free download from www.apple.com/itunes/download.
Promote Video
Does your product Appeal to younger people? Then load video at facebook, youtube, etc and then submit those videos. Don’t make a dry workshop or seminar style tutorial, but make it interesting. It is amazing how many younger people click in keywords, and then use the ‘search video only’ link to view relevant videos instead of reading articles.
The list continues. Submit your newsletter, forums, and chat directories. A single article can be submitted to more than 50 000 article submission ‘free content’ sites. No cost involved, except time, and the exposure will create a ripple effect sending your message farther across the web than a $100 000 SEO, traffic buying, and search engine submission campaign.
Grow Your Business - Low-Cost Marketing Techniques for Business Growth
by: Hal Warfield
Let’s face it – sales are good and you are pleased at your progress. So what else should you be doing to grow your business?
You initially built your successful small business on your own abilities. You grew it further by adding a sales person or two. Now you’re at a decision point: what do you do to grow your business further? Do you want to grow to the proverbial “next level”?
If you are that business owner it’s time to delve into marketing; you know you should but you’re not sure how. This article is designed to help you embrace marketing for growing your business.
Marketing has many definitions. It’s often thought of in terms of paid advertising. For our purposes we will use the following formula to differentiate sales from marketing.
A sale is achieved in four steps: Attention, Interest, Preference and Choice. The last two are the responsibility of sales. The first two – attention and interest – are the responsibility of marketing. That’s it – no heavy marketing jargon; the role of marketing is to focus attention on your products and services and then gather the interest and feed it to sales.
Expecting sales people to do your marketing is like expecting hunters to give up hunting in order to farm. The proper place of marketing in growing a small business is feeding opportunities to your sales staff who go forth and make your product or service the preference and then the choice.
Your business will grow to the extent that your sales force has a steady steam of qualified suspects (leads). Marketing is the means of finding those suspects. Why do many small businesses focus on the sales aspect of business growth?
I believe it feels ‘easier’ to go out and beat the bushes looking for another sale versus taking the time to build a marketing approach that works. If you are selling then you are ‘doing’ something. If you are marketing you may feel you are just adding expense.
Marketing is the servant of sales; too often it’s the other way around. Marketing is too often associated with “trash ‘n trinkets” and trade shows and too often isolated from the sales process. When I was in direct sales we always complained that the marketing folks were too far removed from what we in sales had to deal with.
What does it mean to be the ‘servant of sales’? Specifically, marketing’s only reason for existence is to provide leads to sales and to track the effectiveness of what they do in finding those leads.
Taken further, a marketing plan should target those who would most benefit from your products and services and then implement methods that will gain attention and interest.
Understand that a sales person still must close the sale. But the success of that sales person can be multiplied if they don’t have to split their time by finding their own sales leads. Again, that’s the role of marketing. A sales person is measured and compensated by the revenue they generate. Marketing efforts should be measured (and compensated for) the amount and quality of leads they provide to sales.
Another way to look at it is that Marketing feeds the top of the sales funnel. Don’t waste your sales people’s time with generating their own leads; put in marketing methods that work and let marketing fill the top of the funnel.
Another reason business owner’s focus on sales is the time factor – effective marketing takes time and persistence. Many owners would rather focus on selling due to its direct impact on today’s business.
Okay, so you know you should be doing marketing but a) you don’t know what to do, b) you don’t know how to do it, c) you’re not sure what activities would work best in your business, c) you really don’t want the expense of hiring a marketing person.
Let’s talk then about marketing methods that are relatively inexpensive and can be outsourced – and how to decide which ones will work for your business. And notice as we go through them that none of them are focusing on paid advertising.
Marketing Methods
Webinars
Many of us have “attended” a webinar; a hosted presentation accessed via a website and telephone. If planned carefully these can be a powerful way of presenting your company to a wider audience.
Numerous companies offer Webinars including www.webex.com and www.gotowebinar.com. The “trick” with a webinar is to carefully craft your message and desired response to the medium. By this I mean that it is very easy for attention to wander when sitting in your office watching a slide presentation. Phone calls or IMs coming in can divert the audience attention easily.
Rather than trying to fully demonstrate a product or service focus rather on the “high points”. Design the session to prompt viewers to request further information by offering a white paper or a CD or a free offer of some kind.
Remember that the participants are indeed “viewers” and work to keep their interest. Long, text-filled PowerPoint slides should probably be replaced with images or short videos. Excellent resources for improving PowerPoint presentations can be found here:
http://www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit/2007/11/how-not-to-use-.html
and http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/rock-your-
presentation-with-the-right-tools-and-apps-304418.php.
Marketing a webinar is also a challenge. You must find a mailing list of potential email addresses and, again, make the webinar sound interesting and useful. Contact us at www.marketstrategy.cc for more help with Webinars.
Email Blasts and Newsletters
Related to the webinar is the Email Blast. An email blast is accomplished by purchasing a list of potential prospects and sending them a “bulk” email. The simplest way to do this combines Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook to send out a text-only message to the list. These lists can be purchased or even found online. Due to security changes in Outlook, you can only send plain text in this manner.
If you want to send a more formatted email message you will need to use a company that provides this service and has their own mailing software that avoids the problem of text-only messages.
Again, since many of these may be “captured” by Spam filters, it is important to craft the message and the subject line carefully. This type of message should seek a request for more information again by offering a free offer such as a white paper or CD.
In a related vein, an Email Newsletter can be used successfully to keep in regular contact with customers and prospects. While you can do this yourself, companies such as www.constantcontact.com provide easy-to-use templates and tools to create good-looking HTML newsletters with pictures and content of your choosing.
The difference here is that Constant Contact requires the list be “opt in”. Opt In means that individual must subscribe to your newsletter and must also have an easy way of canceling their subscription.
A combination of a text-only email blast advertising your newsletter may result in new prospects and customers.
Articles
Almost every business has a potential magazine or journal audience. Whether retail, professional or institutional, there are magazines, journals and websites aimed at your potential customers. Writing for these publications can establish your expertise and reputation among prospects and your existing customer base.
Now before you dismiss this out of hand (I’m not a writer; I don’t have time to write, I don’t know how to get it published) at www.marketstrategy.cc we spend some of our time “ghost writing” articles and submitting them to the proper channels for you. We interview you to get the content, interview – when appropriate – your customers to gain additional information, and then craft an article that puts your business in the most positive light.
There are also services such as www.elance.com where you can find talented writers and designers who can help you craft your message and get it published. If you have enough information you may even want to consider producing an “e-book” in Adobe PDF format for sale or to distribute freely to enhance your reputation as an expert.
Telemarketing
This is one I used to shun like the plague. However in certain situations it may be an effective way to gain prospects. Let me define “certain situations” – if you cover a large geographic area with a small sales staff and your company is not well known, companies such as www.callboxinc.com can provide a fairly low cost calling program to potential customers.
The trick here is to carefully craft your message so that it elicits a request for more information from you or your sales staff. Do NOT try to close business but simply gain “attention and interest”.
