tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47766583350660021672024-03-05T13:24:40.232-05:00Marketing 'Back-to-Basics' Business BlogKLynn's timely reflections to help you cut through the 'fluff' in marketing...Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-62491989650757289972010-12-30T13:10:00.010-05:002011-01-04T14:56:11.707-05:00Why Buying “Short” Can Be Better Than Buying Local.<span style="font-style:italic;">Mohamed Hage is the founder of <a href="http://www.lufa.com">Lufa Farms</a> in Montreal, Canada. Lufa Farms is the world’s first commercial-scale rooftop farm. More perspectives on urban agriculture by Mohamed Hage can be found at <a href="http://www.lufafarms.blogspot.com">www.lufafarms.blogspot.com</a></span>. <br /><hr /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Imported food up – Exported food down.</span><br />Since the early 1990’s the amount of fresh produce exported by North America has steadily decreased compared to the amount of fresh produce being imported. Now, the typical foodstuff in your dinner has travelled more than 1000 miles to get to you. Based on current trends, this is not likely to change anytime soon. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The basis of “buy local”.</span><br />Many consumers do find lower prices as a result of this movement to import, and certainly some gourmands appreciate that exotic items such as mangosteens, star fruit, and dragon fruits can now be easily found and purchased in North American markets. But critics would suggest that so-called energy ‘food-mile’ cost, lack of sufficient inspections, lack of food traceability, fair-trade issues, and child labor, more than offset such benefits. These criticisms lay at the foundation of the “buy local” movement that has taken root in the North American food politic.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">But food distribution is the real issue.</span><br />While many do find the notion of transporting food from all over the planet onto our dinner plates to be disturbing, that’s only part of the problem. As big (or bigger) an issue is the process of getting it to market. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The long road to you.</span><br />Once a “fresh” food item is harvested it begins a long, arduous ordeal to get to your dinner plate. The items are typically packed up by the grower and transported to shipping warehouse. From the shipping warehouse, the produce is sent to a wholesale food distribution terminal outside of your city. There it may be unpacked, repacked and then sold to a retailer. The retailer than packs up the produce and ships it to its distribution warehouse, where it may be unpacked, repacked and sent to the actual retail store where it is unpacked, sometimes repacked and eventually sold to you. This long ordeal will result in as much as 50% of the produce being lost to spoilage or damage along the way, and will take between one week and three weeks - no matter whether the produce was grown in Malaysia or grown at a farm in your state or province. So much for being “fresh”!<br /><img src="http://www.lufa.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/the-food-process.jpg" width="400" /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">‘Buying short’ is more relevant than ‘buying local’.</span><br />The argument that buying local will somehow save significant energy, while not entirely wrong, is focused on the smaller issue – actually, shipping produce from the Southern Hemisphere to North America by boat, for example, is surprisingly efficient. But the real energy usage and waste, once the produce has been grown, lies in the <span style="font-style:italic;">local transport and refrigeration</span> used in the local distribution channel.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">How “buying long” hurts us</span>.<br />In addition to the large carbon footprint left by the long local food distribution system, buying through long channels also forces growers, wholesalers and retailers to make food decisions – choices - that compromise the consumer. How? Simple - every grower, wholesaler and retailer is concerned about ‘yield’. What is the crop yield per acre? And what is the yield to market how much gets sold once the produced damaged or spoiled along the way gets subtracted? <br /><br />Here are a few examples of choices that hurt the consumer:<br /><br />(1) <span style="font-weight:bold;">Picking crops earlier.</span> It’s a long way to market and if produce is picked ripe they may arrive way past prime and begin decay. But earlier picking means the fruit or vegetable has not fully produced its final flavor or final nutrient content. <br /><br />(2) <span style="font-weight:bold;">Using post-harvest treatments to boost yield.</span> Fruit and vegetables are subject to a variety of problems once in the distribution channel. Poor temperature and humidity regulation, poor handling and inattention to packaging often results in the introduction of moulds, bacteria, loss of moisture, and decay. Often, fungicides, insecticides, gases and water conditioning agents are used to treat produce to minimize these problems.<br /><br />(3) <span style="font-weight:bold;">Increasing use of petroleum-based polyethylene containers.</span> Though comparatively expensive, at some point, the cost of produce damage and loss becomes large enough that it can be economically justifiable to use petroleum-based protective plastic or clamshell containers. <br /><br />(4) <span style="font-weight:bold;">Selecting cultivars for the wrong reason.</span> The long distribution channel, and the damage caused by it, often results in growers choosing plant cultivars (special varieties of plants) that are tougher, more durable and more market-ready. Essentially, this means that the fruit or vegetable will be tougher, but not necessarily more nutritious or flavorful . <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />What happened to the idea of growing good-tasting, nutritious food?</span><br />Someplace in the development of the North American food chain, the idea of good-tasting, nutritious food has given way to tough, shippable (but cosmetically good-looking) food. Taste and nutrient content no longer govern the choice of foods grown and therefore no longer govern the choice of foods bought.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Buying short is the best way to buy local.</span><br />All of these issues disappear when the distribution channel collapses to a simple straight line between the grower and the consumer. No early harvesting. No post-harvest treatments. No petrochemical clamshells. And plant cultivars can be selected for taste and nutrient content. <br /><br />Buying short, of course, will likely mean that you will also be buying local. This way you get the best of both – high quality foods, highly traceable foods, and the security of knowing that your purchases boost the sustainability of your community’s food source.<div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-31296561963573743962010-12-15T22:42:00.002-05:002010-12-15T22:44:26.663-05:00Small Internet Mistakes You Want To AvoidIf you're new to Internet marketing and are about to take the plunge, there are a few common mistakes you need to avoid - mistakes which can come back and bite you later.<br /><br />Among them are:<br /><br /><b>When you choose a domain name</b>, make sure it is registered in YOUR name. Many Internet services or web consultants are quick to offer you a domain name but register it in THEIR name. This provides a bit of a stranglehold on a vital part of your new Internet presence and it means it can't be moved to another provider without their permissions.<br /><br /><b>Domain names are assets.</b> And like any assets, choose them carefully, and keep a tight grip on them. The domain name you have, that cost $15.00 a year to register, might someday solicit an offer of $5000 from someone that wants it bad enough. Be mindful.<br /><br /><b>Internet services and hosting services are a dime a dozen.</b> Your new website can be hosted almost anywhere in the world by almost any Internet services provider in the world. So be careful not to pay too much for your service. A typical Internet hosting provider should be in the range of $80 to $150 a year for conventional hosting. If someone is asking you to pay more - be skeptical - make sure you're paying for something you need or want. Security, anonymity, and certain special services are worth paying extra for, but basic internet hostings services are not.<br /><br /><b>Don't overpay for your website.</b> Websites aren't complicated and many good websites use open-sourced content management technology (which makes it very easy to maintain). The key is not to pay for the technology - technology is cheap. Instead pay for content like graphic design and copywriting. It's content that will get you good search engine rankings and get sales, not the technology.<br /><br /><b>If you build it, they may or may not come.</b> Remember that having a website doesn't automatically mean that people will come knocking on your door. The world-wide web is filled with websites that nobody (except the creator) ever sees. The most important part of your web strategy is going to be how to get people to visit your site.<br /><br /><b>The Internet has a long memory.</b> Be very careful of what you put on the Internet in any form. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tweets and other social site content can come back to bite you. Misspeillings, grammar errors, and inappropriate comments can be associated with you for a long time on the Internet. Be mindful.<br /><br />All that being said, the Internet is an essential place for any business to be. Yes, mistakes need to be avoided, but yes, it can make a huge benefit to your business so it's worth investing in.<div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-16293950913052786372010-07-18T07:02:00.005-05:002010-07-18T07:08:32.469-05:00The Internet is NOT a Market<b>An all-too-common perspective</b><br />I was interviewing a new client recently and was running through the usual qualifying questions with him – the first of which was: “Can you tell me which market your products are targeting?” His response startled me. He said: “well that’s easy, it’s the Internet!” I paused, not quite sure, how to break the news to him.<br /><br />I’m sure he was thinking: <i>wow, this guy is really lame, I offer Internet services, who did he think my market would be?</i><br /><br />And I was thinking: <i>No wonder he’s got no traffic to his site and he’s spending $200 a day on Adwords advertising and getting no conversions.</i><br /><br />The problem is that his view mirrors that of many businesses – that the Internet, all by itself, is a market and all that it takes to tap it is to be present in it.<br /><br /><b>But The Internet is NOT a market.</b><br />The Internet is no more a market than a post office or television channel is. Like those, it’s a medium – it is a means of reaching a market. Potential buyers can reach through the Internet to find your products or services or you can reach through the Internet to find them. But just being on the Internet – having a website, for example – is no guarantee that you are present to your potential market. In fact, only posting a website is a bit like holding up a sign in the middle of Grand Central Station in New York City hoping somebody will stop and order from you.<br /><br /><b>Finding your market on the Internet.</b><br />So if you’re on the Internet, how do you reach into that amorphous mass of would-be buyers to find your market? It’s not as hard as you think. There are several reliable ways to do just that:<br /><br />(1) Use targeted outbound marketing to drive traffic to you site. Direct marketing is more targeted than posting a website. Use direct mail or direct email to drive traffic to your site. Using banners in market-specific e-newsletters is also a good way to get market-specific traffic.<br /><br />(2) Use search engines optimization efforts focused on market-specific keyword to narrow the traffic to your website more to those in your marketplace.<br /><br />(3) Create carefully constructed keyword search engine PPC marketing campaigns to drive traffic to your site.<br /><br />(4) Ensure that your site is listed in market-specific directory sites to pre-screen traffic to your site.<br /><br />(5) Use partner and affiliate links to push pre-qualified traffic to your site.<br /><br />(6)Article marketing - using market-specific content with backlinks to your site is an excellent way to drive relevant and qualified traffic to your site.<br /><br /><b>A few precautions...</b><br />Whatever form of market targeting you use make sure they include strong and market-specific offers. A weak offer or an offer with too-generalized appeal defeats your purpose. Also, in whatever you do, it’s always a good idea to construct a few test offers or test campaigns first.