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Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

At the heart of any marketing communications effort should be a respect for design that communicates clearly and effectively to bring you the results you are looking for, and your selected design agency should be familiar with all forms of visual media. Print management with a view to not only cost effectiveness, but also how your brand is expressed to its maximum impact across all above, below and through the line channels is vital to effective communication with your target audiences. This all becomes even more important with 3D marketing of the brand such as brand environments, large displays, simple pop-up units or fully fledged exhibition stands.

Whether it’s uniquely different banner sign printing or exhibition stand design and custom built display solutions, you need to make a distinctive eye catching impression with an identity and execution that not only looks good in the medium it inhabits but is easy to erect and dismantle.

Central to all this is the initial corporate identity design and logo. Aside from its creativity and how it captures the spirit of your proposition, its ability to translate across all those myriad expressions will determine its longevity and impact. What looks good on A4 print materials may not be so wonderful by the time it’s enlarged to fit exhibition graphics.Equally, any logo can be enhanced in an exhibition environment by an imaginative use of lighting that can produce a number of different effects.

Portable Display Stands, Banners, Pop-ups, Modular stands and Shell Scheme Graphics all have their own unique requirements as to how strong they need to be and how long they will need to last. Design that works will take all this into account from the very start. Point of Sale Material, Window Graphics and Signage have similar marketing functions to fulfil, but require entirely different lifetimes. These items need to be more durable and able to last far longer than temporary exhibition materials and with POS are often left unmanned and need to work entirely alone. They must therefore be considerably more robust than temporary graphics, but still retain the same sense of style and unity of corporate design as all the other relevant items of marketing colleteral.

When a lot of people come online looking to make some additional cash the first place to begin is often with affiliate marketing where you take a commission for each sale made that you have referred. This is a very nice way to begin as you do not need to worry about taking payments, creating a product or dealing with customer services. You could start immediately and be making sales. It is often not long before a successful internet marketer will create their own product to sell and find affiliates who will be able to make the sales for youle to.

Here are some helpful hints that can make life easier if you decide to delve into creating your own product.

Outsource the Job
For a reasonable price you can pay a writer to create the product for you. If you have done a lot of research initially then it will be less costly, but even if you have not, you can find a writer who will do all this for you. Obviously it is much easier to create a digital product instead of a physical product which will probably have high overhead costs. You can even use resell rights products such as those given with Google Conquest.

Look For an Expert
If you are not confident in your market then you can be sure there are many experts out there who are. You can find them everywhere and they can be responsible for content for you and take a cut of the revenue. To find an expert you can look in the forums in your niche and also look for authors who are not currently in the best-seller list. If you approach them in the right way they will probably want to get involved. This approach was taken by Alex Goad to make a successful Clickbank product in an area he knew nothing about.

Research
If you aren’t scared of a bit of work then you can do your research on the subject and become knowledgeable in your area. It will not take years to be fairly knowledgeable and it really is a matter of researching the most respected information and then organizing it so that it is easy to understand and implement. Study what your competitors are doing and plan to be better.

I hope these tips have been useful and you feel more confident bringing your own product to market. It is not as complicated as it may seem and if you stick to the digitally delivered information field it is very fast and has little risk. For a course on how to set this up have a look at Google Conquest review.

Article marketing is a great SEO tool because it allows you to utilize many keywords and phrases that are directly related to your niche. You can use the essential keywords in your articles if you already know them. The articles you publish with your keywords will get picked up by search engines and then your visitors who type in those keywords will see your website come up. You can rank high on search engines for all your keywords through the articles that you write and distribute on the internet.

Article writing brings life long results in SEO. All the articles that you write are stored and archived on the article directories in which you have submitted your article to. This means that all of your articles can be read by others and they can still drive traffic to your site. Articles bring long term results to your websites, which is not the case with most traffic driving methods. 

Your articles create backlinks which in turn improve your overall popularity and will more than likely drive large volumes of traffic to your site. If you write high quality articles, your articles will get published by many websites and e-zines, thus increasing backlinks to your website. Having many links pointing back to your website is important as it improves the position of your website in the search engines.

Articles are an affordable SEO tool. Writing and submitting articles is cheap or even free. You can hire a ghostwriter or you can write your articles yourself. You can manually submit your articles or you can use some software to automatically submit your article to many directories. In most cases article marketing will be a great and affordable way to improve your rankings and positions.

Increase your backlinks following these simple steps

In order to gain high search engine ranking you only need to follow some easy steps, these steps are outlined in this article. There are many ways that you can optimize your website for search engines and gain in your search engine rankings.