It is critical that you have numerous conversations with your telemarketing company and that you have multiple training calls with the actual person who will be calling for you. You may irritate some potential customers but you may also gain useful leads for your sales staff to follow up.
www.MarketStrategy.cc can help you if you’d like to discuss whether this is an option for your business or not.
Trade Shows, Seminars and Speaking
Trade shows are what many think about when they think marketing but they can also be a black hole of wasted time, money and effort.
However, a targeted approach to certain tradeshows can yield useful results with planning and forethought. The approach “we’d better be there because our competition is going to be there” will just mean your sales staff sitting around talking to each other.
A targeted approach to a Trade show is to first make sure you can get a complete attendee list PRIOR to the show. A carefully crafted email and phone campaign can make sure prospects are aware you are exhibit as well as providing invitations to special events or showings of your product or service.
Your approach during the show should again seek to elicit a follow up meeting; not just a glad-handing “good to see you” approach. Questions should also be crafted that separate actual leads from “tire kickers”.
Following the trade show every attendee should again be emailed thanking him or her for attending (whether you spoke to them or not) and again offering useful information to them such as a CD, article reprint or white paper.
A seminar is similar to the Webinar discussed earlier. The key here is whether the expense of renting facilities and providing food and beverage is worth the extra effort. To be useful, a seminar should highlight and feature your customers, not you. If you have happy customers and experts presenting about your products and services you will gain credibility.
www.MarketStrategy.cc can help you decide whether or not a seminar is an effective use of your time and dollars.
Website and/or Weblog (Blog)
Everyone has a website (don’t they?) but does it really help you drive business? I won’t go into much detail here other than to say that you might want Market Strategy to give you a quick no-cost, no-obligation review of your site. We have done website re-design to help companies capture more “eyeballs” and cause them to actually do something with you.
A Weblog is basically an online journal; like an article in a magazine, a weblog establishes you as an expert in your field. A service such as www.elance.com can help with ghost writers if you and your staff can’t provide sufficient content to keep a weblog up to date with new information.
Brochures, handouts and other written materials
While still important, your printed materials should reflect an overall communication strategy that encompasses your website as well. Printed materials are typically most effective in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format both for printing and for making available from your website as downloads.
Basically there should be consistency between your web material and your printed material. Again, www.marketstrategy.cc can help with web and print materials review.
Notice that we have specifically stayed away from paid advertising. In some circumstances advertising may make sense but, like trade shows, they can be unfocused and costly “shotgun blasts”. True marketing should more closely resemble a sharpshooter rather than a scattergun.
For a “free sample” of our services go to www.marketstrategy.cc.
Let’s face it – sales are good and you are pleased at your progress. So what else should you be doing to grow your business?
You initially built your successful small business on your own abilities. You grew it further by adding a sales person or two. Now you’re at a decision point: what do you do to grow your business further? Do you want to grow to the proverbial “next level”?
If you are that business owner it’s time to delve into marketing; you know you should but you’re not sure how. This article is designed to help you embrace marketing for growing your business.
Marketing has many definitions. It’s often thought of in terms of paid advertising. For our purposes we will use the following formula to differentiate sales from marketing.
A sale is achieved in four steps: Attention, Interest, Preference and Choice. The last two are the responsibility of sales. The first two – attention and interest – are the responsibility of marketing. That’s it – no heavy marketing jargon; the role of marketing is to focus attention on your products and services and then gather the interest and feed it to sales.
Expecting sales people to do your marketing is like expecting hunters to give up hunting in order to farm. The proper place of marketing in growing a small business is feeding opportunities to your sales staff who go forth and make your product or service the preference and then the choice.
Your business will grow to the extent that your sales force has a steady steam of qualified suspects (leads). Marketing is the means of finding those suspects. Why do many small businesses focus on the sales aspect of business growth?
I believe it feels ‘easier’ to go out and beat the bushes looking for another sale versus taking the time to build a marketing approach that works. If you are selling then you are ‘doing’ something. If you are marketing you may feel you are just adding expense.
Marketing is the servant of sales; too often it’s the other way around. Marketing is too often associated with “trash ‘n trinkets” and trade shows and too often isolated from the sales process. When I was in direct sales we always complained that the marketing folks were too far removed from what we in sales had to deal with.
What does it mean to be the ‘servant of sales’? Specifically, marketing’s only reason for existence is to provide leads to sales and to track the effectiveness of what they do in finding those leads.
Taken further, a marketing plan should target those who would most benefit from your products and services and then implement methods that will gain attention and interest.
Understand that a sales person still must close the sale. But the success of that sales person can be multiplied if they don’t have to split their time by finding their own sales leads. Again, that’s the role of marketing. A sales person is measured and compensated by the revenue they generate. Marketing efforts should be measured (and compensated for) the amount and quality of leads they provide to sales.
Another way to look at it is that Marketing feeds the top of the sales funnel. Don’t waste your sales people’s time with generating their own leads; put in marketing methods that work and let marketing fill the top of the funnel.
Another reason business owner’s focus on sales is the time factor – effective marketing takes time and persistence. Many owners would rather focus on selling due to its direct impact on today’s business.
Okay, so you know you should be doing marketing but a) you don’t know what to do, b) you don’t know how to do it, c) you’re not sure what activities would work best in your business, c) you really don’t want the expense of hiring a marketing person.
Let’s talk then about marketing methods that are relatively inexpensive and can be outsourced – and how to decide which ones will work for your business. And notice as we go through them that none of them are focusing on paid advertising.
Marketing Methods
Webinars
Many of us have “attended” a webinar; a hosted presentation accessed via a website and telephone. If planned carefully these can be a powerful way of presenting your company to a wider audience.
Numerous companies offer Webinars including www.webex.com and www.gotowebinar.com. The “trick” with a webinar is to carefully craft your message and desired response to the medium. By this I mean that it is very easy for attention to wander when sitting in your office watching a slide presentation. Phone calls or IMs coming in can divert the audience attention easily.
Rather than trying to fully demonstrate a product or service focus rather on the “high points”. Design the session to prompt viewers to request further information by offering a white paper or a CD or a free offer of some kind.
Remember that the participants are indeed “viewers” and work to keep their interest. Long, text-filled PowerPoint slides should probably be replaced with images or short videos. Excellent resources for improving PowerPoint presentations can be found here:
http://www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit/2007/11/how-not-to-use-.html
and http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/rock-your-
presentation-with-the-right-tools-and-apps-304418.php.
Marketing a webinar is also a challenge. You must find a mailing list of potential email addresses and, again, make the webinar sound interesting and useful. Contact us at www.marketstrategy.cc for more help with Webinars.
Email Blasts and Newsletters
Related to the webinar is the Email Blast. An email blast is accomplished by purchasing a list of potential prospects and sending them a “bulk” email. The simplest way to do this combines Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook to send out a text-only message to the list. These lists can be purchased or even found online. Due to security changes in Outlook, you can only send plain text in this manner.
