Monthly Archives: November 2012

• Saturday, November 17th, 2012

  Carry It All With a Budget Tote Bag

  Begin the Search Finding the perfect method to market your company can be as easy as using promotional products. Giving away these items is a win-win for everyone involved, your business because you have an easy and simple way to increase name recognition and your customer because they just received something for free that is also useful.  You will only have to make a decision about which particular items are going to be the best for your company. It’s In The Bag A very popular and useful item for getting the word out about your company is a promotional budget tote bag.  The choices of the shapes of these bags are only rivaled by the material choices available to make them with: Canvas – high …

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• Friday, November 16th, 2012

  New Client? Sell Yourself First

  One of the enduring thrills in marketing is when a new client comes on board, which means new revenue, new opportunities to connect their product with an audience, and a new chance to show them what excellent marketers we are. Then we start looking into the client and her product and now we start to wonder. Maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, or we wonder who’s going to want to buy this, and more to the point, how are we going to interest others?. Or, if it’s a service, we may go on Yelp and discover that the service isn’t really that popular, or people like the other one better, or the company has problems not related to the product exactly, but …

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• Thursday, November 15th, 2012

  Be On Time With a Promotional Travel Clock

  Find the Best Product When you are the one taking care of your marketing plan you need to be sure to include some promotional items as part of your method.  Using promotional products is a tried and true technique to make sure your name is spread all over the place.  There is no better way than to pick several of these products and hand them out to your target audience. Which One? You should take some time to determine which products are going to be the most ideal for your company.  Maybe pick some things that are a logical association with your business product or service.  A really good all around promotional item is the promotional travel clock as it is extremely popular with the …

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• Wednesday, November 14th, 2012

  PR, Advertising, or Both?

  A few years ago, I had the opportunity to work as a communications director for a political campaign. If you’ve ever worked on a political campaign, it will be apparent right away that your campaign co-workers believe that “communications director” is the glamour job. It’s certainly more glamorous than fundraising, organizing neighborhood canvassing teams, or combing through thousands registration forms to find out where the campaign should be canvassing. In fact, the people who have these other jobs are so taken with the communications post that it will not be surprising to find they too are marketing experts. Communications directors stand to get the blame for low turnout at press conferences, poor fundraising (“If only we had better press.”), and a bad candidate. The kicker? …

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• Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

  Hold Onto a Promotional Key Ring

  Time to Move In business you have to be moving forward, if you are not then you are falling behind.  So your marketing strategy has to be constantly evolving and moving ahead so that your name is out there and recognizable to a lot of people.  That said, one of the easiest and cheapest methods of getting the word out is to use promotional products. You Don’t Have To Spend a Lot The great thing about promotional product giveaways is that they can cost as little or as many dollars as you have in your marketing budget.  There are thousands to choose from so there is great flexibility: Different items can be targeted for different customers There are large items which show your name in …

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• Monday, November 12th, 2012

  Is There Ever a Good Time to Go Negative?

  Ideally, marketers would just be able to sell the virtues of the product we represent, the products would fly off the shelves, the client would get “puff” interviews on CNN, and we’d win awards and kudos from the trade association for our creativity. But it doesn’t always work that way. There may be a product that is no better, but more popular than yours. You may develop a personal distaste for your competitor, or wonder why consumers can’t see that your product is light years better. Maybe we should spell it out for them. Thus, the urge to “go negative.” In politics, this is expected. If you can get voters to loathe your opponent, they’ll vote for you. It’s an either-or kind of marketing decision. …

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• Sunday, November 11th, 2012

  Take a Sip from this Tumbler

  Check Out Your Options While considering your choices for marketing your company you have to bring every option into consideration.  Of course you want something that will make a statement, be easy to accomplish and catch your customer’s eyes.  One of the best ideas to consider are promotional products, they are a very popular way of spreading the word about your business. So What to Choose? You do have a wide array of options when you begin to research promotional items, but there is a new one on the scene that is very popular, it is a promotional tumbler with a straw.  These became very popular when the coffee houses started using them for their iced drinks.  Now everyone is walking around with their own …

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• Sunday, November 11th, 2012

  The Rise of the Second Screen

  The game is on, and the family is gathering around the TV set, but increasingly they’re bringing something else with them, be it a smartphone, or a laptop or a tablet. They’re watching this while they’re watching that. An infographic describes this new phenomenon as the Rise of the Second Screen, when TV went social. If millions of people are watching the game on TV, and millions more are commenting on it on Twitter or Facebook, from a marketing perspective, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find a way into that conversation. Infographic Credit: Visual.ly For example, let’s say we were in the pizza business. We could have an ad on TV that contained a call to action for some fantastic …

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• Friday, November 9th, 2012

  The 4 Stages of Social

  Social is one of the most overused words in the language, and it probably means different things to different people. We tend to use it in many different contexts too. Social Security doesn’t refer to our ability to get a date, it’s a pension program. Social studies is a course that teaches “civics”–the Constitution, the government–one could be a total hermit and still ace social studies. Then there’s the “social media,” which consists largely of typing words in a box and sending them to people we may not even know, or who may not be using their real names. It’s OK, we still consider that social. Let’s break down the stages of social. Recognition. They’ve come to your Website, that’s a big step. Interaction. They …

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• Thursday, November 8th, 2012

  Trade Show Boot Camp

  Trade shows can be profitable, educational and entertaining, but trade show survival is vastly different than your routine around the office. Here are some tips to make the trade show experience valuable and pain-free as possible. Prepare as much as you can before you leave for the show. Have your talking points and schedule laid out for you to reduce hassles. Prepare the one “engaging” question for your booth attendees. “Are you enjoying the show?” is OK, but trite. “Have you seen our latest promotion?” is better. Leave your new shoes at home. Ah, but you bought new shoes for the show. Leave them. Most large trade shows are housed in convention centers or other airplane hangers where you can expect to be walking on …

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