<br /><br /><b>Why target anyway?</b><br />Some businesses do get away with generalized marketing or poorly targeted Internet campaigns - for a while. They might get the “low-hanging fruit” but it never works in the long run. First, generalized marketing is only a symptom that the business does not really know who its market is. This means that the business will have more than selling problems to hamper their growth. Second, generalized campaigns will always prove to be more expensive than targeted campaigns and will always result in a worse ROI than market-targeted campaigns.<br /><br /><b>Get serious</b><br />Using the Internet as a medium for your market and means of boosting your sales offers many benefits. But if you are going to use the Internet as a marketing vehicle, get serious about it – make sure you don’t lose your market focus by throwing offices to the general Internet visitor. Invest in going all the way with it – carefully target everything you do on the Internet - it’s not expense and it will pay off big.<div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-90340586823320228442009-04-15T18:19:00.004-05:002010-07-18T07:19:28.402-05:00Finding Balance Between SEO and non-SEO Traffic Generation<div><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0); font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; ">So much SEO.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; "></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0); font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-weight: normal; ">You might think, from all the buzz about search engine optimization – SEO -<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>that it offers a cure for all the world’s business ills. Somehow, SEO has been propelled from the backwaters of Internet geekdom into the forefront of modern business marketing. For example, if Google’s own search results are any indication, the interest in SEO yields almost 50% of the interest in general advertising. That level of interest seems way out of proportion to the realities of business advertising.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><b><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:#FF6600;mso-fareast-language:EN-CA"><o:p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; "><b><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:#FF6600;mso-fareast-language:EN-CA">So why all the hubbub? </span></b><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA"></span></span></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><b><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:#FF6600;mso-fareast-language:EN-CA"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 16px; font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA">The excitement seems to be around the notion that SEO means “free advertising”, that it means, if you do it right, millions of people will be clicking through to your site willy-nilly having found you on some search engine and then will immediately do business with you. And behind all that excitement are thousands of overnight SEO “experts” that, variously, all claim to … (pick one)</span></span></o:p></span></b></p> <ul type="disc"> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Have SEO secrets that will help you get an unfair advantage over the next guy;<o:p></o:p></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Guarantee you a first-page listing for an incredibly low monthly rate; <o:p></o:p></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Provide hundreds of high page rank sites that will link to your site;<o:p></o:p></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Give you 5/10/20 quick tips to immediately improve your rankings;<o:p></o:p></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Tell you what Google/MSN/Yahoo doesn’t want you to know about SEO;<o:p></o:p></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Tell you that whatever SEO you’re doing is all wrong; or<o:p></o:p></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Some other variant of the above.<o:p></o:p></span></li> </ul> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px; ">To some extent, this notion of “free advertising” is not altogether inaccurate. SEO can result in your site being found – free of charge – and it can result in traffic to your site that may, in fact, result in new business. But the reality of SEO is not quite that simple.</span><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><b><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:#FF6600;mso-fareast-language:EN-CA">SEO is far from “FREE”.</span></b><b><span style="font-size:8.5pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:#FF6600;mso-fareast-language:EN-CA"> </span></b><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA"> </span><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA">SEO takes work… often, hard work. For those that aren’t familiar with what’s involved in SEO, below is a list of some of the typical activities that (as the CREST commercials used to say) “when applied in a conscientious program of regular professional care” will result in higher search engine rankings.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <ul type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Researching and selecting keywords that are truly relevant to your desired audience;<o:p></o:p></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Researching competition for desired keywords;<o:p></o:p></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Researching and analyzing competitive websites;<o:p></o:p></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Re-writing and restructuring your website to address desired keywords, to be moreaccessible by search engine “crawlers”, to appropriate label meta tags, headings, and inter-page links;<o:p></o:p></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Create a program to build links to your site from other sites (directories, exchanged links,article marketing, etc.)<o:p></o:p></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Create a program to keep content on your site regularly refreshed and synchronized with all the above.<o:p></o:p></span></li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="color:black;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal;mso-list:l1 level1 lfo2;tab-stops:list 36.0pt"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-language: EN-CA">Regularly (daily or weekly) monitor all the search engines and your competitors positions<o:p></o:p></span></li> </ul> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA"><o:p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0); font-weight: bold; ">SEO is not easy.</span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA">Doesn’t quite sound as easy as some people suggest does it? That’s because it’s not. And it’s all the more complicated when you realize that every site on that first page, and on the second and third, is trying to do the same thing – but against you! You boost your rank above them. They go to work and boost their site back above yours. And so on and so on… It’s a war and the SEO “experts” are the arms dealers.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA"><o:p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0); font-weight: bold; ">Your goals and those of the search engine may be different.</span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA">If you’re going to pay good money for SEO, it may also be worthwhile to keep in mind that search engines don’t necessarily have a goal of making you the most findable site on the web. The bottom line for them is making sure that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">their users</i> finds what they are looking for. Satisfying that requirement may mean that you don’t and should not come up first. Google is the number one search engine for a reason: Google users get results they want. Those may not be the results <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you</i> want.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA"><o:p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0); font-weight: bold; ">Short term & long term.</span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA">In the short run, there may be some serious benefits from investing in SEO to boost your search engine rankings. In the long run, however, there’s probably not much you can do beyond a certain point. Frankly, if you have a finite budget, altering the basic nature of your site and trying to boost how valuable your site is to others (as represented by links to your site) can only be taken so far. After a point, the perfect market characteristics of the search engine will prevail.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA"><o:p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0); font-weight: bold; ">Balance SEO with other forms of traffic generation.</span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA">What this means is:, yes, do make sure you do the essential SEO necessary to optimize your rankings in search engines. But do it in the context of an overall marketing program. Definitely use SEO to ensure that you get a fair and accurate appraisal by search engines. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But also invest in other non-SEO lead-generation methods to bring traffic to your site and business to your table. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:8.5pt;font-family:"Georgia","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:black; mso-fareast-language:EN-CA"><o:p> Above all, measure the results of your SEO and non-SEO activities carefully and frequently. When SEO reaches the point of diminishing returns, cut the rate in which you invest in it and boost your reliance on non-SEO marketing to reach your goals. In the long run, traditional non-SEO marketing may just be the most reliable and consistent way to boost traffic to your </span></div><br /><br /><br/><br /><hr/><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/">KLynn Business Consultants</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site. </p><p align="justify"></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-27517262700719645732008-11-03T12:13:00.004-05:002008-11-03T13:11:50.895-05:00The Cost of Poor Customer Service...4 MistakesEvery now and again, a real-world example of how terrible customer service can impact your business emerges to make it crystal clear. My Saturday afternoon encounter with the <strong>Extreme Fitness Dunfield Club</strong> (a fitness center location in Toronto) could not have been a better example.<br /><br />Here's what happened...<br /><br />I occasionally meet an old friend of mine there to play squash. He's a member of the Dunfield Club but I'm not. I've been meeting my friend at that fitness center 4-8 times a year for the better part of 4 years. So I have a pretty good idea of the guest drill. Until Saturday, it was this: pay $20, fill out a release form (which they inevitably use to call you to solicit a membership), go play squash. No big deal.<br /><br />On Saturday however that changed. I went in expecting the old drill, paid the $20, filled out the release form, and was told that I had to give them my driver's licence. I thought: Oh, they want to confirm my identity, so I showed them my driver's license. They informed me that, no, they needed to keep my driver's licence. Why, I asked. I was told it was for "liability reasons". Hmmm. I explained that I thought signing the release was sufficient and that I was uncomfortable giving my driver's license to anybody given the amount of identity theft and so on going on.<br /><br />It went from bad to worse. Essentially I was told, put up or get out. Thinking that perhaps this clerk was new, I asked to speak to her manager. Same message except now I was told this had <em>always</em> been their policy, my concerns were <em>silly, </em>and when I pointed out that the sign on the desk said merely "<em>present ID"</em>, the manager told me she didn't need the sarcasm. (For the record, the Extreme Fitness Dunfield Club website says "<em>show ID").</em><br /><em></em><br />One might be inclined to think that this is a question of who's right and who's wrong. Not so. By the time it got to the point the manager was called, the Dunfield Club was already "wrong". They made four big mistakes: (1) they failed to acknowledge the discrepancy in their own policies, (2) they invalidated both me as a guest and my friend the member, (3) they made it personal instead of keeping it about business, and last, but by no means least (4) they ignored the future value of an existing and prospective customer.