If you want to send a more formatted email message you will need to use a company that provides this service and has their own mailing software that avoids the problem of text-only messages.
Again, since many of these may be “captured” by Spam filters, it is important to craft the message and the subject line carefully. This type of message should seek a request for more information again by offering a free offer such as a white paper or CD.
In a related vein, an Email Newsletter can be used successfully to keep in regular contact with customers and prospects. While you can do this yourself, companies such as www.constantcontact.com provide easy-to-use templates and tools to create good-looking HTML newsletters with pictures and content of your choosing.
The difference here is that Constant Contact requires the list be “opt in”. Opt In means that individual must subscribe to your newsletter and must also have an easy way of canceling their subscription.
A combination of a text-only email blast advertising your newsletter may result in new prospects and customers.
Articles
Almost every business has a potential magazine or journal audience. Whether retail, professional or institutional, there are magazines, journals and websites aimed at your potential customers. Writing for these publications can establish your expertise and reputation among prospects and your existing customer base.
Now before you dismiss this out of hand (I’m not a writer; I don’t have time to write, I don’t know how to get it published) at www.marketstrategy.cc we spend some of our time “ghost writing” articles and submitting them to the proper channels for you. We interview you to get the content, interview – when appropriate – your customers to gain additional information, and then craft an article that puts your business in the most positive light.
There are also services such as www.elance.com where you can find talented writers and designers who can help you craft your message and get it published. If you have enough information you may even want to consider producing an “e-book” in Adobe PDF format for sale or to distribute freely to enhance your reputation as an expert.
Telemarketing
This is one I used to shun like the plague. However in certain situations it may be an effective way to gain prospects. Let me define “certain situations” – if you cover a large geographic area with a small sales staff and your company is not well known, companies such as www.callboxinc.com can provide a fairly low cost calling program to potential customers.
The trick here is to carefully craft your message so that it elicits a request for more information from you or your sales staff. Do NOT try to close business but simply gain “attention and interest”.
It is critical that you have numerous conversations with your telemarketing company and that you have multiple training calls with the actual person who will be calling for you. You may irritate some potential customers but you may also gain useful leads for your sales staff to follow up.
www.MarketStrategy.cc can help you if you’d like to discuss whether this is an option for your business or not.
Trade Shows, Seminars and Speaking
Trade shows are what many think about when they think marketing but they can also be a black hole of wasted time, money and effort.
However, a targeted approach to certain tradeshows can yield useful results with planning and forethought. The approach “we’d better be there because our competition is going to be there” will just mean your sales staff sitting around talking to each other.
A targeted approach to a Trade show is to first make sure you can get a complete attendee list PRIOR to the show. A carefully crafted email and phone campaign can make sure prospects are aware you are exhibit as well as providing invitations to special events or showings of your product or service.
Your approach during the show should again seek to elicit a follow up meeting; not just a glad-handing “good to see you” approach. Questions should also be crafted that separate actual leads from “tire kickers”.
Following the trade show every attendee should again be emailed thanking him or her for attending (whether you spoke to them or not) and again offering useful information to them such as a CD, article reprint or white paper.
A seminar is similar to the Webinar discussed earlier. The key here is whether the expense of renting facilities and providing food and beverage is worth the extra effort. To be useful, a seminar should highlight and feature your customers, not you. If you have happy customers and experts presenting about your products and services you will gain credibility.
www.MarketStrategy.cc can help you decide whether or not a seminar is an effective use of your time and dollars.
Website and/or Weblog (Blog)
Everyone has a website (don’t they?) but does it really help you drive business? I won’t go into much detail here other than to say that you might want Market Strategy to give you a quick no-cost, no-obligation review of your site. We have done website re-design to help companies capture more “eyeballs” and cause them to actually do something with you.
A Weblog is basically an online journal; like an article in a magazine, a weblog establishes you as an expert in your field. A service such as www.elance.com can help with ghost writers if you and your staff can’t provide sufficient content to keep a weblog up to date with new information.
Brochures, handouts and other written materials
While still important, your printed materials should reflect an overall communication strategy that encompasses your website as well. Printed materials are typically most effective in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format both for printing and for making available from your website as downloads.
Basically there should be consistency between your web material and your printed material. Again, www.marketstrategy.cc can help with web and print materials review.
Notice that we have specifically stayed away from paid advertising. In some circumstances advertising may make sense but, like trade shows, they can be unfocused and costly “shotgun blasts”. True marketing should more closely resemble a sharpshooter rather than a scattergun.
For a “free sample” of our services go to www.marketstrategy.cc.
China Gift Market Trends
by: Janey Yang
Potential Opportunities Catalyzing the Alluring Markets
In recent years, a great number of overseas orders of craftwork and gifts have been transferred to China, mainly from the European and USA general merchandise industry, multinational chain supermarkets, and professional distributors, etc.
Meanwhile, Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and the World Expo Shanghai 2010 will also bring great business opportunities to the craftwork and gifts industry. Facing such a large market potential, the most urgent issue for enterprises to tackle at present is how to make full use of two major resources and markets at home and abroad and complete technology innovations and promote the upgrading of enterprises.
Popular Gift Ideas (Buying Trends)
1; Gifts for Family Decoration
Craftwork is an important composition of family interior soft-environment design, reflecting peoples’ temperament and interests. Practicality and nice design are two important factors people considered when choosing home gifts.
2; Promotion Gifts - Complement Traditional Marketing Methods
The value of promotional gifts in today's competitive marketplace can’t be underestimated. Many businesses nowadays turn to promotional gifts to help them enhance their brand awareness, improve customer loyalty and increase sales.
3; Holiday Gift: Nurture Your Relationship
Despite traditional holiday seasons (Spring Holiday, Christmas, Valentines Day, Mothers Day, Fathers Day…), we obviously can’t forget to mention other important occasions such as Wedding, Anniversary, Birthday, or Graduation day. These special occasions bring us together, creating a chance for our relationships to grow. Gift giving in this case is indispensable to enhance the feelings or atmosphere. Personalized and engraved unique gifts especially make distinguished and memorable presents.
4; Fashion Jewelry Gifts - a Timeless Favorite
In times of rapid change, constants lend comfort to our lives. Since ancient times, jewelry has been one of the most popular gifts to give and to receive, and it still ranks among the top gifts as a universal, particularly pearls and birthstones. Jewelry ranks just beneath flowers as the gift that says "I love you," and it ranks just above flowers as a gift to convey that the recipient is someone special. A gift of jewelry delights the recipient and evokes a genuine smile. Birthstones, among various choices, are very popular with Its Culture-added Value. Almost everyone appreciates a birthstone, and it shows that you actually put some thought into the gift. Many people believe that wearing their birthstone protects them and brings them good luck.
Yiwu City: a Terrific Destination for Your Gift-purchasing Plan in China
China Yiwu is the largest mart for petty commodities. Currently, Yiwu has the largest wholesaling market around the world. The business area of the market covers 1,500,000 square meters, gathering 320,000 kinds of commodities from all over the country with a daily customer flow of more than 200,000 person-times, and the daily output of commodities up to nearly ten thousand tons. Up to now, more than 300 overseas trading offices and 10,000 foreign purchasers have resided in Yiwu.
