by admin | Dec 16, 2011 | Blog
If you have a small budget and your marketing agency is suggesting email marketing – consider the benefits of a direct mail piece instead. The payoff between the better marketing tool can make the difference.
The main difference is that direct mail is considered a more acceptable form of communication for new leads, especially if you have a great offer. Whilst email is a cost effective was of keeping in touch with people who know and love you, but is often dismissed as spam when it arrives in the email inbox of a prospect.
If you have a decent budget, then hedge your bets and do both! But, if you don’t then you have to know the facts before you make your decision
At qubePartners, a marketing agency and advertising agency, all in one, we understand that you can’t have it all, on a small budget. So we suggest that to really get your brand noticed, consider the old fashioned way – snail/direct mail. The rationale is quite simple.
• Firstly, you are putting your brand in the hands of your target market.
• Secondly, it engages all the senses, plus addressed mail has an emotional component (i.e. it’s addressed to me, I feel special).
• And lastly, the letterbox is the least cluttered promotional channel. The inbox is full and the letterbox is quite empty!
On a small budget, it makes sense to look for a channel that is less cluttered, allows for a high degree of creativity and has a far higher chance of getting noticed. A direct mail that ends up in the bin was read first!
by admin | Jan 12, 2011 | Blog, Strategy
Marketing is a recent science, especially based on its widely accepted definitions and is still less than 200 years old, whereas as branding is as old as “civilization” or at least civilization with formal trade and some form of currency!
However, just like the word branding, “marketing” is still misunderstood by most small business owners. In the same way that you can not control things you can not measure, you can not excel at things you do not understand!
Reading this blog one may get the impression that the author has little hope for the average small business owner, yet nothing can be further from the truth! SME owners and entrepreneurs in general are the most resilient and positive members of our society! And in fact they are (if still in business after 5 years from their start up) by definition great marketers…their opportunity and greatest challenge lies in becoming much better marketing communicators or simply better at branding their small businesses!
Below are the most common definitions of marketing:
U.K. Chartered Institute of Marketing:
Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying consumers’ requirements profitably.
American Marketing Association (AMA):
Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organisational goals.
The Marketing Association of Australia and New Zealand:
Marketing consists of activities that facilitate and expedite satisfying exchange relationships in a dynamic environment through the creation, distribution, promotion, and pricing of products (goods, services, and ideas).
Just like branding is mostly about differentiation and creation of positive perceptions inside the minds and hearts of your customers, marketing is a broader concept that can be summarized in 3 words “satisfaction of needs”, which is exactly why small business are great at doing what they do! They are great at what THEY DO, being plumbers, chiropractors, architects, builders, accountants, lawyers, etc
So what can the average small business do to improve their marketing? They need to start selling benefits rather than features of their products and services.
As someone undoubtedly famous said “sell the sizzle not the sausage”, “sell the absence of mice instead of mousetraps”, “shade instead of curtains”!
In the next entry we’ll examine why Marketing is synonymous with Promotion and why Branding is the critical element of promotion.
by admin | Jan 8, 2011 | Blog, Promotion
The word brand began simply as a way to tell one person’s cattle from another by means of a hot iron stamp, which makes it the oldest form of marketing or promotion! In the beginning, before modern marketing there was just branding – a form of DIFFERENTIATION. Today RELEVANT DIFFERENTIATION is still the cornerstone of modern marketing.
Here are a few definitions of branding:
Brand (noun):
– a mark made by burning or otherwise, to indicate kind, grade, make, ownership, etc.
– a kind or variety of something distinguished by some distinctive characteristic
– verb (used with object) to label or mark with or as if with a brand.
David Ogilvy, the father of modern advertising defined it as:
“The intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised. A brand is also defined by consumers’ impression of the people who use it, as well as their own experience.”
BusinessDictionary.com
Entire process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product (good or service) in the consumers’ mind, through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.
Entrepreneur.com
The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products. Your brand is your promise to your customer. It tells them what they can expect from your products and services, and it differentiates your offering from that of your competitors. Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be.
Hence getting your branding “right” is the cornerstone of all your future marketing communications. Unfortunately most small businesses do not get this right and their marketing becomes a painful experience akin to getting “marked” with a hot iron – for all the wrong reasons.
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