Marketing with YouTube and streaming videos

Youtube isn't just for rock bands and funny cats anymore. It's a place where serious business can take place.

Like any social network, the ability to put self created content out for others to interact with and share is vital to the new world of marketing. Youtube is especially powerful because you're no longer faced with the connection of words on a page. Your customers can see your products and services in action. They can view your contributions in streaming color and can rely on this medium to be more real than a still photo can be. By offering up video of your products, promotions from your executives and funny ads to Youtube, you're offering a more raw and real form of promotion that is both endearing and possibly condemning.

The upside to Youtube is clear. Video is a great format, and they've found a way to stream it that doesn't cost you any bandwidth. Their infrastructure is built around sharing and their interface allows realtime feedback (in the form of comments) to what you present.

The downside can be devastating. If your product is poorly placed, or badly marketed, this will be amplified in video. If you are deceitful or not genuine, the public will eat you up and spit you out. Because Youtube, like the rest of the social network hives that have taken over the network, is a land of quick judgements and lasting impressions. You could receive millions of views in the matter of a few days, but what impression will you leave? Think of this before you post your next video. Would you want your grandmother to see it? How about your competition? Your best customer? If you've answered yes to these questions, then Youtube is for you.

Marketing for the upcoming Summer Season

With the dog days of summer upon us, many businesses are changing. Some businesses dry up during the summer, perhaps as a consequence of working in a tourism town or a college town where much of the population leaves for summer. On the other hand, some businesses notice an influx of new business in the summer for much the same reasons. Regardless of where your business stands in the heatwave to come, there's a few things you can do to market to summer sales.

Find a niche for your product that fits for summer - This is tough if you sell jackets and sleds, but many other product lines can cater to summer customers even if they haven't before. For instance, lets say you sell personal electronics, like iPods. People use them year round, but think of all of the ways they can be used in the summer. Perhaps you can offer special sports straps to make them easier to use while running or doing other active outdoor summer sports. Lets say your company sells gourmet teas. You could offer summer-specific blends, such as "Dogs Days of August Brew". A dash of lemon zest and a twist of line and your every day tea is now a summer treat.

Hone in on your customer base and make the most of it - If your town dwindles in population because all of the college kids have gone home for the summer, cater to who's left. You'll still have business people, retired folks and the stay-at-home-moms to tend to. Promote with them in mind.

If you truly can't capitalize on summer, limit your expenses - Some of us do sell snow shoes and hot cocoa, and there's not a lot you can do with those things in summer. If you're going to stay open and you can't update or change your product lines, consider cutting your hours and minimizing your staff. The less you spend now while things are slow, the more you'll have available to ramp up for your prime season.

Need more help beating the heat of slumping summer sales? Consider an outdoor display for your storefront. This will help draw in most customers and soften the blow of a slowing economy.

For a selection of outdoor displays, look here:
http://www.flexidisplay.com/Outdoor-Displays-s/152.htm

Where can I find help in creating energy conservation awareness

Organizations know they need to create awareness within their organization as well as outside of it. They create commitees with key people and give them some direction. Now wouldn't it be nice if the commitee had some place to turn to help coordinate the different activities and messages they wanted to get across.

There is that help.

The creative people at awarenessIDEAS.com have been helping organizations think through their objectives and projects for years. AwarenessIDEAS.com not only has a large selection of focused energy conservation awareness products but they have the system for becoming part of your team, always available to brainstorm your projects and then provide ideas and the final product implimentaion you will need.

Review the web site; pass our site on to critical people in your organization; most importantly call and get to know us.




xxx

All Your (Google) Base

If you're selling products on the internet, you need to be involved with Google Base:
http://base.google.com/

What is google base, you ask? It's the only free, as far as I know, product search engine on the internet. For the good web marketers amongst us, you probably knew it previously as Froogle. These days, Google Base has found a home for millions of products. Everything from home furnishings to electronics, environmental awareness posters to automobiles. You can find it all on google base.

There are a few specific advantages to including your products on google base:

• I noticed that on products we feature in google base, their natural results are higher than products that aren't. I can only assume that this is because google itself is vouching for the items, as they are part of another google program.
  
• On top of any paid or natural search results you may be a part of, you'll now have a separate data stream which can be picked up by google and other product engines. Within a month of posting to google base, I found our products appearing on shopping.com and a variety of other shopping engines.
• The google feeder allows you to customize content specifically for their listings. You choose which products appear in your feed, and with what content.
• Google Base is FREE, and you only have to update your products once/month to keep them in the current listings.