Notable Domestic and International Gift Fairs
1; International Gifts & Home Decor Trade Fair
The largest fair of its kind in East China, was held in Shanghai every year, which can both serve the industry and add luster to life, creating a real buzz in Shanghai Mart.
2; Shenzhen International Toys & Gifts Fair
This event is an ideal platform for sourcing from China. Its exhibitors include top ranking suppliers of products from their respective categories, as well as leading brand names who are looking for distributors. Many of these exhibitors are already leading suppliers in the China market, and they have expressed keen interest in developing business overseas.
3; Sands Expo Center -- The ASD/AMD Las Vegas Gift Expo
ASD/AMD Trade Shows have been at the top of the gift, jewelry, variety and discount industries'' annual market calendar since 1961. Dollar for dollar ASD/AMD Trade Shows are the most cost-effective and convenient way to get buyers and sellers together in a sales and profits-oriented marketplace.
E-business Web Choice – Finding Authentic Suppliers in China
If you happen to be a buyer, looking for appropriate China Supplier partners. Would you like to get comprehensive information, such as company business registration condition, actual production, trade, R & D abilities and quality management system, of potential partners quickly? Do you hope that this information is from an impartial authoritative organization like SGS? If you are looking for such suppliers and need such important business information, please choose Made-in-China.com. Made-in-China.com has already become a leading B2B portal especially in assisting global buyers and Chinese manufacturers to make contact and conduct international trade.
Challenges Facing the China Gift Industry and What’s On Trend
1; Design Capability and Awareness as the Core
China gift industry desires for professional and creative designers. Competition enhances design capability in a positive way. To upgrade their design capability, many companies employ experienced designers. Some suppliers even recruit skilled artists from Japan and the US. They then form teams who will work closely with clients in new product development.
Brilliant designer teams stay abreast of trends and always scout for new ideas or options when going to some relevant events or shows. Gift magazines and Internet sites are used as references as well. Aside from these, some suppliers hire fresh graduates from design schools. This allows them to go beyond the conventional and develop innovative designs for niche markets.
2; Brand Name Promotion
Some experts pointed out that many Chinese gift enterprises are small in size and are not competitive on the market due to lack of awareness of intellectual property rights and independently-developed brand name.
Companies that do not have any awareness in promoting their brands cannot survive. Companies are now getting to that awareness. Brand stands for everything - low price, convenience of purchase, emotional attachment, and for performance and quality. As far as allocation of funds (for brand promotion) is concerned, it should be carried out on a sustainable basis. It has to be part of the overall budgetary allocation of the company.
3; Creating Value, Adding Value and Maintaining Value
Whether it is Culture Value added or Technology Value added, they would undoubtedly make your gifts more competitive. Many traditional Chinese gifts maker should strive for new technology to bring novelty to their products and maintain freshness. Meanwhile, we can’t ignore the culture value of the gifts or even an enterprise. For instance, “Swarovski Crystal” are paying much attention and funds in its culture value promotion (crystal history, magic function etc.), it’s the culture connotation that contributes much to its overall success, attracting people to buy it and enjoy it.
4; Know the Psychologic Profile of The Target Market
The psychologic profile of gift consumers reveals their different drives and motivations in purchasing gifts. What factors are more or less important in driving gift purchasing decisions? How can gifts marketers and retailers better understand the hearts and minds of their consumers and use that insight to capture a greater share of the consumers' gifting budget? These are questions every gift enterprise should investigate into seriously. The market will shrink if we always produce old-fashioned or unchanged gifts the target buyers don’t familiar with or interested in. In other words, for the foreign gift trade business in china, it would be favorable for the profits and markets to grow, for example, if the manufacturers could produce gifts that taking in more western flavor, religious imply, personalized demand, or of high quality level.
5; Environmental Friendly - Go Green
The environment is increasingly on consumers' radar screens, according to the 22nd Annual Holiday Survey of retail spending and trends, commissioned by Deloitte. The survey revealed that almost one in five consumers (18 percent) will purchase more "eco-friendly" products this holiday season than in the past, and 17 percent will shop at more "green" retailers. Additionally, almost one-third of consumers (27 percent) surveyed will use fewer plastic bags from supermarkets and other stores this holiday season, and one in five (20 percent) will consider not wrapping holiday gifts to conserve paper. These responses concerning the environment and holiday shopping intentions were consistent across gender, age and income groups.
Potential Opportunities Catalyzing the Alluring Markets
In recent years, a great number of overseas orders of craftwork and gifts have been transferred to China, mainly from the European and USA general merchandise industry, multinational chain supermarkets, and professional distributors, etc.
Meanwhile, Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and the World Expo Shanghai 2010 will also bring great business opportunities to the craftwork and gifts industry. Facing such a large market potential, the most urgent issue for enterprises to tackle at present is how to make full use of two major resources and markets at home and abroad and complete technology innovations and promote the upgrading of enterprises.
Popular Gift Ideas (Buying Trends)
1; Gifts for Family Decoration
Craftwork is an important composition of family interior soft-environment design, reflecting peoples’ temperament and interests. Practicality and nice design are two important factors people considered when choosing home gifts.
2; Promotion Gifts - Complement Traditional Marketing Methods
The value of promotional gifts in today's competitive marketplace can’t be underestimated. Many businesses nowadays turn to promotional gifts to help them enhance their brand awareness, improve customer loyalty and increase sales.
3; Holiday Gift: Nurture Your Relationship
Despite traditional holiday seasons (Spring Holiday, Christmas, Valentines Day, Mothers Day, Fathers Day…), we obviously can’t forget to mention other important occasions such as Wedding, Anniversary, Birthday, or Graduation day. These special occasions bring us together, creating a chance for our relationships to grow. Gift giving in this case is indispensable to enhance the feelings or atmosphere. Personalized and engraved unique gifts especially make distinguished and memorable presents.
4; Fashion Jewelry Gifts - a Timeless Favorite
In times of rapid change, constants lend comfort to our lives. Since ancient times, jewelry has been one of the most popular gifts to give and to receive, and it still ranks among the top gifts as a universal, particularly pearls and birthstones. Jewelry ranks just beneath flowers as the gift that says "I love you," and it ranks just above flowers as a gift to convey that the recipient is someone special. A gift of jewelry delights the recipient and evokes a genuine smile. Birthstones, among various choices, are very popular with Its Culture-added Value. Almost everyone appreciates a birthstone, and it shows that you actually put some thought into the gift. Many people believe that wearing their birthstone protects them and brings them good luck.
