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Get More Results with Soft Marketing
Getting product to market is very important in order to see sales and return on investment. The trick with marketing nowadays is the approach to which marketing is done. Customers are tired of the obnoxious methods of marketing which very rarely yield conversion. The methodology which seems to be the most successful is soft marketing or “un-marketing”. What do we mean by this? The best way to make a sale is to build a relationship first with the customer and then the customer will come back to purchase the product from you. Yes, you do need to market the product traditionally, but do it with a friendly approach. People are not going to buy if they are pounced upon.
There are many ways to market products to customers softly. Some of those methods are through publications such as email newsletters, blogs, newspaper articles and the like. Another method is by just establishing a relationship with personal contact either face-to-face or with remembrances of special days like anniversaries and birthdays. People will come to you to purchase whatever product or service from you because they like you and remember you for what you did for them. The product becomes irrelevant to the situation. Greeting cards do a great job of this.
One company which has seized this niche is SendOutCards. They allow people to easily send custom greeting cards to customers for various reasons. By sending a card for a birthday or any other special day, the customer will come back to you for whatever product or service you may be offering. The best part of the product is that it ends up being cheaper than traditional cards purchased in the store. I can attest to this system because I am a customer myself and have found it to be inexpensive and efficient.
I can’t share enough how many people have tried to get me to buy into things by slipping them past me via lunches which were intended to be friendly. Personally, I don’t like being sold goods this way as it rushes the relationship. Buying a product is similar to dating someone. There has to be a period of getting to know the person before a bill of goods can be sold easily.
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Tags: Relationship marketing, Send Out Cards, soft marketing, un-marketing | 
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Using Information Tools Rather Than Just Having Them
Information technology has always been a race to see who can claim the bragging rights to who has the newest technologies. In the race to have great marketing, it is also important to know how the tools that to best utilize those tools. If the tools developed for us are used properly they can greatly help our advancement.
New developments in software are constantly coming out and marketed to us. Everything that comes out is almost forced upon us not for what it can do for us, but just as a money maker. Yes…we all need to make money from our products, but those products also should be more useful to us than the previous versions. Most of the time, the new features that are developed are geared more for large enterprises than the small businesses which certainly outnumber the large corporations. Very few of the advancements in software technology help the little guy do his work more efficiently. New features that help the small business come along every few years rather than every year like most software packages.
For example, software productivity suites such as Microsoft Office come out almost every year to every other year. However, putting the cost of upgrading aside for the moment, when was the last time that a new feature was introduced that enabled a great new feature for the masses? It’s been a while. Most of the recent versions have features that support expensive network infrastructures rather than helping someone create a better document that is viewable by everyone without needing yet other piece of software.
In order to keep up, we are forced to have to have the newest and we all then can claim we have the newest. But…Does the newest thing on the market actually make your business better? In my experience, it’s not the amount of solutions you have or the amount of money that has been spent; rather, it is the way in which those tools have helped to increase your productivtiy and get the job done faster. In most cases, the same thing we had a few years ago will get the same job done in the same amount of time. All that changes, for the most part, is the user interface.
As the old addage goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well, for the most part it is correct. But, if what you have is doing the job for you and helping you to increase your bottom line, why upgrade to a new version just because it’s there. One thing I always do when a new package is announced is to look at what it has to offer me before I hand over the money. If it offers a ground breaking development over what I have, I’ll go for it. But, if it’s really insignificant, I’ll wait till the next version and repeat the process next time meanwhile increasing my ROI on my last investment.
In an age where more and more is done via the Internet, our tools need to be able to reflect this major change in the way we work. If developments don’t move in that direction, then there is no need to change our tools. The same tools from the past will continue to do the job. It’s not what you have, but rather how you use them to your advantage that makes the tools useful tools and investments.
Internet Usage vs. Performance
The Internet has become a vital part of business. As a precautionary measure, businesses have restricted access or blocked entire sites to employees because they are distractions. Unfortunately, some of the sites that are blocked are vital to today’s business operations.