<br /><br />The future value of a customer is by far the most important -- especially if a typical Dunfield Club Extreme Fitness member is paying something like $60 per month and remains a member for 5 years or so - that's a value of $3,600! But making it personal, by the invalidation, and failure to acknowledge their own problem, they induce a greater loss. Instead of just being frustrated with a change in policy, the personal nature of the manager's approach to solving the problem provided an emotional incentive to go further. The irate prospective customer (me, in this case) now writes a letter to the Extreme Fitness executive staff about this, promptly fills in two 1-star ratings of the Dunfield Club on various community sites (complete with commentary) and then goes home to write a blog entry, submits it to an article distribution service and waits for the decay of fitness center and sports club's future value.<br /><br />What could have happened instead? The manager could have come out of her office. Listened patiently to my concerns. Calculated the future value of a prospective membership in her head and then carefully responded. She could just as easily have responded by (a) acknowledging that she understood how I might be concerned about identity theft, (b) acknowledging that it was a change in policy, that unfortunately they had not communicated very well, and (c) offering to retain the driver's license in her personal safe to ensure there would be no problem of identity theft.<br /><br />It would likely have paid off. In one example in another business, New England Business Services (NEBS) demonstrated more than 20 years ago that customers that have had a problem resolved effectively often <em>double</em> their lifetime value over customers that have never had a problem!<br /><br />Too bad Extreme Fitness hadn't read about that in training their staff to handle problems.<br /><br />The moral of this episode is simple. Always keep the future value in mind. Keep personality <em>out</em> of the equation and then find a solution. The results will always be better.<div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-37669470064986954662007-12-07T21:45:00.000-05:002007-12-07T21:48:40.194-05:00What's in a (domain) name?In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, they asked "What's in a name?" asserting that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But on the Internet, your name is everything because, on the web, your name -- your domain -- is your brand.<br /><br />Sure, it sounds easy – just pick a name and get your web business going! It’s not that simple. Choosing your domain name isn’t simple and it’s one of the most important dynamics in a web-based business. Your domain name choice is <br /><br />Before you sit down in front of your PC and start checking out names, here’s a few things to consider:<br /><br />(a) <strong>A brand is more than words.</strong> A brand is an image of who you are and what you offer represented by words. Like any communication task, pick the wrong words and you establish the wrong image. Often it’s more important that your brand be clear than it is that your brand be clever. A domain name choice of “wesellcows.com” might not be more clever than “bovineboutique.com” but it’s very clear what the company does. Generally a brand should also address a “benefit” that is provided. In this vein, a domain name choice of “qualitycowsmarketplace.com” might be much better than “hefnersheiffers.com”.<br /><br />(b) <strong>The idea of a brand is to be memorable</strong> – to get “mindshare.” To that end, it makes no real difference whether your name is long or short – both can be memorable. But it probably suggests that you do not add articles such as “the” or “a” to the name and that you do not include hypens in the name unless that is accepted common usage for the terms you choose. If in doubt, take a poll of prospective customers and ask them about the memory “stickiness” of your proposed name.<br /><br />(c) <strong>Lastly, everybody wants the dot-com extension</strong> but don’t discount extensions such as “.net” and “.us” -- they may make good sense also. Just make sure that when you include the extension as part of your “brand” that it works all-together.<br /><br />Just remember that your domain name choice is your brand choice. You’re eager to get your presence established on the web, but take your time and find the name that will add-value to your marketing presence rather than confuse it.<div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-29695125809969621432007-11-16T11:54:00.001-05:002010-07-18T07:18:32.331-05:00Viral Marketing: The Rant.<strong>Viral, shmiral.</strong> IF I HAVE one more would-be client tell me they’re looking for a “viral marketing” campaign... I’ll scream! (And I guarantee that the video of my screaming will result in a higher social network potential than 90% of the products or services that I’ve been approached to virally market!)<br /><br /><strong>Let’s get a few things straight:</strong> just because FACEBOOK.COM and YOUTUBE.COM did it, just because the Blair Witch Project did it, does not – repeat – does not mean that you can do it. Or should, for that matter.<br /><br /><strong>What is viral marketing?</strong> It’s a marketing strategy/tactic that focuses on social networks to boost brand awareness. For all intents and purposes, it means: word of mouth. One person sees an interesting thing and tells another and another and another. It is based on the belief that a satisfied consumer will express their satisfaction to an average of three others. (NOTE: there is also the belief that a dissatisfied consumer will express their dissatisfaction to an average of eleven others, so better hope your viral marketing campaign doesn't go wrong.)<br /><br />Would-be clients that ask me for viral marketing campaigns have little understanding of the dynamics of such campaigns. What they really want is low cost; somehow there is the assumption that viral marketing campaigns are inexpensive. But this is simply not true. YouTube.com, for example, invested more than $10 million to achieve its success – and, as anybody can see from their site, it wasn’t all spent on software development!<br /><br /><strong>Here’s a few things you should know about viral marketing campaigns…</strong><br /><br /><strong>First</strong>, they are rarely successful in B2B marketing. The reason is that the decision makers don’t commiserate in the way that end consumers do.<br /><br /><strong>Second</strong>, you might notice that most highly successful viral marketing wunderkind – like YouTube, or Digg, or Facebook – offer their services for free.<br /><br /><strong>Third</strong>, the money you hope to save in paid advertising is likely going to be spent on the market research necessary to find a high coefficient of social networking potential – in other words, finding an audience that will actually behave virally with your product or service.<br /><br /><strong>Fourth</strong>, a lot of viral marketing is really better known as “astroturfing” – that is, it’s formal and structured marketing or PR campaigns disguised to look like grassroots reactions. It’s call astroturfing because it’s fake grassroots. It’s a technique borrowed from the political arena (e.g. it would be like the AMA flooding the U.S. Internet community with emails allegedly from people in Canada, talking about how bad their healthcare coverage is.)<br /><br /><strong>Bottom Line:</strong> Get over it. If you really have the kind of budget to engage in a real viral marketing campaign come talk to me. If you're just looking to do marketing cheap, think again – viral marketing isn’t the way you’re going to do it.<br /><br /><strong>Alternate Strategy:</strong> Think in terms of 'word of mouth' marketing. Not the verbal kind of viral marketing but rather the old-fashioned kind -- the kind where you produce such an excellent product or service that your clients feel compelled to tell their associates.<br /><br /><br/><br /><hr/><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/">KLynn Business Consultants</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site. </p><p align="justify"></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-54721444567263339832007-11-02T21:02:00.001-05:002007-11-03T16:57:06.527-05:00Traffic Building – 4 Easy Ways to Increase Traffic to Your WebsiteIf your business uses a web site either for advertising, getting visitors to come to your site is the name of the game. The more visitors, the more impressions, and presumably, this means more results. Traffic building on your web site, however, requires a conscious program of action. Make sure your traffic building project contains at least these four elements: <br /><br /><strong>Search Engine & Directory Inclusion.</strong> Make sure your site is listed in all the major search engines and in appropriate industry and consumer directories. Start with Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org) and then move to Google, MSN, and Yahoo!. When you're done with those, begin looking at industry-specific or country-specific directory sites that will list you. <br /><br /><strong>Advertise (of course).</strong> Make sure you let people know that your web site is available! Use search engine advertising like Google’s Adwords as a start, but look at all forms of pay-per-click and banner advertising, too. Don’t forget to include your site in conventional advertising as well – make sure your web site is prominently mentioned in print ads, direct mail, signage and other promotional media. <br /><br /><strong>Hi-Traffic Partners.</strong> Your traffic building efforts can be built upon the traffic building of other companies as well. Exchange links with trading partners, resellers, distributors and suppliers. Mention them on your web site and be included on theirs, too. Make sure you choose partners that draw traffic that you’re interested in. <br /><br /><strong>Brand Your URL.</strong> Make your website URL a part of your brand or a tagline associated with your company brand. That way, it’ll be included everywhere that your brand is mentioned. And don’t miss any opportunity to use your URL on every piece of business collateral you have – business cards, signs, posters, envelopes, stationery, and in your email closing signature. <br /><br />These are all good things to focus on in your traffic building planning. If you give sufficient attention to these, your web traffic, and your business, will grow accordingly.<div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-39194563471238596422007-10-25T20:19:00.000-05:002007-10-31T06:04:43.979-05:00A Close Call...Most people that are active on the internet are aware that there are plenty of scams and fraudulent activities taking place out there. I've always thought of myself as pretty alert to this type of thing -- I always visually inspect a link address on anything before I click on it, I have super firewall protection, I never answer that poor guy in Nigeria that wants me to help vacate his deceased father's will, etc.<br /><br />On the other hand I often do business - blind - with companies in Europe or Asia that want a quick consult on their internet or off-line marketing. Generally if I don't know them, I ask for 50% up front -- they risk half, I risk half. It's fair.<br /><br />When I work on someone's site, I also always check the domain registration as a means of understanding who I'm dealing with. I will also do a "site: domainname" query on Google to see what kind of links the client might have to their site. It's often quite informative.<br /><br />Last week, I was contacted by a gentlemen from Thailand that wanted me to make a proposal for increasing the traffic to his site - www.careerexperts.org. I looked at it. It was a credible site, had some copy issues, some navigation issues, no keywords, content not very keyword oriented, and other things. I look up, as I do, the domain registration and, sure enough, it's owned by the guy I'm talking to but his address is in Vancouver. <br /><br />I ask him in our next email exchange how he got from Vancouver to working in Thailand. I'm thinking: must be nice to sit on the beaches of Thailand while the rest of us work for a living in -10 degree winters. He ignores the question but presses on with the details of my services. I tell him I'll prepare a proposal and send it to him. He tells me how please he is to have hooked up with me. <br /><br />Then, I do the "site: www.careerexperts.org" query. The first listing is WHOIS from network solutions. Nothing unusual. But the next 30 or so listings are liberally laced with words like "con artist", "scam!", "Top story on Global TV 6PM", "Better Business Bureau Vancourver" and so on. There's even a few YouTube videos of news clips about my possible-future-client from major news networks warning consumers about him. I browsed through all the links. The fellow is a convicted sex offender and has multiple convictions for consumer fraud, wanted by the FBI for questioning and a whole lot more.<br /><br />I write him a letter. I explain that I was doing my usual "homework" on his site and that the "site: www.careerexperts.org" results had amazed me with how many people one could piss off in so little time. I told him, I would be passing on doing any work with him. <br /><br />I never heard anything back.