Lisa Chapman – Page 18 – Management Library

November 16, 2010February 16, 2023

Business Christmas Cards

What Marketing Message Do They Really Send?

It’s primarily a Christian tradition. But the custom of sending Christmas cards has become popular among a wide cross-section of people, including non-Christians, both in Western society and in Asia. The traditional greeting reads “Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”; much like that of the first commercial Christmas card, produced by Sir Henry Cole in London in 1843.

There are innumerable variations of the Christmas card formula, many expressing a more religious Christian sentiment, or containing a poem, prayer or Biblical verse; while others distance themselves from religion, with an all-inclusive “Season’s Greetings”. However, even the ‘generic’ holiday cards are sent at Christmastime, and often contain Christian symbols, such as Christmas trees and ornaments.

Is it (Possibly) a Negative Marketing Message?

What marketing message comes to mind when you receive a Christmas card from a business? Certainly, it’s intended to create goodwill, but it MAY create feelings of thoughtlessness. Are you unintentionally offending a valued customer who doesn’t share the same religious beliefs?

Religious Diversity in the US

The United States is the most religiously diverse country in the world.

While the majority of Americans (76%) identify themselves as Christians, mostly within Protestant and Catholic denominations, many non-Christian religions (including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism), collectively make up the remaining 24% of the adult population.

Instead, Send a Message of Thanks!

Thanksgiving is currently celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, and has been an annual tradition in the United States since 1863. Thanksgiving is a holiday widely regarded by Americans as a time for:

giving thanks
spending time with family,
feasting,
football games,
Parades (Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade)

This year, Thanksgiving will be celebrated on Thursday, November 25, 2010. So consider sending your trusted employees and valued clients that same message of gratitude, family and fun.

By sending Thanksgiving cards, you will pre-empt other businesses (including your competition) that send Christmas cards, you will stand out from the crowd, and your message of thanks will be remembered long after the holiday ends. (Can you say the same for Christmas cards?)

What else inspires you (think outside of the box) in your marketing messages this holiday season?

PS: The first Thanksgiving feast consisted of fowl, venison, fish, lobster, clams, berries, fruit, pumpkin, squash and turkey. This recipe is for an entire Thanksgiving Dinner that takes one hour to cook: One hour Thanksgiving Dinner.

(Many thanks to Wikipedia for the great source of information.)

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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November 12, 2010January 26, 2022

Survey of Marketing Executives’ Priorities

Challenges Shaping Marketing Strategies

What are the most pressing issues shaping America’s marketing leaders? Frost and Sullivan, co-sponsored by the Business Marketing Association, surveyed 437 executives to find out. Whether B-to-B, B-to-C or both, there is considerable overlap regardless of the business model.

Top External Factors

Key takeaways: the top three external factors impacting marketing strategies are overwhelmingly negative. Companies reported at least 71% of the time that these three factors negatively impacted them:

Adjusting to the economic downturn
Intensifying competition
Changes in customer buying behavior

Top Five Key Marketing Challenges

According to the results of the study, marketing executives are under pressure to focus on identifying new avenues of growth. Although the priority of these challenges may vary across business models, they are largely the same for all:

Identify new, adjacent market strategies
Identify new opportunities for existing products
Measure marketing spending efficiency and effectiveness
Prioritize content offerings to create maximum value with customers (ex: social media, white papers, benchmarking tools, etc.)
Improve sales and marketing integration

Other Key Marketing Survey Take-Aways

Survey questions revealed some surprising results:

On average, B-to-C companies have larger marketing budgets, allocating twice the amount of revenue to marketing as companies with other business models (8.5% for B-to-C vs. 3% for B-to-B or Hybrid models.)
B-to-B companies spend 50% more of their marketing budget on online media vs B-to-C companies.
Marketing executives predict either maintaining their existing marketing staff levels, or moderately recruiting new staff.
They also believe that budget cuts are over – optimistically expecting moderate or substantial increases in budgets.

Marketers believe that the economy is rebounding, and predict a moderate increase in their company’s performance going forward. With such increases, they anticipate their marketing budgets to increase, too.