Many companies still block sites such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter from employees because of the invitation to get side tracked from work. However, blocking these sites in today’s business world is also behind the times. Professionals need access to these sites as well. They are a means of modern business communications.
Back in the early days when bandwidth was limited, network administrators capped what sites and services could be accessed so that the connection would not be burdened by employees doing unnecessary tasks. However, now some of those limitations are actually prohibiting employees from doing necessary work.
Although it was always stated that bandwidth was limited and setting limits had to be done, there was always the underling reason of keeping employees on task. However, with new social media and online portals, it has become harder to lock out sites that were once forbidden.
Young employees just getting out of school depend on these services as they depend on their legs for walking. Therefore, not having access to these tools is an impediment to their working. So, the question becomes in the workplace, “What is more important, performance or Internet usage?”
When I was going for my Masters in Business Administration, my professor used to make reference to the need to look at a person’s performance as opposed to the amount of time they spent at the job. The same principle pertains to how we must look at the Internet and all of its tools.
We have to remember that the Internet has become a huge tool for doing business. It allows us to gain access to information that at one time would have taken days of research to accumulate. Therefore, do we bite off our noses to spite our faces to keep people in line or do we begin to learn how to trust and evaluate on a different level than before?
Importance of Comaraderie
Camaraderie or the fostering of relationships among colleagues is critical to an organization. Not only is it needed internally, but externally as well for marketing reasons.
It was once said that “No man is an island.” That statement is so true. Part of being human is interacting with other people, talking to and getting to know them personally. That small bit of interaction with others helps solidify relationships between people. If people don’t get to interact with each other, camaraderie is lost and the potential connections are missed.
Camaraderie is not just something that is among friends which starts in school. It is the key ingredient to making connections with people in business. Small businesses thrive on it because the number of people working in the organization is small. As the organization grows, the concept should be kept alive and fostered by management, but often it fails thus causing the organization to fall apart.
A new generation of businesses is being born with the advancement of Web 2.0 technologies, but that doesn’t mean that online relationships are going to replace old fashioned face to face relationships. It is actually now more important to do the face-to-face so that we continue to develop our social skills which have gotten lax. So, we need to come reinvent old fashioned ways of fostering camaraderie with customers, employees and contractors.
Getting repeat customers could also be a result of comraderie. The person making the sales contacts should make an effort to get to know potential clients and do what is necessary to gel with them. If a strong connection is made, a repeat customer for life is made.
It is also important to establish relationships with existing customers through simple gatherings somewhere on a scheduled basis. For example, I know of a small business located in Celebration, Florida called Owner’s Locker where the founder meets members for a glass of wine at the France pavilion in Epcot Center. Not only does this allow the owner, John, to get to know his customers, but also allows him to get direct feedback. It’s also a means of promoting the business itself.
One of the newest things that can be done is to setup a private social networking site and combine that with some sort of social event, such as a happy hour. This combination not only puts a face to a name, but we also get to really know a person outside of the online relationship.
Once we’ve established these connections, these connections with others will help build an organization from the inside out and the outside in. These relationships will be a form of public relations, in a sense, for the organization. This reputation will allow the organization to grow in leaps and bounds. But…without putting the effort into building the camaraderie, the potentials will be lost entirely and people will be driven away, customers, employees and anyone else that works in conjunction with the organization.
So, one of the biggest goals that can be set for an organization is to establish a sense of comraderie with all constituents, internal and external. You will be glad it was done because it will pay back in multitudes at the end.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: Comraderie, social networking, work environment, workplace behavior | No Comments »
New Features of Joomla! 1.6 CMS
Joomla!, the open source CMS (content management system) has made great progress in its development since its early versions which were a cousin of Mambo. The developers of Joomla have been very busy building a new version of the CMS which will greatly improve the operations of the previous versions.
