The Opening Bell of the Christmas Season is a Gobble

Tomorrow we eat. We gather with our family, our friends or people we barely tollerate and take a moment to be thankful for what we have.

Tomorrow is also the begining of the Christmas Shopping Season. And that means our televisions, radios, newspapers, websites and emailboxes will be full of suggestions as to how we can spend our money in these last few weeks of the year.

For the smart marketer, this offers a great opportunity to learn how other businesses are reacting to the recession. Keep a close eye on the sale prices, the stories that the ads are telling and just how anxious the calls to action are. You can learn a lot about other businesses by watching their ads. And in turn, you can learn how you want to present your business in your next campaign.

Online Advertising Market Grows Bleaker - Good News for Advertisers

There’s an old joke in the legal community: A bankruptcy lawyer will only go out of business if no one else can.

Just because it’s old, doesn’t mean it’s good.

Anyway, the idea is that when market conditions are bad for one group of people, they can be good for others. And in the case of advertising, a down market for publishers means great oppportunities for advertisers.

The anemic economy is making publishers squirm. They have pages to fill, payrolls to meet and goals to achieve. They need to bring in new business. Which is lucky, because you do too.

Online advertising is a great way to focus your message within a specific group of potential customers. You could even make the logical conclusion that as the economy slows, and there’s less for people to do while at work, they’ll spend some of their time surfuing websites that would be happy to have you as an advertiser. Higher audience normally means higher prices. But in this economy, companies are looking to pare back on their expenses. And that means that you’ll be able to strike a better bargain when you place your ads.

And if you’re spending less money to attract more business, you’re making smart marketing decisions.

Of course, you could also tie your advertisements together with a response measurement system like AdSymetrix. You could know what ads are working, what ads aren’t and how you’re converting their responses into your sales.

3 Rules of Smart Marketing (And Saving Money)

We’re going into a weekend. This means that you may have two mornings where you don’t have to wake up in a cold sweat wondering how you’re going to get your phone to ring. Use that break from the stress to come up with some new ways to market your business. Feel free to start here.

You know you need to get more people to think of your business when they’re interested in the kinds of goods and services you provide. The only way to turn these people into customers is to let them know that you exist. And that’s where marketing comes in. The key, however, is to market smart, spending just the right amount of money to get the word out and focus your placement in locations where your customers are most likely to spend their time.

Here are 3 Ways to Save Money When Marketing

1. Know Your Audience

Look at the kind of people that you already do business with. What kind of similarities do you see? Are they all within a specific location? Do they all have the same level of education? What kinds of things do they talk about while you’re making the sale? What kinds of problems are they looking to solve with your products? How would you describe this typical customer? Defining that customer is the first step towards finding more people who are inclined to do business with you.

2. Target Your Audience

Once you know who is already doing business with you, you can focus your marketing in places other people like them are already hanging out. This could mean creating direct mail pieces that hit a specific neighborhood, or grabbing a group of people to wear t-shirts at community events, or buying an advertisement in a publication that specifically targets the same people you want as customers. You know how to talk about your business, you just need to know how to get that message in front of the right people.

3. Know What Works

Measure the responses you get from your marketing. You already know who you’re talking to, and where they’re most likely to spend their time, you now need to know if your marketing is working. AdSymetrix has been created for just this piece of the puzzle. We capture every response from any ad you place anywhere. You can use that information to perfect your marketing plans and save money by only focusing on marketing that works.

By knowing your audience, targeting them and measuring the responses, you’ll grow your business, waste less time and save money.

And hopefully enjoy a little less stress this weekend.

Technorati

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/e9k9756qu2″ rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

When Where is as Important as What

You know what you need to say to get customers to call on your business. From coupons to press releases to ads to direct mail. You know what to write, you know how it should look, you even know what to expect once someone sees your piece. What you have to focus on now is where.

Where is incredibly important. You can create a hundred great ads, but if you don’t place them where people who can act on them will see them, you might as well not even bother. Where is where real costs come in to play. Every year you hear about the cost of an ad during the Super Bowl. The reason that those ads are so expensive is that they are viewed by so many millions of people. Regardless of whether those ads work, the people who place them are paying millions of dollars for the opportunity to bring their messages to that huge, unfocused, audience.

Where doesn’t have to be expensive. But any money you spend needs to be spent wisely. You could spend millions to get on the Super Bowl, but the premium you’re paying for that audience may not return to you in new business. When you know what works, you can make smarter marketing decision. And for the sake of this conversation, when you know where works, you can save yourself time and money.