<br /><br />But it was humbling to me. This fellow was very smooth and I'm very worldly-wise (so I like to think) and if I had bypassed my usual routine... well, who knows?<br /><br />It was a lesson; a lesson to reinforce my vigilance. The internet can be an amazing place, it's true, but it can also be treacherous.<div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-16923073534593328282007-04-19T14:01:00.000-05:002007-10-20T12:58:17.095-05:00It's ALL About Trust & ConfidenceWhen I was working in the computer industry years ago, I used to be baffled every time I lost a sale to IBM. I had the better product -- often by far -- I had the better technology, the better software, etc. I was an excellent salesperson, and excellent presenter and often established a close rapport with my intended clients. But again and again I lost the sale to IBM.<br /><br /><strong>Why? Trust and confidence</strong>. IBM had the trust and confidence of the prospective consumer even if they didn't have the best solution. At the time, buyers took the attitude that if it were, in any way, a risky decision between any two vendors, go with IBM. You couldn't go wrong with IBM.<br /><br /><strong>Trust and confidence is as powerful a decision force today as it ever was then</strong>. In fact, it may be MORE powerful than it was then. This is particularly true when doing business over the Internet -- you don't know who is on the other side of the network, but you do know that it's easy to <em>look</em> good on the Internet. Spam and phishing scams teach us that every day. But Internet net or not, it always pays to make sure you cover the trust and confidence dimensions of your product or service positioning.<br /><br />How do you do that? How do you gain trust and confidence when you're new and small and unknown? Here's a few tips...<br /><br />(1) <strong>Focus on customer lists, customer testimonials, and customer case studies</strong>. Make sure your marketing materials and web materials have a large number of customer pull-quotes, customer lists, and real-life case studies. These are more credible than more superlative copywriting.<br /><br />(2) <strong>Focus on getting and communicating 3rd-party assessments</strong> of your products and services. Participating in product showcases, getting press pickups from a news release, and getting analyst or editorial reviews are excellent ways of getting credible 3rd-party assessments.<br /><br />(3) <strong>Offer a free trial.</strong> If you can't do something to immediately improve the perception of trust and confidence, then reduce the risk. Allow your prospective customer to use the product free.<br /><br />(4) <strong>Offer a strong guarantee.</strong> Same principle, reduce the risk.<br /><br />(5) <strong>On the web,</strong> especially, consider subscribing to various authentication and validation services -- You can get <a href="http://www.truste.org/">TrustE</a>, a non-profit web certification organization, or Better Business Bureau's <a href="http://www.bbbonline.org/">BBBOnline</a>, to certify your website.<br /><br />These are but of few methods to boost your credibility and trust. Don't use just one, use them all! Look for more ways, too! <br /><br />Here's a novel way that one client of mine found. The company produced a retail product that was sold through retail office-supply stores. Each year the company took out <em>one</em> small ad, in a regional edition of TIME magazine -- the least expensive ad they could buy. Then, for the rest of the year, they placed an outside wrap around their product that said: "As advertised in Time Magazine!" Clever. (But it's worth keeping in mind that even a small ad in Time Magazine is not cheap.)<br /><br /><strong>Bottom Line:</strong> Every increase you get in the consumer's trust and confidence will pay you back again and again and again. Go for it!<div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-33199974532426053352007-02-20T08:22:00.001-05:002010-07-18T07:18:17.087-05:00Ignore Internet Marketing At Your Own Risk...<span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff6600;"><strong>"The internet is coming!"</strong></span><br /><strong>For years,</strong> we've heard the proclamations about the impact the internet would be having on our business: "<em>The internet is coming, the internet is coming</em>." Frankly, it's been a little like the old joke of the guy sitting on the edge of the bed telling his partner how good it's going to be. The fact is that most people just didn't see or, well, feel that the internet was going to be that big a factor. Well, sure, there was Amazon.com that turned the retail book industry on its ear... and, OK, there was eBay's success, and the whole online stock trading thing... but for most of our businesses, we looked at the internet as being business as usual, but with a virtual twist. Selling would still be selling. Shipping would still be shipping. Margins and profits would still be calculated the same way.<br /><br /><strong>But it's not business as usual.</strong> The internet is upon us and if you ignore its ramifications on your sales and marketing, it might not be long before you'll be joining the ranks of manufacturers of buggy-whips, film-based cameras, and vacuum-tube electronics. And it's no longer "<em>the internet is coming</em>" ... it's here.<br /><br /><strong>Here's a few data points</strong> to chew on...<br /><br />* At the end of 2007, internet traffic to online commerce sites exceeded <em>3.5 million visitors</em> <em>per minute </em>(Akamai Technologies statistics).<br /><br />* In 2007, advertising spending on the internet will grow by 28.2% whereas all other advertising spending will grow by only 3.9% (Zenith Optimedia Research)<br /><br />* In the largest markets (i.e. U.S., U.K., Canada, Japan, etc.) one out of every ten advertsing dollars is spent on the internet. In two years time, it will be one out of five. (eMarketer.com)<br /><br />* Watch out Yellow Pages, search engine marketing is growing more than 50% a year and is already at $10+ billion. (SEMPO survey 2006)<br /><br />* 83% of 1500 marketing professionals surveyed by Datran Media Research selected email marketing as the single most important advertising medium of 2007.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff6600;">The Internet is Here!</span></strong><br />Are you? Your company? Beyond using email for correspondence and for accepting the occasional purchase order, and except for creating a website as an online brochure for your company, are you taking your place in the world of internet marketing?<br /><br />Here's a quick checklist to see where you are:<br /><ol><li>Do you build and maintain email lists of customers and prospects?</li><li>Do you send out regular promotional emails? Do you track click-thru rates?</li><li>Do you use autoresponders?</li><li>Do you advertise on search engines? </li><li>Will your web site emerge on the first page in a search of relevant keywords?</li><li>Do you use pay-per-click advertising in other venues?</li><li>Do you participate in, or sponsor, any internet affiliate programs?</li><li>Do you regularly track web site and web page traffic? Is it going up?</li><li>Have your brands been extended to address the internet?</li><li>Do you have a formal "link-in" program?</li><li>Do you utilize internet forums or article distribution services to increase web traffic?</li></ol>If you can't answer "yes" to more than six of these questions, you're probably not doing enough to take your place on the internet. And if you ever expect to do so, you'd better act now.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff6600;"><strong>Internet marketing is now, not later.</strong></span><br />Many marketers have recognized that internet marketing is something they are going to need to address. But it's something to do later, when there's more time. There is no more time. The internet has rapidly become the most effective way of accessing and expanding your market. If you're not taking your place in that expansion, then you're losing market share -- and in an electronic venue like the internet, that means you're losing it quickly.<br /><br />Don't underestimate the effect of the internet on your marketing. It's so important to your business that it deserves a very high level of attention and visibility. So much so, that it won't be long before forward-thinking companies begin to appoint a new type of CIO -- not Chief Information Officer, but Chief Internet Officer -- to head their marketing operations.<br /><br /><br/><br /><hr/><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/">KLynn Business Consultants</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site. </p><p align="justify"></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-4547621304352363202007-02-04T18:40:00.001-05:002010-07-18T07:17:59.733-05:00How Effective Is Your Business Marketing?We've heard, again and again, that "it's dog eat dog" in the business world. Turns out, there are some places where this is actually true. In your industry, for example, it's just not enough to be making money. You have to be growing, too. If you're not growing, <em>at least as fast as your marketplace is</em>, then you're <em>losing</em> market share to someone else. It truly can be dog eat dog.<br /><br />But let's not use the term "growing" too glibly. Growing means increasing sales -- and not just maintaining the same level of sales and not just more than what you sold last year. Growing means that you're increasing sales <em>faster than the market is growing</em> -- it means you're taking sales away from other people, you're gaining market share.<br /><br />If only it were that easy. More than a few of my clients, after having started a successful business, have awakened a few years later to the fact that their companies have stopped growing. They've stopped growing because their sales and marketing has somehow lost its effectiveness. And, worse, it's always a surprise to them! Unfortunately, by time they realize they've stopped growing, they're already in trouble. In the tough, fast-paced, global market environment of today, keeping your finger firmly on the pulse of your sales effectiveness, on your growth, is vital.<br /><br />The good news is that it's not hard. Here are<span style="color:#330033;"> ten </span>tips on keeping yourself up-to-date on just how effective your company is at its sales and marketing.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff6600;">Look At The Data.</span></strong><br />First and foremost, look at the data. Sure, you've been watching your top line and your bottom line and a few lines in between. But are you watching what goes on behind those P&L lines?<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Tip 1. Calculate the conversion time to turn prospects into customers.</span></strong><br />That's right. How long does it take to turn a prospect into a customer? It's the length of time from when a prospective buyer first shows up on your radar to the time they place their first order. Track it in days. If the number isn't going down, it means your selling effectiveness is.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><strong>Tip 2. While you're at it, check out the lost sales ratio.</strong></span><br />Simple enough to do, of every hundred prospects that show up on your radar, how many don't buy within a fixed period of time (within 1.5x of your average conversion time)? If that number is staying flat or increasing, you've got a problem. Staying flat means you're not getting better. Increasing means your selling is actually getting worse.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><strong>Tip 3. Calculate the cost of a customer and the cost of an order.</strong></span><br />Divide your entire sales and marketing budget for a period (and some suggest you throw in fixed or allocated costs for sales and marketing) by the number of <em>new</em> customers; that's the cost to acquire a customer. Now divide the budget by the number of <em>new</em> orders to determine the cost of a new order. If those numbers are increasing, your sales operations are becoming less efficient. If it doesn't stop, eventually it will kill you.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><strong>Tip 4. Now, look at the lifetime and lifetime value of a customer.</strong></span><br />To truly appreciate your marketing and sales cost, however, you have to have some basic idea of what a customer is worth. Regularly measure average life of a customer and their value to you during that time. If you don't know this number then it's impossible to know how much you can or should spend to acquire a customer! Needless to say, the goal is that lifetime and lifetime value <em>increase</em>.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><strong>Tip 5. Calculate your overall revenue per head.