Marketing BEEP

Ways to Work with Other Companies

Economy

Collaborating with other companies is one way to improve cost-effectiveness. It makes sense in the current economy because people have less disposable income, so it is more important than ever to make your products the most attractive to them. Teaming up with other companies can help everyone involved in several ways. The companies may form a new entity and both contribute to the projects, or they may maintain their separate identities and attempt to draw on their existing brand power and customer base. Companies may print business cards or set up a joint website to promote their product and collaboration.
In today’s economy, it is more important than ever to find ways to make your company’s time and money go further than ever before. When customers have less disposable income, companies need to go the extra mile to streamline the way they develop and promote products, and collaborating with other companies is one way to do this.

Cost effectiveness

Teaming up with other companies can cut your costs and improve your production time. You can use virtual meetings and exchange information over the phone and computer to cut down on or eliminate travel costs, which saves both time and money. With software and the internet making large improvements in the past several years, companies should examine the possibilities for improving cost efficiency and cutting down on wasted time. Used effectively, online collaboration and virtual workspaces can streamline the way the company operates, as well as allowing people in various cities or countries to work together more easily.

Since there is input from more than one company, there is also the possibility for a wider range of ideas owing to the wider experience of the different companies. With enough organizing and communication skills, this can help to generate ideas more quickly and get products finished in a more timely fashion. 

Cross selling

 

Another way of working with other companies is to cross-sell products with them. This involves promoting complementary products on your website which suggest additional items and accessories. For example, if your website sells musical instruments, and the customer is looking at a guitar, you could place products such as guitar strings on the page to encourage them to purchase additional items. It is important that the products listed are complementary and that it makes sense to the customer to buy more than one of them at the same time. It also helps to have clear, easy to understand information and photos of items when possible. Usually, the products listed are the same price or a lower price than the original item, which also tends to encourage additional purchases.

In today’s economy, companies should try to find the most cost-effective strategies for marketing their products, and teaming up with other companies is one way they can cut costs and boost profits. Done correctly, collaboration with other companies can save everyone involved time and money, which is crucial in times of economic crisis.

How to do an Honest Assessment of your Marketing Campaign

Defining Success

To figure out how successful your marketing plan is, it is important to first define what you mean by "success." All too often, a company will waste money using whatever marketing strategy it can find and leave the rest up to luck. Decide how you are measuring the success of your marketing campaign, and then you can measure how successful it has been. Do you want to increase sales by a certain percentage? Do you want to reach a certain target market? Decide what success entails and then go out and measure it.

Tracking Results

 

If you want to reach a certain market, surveys and coupons can be used to track who is buying your products, and where they are buying them. Do you want to see if your customers are remaining loyal? It is usually much cheaper to keep a customer coming back than to spend money on more advertising to try to reach new customers. To get new customers, you need to find the most cost-effective ways to advertise that work. You need to find the way to get the best possible return for your investments, both in time and money. 

An inexpensive way to track customers' habits is through email newsletters, through which you can track their activity and offer promotions and surveys. A survey leading to some kind of offer can encourage a customer to share valuable information with you. Postcard queries and customer satisfaction queries can be very useful to hone in on what works and what doesn't, and promotions and incentives can be used to encourage customers to fill these out. These can be sent via email in newsletters or packages with products or in color brochures in a store or through the mail. These might ask what products the customer has purchased, why they purchased them, and what other products might be of interest to them. Online, you can add tracking codes to your pages to find out where a customer came from.

Determining Profit

Once you have some data, you can figure out your return on investment by dividing what you spend on market by your net profit. If it is higher than 1, you are making a profit; otherwise you are losing money. You can also evaluate where customers are coming from. If advertising on certain types of sites is making the most money, you can focus your marketing there and eliminate sites that aren't bringing in as many customers.

The most important part of a successful marketing plan is to get the most back for your investment. You want to market in the most cost-effective way to reach as many potential customers as you can as well as to keep repeat customers. Tracking sales and listening to customer feedback on surveys and customer satisfaction queries is an important way that you can eliminate ineffective strategies and focus more on effective strategies. If one strategy is not working, you can find out with these tactics and try something else rather than wasting money.

5 Keys to Effective Catalogs

Whether you are an old pro at printing catalogs for your business, or you are a catalog printing rookie, there are some things you need to know.  Here are five essential items for your mental toolkit.

Catalog Success Key Number One: Ask for Action!

There are far too many catalogs out there that do not include a call to action.  The best catalogs in the world will not be very effective if it does not tell the customer what he needs to do next to buy your product.  Always include several calls to action in your catalogs.  Whenever a customer sees a product he likes, you want him to know exactly how he can buy that product.  So make it easy for him to do just that.  Include your phone number or email address and the specific way to make an order.

Catalog Success Key Number Two: Contact Information

This pretty much goes hand in hand with key number one.  If the customer does not know how to contact you, she can’t order your products.  And if she can’t order your products, she can’t give you her money.  And if she can’t give you her money, your business is going to fail.  Make sure you clearly display your contact information (phone numbers, website addresses, email addresses) in several prominent areas in your catalog.

Catalog Success Key Number Three: Emphasize Your Company

You often hear about your “brand”.  Your brand is (or should be) incorporated into all of your marketing materials, including your catalogs.  Once you design an effective brand, and blend that into an attractive logo, use them!  Put it on the front of your catalog, and find a way to mix it into the contents of your catalog in an appealing way.  The more times a customer sees your logo and the “brand” that you are presenting, the better the chances that it will stick in his brain.