(Thanks to Frost & Sullivan’s “Growth Team Membership” research.)

What are YOUR predictions for overall business growth? For marketing budgets? Why?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

Ms. Chapman’s new book, How to Make Money Online With Social Media: A Step-by-Step Guide for Entrepreneurs will be available very soon. With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman helps clients to establish and enhance their online brand, attract their target market, engage them in meaningful social media conversations, and convert online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

November 9, 2010July 5, 2022

Develop a PR Plan

Businessman thinking while making a note

How to get Your Name in the News

Do you think Lady Gaga, marketing genius, achieved the distinction of being the most-searched woman on Google without a PR plan? According to ReadWriteWeb.com, “Lady Gaga was ranked 3rd overall in news coverage, in magazine websites and music blogs, with 4,326 articles.”

Most businesses barely have a marketing plan, much less a written, strategically developed PR Plan. Yet it could be the very thing that helps you save advertising dollars AND gain an edge over your competition.

Review Last Year’s PR

If you received PR coverage, review it for its content. Compare it to last year’s plan. What got the media’s attention and what didn’t? Which editors gave you positive coverage and which gave you negative coverage? Can you tell why? Consider calling them to discuss it.

Search online for all results that include the name of your business. Now do the same thing for your closest competitors. Why did they get the coverage? Were their stories particularly interesting in some way? Did they target media that you didn’t target? Make a list of these angles and media targets to add to your list of PR objectives.

Articulate Your PR Objectives

When you take a vacation, you choose the destination first, right? So start by putting your PR objectives in writing. It can be simple – even a bullet-pointed list will suffice. Topics to cover will depend upon the type of business, your customers, your competition, and your target media.

Example objectives might include:

New product or service launch coverage
Company events announced
Employee promotions or additions spotlighted

PR Tactics and Tools

With your written PR objectives in front of you, brainstorm activities that will help you plan and execute effective and consistent PR tactics. Consistency is the key, so get out a calendar or create a timeline as an integral part of your plan.

Try these additional PR tactics:

Create a comprehensive PR contact list, with their preferred method of being contacted (ex: email or fax?)
For each media, list their deadlines. If they come up short for content at the last minute, your press release just might fill that need.
Schedule time on YOUR calendar for PR activities. Make an appointment with yourself!
Call the media contacts and introduce yourself. Offer yourself as a subject matter expert. Sooner or later, they’ll likely call you when they need a quote on a story ion your field.
Don’t forget about blogs and social media. These days, PR online might even eclipse PR offline.

What PR tactics have worked for your company? What should others avoid?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

.. _____ ..

ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

November 4, 2010July 5, 2022

Holiday PR Tips

Tips of scrabble letters on a blue background

Media Tactics That Get Attention

Holiday media is crammed with advertisers claiming to offer the latest and greatest everything for everybody. Get out your boxing gloves, because it’s a seasonal fight for media space and consumer attention.

How do you get a word in edge-wise? What’s holiday newsworthy, and how do you rise above the competition with editors who are equally bombarded (and equally stressed)?

Feature News Releases

Media Editors look for outstanding stories that will engage their readers’ emotions. You can get a feel for this prior to creating your news release:

Review their past feature stories for examples of what they deem worthy.
Look at their website or blog for more clues.
Call the Editor and ask! They’ll actually tell you exactly what they’re interested in.

For example, if you’re targeting a local newspaper that’s circulated to the general public, it may be a deeply-felt human interest story related to the holiday season. To make your story stand out, bring it home to the reader by highlighting heartfelt experiences of helping real people in severe or unusual need. Make it interesting by making it really different. For instance, in this year’s economy, it could be a family that’s newly homeless due to job loss and how your company helped them. And be sure to tie it to the holiday season. How can your company help give them some happiness this season, despite their circumstances?

Customize Your Holiday Media Campaign

Media Editors can spot a generic and inauthentic news release in about two seconds. Your one-size-fits-all story just won’t hit the mark most of the time. So DON’T send the same story to every media outlet.