</strong></span><br />This is a question of taking your total revenues and dividing them by the total number of people in your company... even the administrative and janitorial staff. The find out and compare your numbers to the typical ratios for your industry. Consider investing in the Culpepper Reports (if you're in the technology world) or purchasing the Robert Morris Associates (RMA) ratios. These will tell you what the average ratios are for other companies within your industry. An example of the Culpepper ratios is shown below. Note the diverse revenue per head values. Your banker may have access to the RMA reports (they're often used as the basis for assessing credit worthiness).<br /><br /><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5027832403766062610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4DN2HFWd4kFFFgjclC2oWxCJAhTNv0weg3a-tNfVQPL1EBw4VwVxKWvUZdc0poWbq15pTMxBvV3tATuc2usgsFpGAFdaWl-QP_k6LoltrEzVnC-u1LtbGV0jZl-himL8_oNiwgtK0a0U/s320/CulpepperRatio.jpg" border="0" /> </p><p><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff6600;"><strong></strong></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff6600;"><strong>Examine The Mechanics.</strong></span><br />It's one thing to manipulate numbers to get an idea of what's going on, it's another to understand how these numbers happen. To find out, let's roll up your sleeves and get down in the dirt -- where the action is. Here's a few more tips...<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Tip 6. Talk to your existing customers -- frequently.<br /></span></strong>Want to find out how your selling operation is doing? Who better to ask than your existing customers? Make a regular practice of talking to existing customers about your selling efforts. Pick a customer at random and get them on the phone. You'll find that not only do you learn something you didn't know, you'll find that they really appreciate your interest. Many successful companies make their entire senior staff do just this.</p><p><strong><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Tip 7. Talk to lost prospects.<br /></span></strong>If you think talking to customers is informative, take the time to talk to the "ones that got away." These are the one's you really need to give attention! Make a point, independent of your sales force to call customers that chose NOT to do business with your company. Try it! </p><p><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Tip 8. Take a customer service person to lunch.</strong><br /></span></span>When you're done meeting with your customers and lost prospects, make a point to take one of the line-level customer service people to lunch. Or buy the pizzas and do a roundtable with them all! Customer service people get the problems first. They have to clean up the mess. Take them to lunch and you'll find out a lot about where your problems lay in setting expectations properly with your prospects, or about what's not working in the sales process, or where your quality problems are. You'll be surprised at what you'll learn!</p><p><strong><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Tip 9. Take a fresh look at your selling materials.</span><br /></strong>For marketing, my variant of Newton's Law says that once you set something in motion, it will tend to stay in motion until something stops it. Nowhere is this more true than with your selling materials. A brochure gets developed and tends to stay in circulation long after its content becomes obsolete. Same with your web site. And the same for presentations, and whitepapers, and case studies. Make it a point to see exactly what your sales prospect will see. Then act accordingly. If your sales materials are out of date, then your whole company and brand are out of date, too.</p><p><strong><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Tip 10. Contact your own company.<br /></span></strong>This is one of my favorites. Yes, call the 800 number, fill in the web form, send an email, or just call the receptionist and request some information on your company's products. Then start your stopwatch. If you think you'll be recognized, get someone else to do it for you. See what happens, what you get, and how fast. If your company is on top of its sales process, you'll have action and materials in an hour. If your company can't do that, you better worry about the competitor that can.</p><p><strong><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff6600;">Dog eat dog. Up or out.<br /></span></strong>At the end of the business day, it's all about growth. And growth is all about sales. If your company can't grow enough, if your company can't sell effectively, then you're destined to lose to someone who can. It'll just be a matter of time. Try the 10 tips. You'll be surprised at what you learn about your own sales and marketing operation. </p><br /><br /><br/><br /><hr/><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/">KLynn Business Consultants</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site. </p><p align="justify"></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-88860210561535248932006-12-28T19:30:00.002-05:002010-07-18T07:17:23.576-05:00What Is "Positioning?"<p>"Positioning" is a way of looking at your markets through the eyes of the consumer to determine the strengths and weaknesses of your product or service. While it was first developed as a methodology to guide advertising, it is (or should be) the foundation of any proactive product marketing or business development program. Unfortunately, in my experience, positioning is a marketing concept often talked about, but all too rarely applied.<br /><br />The concept of positioning is not new. It was first articulated in 1969 by veteran marketers Al Ries and Jack Trout in an article in <em>Industrial Marketing </em>magazine and then, later, became the subject of their first book "<u>Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.</u>" The methodology has been expanded considerably over the years, most notably by MIT's Glen Urban and John Hauser in "<u>Design And Marketing of New Products</u>" published by Prentice Hall.<br /><br />To understand how positioning works, let's walk though a simplified positioning exercise focused on the marketing of, say, a bicycle that we already have on the market. Our bicycle, the Platinum Zephyr, is a 3-speed, racing-style, bicycle that costs $300, weighs 25 pounds and comes with a tire pump, water bottle, bell, night light, and reflectors. Our bicycle is distributed throughout North America in bike shops and in a few of the larger retail chains.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff9900;">Market Dimensions</span></strong><br />The first task of our positioning exercise is to determine what the decision <em>dimensions</em> are for our market. This involves understanding what criteria are used by the consumer to determine their choice of bicycle. We consider four market segments as follows:<br /><br />(a) recreational bikers - adults<br />(b) recreational bikers - children<br />(c) sport bikers (e.g. mountain bikers)<br />(d) racers)<br /><br />In each segment we want to determine what the decision dimensions are for purchasing a bicycle. This will involve some form of market research. To keep it simple, we might interview 10-15 members of each segment. Alternatively, we might use a focus group for each segment although this is more expensive and may or may not yield better data. In these interviews, or focus groups, we will ask participants to identify the reasons they choose a particular bicycle for their use. In the case of the children's market we might interview both parents and children.</p>What we're likely to find from this research is something like this:<br /><br />Segment: Recreational Bikers -Adults<br /><br /><ul><li>Comfort</li><li>Price</li><li>Safety</li><li>Easy maintenance</li><li>Available accessories</li></ul><div align="left">Segment: Recreational Bikers - Children</div><ul><li><div align="left">Safety</div></li><li><div align="left">Price</div></li><li><div align="left">Style (is it 'cool'?)</div></li></ul>Segment: Sports Bikers<br /><br /><ul><li>All-terrain tires</li><li>Weight</li><li>Price</li><li>Speed of Maintenance</li><li>Available accessories</li></ul>Segment: Racers<br /><br /><ul><li>Weight</li><li>Tires</li><li>Reputation among racers</li><li>Price</li></ul><p>Note that we might want to have our survey participants rank these factors in order of importance to each segment (We'll assume that order shown is the ranking received).<br /><br />In examining these various factors we can see that several segments have the same factors mentioned (e.g. price, weight, safety) but we can also see that different segments rank those factors differently.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff9900;"><strong><span style="font-family:arial;">Competitors</span></strong><br /></span>Now we'll set that information aside for a moment and examine our competitors. We can do this by company and/or by product. In the bicycle world we might identify our chief competitors by first talking with bike shop owners or our own salespeople. From them we might learn that General Bike, People's Bicycles, and Acme Biking are the three competitors we face regularly.<br /><br />But other companies are not the only competitors we face. We might also realize that the competition includes skateboards and scooters! So we'll consider all five sources as competition.<br /><br /><span style="color:#ff0000;"><strong><span style="font-family:arial;color:#ff9900;">Scoring</span></strong> </span><br />Now, with our list of dimensions and our lists of competitors, in each market segment we'll score each competitor - and ourselves -- against the decision dimensions we have learned from our market research. To keep it simple, we'll score using a rating of 1 to 5 where 5 is "goodness" and 1 is "not-goodness."</p><p>For the Recreational - Adult market segment, as an example, we will see a matrix that looks like that shown below:<br /></p><p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5017032375518332562" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTQzTuphhfIpyApjBhUAT26ZcMYbARZQaK0L8QYasaDHjKib0dplDkxxncp50Y9ELtSKXzNhWkGiz963PCYejPoyphhdU4v8SfkdVrpH4aA9U4jZW86ENg00kIUI7_n5nHHiVmZlSgNzY/s320/Bicycle+Scoring.gif" border="0" /><br /></p><br /><span style="color:#ff9900;"><strong><span style="font-family:arial;">Analysis</span></strong> </span><br />If we then examine our "position" on this chart - versus our competitors - it will tell us a lot about where we are in the recreational bicycle market for adults and what we need to do to improve my position. Consider:<br /><br /><br /><p></p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5017035381995439778" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjes7B6nzf-GNmatsGvUiT7KF3VrFaLM0jQrFfYjc40PkAJJXmVXly0QhLVtdc-6tWvEg9XNT3mNBytJdDkx40dKbqR16GY_yOu37VbbvReneFG5CKCyY4lnK6X4DimIQjY6k19TFawwf8/s320/Bicycle+Scoring2.gif" border="0" /><br /><p></p><p>What we see from the chart above is that out strong points are our "comfort" and our "available accessories". We have a relative weakness in price (as the price leader) and maintainability. It also shows us that "safety" is not a distinguishable dimension for us at all insofar as all my principal competitors have equal ratings. In all respects, in the adult market, I am perceived as better than skateboards and scooters.<br /><br />Now, as a responsible product marketer, how do we act on this "position"? </p><p>There are several ways we can act: </p><p>(1) We focus our marketing communications efforts on "comfort" and our rich "accessories". We tell our creative people to also focus on "value" because the richness of our accessories is so much more valuable than the bikes of our competitors. </p><p>(2) Then we focus our product development people on cleaning up our maintainability and looking for a way to distinguish our products in the "safety" category (Maybe we include a helmet as part of our accessorizing). </p><p>(3) Lastly, we put pressure on our manufacturing folks and our purchasing department to reduce the cost of our bikes so that eventually we can price lower.<br /></p><p>There it is: one "positioning" chart that outlines our market, product, communications, and costing strategies quite succinctly.</p><p>Of course, ultimately, we would do this exercise with each market segment we target and we would make sure that each of our advertisements, each brochure, our web site, etc. all echo the basic positioning strengths that we identified above.</p><p><br /><span style="color:#ff9900;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Summary</strong></span><br /></span>The example we've discussed here illustrates the power of positioning. This technique, working hand-in-hand with market research, allows us to pinpoint how strong or weak we are with respect to the decision dimensions of our prospective buyer. And then it shows us exactly what we have to do to improve our competitive posture. </p><p>Yet, too few companies will use this approach. That's their perogative but those that do will always have a decided competitive advantage over those that don't -- they'll know what the landscape looks like while the others are flying blind.