So what's the downside to google base? To be honest, I've yet to find one. It's a good business decision to put your products out on google immediately.

Drip Marketing, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the (email) Bomb

There's so much taboo when it comes to marketing your business over e-mail. Over a decade has passed now since spammers began polluting our communication streams with tales of penile virility, get rich quick schemes, weight loss miracles and other garbage. As avid email readers, all of us have learned to sift through this mess to get to the authentic communications below. How do you keep your own email marketing messages from getting caught up in the fray?

The answer is in Drip Marketing. Drip Marketing is a concept where a highly specific niche is created from your customer base and a steady stream of captive marketing materials are sent to fill that niche. This stream must have three elements:

• Content must be exactly what the customer is looking for. In the case of our energy conservation materials, we drip market to energy managers, engineers that work at power companies and those who deal with energy for large manufacturing firms. Sure, a few emails get out to others that may only have a mild interest in energy conservation, but for the most part our market niche is precisely the kind of customer base we desire.
• Content must be captivating and information, not just ad space. The niche you've chosen has hundreds if not thousands of potential market suitors to deal with on a daily basis. They will stick by information providers that give them what they need in a no-frills package that is informative, intuitive and straight forward. So create your drips with this in mind. Content, content, content, sales pitch, content, content, content, ad space, content, content. If you're not giving them a reason to be involved, they won't be involved.
• Drip Marketing, like a drip in a faucet, must be regular, quick and small of quantity. There's a fine line here between "regular" and "overpowering". I set our drips to go out once every 2 to 3 weeks. They're done in plain text (no HTML) and I rarely embed pictures or include attachments. I've found that you'll get a much better view rate and response rate out of a paragraph or bullet points coupled with a link than you will a full color ad with effects.

Now that you understand a bit about drip marketing, go out there and create some content. If you'd like some assistance in doing your drip marketing, come to us at awarenessideas. We'll gladly help you create content and train you on the way to implement these processes.

Efficiency is your greatest marketing secret

When it comes to marketing in a small business, you don't often have the time or resources to be a full time marketing person. In companies of all sizes, you tend to live beyond your title. In small businesses, this is even more true.

By my title, I'm the marketing director. During daily operations, I find myself doing project development, sales, website design, dealing with vendors.. pretty much everything it takes to keep a business running. I bet you're much the same.

That said, the greatest marketing secret I can offer to you is to streamline your operations to make them as efficient as possible. This gives you more time to do marketing and less energy handling the hassles that seem to consume your time.

Here's a few hints to keep you moving on the right path:

• Minimize input. If you've got one system to take orders, one to keep track of your customers, one to handle your vendors and one to handle your promotions, you've got three too many systems. Do what you can to buy a CRM System and an accounting system that work together. This will eliminate keying in data multiple times and cutting down on efficiencies.
• Only stock what you need. This goes hand in hand with the idea of "Just In Time" business operations. If you anticipate selling 1000 widgets in the next month because you've sold 1000 widgets for the last 6 months in a row, order that 1000 widgets and keep them on hand. Unless there's a major advantage to ordering 5000 widgets, don't do it. Regardless of the space you have, you'll find a way to fill it with inventory if you don't keep a tight control on supply and demand.
• Trim the fat from your operations by cross-training and removing unnecessary personnel. How many jobs can any one of your employees do? Perhaps you've got an accountant with some downtime that is also good at sales. Perhaps you've got a production manager who is also a pretty good handyman. It's often easier to retain good employees if you pay them for the jobs they will be doing (and others they may grow into) as opposed to hiring extra bodies.
• Freelancers can fill gaps as needed. This is especially true of businesses that are approaching new ventures or are growing in unplanned ways. Hire a freelancer to work on a per project basis. While they may be more expensive than hourly employees, they can be put on projects as they come up and they can fill gaps in your resources while you adjust the way your business runs. Also, letting a freelancer go is less of a liability than letting a regular employee go.
• Stay focused on your mission statement. I can't tell you how many businesses I've seen that sell widgets, but also sell wonjets, whojunts and whatzoos, just because someone asked them to do that one time. Stay focused on what has been proven to work and don't chase after every bit of business that might, possibly, maybe, sorta, kinda fits what you do. It's a waste of resources and will only work to disenchant both you and your employees, as well as your customer base. Instead of seeing an expert and an accomplished niche marketer, the customers will see a jack of all trades and a master of none.
• Cut down on internal waste. This can go for any number of things, including eliminating scrap, cutting down energy waste, working to recycle or reuse components or cutting processes that don't help you in the end.
• Re-evaluate your goals every 3 months. I find it's helpful to make an excel sheet of everything you hope to accomplish in the next quarter, half year, year and 5 years. Put a reasonable deadline and timetable on these and then decide which are most important. I bet this new perspective really helps sort out the hodgepodge from the winners.