 * Write and submit press releases about your website. Once you submit your press release to various press release websites, those sites will submit your press release to major search engines. Your press release may be picked up by other publications like blogs and websites and other media sources – This will increase links to your website. Remember that you must include your website URL on your press release.

 * Participate in forums and online groups that relate to your niche or topic. By posting your keywords and website URL in your signature, you create a way to increase your exposure whenever you make forum posts. Some of these forums have high popularity rank, so by having links to these sites, you also increase the popularity rank of your website.

 * Write product or website reviews, include your website URL and post these on websites that have high popularity ranks. This increases links to your website and also help to drive traffic to your website through other websites.

Writing, submitting articles, and following other steps in this article is clearly the best strategy for improving the ranking of your website on search engines. If you really want to find success with SEO and link building, it is paramount that you follow several strategies as outlined in this article.

Article Source: Article Productions Create Articles, Spin Articles, Compose Articles, DripFeed Your Blogs, and more… Unique Articles

Why should you bother?

Good customer service is the life blood of any business. New customers are important but good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business is likely to win many more customers through recommendations and remember, if you are not taking care of your customers, your competition will.

Online customer satisfaction surveys will help by not only identifying problem areas but show that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where to start?

Objective – Before you start compiling your survey you should first consider what the objectives of the survey are, in that way you will remain focused and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis – Consider how you will analyze the answers having completed the survey.

Keep in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where a respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are much easier to analyze than ‘open’ questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

Much will depend on the predicted volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to advertise areas of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

Before you publish the survey confirm that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analyzed will help you make informed decisions.

Next, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing – promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

In asking this question the store will hopefully not only receive useful feedback on the baby changing facility but they will also promote the store as being a child-friendly and caring store even to those the customers who do not actually require the facility.

Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to avoid the temptation, in any way, of attempting to sugar coat the survey.

A customer satisfaction survey should be designed to highlight problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and will also give early warning on where your competitors initiatives may be losing you business.

What to ask?

Each business is likely to have unique factors in relation to providing good customer services however there are common areas that are going to be relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online store or a service industry. The following are key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – What do you do to help your customers communicate with you?

When a customer telephones is the phone answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services properly handled? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, quickly, politely and fairly.

If a problem is not resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be knowledgeable, courteous and helpful.

Location – Do your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical bricks and mortar store, is it conveniently located with good access?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For a virtual business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.

Physical store or online website, is the store properly laid out, can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – Not only should you measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should check that the products and services that you market are what the customer wants and closely match their expectations.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is rarely a good measure, value for money is.

Do your current customers consider your services as value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Regardless of the business most customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything you can to avoid any delay?

Customers like to be treated as individuals, how do you treat your customers? Attention is one thing but this has to be hand- in-hand with a quick and satisfactory resolution of the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example where do they live and what is their age group?

The better you understand your customers the more you will be able to properly target your business.

For customers who have specific problems allow them to provide details and contact details.

What next?

Having completed the survey analyze the results.

Trends – Identify common and specific areas where the service needs improving.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid, be honest to yourself, is there anything that can be done to properly resolve, or at the very least, minimise the problem?

Training – Are all employees properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where employee training programmes have been implemented have they made a positive contribution to the business and improved the customer service?

Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue do all you can to ensure that their complaint is addressed.

Do not waste an opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.

Continuously Monitor – Make changes based on the survey results and then re-measure by issuing follow up surveys.

If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.

Market research is an essential element of any organization that wants to offer products or services that are focused and well targeted. Business decisions that are based on good intelligence and good market research can minimise risk and pay dividends. By making market research part and parcel of the business process and conducting market research throughout the life cycle of a product or service market research will bring the following benefits:-

• Market research will help you better communicate – Your current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By asking the customer you can take the guesswork out of customer services and show them that you care.
• Market research helps you identify opportunities – If you are planning to operate a new service and want to know the preconceived attitudes people have then market research can help, not only in evaluating the potential for a new idea, but also by identify the areas where a marketing message needs to be honed.
• Market research will minimise risk – Market research can help shape a new product or service, identifying what is needed and ensure that the development of a product is highly focused towards demand.
• Market research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress – You need to be able to measure so that you can ensure that your organization is always improving. Early research can identify flaws in your service or areas where a product needs to be improved, by conducting regular market research it will identify if improvements are being made and, if positive, will in turn help motivate a development team.