</p><br /><br /><br /><br/><br /><hr/><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/">KLynn Business Consultants</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site. </p><p align="justify"></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-91403461775228704192006-12-16T23:49:00.001-05:002010-07-18T07:16:10.053-05:00Putting Your Finger on The Market Pulse<strong>Twenty years ago, I had a boss that used to say:</strong> "There's only two mistakes you can make as a marketer. The first mistake is not to research your market... the second is not to believe the results."<br /><br />Yet, in the many years since he offered me that guidance, I have found that very few marketers actually check the pulse of their markets through research. Instead, they believe (erroneously) that "they know the market."<br /><br />This is rarely, if ever, true. <u><em>No matter how much experience you think you have in your marketplace, you are not representative of your market!</em></u> You are therefore prone to miss important dynamics of the marketplace.<br /><br />How do you check the market's pulse? There are two ways to do this. The first, and simplest, is to arrange interviews with existing customers and existing prospects. I generally try to do at least ten of each. When I'm done with that, then I dig through files and get the names of prospects who decided against my product or service -- sales that were lost. I make a point of talking with them, too!<br /><br />The second way, the more structured way, is to construct a formal survey and administer it to an appropriate sample of prospective consumers. Many marketers balk at this because they know enough about statistics to be afraid of the math and to avoid the slippery slopes of sampling. But surveys aren't has difficult as they might seem and it doesn't take a particularly large sample size to get useful information.<br /><br />Most often, what I do is a combination of the two. First, I will talk to customers, prospects and lost sales with a goal of identifying what factors matter in their decision making. Then, if the anticipated product marketing investment warrants, I will apply those factors in a formal survey to determine how meaningful those factors are, and how my competitors fare against those factors.<br /><br />In a market of 50,000 potential prospects, I might look to survey as few as 25 consumers -- perhaps 5 from 5 different regions of the county. While a sample of 25 seems small, it yields a surprisingly good perspective offering a 95% confidence level (certainty) and a confidence interval of no greater than ±20%. This means that, statistically, 95% of the 50,000 potential prospects would pick an answer within the confidence interval of ±20%.<br /><br />For example, if the survey reveals that 50% of the participants thought price was the significant decision factor for a product, the sample is big enough to ensure that of the entire 50,000 prospects, at least 30% and as many as 70% would agree. That might seem like a broad spread to some, but when compared to making a shoot-from-the-hip guess, it provides sniper-level accuracy. If it's too broad however, merely increase the sample size. See the tools at <a href="http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm">http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm</a> to determine what sample will give you the accuracy and precision you seek.<br /><br />Administering a survey is also no longer as involved or cumbersome as it once was. Previously it was a major logistical effort involving printing, mailing, and hand tallying. But new, inexpensive, on-line tools like Survey Monkey (<a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com">www.surveymonkey.com</a>) and Snap Surveys (<a href="http://www.snapsurveys.com">www.snapsurveys.com</a>) make it quite easy to create and administer high-quality surveys.<br /><br />Moreover, if you use direct marketing methods like telemarketing, web-based ordering, or direct mail, it's often quite easy to use those activities to get better market data. With telemarketing, either inbound or outbound, it's often just a matter of adding one or two questions at the end of each call. With web-based selling, a pop-up web survey can intercept normal user dialogue and ask for participation. Lastly, with direct mail, split testing can be a very effective means of surveying. For example, if I'm researching price sensitivity, I might send 5,000 mail pieces with a price of $85 and another 5,000 with a price of $100 and compare the results.<br /><br /><strong>With today's technology, there is no excuse</strong> to ignore the wisdom offered by my old boss. Surveying your market, formally or informally, is easier than ever. And if you're not putting your finger on the pulse of your market, then you're putting every dollar your company spends on its products and communications at risk.<br /><br /><br/><br /><hr/><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/">KLynn Business Consultants</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site. </p><p align="justify"></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-67397938526306397882006-11-22T14:12:00.001-05:002010-07-18T07:15:34.008-05:00The Two Most Important Marketing Communications Technologies...<p>That's right... there's only two. And they're not hi-tech. The two I have in mind are used in 95% of all marketing communications campaigns on the planet. These <u>most</u> important technologies are: <em>writing</em> and <em>printing</em>.<br /><br />Why?<br /><br /><strong>Writing.</strong> Doesn't matter whether it's for print or broadcast, if the writing isn't there, neither is your marketing. Writing <u><em>is</em></u> communicating. Copy is, more often than not, the carrier of your message, and the language of your call to action. Write poorly and there is no message. Write poorly and there is no call to action.<br /><br />Good writing, for marketing communications, is more than simply shoving words around in an aesthetically pleasing way. Good writing requires a thorough understanding and articulation of the product and service benefits which are being communicated. It also requires good context -- that is, it requires an understanding of your market "position" with respect to your prospective buyer and your competitors. Can't articulate the benefits yourself? There's nothing to write about. Don't understand your "market position"? Likewise.<br /><br /><strong>Printing.</strong> The physical manifestation of a very large percentage of the marketing communications done in the world, is in the form of printed material. Signs, brochures, letters, flyers, posters, packaging, magazines, newspapers, direct mail, billboards, and advertising specialties, all have to be printed.<br /><br />The marketer that understands printing will outperform the one that doesn't. Here's a few simple examples of how:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:webdings;">=</span> If Marketer A can print her direct mail piece in color for the same price that Marketer B can print his in black and white, she'll win.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:webdings;">= </span>If Marketer A can print her direct mail piece postcard at 30% less cost than Marketer B can, she'll be able to mail more pieces than Marketer B can, for the same cost! In other words, Marketer A will be able to reach more of the market than Marketer B.<br /><br /><strong>These situations are not unusual</strong>; they're very common. So common that you might begin to wonder whether your competitors know something about writing or printing that you don't.<br /><br /><strong>The good news</strong> is that there are ways to learn the necessary skills. For writing, one of the best sources I know is the <em>Direct Marketing Association</em>. Copywriting seminar information (online and otherwise) from the DMA is available by <a href="http://www.the-dma.org/seminars/aco/">clicking here</a>.<br /><br />For printing, you may want to check your local university, but the premier educator for all things printing is the <em>Rochester Institute of Technology</em> in Rochester, New York. Their <a href="http://www.seminars.cias.rit.edu/index.php?page=semlist&id=17"><em>Print Buying Essentials</em></a> course could well mean the difference between winning and losing to a print-knowledgeable competitor!</p><br /><br /><br/><br /><hr/><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/">KLynn Business Consultants</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site. </p><p align="justify"></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-82230271343725158082006-11-22T14:02:00.002-05:002010-07-18T07:15:13.900-05:00Aversion... Then ConversionFor most of my life I went to great lengths to avoid writing anything more than I absolutely had to. The requirement to write was like acne to me — it was unpleasant and it would surface at the most unexpected and inconvenient times.<br /><br />But in more than 25 years of business and technology product management and brand marketing, I could never escape from writing. Invariably, my job would require me to produce such things as business plans, advertising copy, brochures, flyers, direct mail, signage, manuals, websites, and even a subscription-based newsletter. Writing was unavoidable.<br /><br />Emerson once said that “Fear always springs from ignorance.” So instead of trying to avoid, I invested... in course after course at the University of Toronto to help me write better and write more. I joined writer’s groups and I read everything and anything I could find about the craft of writing. In doing all that, I discovered a joy in writing, a true avocation, and a new vocation. Who knew?<br /><br />If you're looking for a writer that is reliable, both left- and right-brained, easy-to-direct and easy-to-work-with, look over some of my work at <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/writing">KLynn Business Consultants</a>. </p><p align="justify"></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-31541009571663721932006-09-30T11:59:00.001-05:002010-07-18T07:13:24.284-05:00"Why Offer a Guarantee?"<div align="justify"><strong>Guaranteed or Not...</strong></div><div align="justify">You'll get different opinions when you ask a fellow business person about the notion of offering a guarantee for your product or service. Some will consider it a liability (this is likely to be the view of your accountant!). Others might consider offering a guarantee as a necessary evil - they don't want to do it, but feel they have to do it. But ask any good product marketer and they'll tell you it's an essential asset in their arsenal of marketing tools! So let's look at guarantees for a moment...<br /><br /><strong>What is a Guarantee?<br /></strong>According to the American Heritage Dictionary (4th Edition), a guarantee is "a promise or an assurance, especially one given in writing, that attests to the quality or durability of a product or service." Simple enough, but the key words are "attests to the quality or durability" -- it's a statement of quality. In fact, a guarantee is a marketing statement. It's an advertisement that says: "our products are good... so good that we publicly make a promise to you about what we'll do if you find they're not good."</div><div align="justify"><br /><strong>How Strong a Guarantee Should You Have?<br /></strong>While all guarantees offer assurance, they are not all equal. Shown below are two typical, but very different, guarantees: </div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"></div><br /><em><span style="color:#ff9966;"><span style="color:#ff6600;">Guarantee #1: The Limited Guarantee</span><br /></span></em>"This product is guaranteed against defects in material and workmanship. If, within 90 days, you find any widget to have a defective component, return it to the factory for a free replacement. "<br /><br /><em><span style="color:#ff6600;">Guarantee #2: The Sweeping Guarantee<br /></span></em>"If at any time, for any reason, you are not completely satisfied with our product, you may return the product to our factory for a replacement or complete refund."<br /><br />Both of the above statements are guarantees; both suggest that the company stands behind its products. But they are also quite different and evoke a completely different perspective about the company making the guarantee. Which would you rather do business with? The choice of using a limited guarantee or a sweeping guarantee depends a lot on the product or service you provide. For products or services used in highly variable environments, or made of hard-to-predict materials, you may want to use a limited guarantee. For example, for many years, squash racquets were not guaranteed at all. They were made of wood and were used by players with unpredictable temperaments. However, years later, when graphite racquets were introduced, manufacturers began to differentiate themselves by offering a limited guarantee. The new materials made it possible to be more aggressive with their guarantees.