Efficiency awaits you, loyal leaders! Go out into your business and find a way to remove the inhibitors and stimulate the victories. You may finally have time and clarity of mind to get back to being a marketer.

Accounting firms need to get their marketing message across

Accounting firms do a lot of promotional advertising and most of it is off the mark.

When accounting firms ask us for a promotional product to help them market their professional business, we don't show them products, we ask them questions.

With the answers to our questions provided; we then develop a theme and graphics that when applied to a practical product, the product and theme strongly grabs the attention and interest of their receiving recipient. Your best prospects have specific needs and a proper message will grab their attention.

Our web site is full of examples of how products can become a low cost vehicle for delivering a focused message to a focused audience.

Visit our web site, see for yourself our problem solving and creativity, then give us a call.

How to decide on a good promotional products company

First and for most, ask for examples of their work. No I did not say ask for samples of products you could hand out; I did say.... ask to see samples of the work they do for other companies.

Our web site is full of the problem solving and creativity our clients have received from us, and that you can receive when working with us. We believe your investment in your promotional handouts should help you accomplish more then just name recognition. What our creative people and graphic designers will help you accomplish, is to distinguish for your audience in their minds, why you're a good choice.

Visit our web site soon, then give us a call.

A new year means new opportunities

As 2008 approaches, I am reminded of what I love about marketing. The new year brings new opportunities. Budgets renew. New company goals are set. Trade shows start back up for the season. Now is the perfect opportunity to reexamine your marketing goals, plot our new courses of action and prepare yourself for what's to come.

It's about this time of year that I do a bit of marketing housecleaning. Here's a few questions to ask yourself for the new year..

• What worked for me last year?
• What didn't work for me last year?
• Did I spend enough in advertising?
• If not, where could I improve my ROI?
• Did I do enough trade shows, or the right kinds of trade shows?
• Did I make new contacts with the right suppliers?
• Is my company more well known now than it was last year?
• Is my growth on target with my realistic goals?
• Is my growth better than the average for my industry?

These questions put you in the right mindset to be critical of your practices and improve your operations. There's no time like a new year to move forward with new ideas. Some things to consider doing in the next year:

• Is your website up to date, current with pricing and information and as complete as it can be?
• Is your storefront, if applicable, presentable and well stocked and easily recognized?
• Is your brand recognizable and easily identifiable?
• Do you have your budget for the next year formalized and finalized?
• Are you introducing new products or services to the market?
• Have you allocated resources to research and development?
• Are you going to drive yourself crazy with all of this new work?

That last point is particularly important. Rome wasn't built in a day, but every day a stone is carried is a stone towards completion.

The importance of partipating in Trade Shows

With all of the hype surrounding the internet, social networks and other ways that we communicate with our customers, prospects, suppliers and even competitors, it's sometimes easy to dismiss trade shows as being a relic of a business strategy gone by.

That's very far from the truth. The more connected we become through technology, the more important it is to have these face-to-face demonstrations to reaffirm our social networks. As the lines of industries blur and cross-market promotions push all of us into new territories and new technologies, it's important to remember that seeing the products and meeting the people behind them face to face can help draw out the best decisions.

From a supplier standpoint, you get to meet fellow suppliers and your customers. You're no longer just a page and a sales brochure but a series of people who have concern for your customer's needs and a face-to-face connection with those who keep your supply chain moving. You get to be the first to market with your new ideas and get to shine in your industry with an innovation that no one else has. You get to set a precedent in a public forum with your marketing mix. You get to make an impact amongst your peers and customers.

From a customer standpoint, they get to see all of their vendors in one place competing for their attention. They get a first hand look at new technology, new ideas and new products. They get to ask questions of engineering and sales and marketing personnel who deal with these products intimately. Most important, they get all of this in one convenient place over the course of one to five days and they have a chance to stay focused on the experience, as opposed to being pulled all over if they were on the phone or the web in their office looking at these same products.

The bottom line is that trade shows are just as important now as they were 20 or 30 years ago. Technology changes, but the need to make real connections with our customers and suppliers does not. So get involved. Get into a trade show for your industry. Branch out into similar industries with your products and ideas.

If you need help with trade show planning or need a trade show display, call Flexi Display Marketing. 800-875-1725 or http://www.flexidisplay.com