Catalog Success Key Number Four: Consistent Design

Your catalog should have a concept behind it, and that concept should permeate the entire catalog.  If you are going with a holiday theme, stick with it throughout the catalog.  Do not confuse the reader by switching up the catalog’s concept halfway through.  Come up with a theme or an idea that will drive your catalog, and use it all the way through the entire campaign.

Catalog Success Key Number Five: It’s Still About Quality

The word “quality” is thrown around a lot, and it may feel stale.  But when it comes to your catalog printing, it is still vital.  You absolutely must use quality products in the design and production of your catalog.  Anything less than quality will be noticeable to your readers, and will give them the impression that you are cheap.  It is far better to spend more money on a quality catalog than to offend potential customers with a cheap one.  Even if your products are of the highest quality, your customers won’t know it if you hand them a cheap catalog.

 

Too Much Information: Solutions for a Clutter-free Brochure

The challenge when designing a brochure is to incorporate the necessary information, while at the same time keeping the design uncluttered. Very often, clients give their designer too much information for a brochure. Sometimes the only way to solve this problem is to ask your client if you can cut out some of the images or copy they've sent you. But when this is not an option, here are a few more ideas for creating a clutter-free brochure that satisfies your client's needs.

Rewriting copy
Instead of asking to cut full paragraphs, ask your client if you can rewrite the copy they've sent you. Focus on a headline that makes an offer and a clear call to action. The headline should lead a reader into the brochure, and the information inside the brochure should lead to the call to action. When writing the technical information, draw each feature back to a benefit. Ask yourself, what will appeal to my audience? The fact that this pair of golfing gloves will provide comfort is a plus, of course, but most of all you want your reader to understand that using these gloves will make them a pro. Practical benefits should always be included, but don't forget to also appeal to a customer's desired lifestyle.

Subtitles
Break up long blocks of information with subtitles. This gives a reader the option to easily skim through the information in a brochure. Just make sure that your subtitles still provide the main points so that when skimming, a customer is led to the call to action. The best way to do this is to write subtitles that point to the offer in the headline. For instance, if the headline offers condos that provide the luxurious lifestyle customers have always dreamed of, the subtitles could point to no more yardwork, the large swimming pool, a clubhouse, and other such ease-of-living appeals.

White space
Keep enough white space between information so that the brochure's appearance is uncluttered. White space is a great way to break up copy and also lead the reader to the next point. Don't forget also to leave blank space along the margin of the page - the sides of the page. Margins create an organized look, much more appealing than cramming information into every corner of the brochure.

Size
You can always talk to your client about going with the next larger size for their brochure. Of course, this may not work for some purposes, but an oversized brochure catches the eye more easily than the standard 8.5x11 size. Remember to remind your client that the size of a brochure refers to the size of the paper when unfolded.

Folding
Another way to spread out the information in a brochure is through the type of fold you choose. The tri-fold is the most popular because it presents the information in a series of steps, but you may decide that a gate fold or half fold allows you to better organize information. An accordian fold has the benefit of folding a larger sheet of paper into the size required for brochure holders, giving you more real estate to work with while maintaining a versatile marketing tool.

Whatever you and your client decide is best for the brochure, always design according to the brand of the company. If you truly capture the image of your client, you'll be better able to convince them to cut down or reorganize their information.

Print Industry Needs to Use Online Resources to Its Advantage

What does it mean nowadays to be employed at a printing company or a company whose main business is something printed? It means being scared of losing your job (good-bye, Rocky Mountain News) and it means toughening up and using the very thing that is helping take printing jobs away – the Internet.
 

This isn’t new news; the Internet’s impending doom on printed materials, from magazine to print marketing materials has been a long time coming according to some. But, most of print is still holding on. Yes, magazines and newspapers are folding, but not all of them are. There are nearly 300 national magazines still alive and well in the United States, not counting regional and city magazines, as well as niche magazines. There are probably hundreds of small and large magazines dying every year, but hundreds more spring up each year as well to take those magazines’ places, as well as fill a few other niches.
 

A Fast Company article likens newspapers to travel agents. It’s not quite that bad yet, but it is heading in that direction. The good thing is that print has time to make changes; travel agents didn’t.
 

Use Each Medium’s Strengths
As print budgets get smaller though, it doesn’t make sense to shut out the Internet realm and pretend like if you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. The way to make print and online resources work together is to embrace each and use each for its strengths. For example, no one wants to read a feature story that takes 5 or 6 clicks of the mouse to get through. And no one wants to read about last month’s newest craze or hot news story a month late. So, in this case, for magazines, it makes sense to use print for features and display shorter, up-to-date stories for the magazine’s Web site. 
 

Use Each Medium to Entice Readers to the Other
Many magazines are printing shorter articles and how-to’s, with extra tips or “insider info” on the Web site. This is a great way to get print readers to become Internet visitors and vice versa. By placing an enticing nugget for a feature on a Web site and only providing the story in print, many magazines and newspapers can survive using both mediums.
 

Broaden Your Customer or Reader Base
A direct mail printing company can offer an online catalog as well as a print catalog and provide each to differing customers for a broad reach. Even though older adults are logging on to the Internet in droves, many are still scared of it. That audience could be reached by print, while the Web savvy can be reached by Web site. This includes two audiences whereas if you only had print or an online presence, you would only reach one audience.
 

There are over 300 million people in the United States, and only 31 million laptops were sold in 2007. That’s a lot of people needing print materials to read at the dinner table, in the airports and anywhere else electricity and WiFi is not readily available. Print still has an audience; you just may have to get to them through the Internet.