<br /><br /><p align="justify"><strong>A Guarantee Combats Sales Objections<br /></strong>Your statement of guarantee is a part of your product offering. It tells the consumer that you are a trustworthy company and that you stand behind your products. If your company or product is not well known, your guarantee can make the different between a consumer playing safe, or taking a chance on a new supplier. With a sweeping guarantee, for example, how can the consumer make a mistake! This is one reason why mail-order catalogs often use sweeping guarantees like the original Sears Roebuck "Satisfaction Guaranteed."<br /><br /><strong>A Guarantee Increases The Lifetime Value of a Customer.<br /></strong>In the catalog industry, where the "lifetime value" of a customer is one of the most important dynamics of a customer relationship, it's well understood how a guarantee affects this. In test after test, catalog merchants have found that the customer that returns a product against the merchant's guarantee will have a much larger lifetime value than the customer that never has cause to return a product. Why is that? Because the credibility and trust of the merchant have been proven making it easier for the consumer to buy again.<br /><br /><strong>A Guarantee Is a Statement of Quality</strong><br />Something that many business people fail to recognize is that a guarantee statement is also a statement about the quality of their products -- it tells the consumer what quality is worth to your company. Guarantee #1 tells the consumer that it's somewhat important but that there are limitations. You have faith in your products ...up to a point. Guarantee #2, however, tells the consumer that you are completely behind the product -- no questions.<br /><br /><strong>A Guarantee Offers Legal Protection<br /></strong>In the software field, where it's common to disclaim any liability for your products whatsoever, there have been a number of court cases where the judge has ruled that such disclaimers are "unconscionable"-- that disclaiming everything is simply unrealistic and unacceptable. In these cases, the court will decide on what an appropriate settlement should be.On the other hand, in court cases involving firms that offer some form of guarantee, the firm's guarantee statement has protected the firm from undue penalties because it afforded the consumer some responsible recourse. A quick consultation with your lawyer about guarantees and "errors and omissions" liabilities help you understand what protection may be available in your industry from a strong guarantee statement.<br /><br /><strong>Things to Think About in Creating Your Guarantee<br /></strong>Start with the assumption that, from a marketing point of view, the sweeping guarantee is the strongest. Why wouldn't you want to make the strongest advertisement for the quality of your products! Work backwards from there. Is your product expendable? If so, some sort of limitation might be appropriate (this is the theory behind "Best Before" dates). What is the true quality of your product? What is the quality expectation set by the pricetag? A $25 coffee maker that leaks after one year is a higher quality product than a $200 coffee maker that leaks after one year! What type and number of complaints do you get now? How do you resolve them? If you already satisfy customer complaints aggressively, why not say so in your guarantee! If your customers have a high repeat value - they come back for more and more -- then examine your guarantee against the full value of your consumer over a period of years. Lastly, examine the guarantees from your suppliers. Will they leave you high and dry if there's a problem?<br /><br /><strong>The Dark Side of Your Guarantee<br /></strong>Now for the bad news. If you make a guarantee, you have to make good on it. Your accountants may not like this but if the entire company understands your guarantee and the consequences of poor quality, you'll find that the quality of your products or services will increase to meet the guarantee criteria. That being the case, you'll find that the type of guarantee you make about your services or products is also a statement about what degree of quality problems you will accept within your company. No guarantee? You'll tolerate quality problems. Strong guarantee? You'll tolerate none.<br /><br /><strong>Guaranteed to Make a Difference</strong><br />So should you offer a guarantee or not? As long as your committed to providing a quality product or service, the reasons to do so far outweigh the reasons not to do so. The biggest reason? Your customers and prospects will respect and appreciate your interest in satisfying them.<br /><br /><br/><br /><hr/><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/">KLynn Business Consultants</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site. </p><p align="justify"></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-27590727673922455772006-09-28T08:38:00.001-05:002010-07-18T07:13:06.246-05:00"I Never Open Junk Mail!"<div align="justify">Invariably, this is the first thing I hear when I suggest a direct marketing campaign to one of our clients. But it's not quite the truth. They never open junk mail... except when they do.<br /><br />To be sure, most people do not open their junk mail. For a good campaign, perhaps only 10%-20% will open it and only 1%-2% will act on it. That doesn't seem like a lot, does it? But then, why do we continue to get junk mail? Why does it seem, in fact, like we get <em>more</em> junk mail every year?<br /><br />The short answer is: because it works. Here's how...<br /><br />Let's take the example of mailing a promotion for a $250 item to 20,000 people. Here's the math based on a response rate of 1.25%:<br /><br /><br /></div><p align="justify"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/4855/583088175667236/320/Example%20Chart.png" border="0" />In this example, we spend $14,500 in preparing and sending the mail piece. With a response rate of 1.25%, we get 250 orders giving us sales of $62,500. Assuming the product we sell is purchased from someone else, we may get to keep 40% of the sales with the remainder going to pay for the merchandise. That leaves us $10,500 <em>after </em>the costs of the mailing.</p><p align="justify">What this example illustrates is that -- even though 98.75% of the respondents <u>do not</u> open/act on their junk mail -- the campaign will earn $10,500! Imagine if the response rate were 2% instead of 1.25% ...then it would net more than $25,000! </p><p align="justify">With those kind of numbers, instead of asking why we get so much junk mail, we might want to ponder <em>why we get so little!</em></p><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynn.ca/">here</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site.<br /><p></p><br /><br /><br/><br /><hr/><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/">KLynn Business Consultants</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site. </p><p align="justify"></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-24376851534508758682006-09-14T06:38:00.001-05:002010-07-18T07:12:51.633-05:00The 9 All-Too-Common Characteristics of Technology-driven Companies (...or why the dot-coms crashed!)<div align="justify"><strong>The Burden of a High Potential</strong><br />Technology companies have a reputation of being "high-flyers" -- that is, they have high potential for rapid and significant growth. Companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, and Google underline that perception. But for every technology company that flies high, there are hundreds of others that can't make it past a sales mark of a few million dollars or can't cross the line to become profitable. Often it's these companies that come to KLynn looking for a way to bust out of their doldrums and realize the high-flyer potential they have. These companies all share certain characteristics.<br /><br /><strong>The Good Idea</strong><br />The most common characteristic is that they tend to have a really good idea behind their business. Yes. Their problems are not because they have a bad idea, a bad product concept or a bad service concept. Just the opposite. They have a good idea and they know it in their bones.<br /><br /><strong>Solutions Looking for Problems </strong><br />But too often, what they also have is a <em>solution looking for a problem</em>. They know they have a good idea, true, but they do not know who has the problem. Because the founders of these companies are often technologists themselves, they have the view that a really good idea should be sufficient to draw customers out of the woodwork. If we build it, they will come. (<em>see 'Magical Thinking' below.</em>)<br /><br /><strong>Ambiguous Markets</strong><br />That type of view complicates their entire business model. If a company hasn't found the problem their solution is for, then they haven't found a market. Without a market, finding customers is difficult (at best).<br /><br />What often happens is that the company is glib about where the problem is that they have a solution for. "Our market is the Fortune 500" is a phrase I often hear. That's just not good enough. It doesn't mean anything in terms of how the company can get to the market.<br /><br />In contrast to that glibness, let's take a company like NEBS (NYSE: NEBS <a href="http://www.nebs.com">www.nebs.com</a>). NEBS' market is small businesses. They have the name and address of <u>every</u> one of the small businesses in their marketplace. As a catalog sales company, they know <em>exactly</em> who they're selling to. They have to. Without a name and address they cannot mail their prospective customer a catalog. So with NEBS, there's no glib description of the market; knowing who their prospects are is a core value for the company.<br /><br /><strong>Poor Understanding of Customers<br /></strong>A poor understanding of the marketplace can only result in a poor understanding of one's customers. Too few technology companies really understand their buyers. Why did they buy? Who made the decision? What other products or services did they consider? What else do they buy? How often do they buy? These are just a few of the questions that most market-driven companies can answer, and most technology-driven companies can't.<br /><br />Looking at NEBS again as an example of someone who does know their customer, they can answer these questions and many more. They also require their management team, executive and middle-level, to each visit a number of their customers every quarter. Customer knowledge is a vital component to their business and they have incorporated that into their very culture.<br /><br /><strong>Insufficient Measurement of Results</strong><br />Outside of the lab or the engineering development organizations, technology-driven companies tend to be equally glib about the measurement of results. It's a strange contradiction of disciplines. They will know the number of lines of code that each software component has, but they will not know how well the last advertisement performed. They will know the Mean-Time-Between-Failures (MTBF) of every hardware component they use but they couldn't tell you the average value of an order or the maintenance plan renewal rate for their customers.<br /><br /></div><img style="DISPLAY: block; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/4855/583088175667236/320/LordKelvin.gif" border="0" /> <p align="justify"><br /><br /><strong>Poorly Articulated Goals</strong><br />This becomes clear in examining the goal statements of technology driven companies. Too often, technology-driven companies have goals like: "Be the leader in... " or "Dominate our markets!". But these are not goals to manage to. Good goals are goals where progress can be measured and good goal articulation includes the measurement criteria; e.g. "Be the leader in network routers <em>as measured by</em>... " or "Dominate the screensaver market <em>as measured by</em>...".<br /><br /><strong>Inability or Unwillingness to Set “Strategy”</strong><br />To make matters worse, technology companies often have difficulty setting strategy. Generally, this is because the company doesn't know who their market is and has too many good ideas for it. They're all good ideas! Everyone of them deserves to be developed and launched!<br /><br />Too many ideas, too few markets, and a limited amount of cash make strategy essential. But what is "strategy"? Many managers think strategy is about cleverness. It's not. Strategy is simply prioritizing. Every aspect of a firm's business plan needs prioritizing. The priority of markets is the market strategy. The priority of products and product development is the product strategy. The priority of channels is the channel strategy and the priority of sales initiatives is the selling strategy. Strategy, a.k.a. priority, defines how we may invest in the many opportunities available to us. The term "counter-strategic" then means: we are investing in something counter to our priority.