Marketing Insights and Tips

It is very difficult to keep up with marketing when everyone is saying you must market more during a downtrend in the economy. But WHERE do you spend your money or time effectively. How do you evaluate this along with the profusion of WEB STATS people throw at you. Some of the following may help guide you in your decisions:

We see companies making MARKETING DECISIONS from ancient formulas taught in high school. The marketing world has changed 10,000 times since some of the old formulas. Numbers of Copies is a laugh — the newspapers and telephone books have not done so well in the past years. It is vital you choose a method to reach your USER.

Is your market only local or do you derive business from far away, or a combination of both? Is your market — specific to a few or can everyone use your services? Do you have to drop marketing one possible user to afford another?

Always review how the perspective advertising company spends their money on marketing — or do they depend strictly on one method, or many to get the (your) name out there.

Don’t believe the numbers of copies BIT — because those copies could be dumped, in storage unit and with some publishers –never produced.

We see many publishers place their copies as a group on trade show tables — shipping them in and never bothering to hand them to the perspective user…..where is the “permission based lead for their client?”
We see publishers turn their copies over to magazine distributors — but the unsold are tossed in the trash after a certain date and no one sees them.

We also see publishers who have “left over or outdated publications” take a trade show table to “unload what is NOT SOLD”, leaving the advertiser thinking their name was out there months ago.
Consider the WEB LINK companies who say they are number one by ALEXA…..oh dear this leads to problems. ALEXA, along with many others puts COOKIES & TRACKERS in the web site which allow them to track the USER who comes on to utilize the web site. These trackers are invasive and collect personal data from e-mails — etc — this data is SOLD. Do you want to be part of a company who uses INVASIVE WEB TACTICS?
THESE ARE SOME ADDITIONAL METHODS TO GET YOUR NAME OUT THERE

Write a brief article about the type of business you do. Go up on a search engine and type in your web site’s key words. Up will come a raft of web sites. The directories often have need of articles on specific subjects. E-mail them and tell them you have an article ready if you can have a hot link to YOUR WEB SITE address in the base of the article. You can use this for local or regional publications.
Get on a local talk radio show — speaking about your particular business.

Contact the event locations with your media kit and ask for referrals. You bring them referrals.
Cross link your web address with associates (affiliate linking)…..understand, ALL web addresses can be cross-linked — but the exact address has to be copied out, checked to make certain the links work and log them in a binder for future review. Add to these monthly.