Do some homework, and craft your basic story to the individual media type and their audience. For example, publicizing an event that’s open to the public and benefits a charity may be perfect for a public service space on a radio station. It could be written as an invitation with background information. That same press release targeting television could be more effective if something visual is highlighted, such as the faces of the children involved, and the happiness they feel. TV might cover the event and run it afterwards, instead of before.

Online Press Releases

For holiday press, human interest stories have an excellent opportunity to go viral. Write your story, make it short, and include photos. Release the story:

On your social network platform
Distributed to free online press release sites

Through your email database
In your newsletter

The chances of it going viral increase if you:

Run some kind of a contest (Photo submission? Story submission?)
Utilize video (make it funny!), or
Offer something free.

Timing and creativity are super important. So be BOLD!

What catches your eye during the holiday season?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

.. _____ ..

ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

November 2, 2010February 4, 2022

Expand Your Sales Force – Part 2 of 2

Man on a phone call looking at a sales chart on a desktop

Try Affiliate Marketing

In the last post, we discussed Affiliate Marketing as an inexpensive way to increase your sales force and boost your revenues. Here, we’ll take a closer look at HOW those revenues are earned.

Some Merchants run their own (i.e., in-house) affiliate programs using popular software while others use third-party services provided by intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates (see outsourced program management). Merchants can choose from two different types of affiliate management solutions: standalone software or hosted services, typically called affiliate networks.

Affiliate Marketing Compensation Methods

As Affiliate Marketing has evolved, so have compensation models. The methods vary:

80% – revenue sharing or cost per sale (CPS)
19% – cost per action (CPA), and
the remaining 1% use methods such as cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (CPM).

As a retailer, or Merchant, this is quite attractive, because Affiliates are typically paid a commission for each sale. And when the Merchant uses an Affiliate Network, all the activity is tracked, payments are made, and reports are automated.

Top Affiliate Network Companies

CompareTheBrands.com offers an in-depth look at many of the Affiliate Networks and their typical commission structures, along with great insights from real experience: “We make most of our revenue from affiliate programs, and have plenty of experience with them. Here are the best networks out there. See which one topped all others in this affiliate network review and comparison.”

The following list of the best Affiliate Networks is compiled by an actual full-time affiliate marketer who has worked these programs for over five years, as reported by onlineprofitable.com:

Commission Junction (www.cj.com)
ClickBank (www.clickbank.com)
LinkShare (www.linkshare.com)
Affiliate Window (www.affiliatewindow.com)
Amazon (www.amazon.com)
Shareasale (www.shareasale.com)
Google (www.google.com/adsense)
LinkConnector (www.linkconnector.com)
CPA Empire (www.cpaempire.com)

Do you have tips for other small businesses just starting out with Affiliate Programs?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

.. _____ ..

ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

October 29, 2010February 4, 2022

Expand Your Sales Force – Part 1 of 2

Establish an Online Affiliate Program

Online marketing can quite effectively expand your sales force (and your sales!) with minimal cash outlay and greatly increased margins.

Your business can literally explode online sales with a simple and easy to administer Affiliate Marketing program. Using one website to drive sales to another website is the basic concept employed in affiliate marketing, which is growing in favor among retailers everywhere who are looking for innovative ways to increase sales.

Use an Affiliate Network

Affiliate Networks are companies that match retailers and salespeople. They handle all the transaction flow in exchange for compensation from the transactions and the relationships. Affiliate Networks act as the intermediary between retailers (called Merchant Affiliate programs) and salespeople (called Publishers or Affiliates).

Top Affiliate Networks coordinate hundreds, and even thousands of Merchant Affiliate programs, which are searchable by keyword in their extensive directories. Affiliates earn a sizable commission for each sale made through their own website. On their own websites, Affiliates often promote a wide variety of Merchant programs related to their core business and customer needs.

Affiliate Network Services and Benefits

For Merchants, Affiliate Network services and benefits may include:

instant tracking technology,
extensive reporting tools,
automated payment processing, and
access to a large base of resellers/Publishers.

For Affiliates, services and benefits can include

simplifying the process of registering for one or more Merchant Affiliate programs, greatly reducing the administrative and record keeping burdens,
automated reporting tools, and
complete payment aggregation.