Market research brings considerable benefits and it is perhaps surprising how few businesses invest sufficient resources to gather good intelligence that will help them improve business. Many may think that market research takes too much time and effort but that is just not the case anymore as through the power of the Internet online survey software is readily available and vital market research data can now be gathered in a quick, simple and cost effective manner.

Why bother?

Good customer service is the life blood of any business. Although you should try and attract new customers good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and encourage repeat business. With every satisfied customer your business is likely to go on and secure many more customers through recommendations and if you do not take proper care of your customers there is probably a competitor waiting in the wings that will.

Online customer satisfaction surveys will help you not only identify problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where to start?

Objective – Before you start compiling your survey you should first consider what the objectives of the survey are, in that way you will remain focused and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis – In addition to the objectives consider how you will analyse the answers having completed the survey.

Keep in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where a respondent is asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are much easier to analyze than ‘open’ questions (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A great deal will depend on the expected volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity – As well as obtaining valuable market research data keep in mind that customer surveys are also a good way to advertise areas of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

It is important that before you publish the survey that you check that the questions you have asked will provide you with market research data that when analyzed will help you make informed decisions.

Then, read through the survey from a marketing view point, check that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing – promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good market research feedback on the facility they provide but they will also promote their facilities and advertise themselves as a family friendly store, even beyond those customers who have a specific need for the baby changing facility that has been provided.

Warts and all – to benefit most from a customer survey you need to be prepared to dig deep and accept the worst.

A well designed customer satisfaction survey will enable you to identify problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and give you early warning on where you might be losing out to your competitors initiatives.

What to ask?

Although each business is likely to have specific and unique factors that are important in providing good customer services there are common areas that are relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online internet store or a service industry. The following are key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – Is it easy for your customers to contact you?

When customers telephone are their calls answered quickly; are their enquiries about products or services handled properly? A good business will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.

If a problem cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to check that all your employees are perceived by your customers as being helpful, courteous and knowledgeable.

Location – Are you doing everything you can to ensure that your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical store, does it have good access and is it conveniently located?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For a virtual business it is important to ensure that your website is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.

Regardless of the store being a bricks and mortar or purely online web based store, is the store properly laid out and can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient detailed information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products – Not only should you measure the quality of the service that you provide but you should check that the products and services that you market are what the customer wants and closely match their expectations.

Value for money – Cheap or expensive is hardly ever a good measure, value for money is.

Do your current customers consider your services as value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention – Regardless of the type of business most customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything to prevent any delays?

Customers like to be treated as individuals, how do you treat your customers? Attention is appreciated but it needs to be followed up with a quick and satisfactory resolution to the query.

Demographics and Specific issues – Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example where do they live and what is their age group?

The more knowledge you have of your customers the better you will be able to target your business.

Within the survey allow customers to highlight specific problems and provide contact details.

What next?

Having completed the survey analyse the results.

Trends – Look for common and specific areas where the service needs improving.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid, be honest to yourself, is there anything that can be done to properly resolve, or at the very least, minimise the problem?

Training – Are the staff properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

If customer service training programs have been implemented have they improved the customer experience?

Follow-up – If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue do all you can to ensure that their complaint is addressed.

Do not waste an opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.

Continuously Monitor – Make changes and then measure by issuing further surveys.

If you are interested in tracking customer satisfaction and would like to see a sample survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please view the following example that can be used as a customer satisfaction survey template.

By conducting effective market research what you can learn?

Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to fine tune your product or service towards the target market.

Know your target market – Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? Does your service or product appeal to specific age groups? Who are your potential customers and where do they live?

Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and are you improving in the right areas?

Products and services – Do you have the products or services that people want? Is what you offer value for money? How do your company’s products and services match up to that of your competitors? Can you, do you, should you deliver?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there sufficient advice and assistance on hand? Do you make it easy for people to buy from you? Are all your staff properly trained, helpful, knowledgeable and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. Which are the least effective marketing channels?

Is your marketing message understood? Does your marketing material accurately reflect your brand? Do you advertise and promote through the right channels? Are you reaching the right people?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.

Website Video Ad

The Internet has developed no end in the last ten years where seeing more and more video presenters on websites today. The web has grown from simple sharing information to an all encompassing, singing and dancing virtual world. This growth in Internet use and the advances in technology have begun to challenge the media industry, TV can now be viewed anytime, and any place online, the same with films and music. The long wrangling issue of illegally download music, movies and software has seeb advertisers capitalize on this.

