The right time to advertise is not when you are closing the doors to the store you have loved and owned for 25+ years, but this can also be a key time for running an advertising campaign.  No, if you want to stay in business and come out of this slow period as a strong leader in your industry you need to call an advertising agency TODAY!  There isn’t a miracle with any form of marketing or advertising even though many reps would like to tell you that their product will get you instant results, but if you continue to stick your head in the sand and take no action at all you can be sure that it won’t be long before your business becomes part of the growing statistics of fall-out from today’s economy.  You need to be visible and maintain a marketing presence and get in front of your prospects.  Don’t discard traditional forms of advertising like TV, radio, billboards, etc and think that you can substitute these for social media marketing.  The truth is you need to do both traditional and non-traditional and do them aggressively.

If you need help with your advertising and marketing please call!  Though I love writing this marketing blog and giving marketing tips and ideas, your business deserves immediate attention and a plan to take action. If you are on the fence about what really works and if TV or radio in your area is affordable and effective or if buying Google Ad Words or ads on Facebook equals sales for your business, call! Don’t get caught as one of those businesses that the first call they make for advertising help is  to promote a “going out of business sale”.

All my best to your success! ~ Charlene

“Success wears The Purple Diamond!”

Beyond the obvious of the “good-will”  and potential PR opportunity or marketing exposure a business gets by sponsoring a community event, it also helps to build a strong environment and richness to the community your business has made home.  When the community is attractive it draws attention from others and brings in the best candidates for positions that may open up in your business in future years.  The popularity of community organizations in your local area and their well attended events will also create excellent business networking opportunities for your business without you needing to travel a great distance to connect with key prospects.  The home court advantage of sponsoring the local community event that is only a few miles from your office helps you or your sales team to easily get prospects to consider stopping over to your office while they are in town or to schedule a tour of your company at a later date.   When people become familiar with an area and they associate it with a positive experience, they are more willing to return or do business in that area and that helps your business.

So, what does a company do if they do if they only have $2000 a year  to give to the community organizations  or  events or an amount that is considered small compared to larger businesses? You can choose to give that one lump sum to one event in a sponsorship or donation, or you can divide that amount up in to $100-$200 increments and donate throughout the year to more than one community group.  My advice is to reach out to more so that more groups benefit and connect with your business.

Also, do not discard the importance of volunteering your skills or physically helping during the actual community event.  This is a great way to get to know key people within these organizations and also to connect with some of the larger corporate sponsors of the community events.  Smaller businesses may not have the cash flow that some businesses have, but volunteering your time or giving a gift certificate or gift basket with your business name on it to be auctioned or raffled off at the event is a great way to be part of the larger picture and get the exposure you need to grow your business.

Finally, if you are actively helping the community and there is a chance for a photo opportunity or a press release to be sent please do not be shy about sharing this on-line and with the newspapers and other media organizations.  Put it up on your own social media networking pages like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter and blog about it as I have done here.

All my best to your success~ Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

LET GO OF YOUR FEAR!

Target marketing cannot work and offer the sales results you need until you let go of your fear.  “EVERYONE” is not a target market. The fear factor is one of the key reasons people fail at selling or marketing their product.  Most business owners have never worked for other companies as a “straight commission” sales person so they are not familiar with going after the “A” client and optimizing their sales day so that it results in closing key revenue accounts.  They have not learned through time and aggravation and small paychecks that you can work just as hard with a small sale as you can a bigger client and that your closing ratio improves when you zero in on a potential market that is more likely to buy the product.

“Sales is a numbers game”.  This is something my sales manager loved to say to me when I used to sell TV advertising campaigns and he was right.  If I have an average of 8 hours of selling time in a day, who should I spend that time going after? What will be my strategy and who do I “Focus” my time on so that I make the most money and have long-term relationship accounts?

FOCUS…FOCUS…FOCUS!!!

There are only so many hours in a day and so much of an advertising, marketing and sales budget… remaining focused on what you wish to accomplish is the first step to determining your target market.

