Posts by Tim:
- What is our purpose for existing?
- Who is our target market?
- Does anyone need what we are selling?
- If there is a need for what we are selling, can we be profitable?
- What are our competitors up to?
- Can we reduce expenses without harming the product?
- Do we have the right leadership? Read the rest of this entry “
- Measure customer satisfaction
- Make your marketing more efficient
- Find new customers
- Develop a customer-centric product development cycle
The Maturation of Social Media Marketing
June 16th, 2010
Tim Newhard, Business Development Manager
Wow! Social Media sure is popular. And its use as a marketing vehicle has greatly accelerated as social media networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook have been inundated with Babyboomers. In fact, the research organization Forester predicts that spending on social media marketing will soon outpace spending for email marketing (which is in some circles a form of social media marketing).
So what does it all mean?
In short, since social media marketing has come about so quickly – a lot of people probably don’t know how to use it. As a result, there are lots of businesses wasting time and money on a medium that is rich with data and buzz, but no clear use for the average business.
The average dialogue regarding social media probably goes like this: Gosh, everyone I know uses social media, in fact, I read in an article that the average Facebook user spends ONE HOUR a day on Facebook (true fact). I should open up a Facebook account. End Quote.
This idea has good intentions, but it lacks direction, goals, and any resemblance to a strategy.
Like any new thing, people are bound to grope around for answers while other people will claim to have all the answers in an effort to lead the groping masses to higher profitability. In an effort to help the masses, while not proclaiming to have all the answers, here are some social media tips from a real marketing strategy consulting and design firm: Read the rest of this entry “
10 Questions You Should Never Stop Asking About Your Business
April 19th, 2010Marc Kramer wrote an article for Forbes Magazine last November. The title of the article is The 10 Questions You Should Never Stop Asking. The article is based in experiences the author had while trying to captain a sinking publishing business. Here are his 10 questions:
Better Market Research = Better Profits
April 6th, 2010The future success of your business depends on your ability to perform meaningful market research. Does this come as a surprise? It shouldn’t. Market research allows you to:
Assuming that you are selling a useful good or service, knowing any or all of the bullet points above would be considered useful by most business people.
A study done by an Australian research group discovered that firms that had strong market research capabilities had greater sales growth, profitability, customer satisfaction, and new product success rates were firms that had significantly greater market research abilities (Vorhies, Harker, Rao 1999). Read the rest of this entry “
Forbes has our Back
March 31st, 2010Forbes has our Back.
Well… they don’t literally have our back, but we are preaching mostly the same thing. In a recent article by Larry Light, marketing is portrayed as one of the most important business functions that on many levels is not managed like a business function.
Mr. Light proposes that marketing is run like a trade. What he means by this is that marketers are becoming increasingly specialized. This is to the point that marketers in a particular specialty our unable to see the marketing and organizational big pictures and see their methodology, theory, or technology as the only true way to market things. They become disconnected from the organization they are a part or servicing.
Mr. Light feels that this trend is devaluing marketing. We completely agree with this notion.
We feel that all marketing strategies should be composed of the right tactical mix of many marketing tactics (trades). We also strive to help our clients understand how marketing is directly integrated with their key performance metrics (profit, sales volume, lead conversion). Read the rest of this entry “
What Motivates Your Customers?
March 10th, 2010Motivation is hard to quantify. It is not a tangible thing. Motivation does not make a sound, it does not hurt when it hits you in the head, and it cannot be measured with a ruler. Motivation is just a way of describing what drives us to do things. Sometimes the thing that drives us to do things is physiological – this is what drives us to want to eat and drink. But, what drives us to exhibit consumer behavior, buying stuff, can usually be explained as motivation. So, what motivates us to buy stuff?
Motivation is complicated, however motivational theory models do exist and they can be used to predict behavior. One that I subscribe to in particular is the Expectancy Theory of Motivation.
The theory itself is a little complex and has countless uses in defining motivation. From this theory we can glean that people are motivated to do things in order to achieve outcomes based on the desirability and probability of achieving those outcomes. Read the rest of this entry “
