We know that most people are NOT price only shoppers. What customers really want is a good value. Real value is when the customer believes they are getting something greater than the price they are paying. There are two sides to this equation, the price side and the value side, as I demonstrated here: The Price…
Guest Post by Jason Falls We’ve reached a maturity level in social media marketing that has been a long time coming. Companies and brands are no longer approaching the web and all of its social connections and technologies with the sandbox approach. The tide began turning about nine months ago. CEOs, marketing directors and more…
Unfortunately, it’s much easier to do the wrong thing than it is to do the right thing when it comes to your brand. Fortunately, we can always learn from the mistakes of others, and we will do so here with these brands gone wrong. Photo Courtesy of aussiegall The Geek Squad The Geek Squad used…
When cable was new, and I’m old enough to remember when it was, it was the advertising stepchild. Not so anymore. Cable advertising can add impact to your marketing mix, especially for local small businesses. I’ve personally experienced measurable results from from cable advertising with my clients. Overall, cable viewership is greater than broadcast viewership….
Photo courtesy of thienzieyung When starting the branding process with a new client, we always start with the mission. The mission is the one thing on which all other things in the business are based, and that includes marketing. Yes, we know. Business has largely blown up the mission and bastardized it into a mostly…
What should you do to market your business in 2012? To answer that question, I created this short video for Network Solutions’ 12 Ways to Makeover Your Small Business in 2012 series. (email subscribers and feed readers, click here if you don’t see the video: Sharpen Your Brand) The Rules of Marketing A new year…
Where oh where did the time go? Here we are in 2012 with another great year of marketing ahead of us. But before we get too far down the highway, let’s take a look back at the best small business marketing articles of 2011. I’ve organized the list around the four essential spots of small…
You understand the value of word of mouth. It’s free advertising and it’s powerful advertising because it’s unbiased advertising. But do you understand how to get more of it? The answer is magic, specifically magic moments. My first article for the Washington Post was recently published and it has more on how to create magic…
A while back I asked the question: Are you wasting your time on Facebook and Twitter? It was still the new frontier of social media marketing when businesses were wondering whether or not they should create a Facebook page. Now, by varying estimates, about 3/4ths of all businesses have some sort of social marketing involvement….
Guest post by Dave Thomas For many retailers, the holidays are the sink or swim time for their businesses. Put together a winning retail season and they can either go into 2012 with a surplus and a winning attitude or at least have broken even to end a difficult year. Come up with a losing…