<br /><br />What's often observed in technology companies, if one looks hard enough, is that there are strategies being executed counter to the priority or there are simply no priorities. Obviously, this is not OK.<br /><br /><strong>Difficulty in Scaling</strong><br />Well, really... if a company has ambiguous markets, if it doesn't understand its customers, if it doesn't measure results, has poorly articulated goals and won't prioritize, difficulty in scaling is often <em>the least</em> of their problems.<br /><br /><strong>“Magical thinking” (or Dangerous Ego)</strong><br />Sergeant Friday on the old detective series "Dragnet" used to say: "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts." But there is something about technology that seems to imbue its worshipers with magical powers and causes them to think that they can defy the laws of marketing physics. Two statements that typify magical thinking are as follows:<br /><br /><br /></p><br /><br /><div align="center">"There is no competition."<br /></div><div align="center"></div><br /><div align="center">"I know the market."</div><br /><br />Most often, both of these statements are wrong. There is no substitute for facts. Gut feel just doesn't cut it.<br /><br /><strong>Marketing IS a Technology.</strong><br />The big mistake that may technology companies make is not to recognize that marketing IS a technology. As a technology it is the application of a science. (Yes, Virginia, marketing is a science.) As such, it can be measured and tested and predicted with a surprisingly high degree of accuracy.<br /><br />So... think about it... Now does the dot.com crash make sense to you?<br /><br /><br/><br /><hr/><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/">KLynn Business Consultants</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site. </p><p align="justify"></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-21149481715007584532006-09-01T07:05:00.001-05:002010-07-18T07:11:37.888-05:00The Rule of List, Offer & Presentation<div align="justify">There are few marketing tenets more important than that of "Lynn's Rule of List, Offer, and Presentation"*. Essentially what this rule governs is the success factors in marketing communications -- where "success" is a measure of how much response there is to an advertisement or promotion. The rule suggests that selecting the right "list" (i.e. your audience) contributes 50% of the success of any given advertisement or promotion, and 40% comes from having the right "offer". The remaining 10% comes from the "presentation" or the creative component of the advertisement or promotion.<br /><br />Think about it... if the rule holds true, what this suggests is that all the money spent on impressive graphics and clever copywriting contributes only 10% to the success of an advertisement or promotion. Scary.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><p align="justify"><add><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/4855/583088175667236/320/Success_factor.png" border="0" /><br />So let's look at where the 90% comes from. The rule suggests that 50% is attributed to the "List". For a mailing, it's the mailing list, for a print ad, it's the circulation list, for an event, it's the attendees list, and so on. The promotional quality of the list is what's important. In the case of lists, quality is determined by the relevance of the members of the list to the promotion being made. Are they in the target marketplace? Are they decision makers? Is there evidence that they respond to this type of promotion? How long ago? These are all questions important in selecting a list. For example, the notion of advertising in a magazine without understanding the circulation list or exhibiting in an event without understanding the attendees is essentially promoting "blind" and the results are likely to be underwhelming. </p><p align="justify">The list is a significant component of promotional success, but where many marketers go wrong is failing to make an "offer" to the list. They may create a beautiful and clever print ad, they may place it in a magazine with an appropriate circulation list, but they fail to offer the prospective viewer any <em>reason to act</em>. In effect, an ad without an offer is like me introducing myself to someone I've been dying to meet, and then saying only "Hi, my name is Kurt" and then walking away. What's the point?</p><p align="justify">An offer is an invitation to act -- a call to action. An offer can be as simple as "Buy GeeWhiz today!" or as complex as "Buy GeeWhiz at 20% off, while supplies last, one to a customer; offer expires September 30, 2006". Some offers work betters than others but <u>any offer</u> works better than none at all.</p><p align="justify">There is both science and art to making a compelling offer that will evoke a good response from a list of prospects. The science of good offers has been developed through years of empirical testing -- principally through "split-testing" of different offers (sending one offer to group A and another to group B and statistically comparing results). Testing in this way has proven that different offers have different strengths. For example, a sample list of offers is shown below, in order, from strongest to weakest:</p><ul><li><div align="justify">"Sweepstakes" or contests (e.g. "Win $2,500 cash and a trip to Costa Rica...")</div></li><li><div align="justify">FREE!</div></li><li><div align="justify">25% Off!</div></li><li><div align="justify">No Risk, Money Back Guarantee. </div></li><li><div align="justify">Limited time or quantity (e.g. "Offer good only until <date>..." or "Only 100 available!"</div></li><li><div align="justify">Send for information.</div></li><li><div align="justify">Have a salesperson call.</div></li></ul><p align="justify">The art of good offers is how we package the science. For example, "50% off", "Save $100 each", and "Buy one, get one FREE!" are financially equivalent for a product with a $200 SRP --but each evokes different buying dynamics. Likewise, "Call 800-555-11111 for installation details" is essentially the same as "Call 800-555-1111 for your FREE planning guide". </p><p align="justify">With offers, it's also a good idea to keep in mind the effect of a strong offer on your entire sales cycle. A strong offer may result in an excellent response rate to your promotion. But the leads that are generated by it may be more difficult to close or have a low closing percentage. For example, a compelling offer in an advertisement for network management tools might be "Ask for our FREE planning guide and we'll send you a check for $25!" Almost certainly you'll be asked for many planning guides... but the close rate on prospects generated in this way will be low. Why? The responder wants the $25, not the guide or product. On the other hand, with an offer of a rebate of $25, the offer associates the incentive with the desired action -- i.e. you get the $25 when you buy. The response rate will be lower, but the quality of the lead will be higher.</p><p align="justify"></p><p align="justify"></p><p align="justify"><u><strong>Bottom Line</strong></u></p><p align="justify">Make sure all your promotional work is vetted against the rule of List, Offer, and Presentation. Check each element to ensure that your promotion is focused on the right audience, includes a compelling (to the audience) offer, and is presented in a way that will make the offer stand out.</p><p align="justify"></p><p align="justify"><br /><br/><br /><hr/><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/">KLynn Business Consultants</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site. </p><p align="justify"></p><div align="justify"><br /><br /><em>*This rule of thumb is actually industry legend in the direct marketing world. I only claim it as my own because so few people actually practice it.</em> </div><p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-33587567572340873292006-08-31T11:19:00.001-05:002010-07-18T07:10:22.089-05:00Logos, Logotypes & Tags<div align="justify">There's a lot of confusion about creating logos and tag lines to go with them. If you're creating a new logo or logotype for your company or for a new product or service, there's a few things you should keep in mind:<br /><br />1. A logo or logotype is, in effect, an adjective that establishes ownership over something. It's like saying Lynn's Bar & Grill. "Lynn" is the logotype - an adjective - and "Bar & Grill" is what the adjective modifies; it's the tagline. This is one reason why using progressive tense taglines such as "eating & drinking" or "feeding the after-work crowd" just don't work very well.<br /><br />2. The idea of good naming and tagging is that, collectively, the name and tag should tell the viewer three things: (a) what the product/service does, (b) what are the benefits, and (c) who's it for. If we take this back to our bar and grill, the name is "Lynn's" but the tagline "Bar & Grill" just doesn't cut it. To be ideal, the tag line should be something like: "Good Food & Drink For the After Hours Crowd."<br /><br />Oh. But that's not very "clever" is it? Perhaps not, but a long descriptive articulation that communicates properly will always be better than a short clever one that doesn't.<br /><br />If you're an unknown, whatever you don't say in your name and tag is something you 'll have to establish via advertising or other communications. Imagine, for a moment, that you're introducing a new diet drink. You're a nobody -- just an average person that's created a refreshing strawberry-flavored beverage targeting baby-boomers. You can be clever, for example, and attach a name like "Jive!" and a tag line that says "Beverage" but then you better be prepared to spend a lot of money on advertising communicating just what Jive! beverages are really about.<br /><br />"But Why?" you ask, "Diet Coke can do it." And if you have the advertising budget of Coca Cola, you can too. (Actually, even Diet Coke has a descriptive tag that says: "Sugar free, calorie free cola"). Better you should get off on the right foot immediately by naming it something like "Woodstock" and tagging it with something like "A tasty nostalgic refreshment for baby-boomers."<br /><br />3. The idea of naming and tagging is to equate a meaning to a logo or logotype. What we're trying to do is to equate, in the minds of the consumer that:<br /><br />logo = tag,<br />LYNN'S = GOOD FOOD & DRINK FOR AFTER-HOURS PEOPLE<br />WOODSTOCK = NOSTALGIC REFRESHMENT FOR BABY BOOMERS.<br /><br />Ultimately, the way we do that is by repetition. This means that every time we mention the logo or logotype -- especially during the initial communications -- we use the logo <u><em>and</em></u> the tag line together. Always.<br /><br /><u><strong>Bottom Line</strong></u><br />Make your logos, logotypes and taglines as meaningful as you can to the ultimate consumer. It'll save you thousands of dollars in advertising later.<br /><br />Click <a href="http://www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com/">KLynn Business Consultants</a> to link to the KLynn consulting site. </div><p></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4776658335066002167.post-11591283600458349392006-08-31T09:16:00.000-05:002007-02-08T23:28:07.854-05:00Bad Marketing.<div align="justify">There's a lot of bad marketing in the world today. It's not just from small, inexperienced companies; there's bad marketing from some of the big ones, too.<br /><br />How does bad marketing happen? Often, bad marketing is about trying to get too clever. Instead of focusing on marketing basics, like remembering who's the audience, some marketers get carried away with the "creative" component. But being creative just isn't enough.<br /><br />This blog is about underlining the marketing basics. Watch this space for timely and interesting notes on different aspects of product marketing, branding, direct response advertising, and marketing communications. Here, we'll focus on the basics, pointing out some of the problems and solutions for marketing today. Just as in our own business, you'll find described here some unique problems that require some unique solutions -- but all that can be solved by the application of marketing fundamentals.<br /><br /><u><strong>Bottom Line</strong></u><br />Back to basics -- focus on the tried-and-true principles of good marketing. Avoid "clever."</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">KLynn Marketing Notes(tm)
Back-to-basics Marketing Perspectives
(c) 2006,2007 KLynn Inc. All rights reserved.
www.klynnmarketing.blogspot.com
www.klynnbusinessconsulting.com</div>Kurt D. Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14356073495936285642noreply@blogger.com