• WHAT IS YOUR GOAL?

• WHAT DOES YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER LOOK LIKE?

*Who are they?         *Where are they located?      How will you reach them?

• WHO DO YOU FOCUS ON AS A POTENTIAL OR “LIKELY” CLIENT & WHERE WILL YOU FIND THEM?

BUY TWO  CUPS OF COFFEE & INTERVIEW YOUR CLIENTS!

You would be amazed at how helpful people can be when you just ask them for their help. For most of us we cannot afford to pay a big marketing company to do an in-depth analysis of who are “target market” is so what does a small business do? Buy 2 cups of coffee and ask your clients for 20 to 30 minutes of their time for an informal interview about them.

What you need to find out [if possible] from the interview:

• Age or Age Group?
• Male or Female?
• Socio-Economic or Ethnic Group?
• Education level?
• Marital Status?
• Do they have kids?
• Psychographics???                                                                                                                                              [Their beliefs, likes, dislikes, personality, why they bought your product, etc]

• Income Level?  What do they regularly spend money on?
• Profession?
• Location?

NOTE: before the internet and on-line social networking the location  was pretty straight forward to where do they live, work and buy goods and services, but today you need to know if they are tech savy, belong to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc and if they prefer to shop on-line or at the store directly or both.

• Do they read the newspaper [which one and is this on-line or in print]? What radio station do they listen to and what TV shows do they watch? Are they a member   of any local business groups or read any business publications?

• Finally, this is a KEY question to ask them: WHAT SERVICES COULD YOU PROVIDE THAT WOULD MAKE LIFE EASIER FOR THEM???

GO TO A QUIET PLACE & ANALYZE YOUR DATA

Try to survey as many customers as possible either in person or on the phone and then go to a quiet room or place so that you can analyze ALL your data and look for patterns or similarities.  Maybe you notice that most of your clients are females ages 35-55 who have a college degree, hold professional positions, have an income of over $125,000 per year and prefer to save time by shopping on-line.  Or, the majority of your clients might have children and so they are looking for family oriented activities that are geared for saving money and are good for the environment or their health.

DO YOU LIKE THE GROUP THAT STANDS OUT & ARE YOU MAKING $$$?

Hopefully, the data you get from your current base of clients that help you determine the target market is in-line with your goals for your business.  For instance, if you find that you have attracted many customers who are difficult to service because their needs are so unique and you do not feel you are making a profit with the time invested, you may need to discard that group as your target market, but use what you have learned to help determine what you could do either in your marketing material or sales process to reach a more ideal target market and increase your profits!

*CREATE MARKETING MATERIAL, ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS & YOUR SALES APPROACH AROUND THE GROUP YOU NOW KNOW AS YOUR TARGET MARKET!

AIM, FOCUS & SHOOT at the TARGET!!!

LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES & SEE THEM AS AN INVESTMENT!

Target Marketing saves companies both time and money by helping them to know who the best prospect is for their business and how to appeal to them as a consumer.  Even the biggest companies have made mistakes in marketing that cost them money and valuable time, but knowing what didn’t work and why, can be as important as what does work!

All my best to your success!

~Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

A simple answer to that question is if sales are strong, then the company’s marketing material is working.  However, with the latest recession and the shift in how technology has changed how people find your business, you still might not be getting the results you would have gotten a few years ago with the exact same marketing material.  So, that means you must continue to evolve in how you do things and be willing to consider adapting your material to get the best results right now.  The days of designing one marketing piece and having it work for all people are gone.  If you want to sell me…..then sell ME! Connect with who I am and what about me needs YOU! Don’t make a list of all the services you provide and tell me you are excellent at what you do….that might have worked 10 years ago to get you clients, but today you have to do more.  Your marketing needs to catch my eye quickly and make a connection with who I am and why I need you. This means you need your marketing to be visually exciting and draw me in.  The audience you are trying to reach has grown up with “fast food”,  “color” TV, “fast” video games ["first person shooters games /FPS"]and technology that offers instant gratification so if your marketing material is outdated it most likely will not reach its target.

