Tag: small business marketing

Wondering How Many Seminar Registrations You Can Reasonably Expect for Your Promotional Efforts? Here’s What to Expect … and How to Increase Conversion

By Jenny Hamby, the Seminar Marketing Pro™

Certified Guerrilla Marketer and Direct-Response Copywriter

Have you fallen for the myth that your seminar-marketing campaign is a total failure if your response rate is less than 2 percent?

Well, guess what … it’s not uncommon to have a response rate of less than 1% when promoting a seminar. The higher your registration fee and the longer your event lasts, the lower response rate you’ll probably get.

The easiest and most economical way to boost your conversion rate is to focus on highly qualified prospects. Here’s an example.

For an introductory inventory management seminar, I sent a preliminary brochure to all segments of the client’s internal database that we suspected would have an interest in attending the event. The response rate was 1.32%, which soundly beat the client’s control.

When marketing the successive classes (there were 7 in all), we sent direct-mail solicitations only to people who had attended one or more of the previous classes or who had requested information about the events. (The class was promoted to other audiences via an organizational catalog, newsletters and press releases.) This was a safe and sound approach, because it made the most sense for prospects to take the courses sequentially; each course built upon the knowledge of the previous seminars.

The response rates on the successive classes were over 80% … because we focused our efforts on the most qualified prospects. Best of all, the client’s mailing costs plummeted to less than $100 per seminar.

To increase your own response rates, start by targeting qualified segments of your internal database, such as people who have attended related seminars in the past. Also consider establishing joint ventures with companies that already have a relationship with your audience, as well as renting mailing lists of people who have attended similar types of events.

Source by Jenny Hamby

If you work in a medium size or large organization then chances are that you would have heard the phrase ‘marketing communications’. It is the department that deals in handling all communications for the company. Depending on the kind of company and the industry they are in, this department is sometimes called the corporate communications or the product marketing division at times.

Marketing communications is nothing but the science and art of communicating information that the company wants to divulge to the public. The information could be related to the marketing of a product, talk about a new product launch or community initiatives taken by the company. The whole exercise is called a science and an art because though there are set rules and patterns to the manner in which communication should be drafted, the ability to communicate effectively is an art that only some can master. Even as just communicating may seem an easy task since that is what we do every day in our normal lives, there is a science behind what to communicate to whom and in what tone and manner. The process becomes more complex when the market to which one is communicating is an evolved market.

To give you an example of the underlying concepts of marketing communications let us consider the example of the promotional emails that we receive almost everyday. Any person who has some technology background will tell you that the communication is filled with embedded action scripts, flash, cookies and a lot of technological techniques to decipher your movement through the Internet. These are the best practices that are being used in marketing communications today.

These technological wonders enable the marketing professionals to track the navigation of the user through the sites. It registers whether you open the email or not and the activities that you undertake once you have reached the landing page. It measures the amount of time that you spend one each page, the links that you click on and therefore the products and options that you are interested in.

This information is then delivered to the marketing department where it is analyzed and a specific customized communication is created for the user. This tracking and monitoring has enabled marketing programs to become more result oriented and measurable. And it is now becoming a significant tool to justify marketing spends and link the increase in sales to marketing efforts directly.

Source by Ken Snow

Most managers & marketing writers now distinguish between selling & marketing. The “selling concept” assumes that resisting consumer have to be persuaded by vigorous hard-selling techniques to buy non-essential goods or services. Products are sold rather then bought. The “marketing concept”, on the contrary, assumes that the producer’s task is to find wants & fill them. In other words, you don’t sell what you make, you make what will be bought. As well as satisfying existing needs, marketers can also anticipate 7 create new ones. The markets fro Walkman, video games, personal computers, & genetic engineering, to choose some recent examples, were largely created rather than identified.

Marketers are consequently always looking for market opportunities – profitable possibilities of filling unsatisfied needs or creating new ones in areas in which the company is likely to enjoy a differential advantage, due to its distinctive competencies (the things it does particularly well). Market opportunities are generally isolated by market segmentations. Once a target market has been identified, a company has to decide what goods or services to offer. This means that much of the work of marketing has been done before the final product or service come into existence. It also means that the marketing concept has to be understood throughout the company, e. g. in the production department of a manufacturing company as much as in the marketing department itself. The company must also take account of the existence of competitors, who always have to be identified, monitored & defeated in the search for loyal customers.