In the current version, 1.5, the menu system was overhauled for easier use. The multiple different menus that delineated certain related tasks were combined into one logical place and the installation of extensions was made easier. For those of us who go under the hood, the coding from version 1.0 to 1.5 also changed.
Now, bigger changes will be coming to version 1.6 which is now in the Alpha stage of development. One of the changes will be in extensions management which will greatly improve how we work and update extensions currently installed in the system. However, two of the greatest changes are to the content structure, the ACL (Access Control List) and the content management structure.
In the previous versions of Joomla!, users could only be designated as to how much they could edit content or change the physical structure of the CMS. Now, with the updated ACL, different users will be able to be given permissions to edit and publish certain pages, a big development step which other CMS sytems already use.
The second major change is in the structure of organization of content. In previous versions, there were two layers, sections and categories. One would create different sections and within those sections would create various categories, but you could not create anything lower than the first layer of categories. Now, with the proposed new structure, sub-categories will be allowed to greatly break down the content articles.
These advancements from my perspective will open up great possibilities for the system to not only the small business owner, but also larger organizations such as schools which need individualized editing for classwork. There are many other possibilities which will open up with a little bit of creativity.
Customer Loyalty: Key to Success
Businesses exist only because of one thing, customers. Without customers there is no business. Therefore, customer relationships and how they are treated are key to the success and growth of your business whether online or offline.
There are many ways to develop great relationships with customers. The old fashioned way was to visit them in person and make the face to face contact so that the connection was made on what you do, what they do and how your service could improve their bottom line. Most of the time this was done using real world examples that existed and could be referred to in a conversation.
The new kid on the block for developing quality relationships with customers is social media. This new online development which came as part of the Web 2.0 philospohy has made developing relationships with prospective customers huge. In the past, your relationships with prospects was limited to how far you could travel in a day, unless you traveled overnight to a distant locale. Now through the Internet, it is now possible to build a relationship with someone in not only another city, but in other countries in the same day.
We are all familiar with comfort foods. They are the foods that make us feel good. Customer relationships work the same way. Customers will build trust in you after a while and begin to turn to you for their answers the same way they turn to their favorite comfort food when in need of something tasty and close to the heart. Therefore, it is important to keep the trust in place between you and your customer.
It has always been my belief that the customer should be treated with the utmost respect as they are the reason why you remain in business. If the customer keeps coming back to you, it is in your best interest to also help them out in some way so that they continue to spread the word about you. Great customer relationships will result in great word-of-mouth advertising, something that is greater than any advertising method available. However, it is up to the way customer relations is addressed that will determine your destiny as a professional.
Increasing SEO…Interview with Hugh Macken
On June 24th, I had the great opportunity to be interviewed by Hugh Macken of VMR Communications of Marshfield, Wisconsin on BlogTalk Radio. Our hour long discussion covered various methods of using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to increase your organic search engine ranking.
With a new website coming live just about every minute, getting good search engine ranking is critical to getting your site viewed by visitors and potential customers. In the interview, we covered topics such as proper site design to enhance search engine friendliness all the way to the importance of inbound links to your site from high ranking websites such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Some people say that search engine optimization is only a fad, however, the principles of proper site design, content creation, and site management are the key. There are many blunders that are done continuously which hurt a site’s rankings. Avoiding these blunders from the start is the key to your site’s popularity among the search engines. Just like personal popularity in school and at work, web sites are judged by the search engines in the same manner. Getting over those obstacles is your goal.
I invite you all to listen to this conversation that may take edge off your mind about search engine optimization and how it can serve as a major marketing advantage to your business and your own personal professional reputation.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: search engine friendly, Search Engine Optimization, search engine ranking, SEO, web site, website design | 2 Comments »
Welcoming Thoughts and Ideas
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: Internet communications, Internet Marketing, SAK Information Systems, Social Media, web technologies | 1 Comment »