Affiliate Network Costs

Affiliates are generally able to join top Affiliate Networks for free, whereas there is generally a fee for Merchants to participate. Traditional Affiliate Networks might charge an initial setup fee and/or a recurring membership fee. It is also common for Affiliate Networks to charge merchants a percentage of the commissions paid to Affiliates.

In the next post, we’ll go into more depth, identify top Affiliate Networks, and take a look at Affiliate Network compensation models.

What Affiliate Marketing success stories can you share?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

.. _____ ..

ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

October 27, 2010July 8, 2022

Your Advertising Budget

3 Ways to Approach Ad Planning

Especially in hard economic times, setting an advertising budget is enormously important. Many companies cut advertising when revenues shrink, or expenses creep up.

Reducing your ad spend could be an expensive mistake, further escalating the problem. If you’re not consistently in front of your customers – in the media – your sales may take an additional hit.

Before You Set Your Ad Budget

Step back and take a moment to think about a few factors before you start. How much you spend on advertising depends on your position in the market, the competition you face, and other factors.

You should:

know and understand your competition and THEIR advertising strategies,
analyze your performance compared to last month and last year,
note the length of the selling season compared to last year, and
watch for selling trends, such as shifts in demographics that may affect buying trends.

3 Ways to Plan Your Ad Budget

No matter how you budget, there never seems to be enough marketing money to go around. But using one or a combination of these budgeting methods will help you implement your marketing plan.

1. Budgeting a percentage of sales: Provides a good budget starting point, but when sales decline, you have less money to solve your marketing problems. It’s also not a good approach if you’re trying to expand into a new area.

2. Budgeting according to the tasks you want to accomplish. Ties the amount you spend to the marketing mix activities you have developed. If good marketing objectives have been chosen, this plan offers the best chance of reaching them, but it doesn’t take affordability into account.

3. Budgeting based on what your competition spends. Should enable you to stay competitive in the market and allows you to respond rapidly to a competitor’s marketing campaign. However, basing your activities on those of others may restrict your own company’s growth potential.

Have you found effective ways to plan your advertising budget?

(Thanks to Realtor.org for the 3 Ways to Plan.)

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

.. _____ ..

ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

October 21, 2010July 8, 2022

Email Marketing Best Practices – Part 2 of 2

Things You Should Avoid in Your Email Campaigns

In the most recent post (Part 1 of 2), we covered the commandments of email marketing campaigns – those things you MUST do to optimize your delivery, open and response rates. Thanks to Vertical Response, we also have a list of things to AVOID.

This list is only half as long, but equally important to protect the integrity and boost the outcome.

___ DO NOT use rented lists. These recipients did not opt-in to your mailing, so you could be reported as spam, or even blacklisted by ISPs. Horrors.

___ ISPs and filters search and screen for the use of punctuation in the middle of words. Examples: “FR EE” or “FR^EE”. When they find these, your message may be blocked completely.

___ Don’t over-punctuate. “Read this! You’ll love it!! And it’s FREE!!!” Now that’s just too much. It’s poorly written copy, and it actually works to make you message less believable, not more.

___ ALL CAPITAL LETTERS indicates yelling. You don’t want to yell, do you? It diminishes your credibility. Subject lines with all caps are often redirected to your recipients’ junk mail folders.

___ Don’t send attachments. If you use bulk mail delivery systems, ISPs don’t have the capacity to handle large volumes, and the entire campaign may not be supported.

___ Don’t send offers that your recipients did not request. It is tantamount to spam, and will get you unsubscribed in a heartbeat.

More Tips to Avoid in Email Campaigns to Increase Deliverability

For technical advice, consider using an expert to review your campaign before sending it. Many of the systems vary so much that it’s impossible to know if your message and its construction are compatible with the delivery systems. Here are some examples:

___ Gmail forwards all email content as plain text

___ Hotmail strips out Flash entirely.

___ Yahoo! Mail does not accept JavaScript. (The code will appear in the body of the email.)

___ AOL strips out flash and form tags.

___ Netscape strips out Flash and JavaScript.

___ Internet Explorer can misalign images due to white space.

(Thanks to ZetaInteractive.com for the tips above.)

