Guest post by Dave Thomas For many retailers, the holidays are the sink or swim time for their businesses. Put together a winning retail season and they can either go into 2012 with a surplus and a winning attitude or at least have broken even to end a difficult year. Come up with a losing
Should You Follow Conventional Wisdom?
A friend just completed seminary and is in the process of starting a new church. He and the church-planting committee have set out to do some research. They are visiting other churches in the area, surveying and talking to people to find out what the people need. After all, conventional wisdom tells us to find
How to Create a Profitable Adwords Campaign
Guest post by Nickolay Lamm Don’t miss out on free marketing advice. For updates on new articles: Receive The Marketing Spot by Email or subscribe in a blog reader. How can you make your Adwords campaign profitable? Anyone with a website can get an Adwords account and instantly start getting traffic. However, whether or not
Brands Help Customers Make Choices
Why branding? What is the value of a brand? The simple answer is this: Brands help customers make choices. [Reference: What is a Brand?] Just look at it from the customer’s perspective. A customer is having some problems with her car and she doesn’t know what’s wrong with it. She begins her search for a
The Failings of Faux Personalization
By Jim Morris Image courtesy of Vectorportal One of the great challenges for any small business is how to obtain and retain connections with current and prospective customers. One approach that many businesses turn to is some form of direct mail, whether it’s old school snail direct mail, or email. Nothing wrong with that. BUT,
Peter Drucker on Why Social Media Marketing
Why do you use social media? Because it’s free, because everyone else is doing it? Because you feel that’s where the customers are? The most pertinent reason to engage in social media marketing for your business is to get more business. Image courtesy of IsaacMao Social media channels like Facebook are a marketing tool only
The Importance of Context in the Purchase Decision
Note: Next week is my premium webinar: How to Influence Customers to Buy. This blog post is a partial excerpt from that webinar. Context is critically important to the purchase decision process. Meaning people need to be able to compare things before they buy. Image courtesy of uuikibeach Customers don’t have an internal value meter
What’s the Best Way for Me to Advertise My Business?
Advertising involves spending money and the thought of advertising bristles with the fear of failure. Because the purpose of advertising is it go get more money into the business than you spend on the advertising. What if that doesn’t happen? So the question is: What’s the best way for you to advertise to get that
The Customer Loyalty Investment
This is a guest post by Christopher Wallace There’s nothing more disheartening than feeling like your hard work goes unnoticed. You show up on time, diligently accomplish your tasks, and believe in the quality of your work. So why doesn’t the boss ever say thank you? Photo courtesy of ralph and jenny If he’s smart,
What do your customers want?
Nancy Customer sees this sign driving down a popular street in your town: Is she struck by this advertising pick-up line? Just what I was looking for, someone who wants to be my copier company! Most likely not. Even though Nancy may actually need a copier for her office. Think of it this way. An
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