Much like when you do a spring cleaning or you organize your office space, consider tossing outdated websites, brochures and other marketing collateral and develop material that works for today’s market.  Don’t get hung-up on holding so tight to the past if you are losing your market share today.  The companies who are doing well today have learned to adapt their marketing material to meet the changing audience and they are developing services that are reaching the individual and meeting their needs.

All my best to your success!

~Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

First, review which market segment is the most likely to buy your product helps you to know where to focus your advertising dollars and your sales efforts.  Consider if your product appeals mostly to men, women, or both.  Is there a targeted age or age range that would use your product or be most likely to buy this product.  How about income level, is your product priced in a range that is affordable or is it high end and which income level is most likely interested in purchasing it and why. Finally, consider where or which geographic location you wish to sell this product.  Selling snow skis in a warm climate will not get the same results that it would if you had a ski shop in the north where it snows.  And, if you have no distribution plan set-up to handle shipping your products out of state, then launching an advertising campaign in areas you cannot manage to support is a waste of valuable resources.  Your target market is a segment that is created from the best age,  gender, geography and socio-economic grouping.

Once you have a target market it is easier to use this information to position your marketing material to appeal to this group of people and launch advertising campaigns in medias where this target audience is most likely to hear your message.  This strategy will save you money and get you better results! Making sales calls on anyone not in this group would not be the best use of your time.  So, if you are still thinking your customers are anyone who is breathing, then it is time to call in for some marketing help or consider doing an analysis yourself by looking at your current client base, at who your competition is marketing to, and what benefits your product offers and who is most likely to need these benefits .

All my best to your success!

~Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”

Often one of the first questions I ask a new client is who are your customers? And, who will buy your products? This lets me know how badly they are suffering from trying to satisfy a BIG appetite. When they start to rattle off a long list that doesn’t have any real geographic or demographic segment and pretty much describes the world, I know that they made the right call by hiring Purple Diamond. I am excited that they are visionaries, but it is my job to make sure that their vision works with the marketing budget and the size of the sales force that they presently have. If they are a sole proprietor and wear all the hats in their business I know that they cannot possibly handle a market that large. To be effective in marketing and sales it requires determining what your target or niche market is. Look realistically at 3 segments to help determine your target: geographic, demographics [age & income], and psychographic variables [any attributes relating to personality, lifestyles, interests, etc.]. When you have narrowed your market you can save on the cost to promote your product or service, the expense to distribute the product or service, and make it easier to cover your sales territory effectively with a smaller sales force. This saves you money and offers the opportunity to use language in your marketing material that will reach that targeted group and increase sales with a more directed approach. Advertising requires getting your message heard and understood. Can you imagine having a $5000 holiday advertising budget for the month of December and trying to do a TV campaign for the entire United States? It is a waste and it will not work. However, you could easily have a significant impact by advertising by zones in Cable TV where you can segment by networks like Lifetime or HGTV that are geared towards certain demographics and psychographic variables. And, you could increase the number of airings of those commercials during your scheduled contract by buying one geographic zone or multi-zones depending on what the cost per commercial spot is. If you are a local restaurant or a store and the majority of people who visit your location live in a 5 to 10 mile radius, why should you pay for areas that just do not make sense for your ad campaign?

So, maybe it is time to put your market plan on a diet! Take the time to analyze who your current list. Note where they are from, their age, sex, what their income level is and if you know anything about their lifestyles [ex. Do they like to garden or play sports?]. Get as much detailed information and then review where you are spending your advertising budget, what the message is saying and if you are closing record sales with what you are currently doing. Time spent developing a strategy before you launch your advertising and sales campaign will never be wasted. Find your target and aim and enjoy the benefits of getting your marketing plan in shape!

All my best to your success!
~Charlene

“Success wears the Purple Diamond!”