Are You Giving It All Away?Written by John Colanzi
There must be something I'm missing. I'll buy a product, begin promoting and sales start flooding in.A few days later I find out someone else is giving it away. I must be dense, because I can't understand advantage of giving away a product that can produce $200 to $300 a day. That's without placing any ads. Imagine if I had time to promote it! They must know something I don't. Maybe they have some big back end offer that will make up for losing a few hundred dollars a day. I really doubt it. When I look around I notice one thing. The marketers making "real money", give away a free lead generator, but they don't give away store in hopes of some future profit. They don't make money they make, by being perceived as a bargain basement. They'll sell more products at $100 and up, then other marketers can give away. Why is that? They are attracting customers that are interested in premium products. They are aiming their efforts at attracting customers with money to spend. That's why they can travel to seminars in Bahamas. They are here to stay. Web sites come and go, but their's are up year after year.
| | Marketing to Today's "Distracted" ConsumerWritten by Lee Traupel
The average consumer today is exposed to a deluge of 1,700 marketing messages during a single 24-hour period according to recent advertising industry numbers. Look around you, we marketers have pasted, injected and/or overlaid marketing messages (read advertising) in any possible place imaginable! Case in point, NBC will start to digitally insert commercial "billboards" into advertising content to be broadcast during winter Olympics - in essence a commercial within a commercial. Core Marketing Materials Marketing messages and processes must be condensed, hard-hitting and presented in formats that are easy to understand and digest - not MBA- speak or techno-jargon. Long mission statements with flowery prose simply don't cut it in today's "distracted economy" - customers/clients/partners want to understand what products and services your selling, at what price and how they are supported. A one-page company Facts sheet is an essential component of any marketing campaign - it provides a snapshot of essentials about your company including markets addressed, contact points, core technology, products or services sold and business partners. A well-written Fact sheet should be one page and provide just baseline information, without any hyperbole. Power Point presentations by their very nature force you to distill your information down into bullets and short sentences. Enabling you to make a presentation in a meeting, or have content ready for viewing on a 24/7 basis via your web site. You can create several iterations of presentation which can be tailored for customers, partners, investors, etc. - mixing and matching your core 8-12 slides with others that "speak" to different audiences. Web-enabled Marketing I've written several articles on web-enabled marketing and need for simplicity when designing a web site, with content that is tailored for online community. Many companies are wasting resources on web sites that don't work as an information resource - most of these sites function more as a testament to designer's ability to use cutting edge software graphics tools. Many web sites still utilize text that is just pulled from other marcom materials, ignoring "rules of road" for content on web - online community wants information presented in short paragraphs comprised of 2-3 sentences, with lots of white space.
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