Rather than risk launching a product or service solely on the basis of intuition or guesswork, most companies undertake market research. They collect & analyze information about the size of a potential market, about consumers’ reactions to particular product or service features, & so on. Sales representatives, who also talk to customers, are another important source of information.

Once the basic offer, e. g. a product concept, has been established, the company has to think about the marketing mix, i. e. all the various elements of the marketing programme, their integration, & the amount of effort that the company can expend on them in order to influence the target market. The best-known classification of these elements is the “4 Ps”: product, place, promotion, & price. Aspects to be concerned in marketing products include quality, features (standards & optional), style, brand name, size, packaging, services & guarantee. Place in a marketing mix includes such factors as distributions channels, locations of points of sale, transport, inventory size, etc. Promotion groups together advertising, publicity, sales promotion, & personal selling, while price includes the basic list price, discounts, the length of payment period, possible credit terms, & so on. It’s a job of a product manager or a brand manager to look for ways to increase sales by changing the marketing mix.

It must be remembered that quite apart from consumer markets (in which people buy products for direct consumption) there exists an enormous producer or industrial or business market, consisting of all the individuals & organizations that acquire goods & services that are used in the production of other goods, on in the supply of services to others. Few consumers realize that the producer market is actually larger than consumer market, since it contains all the raw materials, manufactured parts & components that go into consumer goods, plus capital equipment such as buildings & machines, supplies such as energy & pens & papers, & services ranging from cleaning to management consulting, all of which have to be marketed. There is consequently more industrial that consumer marketing, even though ordinary consumer are seldom exposed to it.

Marketing is a new science. What has been around previously is the art of salesmanship. Salesmanship is the art of manufacturing something & making another person to want it. Marketing is the art of finding out what the other person wants, then manufacturing it for him.

In a market of multiple choice, it is no longer sufficient to produce a product 7 show your customers that it satisfies one of their basic needs. You must show them it provides benefits other products fail to provide, that it can be supplied at a competitive price & above all, supplied reliability. But in this fast-changing world, competitors catch up more quickly then ever.

Preferences that consumer have for this or that product work for shorter & shorter periods. Choice makes marketing work.

Companies need to be constantly engaged in product development, if they wish to grow & make profits.

Research is the basic tool of marketing. A marketer must determine what customers needs are. Marketing experts have developed techniques for determining the needs of prospective customers. It’s done by way of market segmentation.

How can market segmentation be of help to a manager who wants to develop a new product? Every market can be divided into segments or, in other words, into separate groups of consumers. First there are demographic factors like age, income, educational background, occupation, size of family, type of home & neighborhood, etc. Then there are psychographic factors – the customers’ opinions & interests, hobbies, vacations spots, favorite sports etc.

Then a product is compared with the goods already established in the market by quality or quantity standards. To be a success you must be ahead of your competitors.

Competition never stops. That is why market segmentation must never stop as well. It should be on a permanent basis. Introduction of a pioneer product cam immediately change the composition & number of a consumer grouping.

For nearly 150 years – up until the 1930s – Americans experienced a tremendous era of production. Automobiles, appliances, & wide variety of consumer goods were manufactured without a thought to what the consumer might actually want. The population was increasing dramatically & demand was high for all types of quality products. Industrialists thus perceived no need for products that were oriented toward consumer preferences. In the 1930s everything changed. The economy was rocked by a severe depression, & suddenly people could no longer afford many of the products that were being produced. To regain these lost sales & to find potential new markets, companies like General Motors & General Electric pioneered the marketing concept & launched America into an era of marketing. The American Association defines marketing as the “performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods & services from the producer to the consumer or user.” While modern marketing approaches first made an appearance in the 1920s & 1930s, it was not until the 1950s that the more sophisticated aspects like the marketing concept had fully evolved. Today marketing is easily as important as production.

The marketing concept implies that the decision-making process in production should begin with the customer. Modern businesses believe that profits can be maximized by creating products for which there is known demand. Thus, companies today are constantly looking for creative ideas that will meet specific consumer needs & wants.

Of course, nonprofit businesses such as charities, hospitals, universities, & museums can also use the marketing concept to advantage.