AdSymetrix can help, of course. We’ll provide you with the feedback you need to know what where works best for your messaging. You’ll capture every response generated by any ad you place anywhere.

Making Advertising Lemonade Out of Poor Economy Lemons

A press release hit our desks today that talks directly to an idea we mentioned in an earlier post. The idea that any kind of market can create opportunities for growth.

Meet TheHomeMag, a publication that focuses on connecting local advertisers with local consumers interested in renovating or improving their homes.

The incredible growth experienced by TheHomeMag shows that is you can find a way to fit your business desires into the needs of your customers, you can grow in down times.

You can see how TheHomeMag can do it, how can your business?

Advertising Works

Really.

When you look at your door, or your phone, or your email box and you wonder why no one is coming in, calling you or sending in orders, you need to look at what you’ve done to get them to take those actions.

Advertising. Marketing. Reminding the people out there who need your stuff that you have the stuff they need.

Even in this down market, people are thirsty for the things they need. And your marketing can define what you are selling as exactly the things that they need. New cars can be sold as remedies for high gas prices. Televisions can be sold as entertainment that keeps the family together, instead of forcing you to spend hundreds of dollars for a night on the town. Nights on the town can be sold as affordable alternatives to the high-costs of traveling. Anything you have to sell can be sold if you just get the right marketing message in front of your potential customers.

And you remind them that your business is the best place to get these things that they now need.

Advertising works, you just need to know which advertising makes the most sense for your business.

Reminding Your Customers that It’s Ok to Shop

Economics is Psychology.
FDR knew this. His famous line, “the only thing we have to fear is, fear itself,” speaks to this idea. When you are worried about the economy, you spend less, which slows the economy, which makes you more worried, which makes you spend less.

What business needs to do is break through that infinite loop and remind customers that it’s OK to shop.

And the best way to do that is to market to them.

Advertisements, direct mailings, telephone calls, coupons, events at your location, anything to remind people that buying your goods or services is still a good idea. Your customers need to know that they’re allowed to spend their money with you.

The trick, from a business standpoint, is to make sure that you’re talking to them in a way, and in a place, where they’re going to be inclined to listen. You need to target how, what and where you’re advertising to reach your customers. Give them permission to buy from you.

You’d be surprised how well it works.

Shrinking Audiences Demand Tighter Focus

We believe in advertising. You can only grow your business when you get people who don’t know your name to consider buying something from you. Introducing yourself to them is best done through advertising.

The key, of course, is to make sure that you’re introducing yourself to the right people in the right way to get them to think the right things about you and your company so that they can make that shift from interested consumer to actual customer.

And that’s where the equation gets difficult.
How do you find just the right place to reach just the right people? You want to make sure that your message is heard, seen, interacted with, or experienced by the largest group of interested consumers that your budget will allow. Television may still attract millions of viewers, but those millions are separated into hundreds of channels. Internet is equally segmented. Radio, print, outdoor… they all have the same problem: The Audience is Shrinking.

Which means you have to more tightly focus your marketing. You need to know where to find your interested consumers and you need to know what works to convert them into actual customers.

So we see the trends:

1. Audiences are getting smaller
2. More advertising venues are opening
3. Economic news is scaring consumers into not spending their money

Of the three, the scariest one is the only one you really don’t have to worry about. Sure, the economy is frightening right now. But people still need to eat, which means that people still need to buy food. And your job, as a business person, is to make sure that when they’re ready to buy, they’re buying from you.

Which is to say, if you take advantage of the first two trends, your customers will be ready to buy from you when they make the decision to put their money on the table.

Audiences are smaller. Less people congregate in the same place these days. You’ll have lower ratings for television shows, smaller audiences for radio stations and print publications continue to lose subscribers. As an advertiser, you need to recognize that some publications (or radio, television, outdoor and internet-based venues) are better for your customer base than others. By targeting your advertising to just the people most likely to respond to your ads, you can use these smaller audiences to your benefit.

Tightening your focus means that you are only placing ads that work, in places that works for your business. When you know what works, what marketing drives responses and sales, you can dump the duds and only spend your time and money on business generating opportunities.

You don’t need to talk to a million people at once, you only need to talk to the thousand people who are interested in working with you.

AdSyMetrix Has Lunch With Phil

We had the pleasure of sitting in with Phil Zelinger for his talk show on BlogTalkRadio.com recently. Phil hosts a show that talks directly to the issues Car Dealers have to deal with when promoting, marketing and advertising their cars for sale.
Sit back and enjoy AdSymetrix on Lunch With Phil, as we talk about how AdSymetrix can be implemented in car dealerships and in your business.

Next Page »