Online marketing is worth big money, for a few key reasons:

TV adverts are only shown between programmes, whereas Internet adverts and banners are on screen nearly all the time. Giving the advertiser much more coverage.

*The amount of people that can be reached is incredible. For example last year google had 1,118,000,000 view their advert that’s over 18 times the population of the UK.

*Targeting the right market is fairly easy, working out the markets interests and then placing adverts on the main sites of these interests can quickly aim the information straight into the segment the advertiser wants to reach.

Some sites such as myspace and facbook know that their users visit the site almost everyday to check their messages or comments and they know this regular traffic is worth a lot of money. Linking between sites is a technique less well known websites can use to gain traffic, by making a post on for example myspace which includes the web address to their site, owners can guide a section of myspace’s users towards their website and therefore boost their own traffic.

Some website owners have even used internet user’s mistakes to gain traffic. You can tell where a domain is from by its ending, such as Great Britain has .co.uk, America .com and France .fr. Cameroon in Africa has .cm and one entrepreneur came across a brilliant and highly profitable idea. He bought up hundreds of domains ending in .cm that sounded similar to their .com equivalents. By using user mistakes to gain traffic Kevin Ham made well over 2 million dollars!

Company owners are also starting to realise that text based websites don’t hold their audience interests for as long as needed. Website creators are attempting to combine web video ad and website to create new, more interesting sites that not only entertain but more importantly sell. These website tour guides can greet site guests, show them round and help a company communicate their brand image and intentions. Not only this, but tests have proved that people stay longer on sites that feature a video tour guide rather than just text and user retention is highly important to potential advertisers.

As you can see the world of online sales and advertising is fast moving and constantly changing. The question is where will it go next and if you know then it’s definitely time to invest.

Virtual Presenters

The use of video on websites has many positive effects on people who become interactive with the website. Websites that use website video production include, YouTube, Face Book, MySpace, E4, 4od etc. the way in which the video’s connect with the audiences are on many levels as the viewers can have a visual on things that they properly wouldn’t bother to read about.

The internet communicates on several levels which are audio and visual.

With the internet becoming very popular and people relying on information on the internet, audiences will look for a specific type of information that they will be able to understand and connect with, the most popular source of information is video based.

When people are given the chance to either read or watch something giving out information on the internet, people are more likely to prefer to watch a video presenters. As this will give them the chance to see what the product offers, give them a clear explanation and demonstration of the product.

Paid advertising on sites like Youtube are very popular and allow advertising to be targeted to specific searches or content.

Another very successful way to advertise a product is to use a presenter to encourage people, this can be evidenced on websites such as homepages to internet services i.e. SKY, MSN etc. on these particular pages I found a detailed advertisement advertising “weight loss products” within this advertisement a woman is shown before and after in a bikini, with her discussing how the product worked for her and giving people details of how to use the product. By being able to see and hear positive feedback about a certain product convinces people to believe in the product.

Audiences need information to be laid out for them in the ways that they will want to watch it, if the information they are looking for is not set out in a specific way (Text, Video’s etc) they will immediately leave the website and look else where.

Certain websites only give out specific ways of presenting information, some are completely text based, video based or they could be a mixture of both.

Video is quite simple the best meduim to keep web visitors more interested in what you do.

YouTube is a website that offers millions of video’s that can be easily found in the search engine, when logging into You tube it immediately gives you things that you may like to watch on the basis of videos you have already viewed. You tube can work as a data base to store information about you and what videos may interest you. You tube is a very reliable website to find information by video.

The internet overall generates information in many ways. As people rely on the internet for information, it is very important that the popular and not so popular websites keep up to date with how information should be presented to audiences as this will have a huge impact on the views that the website receive.

What are the things you can learn by conducting effective market research?

Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to target your marketing and fine tune your product or service.

Know your target market – Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? Does your product or service appeal to specific age groups? Who are your potential customers and where do they live?

Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your business and are you improving in the areas that customers demand?

Products and services – Do you have the products or services that people want? Do you represent value for money? How do your company’s products and services match up to that of your competitors? Can you, do you, should you deliver?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there sufficient advice and assistance on hand be it in the form of notices, leaflets or human assistance? Do you make it easy for your customers to buy? Are your employees properly trained, helpful, knowledgeable and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. What marketing channels are available to you, which ones should you focus on and which, if any, should you drop?

Is your marketing message understood? Does your marketing material properly reflect your brand? Do you use the right promotion channels? Are you reaching your target audience?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.