Yiwu City: a Terrific Destination for Your Gift-purchasing Plan in China
China Yiwu is the largest mart for petty commodities. Currently, Yiwu has the largest wholesaling market around the world. The business area of the market covers 1,500,000 square meters, gathering 320,000 kinds of commodities from all over the country with a daily customer flow of more than 200,000 person-times, and the daily output of commodities up to nearly ten thousand tons. Up to now, more than 300 overseas trading offices and 10,000 foreign purchasers have resided in Yiwu.
Notable Domestic and International Gift Fairs
1; International Gifts & Home Decor Trade Fair
The largest fair of its kind in East China, was held in Shanghai every year, which can both serve the industry and add luster to life, creating a real buzz in Shanghai Mart.
2; Shenzhen International Toys & Gifts Fair
This event is an ideal platform for sourcing from China. Its exhibitors include top ranking suppliers of products from their respective categories, as well as leading brand names who are looking for distributors. Many of these exhibitors are already leading suppliers in the China market, and they have expressed keen interest in developing business overseas.
3; Sands Expo Center -- The ASD/AMD Las Vegas Gift Expo
ASD/AMD Trade Shows have been at the top of the gift, jewelry, variety and discount industries'' annual market calendar since 1961. Dollar for dollar ASD/AMD Trade Shows are the most cost-effective and convenient way to get buyers and sellers together in a sales and profits-oriented marketplace.
E-business Web Choice – Finding Authentic Suppliers in China
If you happen to be a buyer, looking for appropriate China Supplier partners. Would you like to get comprehensive information, such as company business registration condition, actual production, trade, R & D abilities and quality management system, of potential partners quickly? Do you hope that this information is from an impartial authoritative organization like SGS? If you are looking for such suppliers and need such important business information, please choose Made-in-China.com. Made-in-China.com has already become a leading B2B portal especially in assisting global buyers and Chinese manufacturers to make contact and conduct international trade.
Challenges Facing the China Gift Industry and What’s On Trend
1; Design Capability and Awareness as the Core
China gift industry desires for professional and creative designers. Competition enhances design capability in a positive way. To upgrade their design capability, many companies employ experienced designers. Some suppliers even recruit skilled artists from Japan and the US. They then form teams who will work closely with clients in new product development.
Brilliant designer teams stay abreast of trends and always scout for new ideas or options when going to some relevant events or shows. Gift magazines and Internet sites are used as references as well. Aside from these, some suppliers hire fresh graduates from design schools. This allows them to go beyond the conventional and develop innovative designs for niche markets.
2; Brand Name Promotion
Some experts pointed out that many Chinese gift enterprises are small in size and are not competitive on the market due to lack of awareness of intellectual property rights and independently-developed brand name.
Companies that do not have any awareness in promoting their brands cannot survive. Companies are now getting to that awareness. Brand stands for everything - low price, convenience of purchase, emotional attachment, and for performance and quality. As far as allocation of funds (for brand promotion) is concerned, it should be carried out on a sustainable basis. It has to be part of the overall budgetary allocation of the company.
3; Creating Value, Adding Value and Maintaining Value
Whether it is Culture Value added or Technology Value added, they would undoubtedly make your gifts more competitive. Many traditional Chinese gifts maker should strive for new technology to bring novelty to their products and maintain freshness. Meanwhile, we can’t ignore the culture value of the gifts or even an enterprise. For instance, “Swarovski Crystal” are paying much attention and funds in its culture value promotion (crystal history, magic function etc.), it’s the culture connotation that contributes much to its overall success, attracting people to buy it and enjoy it.
4; Know the Psychologic Profile of The Target Market
The psychologic profile of gift consumers reveals their different drives and motivations in purchasing gifts. What factors are more or less important in driving gift purchasing decisions? How can gifts marketers and retailers better understand the hearts and minds of their consumers and use that insight to capture a greater share of the consumers' gifting budget? These are questions every gift enterprise should investigate into seriously. The market will shrink if we always produce old-fashioned or unchanged gifts the target buyers don’t familiar with or interested in. In other words, for the foreign gift trade business in china, it would be favorable for the profits and markets to grow, for example, if the manufacturers could produce gifts that taking in more western flavor, religious imply, personalized demand, or of high quality level.
5; Environmental Friendly - Go Green
The environment is increasingly on consumers' radar screens, according to the 22nd Annual Holiday Survey of retail spending and trends, commissioned by Deloitte. The survey revealed that almost one in five consumers (18 percent) will purchase more "eco-friendly" products this holiday season than in the past, and 17 percent will shop at more "green" retailers. Additionally, almost one-third of consumers (27 percent) surveyed will use fewer plastic bags from supermarkets and other stores this holiday season, and one in five (20 percent) will consider not wrapping holiday gifts to conserve paper. These responses concerning the environment and holiday shopping intentions were consistent across gender, age and income groups.
What Everybody Should Know... About How To Learning Website Analytics
by: Nickolie Greer
Then most difficult aspect of marketing a new product or web site is to find enough people that are interested in it so that they are ready to buy. Mastering Google AdWords will enable you to drive traffic to your web site and start making sales immediately. You can create a Google AdWord campaign in a matter of minutes and be making sales within 24 hours.
So you've launched your website and you're happy with the content, the design, and with its placement in cyberspace. Now, it's time to track your traffic. How many people visit your site each month? Where are they coming from? What do you need to know to be an informed analyzer so you can beef up your site traffic? And what tools can help you along the way? Ladies and gentlemen, sit back, relax, and enjoy the following answers to all these questions.
Why You Should Know Your Dinner Guests
Knowing where your visitors are coming from and knowing where they go on your site are the two most important pieces of acquisition arsenal you can obtain. This is because on one hand, knowing where people are coming from will help you focus your offsite advertising and marketing plans. On the other hand, and knowing how visitors navigate within your site will help you gauge what pages work and which ones need to be revamped. Maybe you have important content that would be most appealing to your visitors but it is difficult to get to due to poor design choices and hence no one is going to that page. You can use metrics to figure out what pages are most popular. That is the best way to understand what type of content and design works and will guide the future development plans for your site. The main goal is to reduce what are know as the dreaded "bottlenecks," pages of your site where visitors exit before they reach your purchase or sign up page.
Know the Ingredients
First, acquaint or reacquaint yourself- as the case may be- with the terminology so that you know what you are actually analyzing. If you know that unique visits is distinct from unique visitors, for instance, you will have a better grasp of what figures to use for reporting purposes, setting advertising rates, and a host of other options specific to your company's needs. Learn what an entry point means and where people travel to once on your site. Some tools, like Webalizer, allow you to see what URL people visited before coming to your site. This is an excellent way to learn more about your audience and perhaps point you towards potential advertising or link exchange opportunities.
Know the Recipe
Analytics tools can be tricky. The most important research you can do is to find out how each metrics system calculates its findings. For instance, the company I work for employs several reporting tools to track traffic to the site. When we first started using these tools, we were very confused. Google Analytics told us a very different figure for unique visitors than Webalizer did. In fact, Google's figures were just about half that of Webalizer! After further investigation, we learned that Webalizer was picking up on traffic behind our paywall where Google was unable to track. Some worthy reporting tools that you should check out include AWstats and WWWstats. AWstats presents their data in an easy-to-digest format and tells us things like usage by the hour and a breakdown of what countries our visitors are from. WWWstats presents the data in a pretty raw format, but allows you to track things like transfers by client domain and transfers by URL or section. Both of these services provide fairly reliable information.
