Archive for May, 2013
How Premiums Work Better Than Coupons and Discounts
What is a Premium? A premium is anything of value that you offer a prospect or client in exchange for taking an action that you direct them to. This could include an incentive or a gift. The right premium could encourage someone who might otherwise set aside the mail to act now instead of later […]
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Your Unique Selling Proposition
What’s a unique selling proposition (USP)? First the Wikipedia explanation: “The unique selling proposition (a.k.a. unique selling point, or USP) is a marketing concept that was first proposed as a theory to understand a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and […]
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Is Your Business Card Bringing You Business?
Typically, many hours are spent deciding on the logo, layout, and tagline to include on a company’s business cards. But not much time goes into thinking about strategies to make those business cards actually work to bring in customers. That is a mistake. Business cards are like mini ambassadors for your business. They represent you, […]
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Emotional Advertising
Most advertising today is of the “me too” variety. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. The louder they yell: “LOOK AT ME!” the faster you want to toss the ad in the trash, change the channel, or click delete. Open the yellow pages (if you can still find one!), look inside a magazine […]
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9 Marketing Lessons to Grow Your Business In Any Economy
Let’s get right to the lessons: Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Studies of sales practices continue to show that most salespeople don’t follow up more than […]
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How Not to Feel Like a Fish Out of Water at Your Next Networking Event
Networking events such as Business After Hours and organizations like BNI and Meetup.com provide great opportunities to meet and mingle with other, like-minded businesspeople outside their place of business in a more relaxed and non-threatening environment. Unfortunately, some entrepreneurs do not get the most of this great opportunity because they feel awkward or simply don’t […]
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Please Don’t Ignore Me
The bulk of marketing budgets is often reserved for acquiring new customers. Much energy, time, and money is spent pursuing prospects that have a marginally small chance of ever becoming a customer. There’s a flaw with this strategy. The simplest and most effective way to boost your bottom line profits is to remember who brought […]
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Marketing That Works Today
There are two broad categories of marketing you can use for your company, and it’s important you understand the difference. These two types of marketing are called brand/image marketing and direct response marketing. Although both can have a place in marketing your business, for small businesses one (direct response) is much more effective and efficient […]
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Beating Email Overwhelm
Most business owners have a love/hate relationship with their email. Mostly hate. But like it or not, business owners and executives often “live” in their email inbox, so it makes sense to learn to control the beast before it controls us. The first step in getting past email overwhelm is to clearly define who