Photo by daliborlevYou can do a great job constructing a badly designed house. But when you are through, you’ve still got a badly designed house. Right? It doesn’t matter how good you are with a hammer if the blueprints themselves are faulty. Ads are like houses.
It doesn’t matter how good you are with nouns or verbs when the core message is boring. There is no good way to tell a bad story. And ultimately, it’s the core message of your campaign that determines the success of your advertising.
Give a powerful core message to an average writer and the little business on the corner can leap from Main Street to Wall Street. But give an average message to a powerful writer and ….yeah, you get it.
“Rainy days and Mondays always get me down”– or at least they did Karen Carpenter as I grew up hearing her sing the song. Today is Monday and it’s pouring rain. I’m actually writing this blog article to waylay my having to go out and get wet delivering some printing jobs to clients. In my mailbox this morning I found a short email about competition. It conveyed some simple thoughts. See what you think about them.
“How good am I?” is the second question that every business owner must answer. “How good are my competitors?” is the first.
Like it or not, your competitors set the height of the bar you must jump.
It’s a weary old saying, but true, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
And as venture capitalist I knew once told me, “We learned quickly that the most important predictor of success is determination. At first we thought it might be intelligence. Everyone likes to believe that’s what makes startups succeed. It makes a better story that a company ‘won’ because its founders were so smart. But while it certainly helps to be smart, it’s not the deciding factor. There are plenty of people as smart as Bill Gates who achieve nothing.”
So, essentially making money is easy:
Sell what people want to buy
Offer it at an attractive price
Occupy a high-visibility location
Wave your arms and draw a crowd
Maybe you can’t have all of those, but I have never seen the combination fail. Need some help? We’re here.
Starting a business online can be one of the easiest things you can do. It doesn’t take much money, and with all of the free software available, it is very easy to automate every aspect of your business.
Start here with our Marketing Grader this free marketing quiz will assist your organization to get on the right track prior to making a commitment to a marketing plan that just isn’t focused.
Once you start to market, things can change very quickly. The Internet is like the Wild, Wild, West. There’s no structure to the organization of the Net, and if you don’t give your customers a way to find you, you won’t make any money from your business.
Although you will find that there are as many “guru” opinions on how to market your business online, as there are gurus, there are four methods than can help you to increase your profits very quickly and mainly involve investing your time. Continue Reading »
Brands are dead. Advertising no longer works. Weaned on TiVo, the Internet, and other emerging technologies, the short-attention-span generation has become immune to marketing. Your marketing performance will determine whethere or not you can overcome these obstacles. Consumers are “in control.” Or so we’re told.
But the real truth is a much more important and lasting cultural shift has happened.
As technology has created avenues for advertising anywhere and everywhere, people are embracing brands more than ever before–creating brands of their own and participating in marketing campaigns for their favorite brands in unprecedented ways. In the process, they–we–have begun to funnel cultural, political and community activities through connections with brands. You can use consumers’ word-of-mouth to enhance your marketing performance without the consumer ever knowing.
What do you know about your product, company or brand? Our FREE marketing performance test is 12 questions that measure 7 key areas of your marketing performance. In just about 15 clicks you can have a thoughtful and measured review of how you’re really doing! Start here.
Touch point focused and two-way? Have any idea what I’m talking about? Planners still classify media touch points as “above-the-line,” “below-the-line” and “new,” but planning should always be based on some critical considerations: Which touch point will best reinforce your brand value? And…where will the brand + media equation yield real engagement? Effectiveness will result only where the plan is seamless, believable, personalized, and authentic. There are those engagement words again— personalized and authentic. Media planning innovation and technological innovation are fast becoming one and the same.
Mobile devices, for example, are becoming an increasingly important touch point for consumers and a starting point for migration from desktop to laptop to blacktop. Location-aware software for phones, while still new, will inspire the mobile medium, so expect promotional coupons to show up along with IMs and look for greater granularity in measuring marketing ROI. Marketing dollars transitioning to online isn’t new, but social networks are also becoming more engaged in engagement to help marketers more effectively deliver messages and determine return on their efforts. Take a look at your media plan. Review it for creativity and innovation. Need ideas and suggestions? We’re as close as your phone, your UberTwitter app, or email.
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