Google Analytics is an extensive - and free! - program that can help you measure just about anything on your site. This includes conversion tracking, which allows you to follow a visitor from the point of entry on your site to each subsequent page that he/she visits. This is an outstanding way of gauging your site's navigability index and where work needs to be done to maximize the user experience (and attract more traffic to places on the site where you want visitors most). You can also track how your keywords are performing on the major search engines. Google's reporting tools, though respectable, can be confusing to use. It is not entirely clear how to access certain tools and, although they offer video instruction for some of their services, if you have specific problems or questions, an actual customer service person is difficult to nearly impossible to contact.
Crazyegg.com is another lesser known tool for tracking your traffic. Though there is a fee to participate, you can try their services for free. They offer a full service program for setting up, deploying and tracking tests, advice on how to properly track click-throughs, live reports, and easy-to-read results. Hey, you have nothing to lose so it's worth trying a free test. Be sure to also check out these other good sites that offer reporting and analysis for your traffic: Clicktracks.com, Fireclick.com, NetTracker.com, and WedTrends.com.
Taste the Results
Perhaps the best way to gauge your traffic more accurately is to look at several different reporting tools and make an educated guess. More likely than not, the actual number of visitors to your site- much like the truth between the claims made of two feuding parties- will lie somewhere in between.
Remember, the web is still in its infancy in many ways and there is no one, overarching, epistemologically respectable reporting tool currently available that beats out all the rest. The existing tools may change as our understanding of the web becomes more comprehensible or if sites become standardized or regulated in some way. But for now, use the tools I've recommended coupled with your best judgment and you will be on your way to making your site the best it can be.
By mastering Google Adwords Ads, you can confidently expand your marketing campaign to include other PPC advertising companies ie Overture, FindWhat and also try offline advertising.
Then most difficult aspect of marketing a new product or web site is to find enough people that are interested in it so that they are ready to buy. Mastering Google AdWords will enable you to drive traffic to your web site and start making sales immediately. You can create a Google AdWord campaign in a matter of minutes and be making sales within 24 hours.
So you've launched your website and you're happy with the content, the design, and with its placement in cyberspace. Now, it's time to track your traffic. How many people visit your site each month? Where are they coming from? What do you need to know to be an informed analyzer so you can beef up your site traffic? And what tools can help you along the way? Ladies and gentlemen, sit back, relax, and enjoy the following answers to all these questions.
Why You Should Know Your Dinner Guests
Knowing where your visitors are coming from and knowing where they go on your site are the two most important pieces of acquisition arsenal you can obtain. This is because on one hand, knowing where people are coming from will help you focus your offsite advertising and marketing plans. On the other hand, and knowing how visitors navigate within your site will help you gauge what pages work and which ones need to be revamped. Maybe you have important content that would be most appealing to your visitors but it is difficult to get to due to poor design choices and hence no one is going to that page. You can use metrics to figure out what pages are most popular. That is the best way to understand what type of content and design works and will guide the future development plans for your site. The main goal is to reduce what are know as the dreaded "bottlenecks," pages of your site where visitors exit before they reach your purchase or sign up page.
Know the Ingredients
First, acquaint or reacquaint yourself- as the case may be- with the terminology so that you know what you are actually analyzing. If you know that unique visits is distinct from unique visitors, for instance, you will have a better grasp of what figures to use for reporting purposes, setting advertising rates, and a host of other options specific to your company's needs. Learn what an entry point means and where people travel to once on your site. Some tools, like Webalizer, allow you to see what URL people visited before coming to your site. This is an excellent way to learn more about your audience and perhaps point you towards potential advertising or link exchange opportunities.
Know the Recipe
Analytics tools can be tricky. The most important research you can do is to find out how each metrics system calculates its findings. For instance, the company I work for employs several reporting tools to track traffic to the site. When we first started using these tools, we were very confused. Google Analytics told us a very different figure for unique visitors than Webalizer did. In fact, Google's figures were just about half that of Webalizer! After further investigation, we learned that Webalizer was picking up on traffic behind our paywall where Google was unable to track. Some worthy reporting tools that you should check out include AWstats and WWWstats. AWstats presents their data in an easy-to-digest format and tells us things like usage by the hour and a breakdown of what countries our visitors are from. WWWstats presents the data in a pretty raw format, but allows you to track things like transfers by client domain and transfers by URL or section. Both of these services provide fairly reliable information.
Google Analytics is an extensive - and free! - program that can help you measure just about anything on your site. This includes conversion tracking, which allows you to follow a visitor from the point of entry on your site to each subsequent page that he/she visits. This is an outstanding way of gauging your site's navigability index and where work needs to be done to maximize the user experience (and attract more traffic to places on the site where you want visitors most). You can also track how your keywords are performing on the major search engines. Google's reporting tools, though respectable, can be confusing to use. It is not entirely clear how to access certain tools and, although they offer video instruction for some of their services, if you have specific problems or questions, an actual customer service person is difficult to nearly impossible to contact.
Crazyegg.com is another lesser known tool for tracking your traffic. Though there is a fee to participate, you can try their services for free. They offer a full service program for setting up, deploying and tracking tests, advice on how to properly track click-throughs, live reports, and easy-to-read results. Hey, you have nothing to lose so it's worth trying a free test. Be sure to also check out these other good sites that offer reporting and analysis for your traffic: Clicktracks.com, Fireclick.com, NetTracker.com, and WedTrends.com.
Taste the Results
Perhaps the best way to gauge your traffic more accurately is to look at several different reporting tools and make an educated guess. More likely than not, the actual number of visitors to your site- much like the truth between the claims made of two feuding parties- will lie somewhere in between.
Remember, the web is still in its infancy in many ways and there is no one, overarching, epistemologically respectable reporting tool currently available that beats out all the rest. The existing tools may change as our understanding of the web becomes more comprehensible or if sites become standardized or regulated in some way. But for now, use the tools I've recommended coupled with your best judgment and you will be on your way to making your site the best it can be.
By mastering Google Adwords Ads, you can confidently expand your marketing campaign to include other PPC advertising companies ie Overture, FindWhat and also try offline advertising.
Learning to Love S & M… (Sales & Marketing)
by: Peter Bowerman
The Marketing-Phobic Author’s Guide to Profitable Book Promotion
(Excerpted from The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living, by Peter Bowerman. Fanove, 2006. www.wellfedsp.com).
I saw a great series of billboards in Atlanta recently. It was for Apartments.com, an online clearinghouse for apartments that allows you to search for exactly what you want in any state. The first billboard had just one short sentence (their tag line, actually) across the middle: “You want what you want.” Then, simply their logo and the Apartments.com name; a thing of simplicity and beauty. In one five-word sentence, they nailed THE hot button for their audience: personal taste and choice in an apartment.