What email marketing systems work best for you?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

.. _____ ..

ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

October 19, 2010July 10, 2022

Email Marketing Best Practices

Things You Must Do in Your Next Email Campaign

Email Marketing is so important that you should have this checklist at your fingertips when you create your next email campaign. According to Vertical Response, they are the ‘commandments’ of email marketing – to improve your delivery, open and response rates.

___ ALWAYS use recipient email addresses that have opted in to receive your materials. If you send spam (unsolicited email), you risk harming your relationship and reputation. It’s not worth it.

___ Use a FROM label that is clearly recognizable by the recipient. If they don’t, you may be automatically unsubscribed.

___ Recipients must see an easy and obvious way to opt out or unsubscribe. It’s the law and the right thing to do.

___ Your subject line must always reflect the content. People resent being ‘tricked’ into spending their valuable time on a promise that’s not delivered.

___ Include your snail mail and phone contact information. In addition to being required by law, it’s helpful in relationship building as well as adding legitimacy.

___ Don’t send everyone everything. Send your recipients only messages in which they are likely to be interested. We live in information overload. You don’t want to be viewed as a waste of their time.

___ People often forget why they’re on your list. Remind them where or when they opted in for information. This is especially important if your communications are sporadic, or if it’s been awhile since you sent the last one.

___ Try to email them regularly in order to build a meaningful relationship with your recipients. Give them something they consider valuable. Do it every time you touch them.

___ Your messages will be recognized if your recipients add you to their address book. Otherwise, they may end up in the junk folder. Ask them to add you.

___ TEST your email campaigns by segmenting your list, changing subject lines, and mailing on different days. Track your responses to determine best open rates.

___ Use images in your emails, and always include text to describe them. That way, if the image doesn’t come through, the reader has an idea of what’s missing.

___ Use a spam filter to test each word in the email. If any get caught in the filter, replace them. It’s easy and quick – and a great way to increase delivery rates.

Email Best Practices Evolve

Email marketing Best Practices continually evolve, but they can make or break the success of your campaign. You put a lot of time into its strategy, messaging and list maintenance, so take these steps to optimize the delivery rate, open rate and response rate.

(Many thanks to Vertical Response, Inc., San Francisco, CA, for the checklist.)

Have you had an email campaign crisis that taught you helpful lessons?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

.. _____ ..

ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman:

October 16, 2010July 8, 2022

Google Search Tips

Google search screen displaying on a tablet

How to Get Better Search Results with Modifiers

Garbage in, garbage out. When you need specific information and don’t have a lot of time to spend searching the internet, a few search modifiers will really help you avoid the garbage, and zero in on your target.

Every search engine is a bit different, but since they account for about 85% of all search engine traffic, we’ll focus on Google’s search modifiers.

Basic Search Modifiers

Almost everyone knows the basic search modifiers that help you find more relevant results:

“ ” means exact phrase. Example: “business card holders” yields results with exactly that phrase, not a portion of the phrase or related phrases.
– means excluded words. Example: cell phones – Verizon yields results that exclude Verizon.
~ means similar words. Example: birthday candles yields results that might include birthday cards, birthday gifts, etc.
OR means multiple words. Example: Train stations OR tracks yields train results that include stations or tracks.

Now, Use More Advanced Search Modifiers

In the examples below, enter the underlined term, or a similarity for your specific search, in the Google search bar:

To find meanings: define: photogenic (if you want the definition of the word photogenic).

To find particular sites: hydrogen peroxide site:edu (if you want hydrogen peroxide only on .edu sites).

To find linked pages: link:managementhelp.org (if you want to find pages that link to managementhelp.org).

To find math answers: 30% of 55 (if you want to get the actual answer).

To find conversions: cm in foot (if you want to get the converted answer).

When you play with these search modifiers, it can almost become addictive!

(Thanks to Google for the guidelines.)

What tricks and tips make your searches more effective?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

.. _____ ..

ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman: