Archive for the ‘PMA Blogroll’ Category
Yellow Page Advertising Fails Again
Just received a very interesting email marketing blast from YP.com or Yellow Pages which was addressed to one of our clients’ email address that is only used on our end for specific account sign-ups—not this one.
This email managed to get my attention for two reasons: 1. They thanked us for signing up—we did not. 2. The gross failure of this email’s message to connect to the reader even if we had signed up–further evidencing Yellow Page’s lost roll in the digital age of marketing.
Let the dissection begin. 
“Thank you for joining the clever, growing droves of YP.com devotees and for signing up for our most excellent email missives.”
Droves? Devotees? Really? Did Bill and Ted come up with the “most excellent” part? And since we’re targeting the masses, let’s toss in the word “missives.” Yes, it is a word, as I also had to look it up—nothing like connecting with your target audience at the most basic level.
“We look forward to charming you with holiday features, travel ideas, contests, deals, how-tos, where-tos, go-tos and other fresh local interests — all bundled into our convenient monthly newsletters.”
Charming me? Did I ask to be charmed? And what exactly are “where-tos and go-tos?” Another first and a made up word this time.
The big wrap up: “To help us out, we hope you’ll take this op to review your profile details — so we can more keenly direct our charms, of course”
Ok, now I’ve got to do something for you because you don’t know your demographic and I have to fill you in—oh, I see.
“We hope you’ll take this op.” Op. How hip. And another made up word. I suppose they just couldn’t find it in themselves to spell out “opportunity.”
And what an opportunity this is, I can’t wait for them to more keenly direct their charms.
Jason Jantzen is President of Phoenix Marketing Associates and a skilled marketer whose experience in growing small businesses is based on real world experience and proven, repeatable strategies. His company uses an integrated approach to online marketing by implementing Search Engine Optimization, Website Content Creation, PR and Social Media campaigns which have had a marked impact on their clients’ overall exposure to their target market.
Marketing Posts
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You Don’t Own a Business, You’ve Bought Yourself a Job
The title of this article rings true for most small business owners—they just don’t realize it. Following their passion, many entrepreneurs quit their high paying, but boring jobs and choose to jump into debt and mortgage their future to purchase a franchise or dealership or start their own brand–all in the name of self employment and prosperity. 
Often times reminding themselves that “they can do it better” or “I’ve got a better product,” most are not prepared for the workload and change in personal lifestyle which lies ahead. Often, the impetus for jumping into entrepreneurship comes at the ill fated recommendations of friends or family who love your cooking, dig your artistic flair or appreciate the service you perform in your spare time. Inspiration can also be found out of complete frustration with where their personal career has taken them and that little voice in the back of their head reminding them of what could be.
As it turns out, they may end up being a better cook or a more skillful artisan, but at the end of the day, they have no idea how to run and grow a prosperous business. I believe there are several factors that contribute to failed businesses, but the one reason I see ignored most often is the failure to use LEVERAGE.
By failing to use leverage, most small business owners wind up in the quandary of believing they run a business, but in reality, your investment has only bought you a job. This is because small business owners end up being a slave to their company, working longer hours than their old job and for usually less personal income.
Believing that your most valuable role within the business is the lead craftsman, cook, designer, installer, etc…is completely false. Your number one role within your business is sales and marketing. Without it, your business will tread water for a couple of years, then die.
Most entrepreneurs get caught up within the catch-all role of operating the business, often times performing all of the work themselves or manning the shop for twelve hours per day. They’ll make the mistake of believing that “no one can do it better than me.” Yes, you may be the best at what you do—but no matter what you believe, good people are trainable and you can train them to perform your duties. Doing so allows you the time to plan your marketing, establish relationships and truly grow your business.
The first reaction to this way of thinking is usually, “I can’t afford to hire someone.” Wrong—you can’t afford NOT to hire someone. If you hire a great employee to replace you and focus on sales and marketing, then you’ll have no problem affording that employee. Without implementing this philosophy in your business, you will undergo extreme peaks and valleys and at the first onset of an economic dip, your business will most likely die. Why? Because you haven’t spent your time filling up that sales pipeline with new accounts or potential customers.
Unless you make this shift, you’ll be so tied to your business that you’ll never be able to take a vacation because “who could do it better than you?” And isn’t freedom and a better lifestyle the reason you got into business in the first place? Successful business owners choose to hire people who are smarter and more skilled than they are and understand that their role is to manage good talent.
Go out and find your replacement, bring them on part time initially if you have to and train them well—then focus on growing your business through sales and marketing and escape the mindset of having a job!
Jason Jantzen is President of Phoenix Marketing Associates and a skilled marketer whose experience in growing small businesses is based on real world experience and proven, repeatable strategies. His company uses an integrated approach to online marketing by implementing Search Engine Optimization, Website Content Creation, PR and Social Media campaigns which has had a marked impact on their overall exposure to their target market.
Branding Mistake by Chrysler Hurts Consumer Confidence
In the quest for brands to establish emotional investment by their customers, one of the most important changes that can be made is a move from demonstrating honesty towards building trust. By now, honesty is expected in business. With negative buzz smeared over the internet by every disgruntled hothead, honesty is a requirement. Given that honesty is expected to stand out, brands must now move towards trust.
Building trust takes significant effort. Trust is what you have with a friend. One of the most powerful expressions of trust that brands can make is the No Hassle Return Policy, made famous by Nordstrom years ago.
A company who has recently made a stab at building trust is Chrysler. 
In February of this year, Chrysler introduced its “Minivan Pledge”. This offered buyers 60 days to try a Dodge Grand Caravan or Chrysler Town and Country with the option of returning the vehicle within 60 days if they were unhappy with it in any way. Excellent idea!
Despite their apparent move in the direction of building trust, Chrysler made a disappointing reversal this month. They spun their new program, now available on most 2010 Chrysler, Jeep®, Dodge and Ram Truck vehicles, as an expansion of their old program, although it is actually quite the opposite.
A look at their July 8, 2010 press release reveals that customers must now choose one of several incentives:
• 0% financing for up to 72 months
• cash rebates of up to $4,000 or
• the 60-day guarantee (a $1000 value at $500 per month)
Fred Diaz, President and Chief Executive Officer – Ram Truck Brand and Lead Executive for U.S. Sales, is quoted in that press release saying, “We build great vehicles for just about any lifestyle and with this pledge, consumers will have the confidence to know they made the right purchase or they can return the vehicle no questions asked.”
Unfortunately, with the latest pledge, Chrysler is actually destroying the trust that they were beginning to rebuild with car buyers in America. Bad move.
Laura Strickland is a marketing professional with an expertise in brand strategy. Her credentials include an MBA with a Marketing Area of Emphasis from Arizona State University as well as experience developing marketing strategies for both large and small businesses.
Laura helps businesses succeed by helping to define their competitive advantage and using this as a foundation for marketing campaigns.
Laura can be contacted at lstrickland@phoenixmarketingassociates.com
Emotional Branding: From Consumers to People
Emotional branding is beginning to supersede the old concept of brand awareness. During this transition, I think we’ll see a move from being consumer-focused to being people-focused.
Here’s an example of a great opportunity for Campbell soup.
Because of the “tough road ahead”, Nick Neumann of Louisville, Kentucky exchanged his restaurant lunches for $1.75 Campbell Chunky soup, buying up to 15 cans at a time.
Noticing this trend, Mitchell Pinheiro, a Philadelphia-based analyst at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, pointed out that 2009 could be “the year of condensed soup, driven by the backdrop of severe economic pressure on the consumer.” 
Further, Edgar Roesch, a Soleil Securities Corp. analyst in New York, said that Campbell soup is “acknowledged as a way to weather a recession.”
Sure, these cheap meals can propel Campbell soup into an out-performer in hard times. But, I see this as a perfect opportunity for Campbell to really bolster their brand so they don’t lose momentum as the economy rebounds.
How can Campbell achieve that? Rather than just ride the wave of the economic downturn, Campbell could stop being so focused on how consumers buy and concentrate on how people live.
Campbell is a bit complacent, as I see it. They’re being lulled into traditional branding concepts that pit consumers against brands. Marketing managers would, and often still do, pin back their ears and attack customers to break down their defenses and decode their language. This is an “us” (manufacturers, retailers, marketing departments) against “them” (consumers) attitude. For Campbell, it turns into a race to sell consumers the maximum amount of soup while they’re still down and out.
Instead, this is a perfect opportunity for Campbell to focus more on the people who are buying their product and how they live. This means Campbell would create more of a partnership approach based on mutual respect. They could start building stronger relationships with their customers so that they could provide information about how they live now and how their lives are changing as the economy recovers. By doing this, Campbell could create desire for their soup that far outlives the economic downturn.
I see Campbell has a Facebook page, which seems like a start. But with unanswered posts like:
• “…what must one do if he finds a mosquito in a can of Campbell’s soup?”
• “Will the catalog for merchandise ever be back online? It seems like it has been ‘under construction’ for about a year now?”
• “…how many people have we got here who actually work for Campbell’s?
I think they’ve got some more work to do to genuinely focus more on emotional branding and discovering how people live.
Laura Strickland is a marketing professional with an expertise in brand strategy. Her credentials include an MBA with a Marketing Area of Emphasis from Arizona State University as well as experience developing marketing strategies for both large and small businesses.
Laura helps businesses succeed by helping to define their competitive advantage and using this as a foundation for marketing campaigns.
Laura can be contacted at lstrickland@phoenixmarketingassociates.com.
Small Business Websites Need a CMS
Marketing your small business online is a process which rewards the swift and penalizes the idle. If your small business can’t afford to have a skilled website developer on staff full time, then your website needs to be operating on a CMS (content management system) platform.
In its most basic sense, a Content Management System allows the everyday business owner to bypass the expense of paying a developer $100.00/hr every time they want to make minor changes to their website. A CMS platform enables individuals who do not know how to write HTML code to make changes and additions to their website at will through the use of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) technology.
The majority of small business owners have no idea how to make changes or additions to their website—which is why most remain static and don’t do a good job at marketing their business and converting web traffic into customers. There are several CMS platforms available from the costly, one-off custom built to the little to no cost platforms like Joomla and WordPress.
Google’s recent introduction of Caffeine, their new search engine platform, now allows for the indexing of information at a much faster rate–meaning that Google’s search engine is constantly looking for and rewarding websites with the freshest and most relevant content. In essence, if you can’t add content to your website on a regular basis, you will disappear.
Through a CMS, you can also install plug-ins which allow for on-page optimization of your website from the page titles to the descriptions and keywords associated with a particular page. Complete the on-page process by adding keyword rich text on your home page with anchor text pointing to pages within your site.
A CMS also allows for the creation of additional web pages which feature new products, services or specials—things that are continually evolving for most small businesses. You can also create specific landing pages to drive targeted traffic which are hidden and non-navigable and whose only purpose is to promote a particular offer.
WordPress CMS platforms are especially useful for performing blogging functions. Blogging is a great way to add keyword rich content which should be promoted through social media and bookmarking websites to drive additional traffic. Remember, every additional page that is created is an additional page that will be indexed by Google Caffeine which helps move your website up the search engine results and in front of your target audience.
Post Recession Small Business Marketing and Survival
Times are tough. However, we are certainly seeing a bit of light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Those of you who have made it through the worst of it, congratulations, you’re a survivor! But now what—is there room to grow your small business or are consumers too wary of another disaster?
Probably a little of both. Small business owners are more directly tied to end consumers and the general economy than anyone else, which means that the slightest shifts in economic trends can have a marked effect on a small business’ success or failure.
Retailers have enjoyed a traditional holiday spike in spending, but for the most part, no one is lighting the world on fire. Service businesses who provide services that we simply cannot live without like heating and A/C contractors (especially now) have realized steady, traditional sales volumes. But for those service businesses or retailers which provide a product or service that depends on disposable dollars, the term peaks and valleys has been an understatement.
If you truly want to grow your business in this economy, then this is no time to scale back on your marketing. For those with the wherewithal to commit to a solid plan and actually start to expand their marketing campaigns, then the overall market for their respective business is theirs for the taking.
There’s an old saying in business with several variations: If you see your competitor drowning, do you offer him a helping hand or shove a garden hose down his throat?
The point being is that for those who want to dominate their industry, the time is now to begin a full scale attack through the marketing of your small business. Marketing should always be viewed as an investment—an investment which will provide a return. Not an expense.
An increase in marketing does not necessarily mean a doubling or tripling in spend. Consider entering social media marketing or email marketing into the fold. Both mediums are fairly low cost and when executed correctly can have a huge impact on your brand’s reach and ability to stay top of mind with your past and potential customers.
If you’re a retailer that depends on localized traffic, then perhaps a geo-targeted pay per click campaign with a controlled daily budget would suit your needs—nothing like placing your company in front of potential customer at the exact moment they are looking for your product!
Traditional forms of advertising like print, radio and television certainly have their place, but remember—many times this is a branding effort and most small businesses just don’t have the kind of budget for branding-only campaigns. Don’t get caught up in the sex appeal and ego infusion of seeing your pretty face in a magazine or on a commercial–now is the time to be extremely targeted and smart with your marketing dollars which will help you not only survive, but dominate your competition.