But, say “marketing” or “sales” to a roomful of right-brained author types and watch the sweat beads pop. But, getting comfortable with the whole sales and marketing thing really is easier than you think…
It’s ALL About the Customer
In the course of promoting your masterpiece, you’ll be crafting a pretty steady stream of promotional materials: press releases, marketing proposals to wholesalers, distributors, and booksellers, email pitches to book review targets, queries to publications to submit articles, notes to groups soliciting invitations to speak (and accompanying promo materials, and much more. As such, it’s good to understand what’s important in this process (your audiences and what they want) and what’s not (you and your book).
Here are the three fundamental principles of sales and marketing – principles that, incidentally, are already a part of your frame of reference as a consumer:
1) “Audience” – Always understand who your audience is and what language will best get through to them.
2) The Features/Benefits Equation – Focus on driving home what you know is important to your audience, not just talking about you and your book.
3) The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – Figure out what sets your book apart in the marketplace and drive that difference home – early and often.
Sales = Making it Easy
Developing a marketing mindset means always looking at things through the eyes of your target audience. For example:
• You want someone to post an Amazon review (after they gushed on about your book in an email), so you send them the actual Amazon link to your book.
• When sending out review copies (and the heads-up emails), you include a prominent link to your “Media Resources” section, which includes everything a potential reviewer might need to put a review together.
• You want some “key influencer” to promote an upcoming event of yours, so you send an actual ready-to-go promo blurb, as if written by them, so that it’s just a simple cut-‘n-paste to get it handled.
• You contact a journalist to get some publicity, and you include a link to “News Pegs” in your Media Resources section.
In all these cases, you’re thinking about their reality and that you’re not a high priority in their world. As such, you need to make it as easy as humanly possible for them to do what you’re asking them to do. Let’s explore each of the three in a bit more depth…
“Who’s the Audience?”
This is absolutely THE first question you need to ask yourself whenever you’re about to put together any promotional copy. When you buy a product you heard about through some form of advertising, it’s because something spoke to you. Someone knew what to say to make you sit up and take notice – which is exactly what will happen when a message is well crafted. What’s amazing – and tragic – is how much marketing material, put together by authors and prestigious publishing houses, is poorly written and doesn’t consider the intended audience. If you can get it right, you’ll set yourself apart.
The Features/Benefits Equation
Some time back, I was contacted by an author who wanted me to review a press release for their new book. It was full of superlative adjectives about the book, hyperbolic gushing-on about the author, and other unforgivable self-indulgences. In short, tailor-made for a quick trip to the circular file. So common. So unnecessary.
The Features/Benefits Equation is an absolute cornerstone of sales and marketing and a concept with which we’re already intimately acquainted.
Basic Definitions
In the publishing context, features are all about a book and its author. Benefits are about your target audiences – what’s important to them, and how your book addresses those issues. Always begin with benefits, follow with features. The more you make it about you and your book, the more likely your intended audience will ignore you.
A Book Example
Okay, using my first book as an example, you think people care that Peter Bowerman leveraged a sales and marketing career into a new career in the lucrative field of commercial writing and then wrote a book about it? That the book covers X, Y and Z subjects? Yawwwwwwwwn. That’s all about me and my book.
If you were a prospect for my book, I’d wager good money that you’d care far more about the fact that there’s this lucrative field called commercial writing, where you fulfill your dream of making a good living (i.e., $50-125 an hour) as a writer. A field that can provide a great income while letting you work from your home, have more time for life, loved ones, and leisure. Sound better? Course it does. Because that’s all about you – your favorite thing in the whole world! Then, once I get your attention with things I know mean something to you, I can tell you more about me.
Just remember, if you’re an unknown author, journalists couldn’t care less that you’ve written a book. A release about a book and its author is…features. That reporter wants benefits: “Tell me why that book is important to my readers/viewers.” Not the book, but the angle represented by the book. Those are the benefits.
USP - The Unique Selling Proposition
Every book is unique in some way. Once you determine the audience for your book, zero in on its Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – THE thing that sets that book apart in a marketplace full of competitors (more important with non-fiction than fiction). What does it do that others don’t? Once you determine your book’s USPs, make sure they show up in your back cover copy and in most everything else you send out. Drive the message home.
Getting comfortable with sales and marketing doesn’t have to be painful. And when you make these concepts your friends, and they become second nature, you set the stage for some serious promotional success.
***************
Can’t land a publisher? Do it yourself, and make a living from it! Check out the free report on self-publishing at www.wellfedsp.com, the home of the award-winning 2007 release The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living. Author
The Marketing-Phobic Author’s Guide to Profitable Book Promotion
(Excerpted from The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living, by Peter Bowerman. Fanove, 2006. www.wellfedsp.com).
I saw a great series of billboards in Atlanta recently. It was for Apartments.com, an online clearinghouse for apartments that allows you to search for exactly what you want in any state. The first billboard had just one short sentence (their tag line, actually) across the middle: “You want what you want.” Then, simply their logo and the Apartments.com name; a thing of simplicity and beauty. In one five-word sentence, they nailed THE hot button for their audience: personal taste and choice in an apartment.
But, say “marketing” or “sales” to a roomful of right-brained author types and watch the sweat beads pop. But, getting comfortable with the whole sales and marketing thing really is easier than you think…
It’s ALL About the Customer
In the course of promoting your masterpiece, you’ll be crafting a pretty steady stream of promotional materials: press releases, marketing proposals to wholesalers, distributors, and booksellers, email pitches to book review targets, queries to publications to submit articles, notes to groups soliciting invitations to speak (and accompanying promo materials, and much more. As such, it’s good to understand what’s important in this process (your audiences and what they want) and what’s not (you and your book).
Here are the three fundamental principles of sales and marketing – principles that, incidentally, are already a part of your frame of reference as a consumer:
1) “Audience” – Always understand who your audience is and what language will best get through to them.
2) The Features/Benefits Equation – Focus on driving home what you know is important to your audience, not just talking about you and your book.
3) The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – Figure out what sets your book apart in the marketplace and drive that difference home – early and often.
Sales = Making it Easy
Developing a marketing mindset means always looking at things through the eyes of your target audience. For example:
• You want someone to post an Amazon review (after they gushed on about your book in an email), so you send them the actual Amazon link to your book.
• When sending out review copies (and the heads-up emails), you include a prominent link to your “Media Resources” section, which includes everything a potential reviewer might need to put a review together.
• You want some “key influencer” to promote an upcoming event of yours, so you send an actual ready-to-go promo blurb, as if written by them, so that it’s just a simple cut-‘n-paste to get it handled.
• You contact a journalist to get some publicity, and you include a link to “News Pegs” in your Media Resources section.
In all these cases, you’re thinking about their reality and that you’re not a high priority in their world. As such, you need to make it as easy as humanly possible for them to do what you’re asking them to do. Let’s explore each of the three in a bit more depth…
“Who’s the Audience?”
