While Internet advertising is the “new thing”, outdoor or out-of-home advertising can be a very effective and affordable method to get your message out to your target market. With people spending more and more time in their vehicles (it is estimated the 150 million commute to work daily), you have a captive audience and the…
Years ago a very wise sales manager asked me, “What is the single most important factor in selling?” Dumbfounded by the question, I sat in awkward silence. Sensing my quandary, he answered his own query with two simple words, “Being remembered”. I quickly nodded yes, but I did not really know what he meant.
Sometimes negotiators don’t tell the truth and it is up to you to figure that out or catch them at their game. Candidly, some people are very good at concealing the truth, but typically there are cues to determine if the other party is bluffing or lying outright. Yet, we get conned all the time.
Unlike advertising and public relations which create publicity and awareness, product promotion delivers a call to action. Typically, the call to action is for the customer to buy now; often there is an incentive offered to encourage the customer to do so.
It is clear that there is an epidemic of business “double talk” out there and it has got to stop.
Advertising is tough for most small-to-medium size businesses since it is expensive, difficult to connect with your target customer, and hard to measure for effectiveness. However, there some tricks when setting up your advertising campaign to ensure that the campaign’s effectiveness can be measured. The simplest method for tracking advertising is to ask the customer how they heard about your business or product. Most of the time, your customers will tell you exactly how they found you; this could be because of advertising or not.
With increasing frequency, the technology crowd has liberally branded new products as
“disruptive technologies”. I think it fair to say that most of these new offerings are not disruptive or even interesting, for that matter. They are new products, short and simple.
Pay-per-click advertising has taken the web by storm and for good reason. You have seen thousands of these ads on the right side of a Google search; the ads scream for you to click on them for more information. It may seem like you ignore them, but statistically they are one of the best and cheapest ways to advertise on the web.
A recent online study by Deloitte and Touche uncovered that two thirds of store visits during the 2006 holiday season were not influenced by holiday advertising. It turns out that most consumers picked stores because of their pre-existing familiarity with the stores and the stores locations. Additionally, the products purchased were researched on the internet.
Every day we are bombarded by overly complex, jargon-rich messages from every media source: radio, TV, internet, and print. I am sick of it. How about you?