The marketing concept directly influences the functions of marketing. All marketing planning, or establishment of objectives & the steps necessary to achieve them, must consider how the marketing concept will affect these major specialized activities. There are seven functions of marketing:

1. Buying. Purchasing raw materials, products, &/or services for business, government, or consumer uses.
2. Selling. Finding prospective buyers, promoting goods &services through personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, & publicity, & providing post-purchase service.
3. Marketing research. Systematically gathering, recording, & analyzing data about problems related to the marketing of goods & services.
4. Transportation & storage. Providing vehicles such as rail or truck to get goods from the producer to the consumer, & storing these goods until the final sale if necessary.
5. Risk-taking. Using market research to avoid possible product or business failures, & shifting risk to insurance in cases such as fire, theft, & flood.
6. Finance & credit. Borrowing or obtaining necessary credit to fund operations.
7. Standardization & grading. Providing specifications so that the quantity & quality of goods can be controlled & compared.

Source by Michael Newman

Importance of Marketing

From a very small fish to becoming the big one and then the biggest among all. This is how few brands have changed with time e-g: Levis Microsoft and many other “The Big Fish”

The financial success of such brands have been depending on combined efforts of their financial strategies and their marketing efforts. One thing that’s been common among all there brands is a high degree of Brand loyalty. They have managed to capture the share of heart and in turn share of customer’s wallet.

Companies now understand that marketing plays an important roll in their overall success ,so now companies have CMOs (Chief Marketing Officer) along with CFOs and CEOs. They understand that if there are functions close to customers its ether Sales or Marketing. Sales become a direct interface among customs and products offered by companies, and marketing is an indirect function between customer and the company.

But what makes marketing so big? Why is it important? If you have a great product you are bound to succeed then why do u need to spend on marketing / advertising?

The answer to these questions lies deep within the customer’s brain. Customers / consumers are smart and they understand what makes your product different form mine. If you are offering then 1 % more that what I do why should they pay me rather than paying you. That’s the point. And secondly it’s important to communicate the product offerings to the end user. If a marketing team has worked hard on understanding the consumer needs they need to make sure their customers get a feel “This brand knows what I want “. Trust me this is the only major differentiator between why your 1% more is able to get you more loyal and more number of customers.

The time has changed. To products that are offered by a brand you have “n” number of more  substitutes and consumers get to know which is the better substitute that suites there requirements . So it is important to make sure that marketing efforts are more on understanding the changing needs on today’s customer. We need to understand the minds of customers. It’s rightly said “customer is KING”

Marketing managers need to understand the customer needs and they need to make their major decisions such as the features to include, the price to be offered to customers and what to spend on advertisements.

Marketing today has become a emotional research which helps understanding customer and consumers psychology so that products are developed based on these understanding. The marketing managers need to answer following questions:

• How do we find the right market segment?
• How do we differentiate?
• How can we compete with low cost business models?
• How do we build a better brand?
• How do we reduce cost of customer acquisition?

A successful Marketing team can carefully analyze customer needs and carefully monitor there competitors marketing moves. Remember a short term sales driven view does not work in business world today. The C-level managers, the CEO,CFO should communicate importance of marketing in an organization,  how the marketing function plays a great role in organizations success.

Source by drypen

Marketing Retainer

If you are a company without a Marketing Department or indeed an appointed Marketing employee but you still need to market your company there is an alternative to signing up another individual to work in your company.  In these times of “crisis” and cut backs you may not want to or have room in your budget for another full time worker.  You may not be able to afford to pay another salary, more social security – you may not have room in your budget for illness or holiday but you still want and need to get your marketing done.

 Marketing companies will often work with you on a retainer basis which means instead of employing the company on a one off basis you work with them on a continuous basis, sometimes for a matter of months or years.   In effect they become your marketing department, researching your business and working out the best way to market you or your product.

 The benefits of this are of course firstly the obvious – financial.  Generally you will pay less for a marketing retainer than a full time member of staff.  Plus there are no holidays to pay for, no illness to cover, no social security to pay.  But a marketing company may also be more focussed on really marketing your product after all it is their job.  They won’t be distracted by office gossip or who’s covering reception at lunchtime, they are 100% focused on getting you results.

As far as knowing your business they will research your business and your target market which means they will come at it from a fresh perspective and see it from your potential client’s point of view – something you may find hard to do from inside the company.

You can work with them on a month to month basis – though of course as with everything the longer you work with a company the more chance you give them and yourself to really market your product or business and of course the more months you sign up to, the less you pay.  True marketing rarely happens overnight or from one advert or piece of PR.  To really build your brand you need continuous, consistent marketing that will build the foundation of your progress.  But you can let them go whenever you want which you just can’t do with an employee. 

 The marketing company should be dedicated to you, coming in for meetings, coordinating your marketing plan and schedule and become part of your team.  In these times of cutting back it’s a very good way of making sure you are committed to your marketing without having to pay another employee.

Source by Redline Company