Trade Show Marketing: Get the Most Out of Your Next Event
We’ve seen it a thousand times. Well intentioned business owners laying out good money to display and market their small business at the next trade show, home show or industry event—you name it; only to leave disappointed and discouraged at the end results.
Rule #1 for any trade show or event is to grow your marketing database! Remember, even though your product or service may not be a match right now, you need to add prospects to your database and continue to stay in front of them through email marketing. They may not buy now, but they could buy later!
Let’s cover the basics of trade show marketing and a few musts:
Be prepared. Coordinate early with show producers and make sure you have the proper time and access to set up your display. Also, at the end of the show, make sure you are on point with the tear down as they usually want you out of there as quickly as possible. Additionally, it’s always a good idea to have at least two people working the booth at one time—nothing worse than not being able to engage interested attendees or an empty booth while on potty break.
Display your brand. Professionally designed display signage and banners are very important to marketing your business and catching people’s eyes as they pass your booth—you’ve only got a few seconds to catch their attention and engage. Also, wear professional clothing or uniforms that showcase your colors and corporate branding. Even the smallest company can afford a couple of monogrammed polos—it goes a long way in terms of professionalism.
Hold a Contest and Engage! This simple must-do is one that is most often overlooked. Time and time again, we see small business owners standing in their booth staring aimlessly at show attendees wondering why no one is visiting their display.
To properly market your business at a trade show you must hold a contest—and one that is worth signing up for. This is how you grow your database—remember rule #1? If you must, buy a product and raffle it off—but most would much more appreciate a free product or service from your company, as that’s why they’re at the show in the first place.
Make the giveaway substantial—everyone loves a good contest and the more entrants, the faster you grow your database. For example, you could give away six months of gym dues if you’re a health club, a water heater if you’re a plumber, a $300 gift card to your store—whatever, be creative and make sure you engage attendees as they pass by! No matter what the actual end cost of that giveaway to you is, it will be well worth the expense in future sales. Once you get them in, get as much info as possible for the follow up process.
Eye contact is important—once you get it at a show, that’s your cue to engage. Ask open ended questions, make them respond to you—you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to market yourself and draw people into your booth. And remember, the attendees are not the only ones you can engage—during lulls in the show, take the time to check out your competition, see what you or they are doing better and how you can improve for the next show. Additionally, you may end up forming some strategic relationships with other vendors that will help you in marketing your business through channels you may have never thought of.
Follow Up. We cannot over stress the importance of timely follow up after an event. When marketing your business at a trade or home show, you are not always just competing against other vendors or your competition—many times your product or service is in direct competition for precious expendable dollars. We have a client who is a jeweler—many times their biggest competition is Home Depot: The 10K diamond ring or the new deck to the house!
You have precious little time to properly follow up with leads derived from a trade show. Come Monday morning, you better be going through your list of contest entries and begin the pre-qualifying process. And of course, stay in front of them on a regular basis through email marketing, because as we mentioned, they may not buy now, but they could at some point in the future.
Search Engine Marketing and Google Caffeine
Google’s recent introduction of their new search engine indexing platform Caffeine once again proves that Google is, without a doubt the cutting edge leader of online search.
Recognizing previous faults with their old search platform and evolving with the way that information is uploaded and shared throughout the web, Google Caffeine reinforces Google’s status of the “go-to” choice for performing search queries.
Websites and their corresponding web pages are more dynamic than ever with the inclusion of tagged images, videos and blog posts which are all uploaded in real time—making information that was indexed as little as a couple of weeks ago by Google’s crawlers out of date.
According to Google’s blog, the old system had to index the entire web (about a two week process) to produce new content to those performing a search. Caffeine provides the ability to index pages in near real time and include them in their indexing system without the wait—producing the freshest search results throughout multiple categories.
What does this mean from a marketing perspective? It means that our philosophy of “content is king” is more relevant than ever! Websites which produce fresh, relevant content on a continual basis will receive preferential treatment on Google’s search engine results pages.
Problem With Twitter – Twitter Over Capacity – Fail Whale
Since Tuesday, June 8, 2010, developers at the popular social media marketing platform, Twitter have been experiencing service side outage problems with their API (applications programing interfaces) resulting in users experiencing the dreaded, “Twitter is over capacity” error message.
The over capacity issue was actually thought to be contained by Twitter, but apparently the “rolling blackouts” have continued through Wednesday morning. Some users are able to access their Twitter accounts sporadically while others are getting no access at all. Some users are reporting access with limited functionality like the inability to see followers and those following them.
According to PC Magazine, the Twitter developers acknowledge that they “aren’t quite 100 percent yet” and have given no exact time frame to reach that point.