A little over a year ago, I posted on our initial experiments with “social media” (or, more specifically, with pay-per-click advertising). That post was well received so this one is an update. Actually, it’s more than an update: it’s a review of our entire US lead-generation machine. I hope it provides you an idea or… “Our experiences with Lead-Gen in the USA (a self-liquidating promotional machine)”
How to develop an ideology-based business marketing strategy. So you think you’re going to publish a newsletter? Hey, that’s not a bad idea! If you make it an e-mail newsletter — like the one you’re reading now — it’s a particularly cost effective exercise. Your distribution costs are nil. Your publishing costs are equivalent only… “The importance of ‘getting religion’”
Wastepaper baskets, the world over, are full of them. In fact, if there were ever a competition to judge the most self-indulgent of all business communications, the newsletter would have serious competition from only the corporate video for first place! A tragedy, when you consider that newsletters have the potential to be by far the… “The corporate newsletter: neglected for years, resurrected at last”
A message for those business people who insist on competing on price: go ahead! That’s right. If you have a cost advantage, flaunt it. Cut your prices, build marketshare, consolidate that cost advantage and annihilate your competitors. So what’s the catch? Well, to successfully compete on price, you need to be able to manufacture, market… “Go ahead. Compete on price!”
At best, most marketing communications are irrelevant to most of their recipients, most of the time. At worst, these communications run the risk of damaging the very relationships they are supposed to be cultivating. The problem is, from a marketing department’s perspective; every relationship looks like a sales opportunity. Accordingly, marketing (and sales) people tend… “From a marketing department’s perspective, every relationship looks like a sales opportunity!”
How to use the virtual world of the Internet to multiply the effectiveness of your real-world marketing activities. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel that managing a traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ business is downright unsexy! Particularly when stories abound of Web entrepreneurs who have reinvented business as we know it (and become… “Clicks and mortar”
How to sell expensive (or complex) products and services [Listen to a seminar on this subject!] If your organisation sells expensive (or complex) products and services, odds are, you get most of your new clients by ‘word of mouth’ or referral. If you’ve tried your hand at lead generation advertising, you’ve probably discovered that, even… “A brief introduction to Relationship-centric Marketing”
and how to fast-track the growth of your business in the process. Over lunch, a CEO recently admitted to me that his financial controller was using his organisation’s profits to build quite a substantial commercial property portfolio. When I asked if this was best use of his organisation’s free cashflow, he smiled, “How did I… “How to establish a clear cause and effect relationship between business marketing promotional expenditure and sales”
Gavin Ross is one of those special people who seems never to be short of energy. Today, however, he is particularly animated. He’s relating the story of how, with the assistance of Justin Roff-Marsh Advertising (now Ballistix), he has shifted his business’s growth into overdrive. “Consider this,” he says – in an effort to justify… “You guys took a good business and you transformed it into an absolutely outstanding one”
America Online and Body Express. At a glance, they mightn’t appear to have a lot in common. America Online (AOL) is the Internet service provider that recently acquired Time Warner – the world’s biggest media company – in a $US165 billion deal. And Body Express is a boutique gymnasium, in Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Look behind… “How a second-hand promotional strategy helped a Sydney gym owner acquire 34 new members in a single week!”