This is absolutely THE first question you need to ask yourself whenever you’re about to put together any promotional copy. When you buy a product you heard about through some form of advertising, it’s because something spoke to you. Someone knew what to say to make you sit up and take notice – which is exactly what will happen when a message is well crafted. What’s amazing – and tragic – is how much marketing material, put together by authors and prestigious publishing houses, is poorly written and doesn’t consider the intended audience. If you can get it right, you’ll set yourself apart.
The Features/Benefits Equation
Some time back, I was contacted by an author who wanted me to review a press release for their new book. It was full of superlative adjectives about the book, hyperbolic gushing-on about the author, and other unforgivable self-indulgences. In short, tailor-made for a quick trip to the circular file. So common. So unnecessary.
The Features/Benefits Equation is an absolute cornerstone of sales and marketing and a concept with which we’re already intimately acquainted.
Basic Definitions
In the publishing context, features are all about a book and its author. Benefits are about your target audiences – what’s important to them, and how your book addresses those issues. Always begin with benefits, follow with features. The more you make it about you and your book, the more likely your intended audience will ignore you.
A Book Example
Okay, using my first book as an example, you think people care that Peter Bowerman leveraged a sales and marketing career into a new career in the lucrative field of commercial writing and then wrote a book about it? That the book covers X, Y and Z subjects? Yawwwwwwwwn. That’s all about me and my book.
If you were a prospect for my book, I’d wager good money that you’d care far more about the fact that there’s this lucrative field called commercial writing, where you fulfill your dream of making a good living (i.e., $50-125 an hour) as a writer. A field that can provide a great income while letting you work from your home, have more time for life, loved ones, and leisure. Sound better? Course it does. Because that’s all about you – your favorite thing in the whole world! Then, once I get your attention with things I know mean something to you, I can tell you more about me.
Just remember, if you’re an unknown author, journalists couldn’t care less that you’ve written a book. A release about a book and its author is…features. That reporter wants benefits: “Tell me why that book is important to my readers/viewers.” Not the book, but the angle represented by the book. Those are the benefits.
USP - The Unique Selling Proposition
Every book is unique in some way. Once you determine the audience for your book, zero in on its Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – THE thing that sets that book apart in a marketplace full of competitors (more important with non-fiction than fiction). What does it do that others don’t? Once you determine your book’s USPs, make sure they show up in your back cover copy and in most everything else you send out. Drive the message home.
Getting comfortable with sales and marketing doesn’t have to be painful. And when you make these concepts your friends, and they become second nature, you set the stage for some serious promotional success.
***************
Can’t land a publisher? Do it yourself, and make a living from it! Check out the free report on self-publishing at www.wellfedsp.com, the home of the award-winning 2007 release The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living. Author
More Than Just A Small Piece of Paper
by: Lynne Saarte
Whether you use them as reply cards, notices, announcements, newsletters, or even greeting cards, your color postcards have many benefits compared to other marketing collaterals.
As a matter of fact, your postcard is more than just a small piece of paper. It is a strong little piece of print marketing material that gets your message to your target clients without having to spend so much on postcard printing and even mailing.
With your postcard design and message already there in plain sight, your target clients are more than likely to read them. No more envelopes to open before they could even get a glimpse of your first sentence. What’s more, your color postcards are more convenient to fill out and return than any other need-response forms.
Postcard printing have been very valuable in more ways than I can count. In many aspects, custom postcard designs can be used to complement other promotional materials such as newsletters, magazines and other published periodicals. They can also be made to support order sheets and subscription forms for any type of merchandise.
Postcards can even be made to become newsletters themselves with articles and features that could really entertain your target clients. They can also enhance and emphasize your call-to-action in your surveys, notices and announcements.
To optimize your results from these marketing postcards, here are some of the techniques that can be applied to your print postcards:
Provide a prepaid return postage. Make it easy for your readers to respond to your call-to-action. If you need them to fill up and return your form, then pay for the postage yourself.
Pre-addressed card or envelope. And don’t make your audience look for your address. If you can provide a prepaid return postage, you definitely can also include a return pre-addressed return card or an envelope, if you happen to have one.
Colored paper. Instead of paying for a more expensive full color postcard, cut costs by using colored paper. They usually attract attention, more than the usual white paper.
Quick-fill order forms. Not only should you have plenty of room to fill in the necessary information from your target clients (e.g. name, address, phone number, etc.), your color postcards should also have easy-to-answer forms or surveys. You can always use tick-boxes for filling out the forms.
FREE. People are generally attracted to anything they can acquire for free. If you want your readers to return your custom postcards immediately, include free gifts or prizes that they can have in exchange.
Consistency. Whatever marketing campaign or message you have in your print postcards. Be sure to repeat them in the rest of your marketing collaterals. Consistency is the key to get your readers to remember you.
The last time I looked, my custom postcards were able to have the results I wanted. I hope your color postcards would be as successful.
Whether you use them as reply cards, notices, announcements, newsletters, or even greeting cards, your color postcards have many benefits compared to other marketing collaterals.
As a matter of fact, your postcard is more than just a small piece of paper. It is a strong little piece of print marketing material that gets your message to your target clients without having to spend so much on postcard printing and even mailing.
With your postcard design and message already there in plain sight, your target clients are more than likely to read them. No more envelopes to open before they could even get a glimpse of your first sentence. What’s more, your color postcards are more convenient to fill out and return than any other need-response forms.
Postcard printing have been very valuable in more ways than I can count. In many aspects, custom postcard designs can be used to complement other promotional materials such as newsletters, magazines and other published periodicals. They can also be made to support order sheets and subscription forms for any type of merchandise.
Postcards can even be made to become newsletters themselves with articles and features that could really entertain your target clients. They can also enhance and emphasize your call-to-action in your surveys, notices and announcements.
To optimize your results from these marketing postcards, here are some of the techniques that can be applied to your print postcards:
Provide a prepaid return postage. Make it easy for your readers to respond to your call-to-action. If you need them to fill up and return your form, then pay for the postage yourself.
Pre-addressed card or envelope. And don’t make your audience look for your address. If you can provide a prepaid return postage, you definitely can also include a return pre-addressed return card or an envelope, if you happen to have one.
Colored paper. Instead of paying for a more expensive full color postcard, cut costs by using colored paper. They usually attract attention, more than the usual white paper.
Quick-fill order forms. Not only should you have plenty of room to fill in the necessary information from your target clients (e.g. name, address, phone number, etc.), your color postcards should also have easy-to-answer forms or surveys. You can always use tick-boxes for filling out the forms.
FREE. People are generally attracted to anything they can acquire for free. If you want your readers to return your custom postcards immediately, include free gifts or prizes that they can have in exchange.
Consistency. Whatever marketing campaign or message you have in your print postcards. Be sure to repeat them in the rest of your marketing collaterals. Consistency is the key to get your readers to remember you.
The last time I looked, my custom postcards were able to have the results I wanted. I hope your color postcards would be as successful.
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