Marketing Wisdom Archives - Page 31 of 38

THE POWER OF DEMONSTRATIONS

October 12, 2011 by Scott Flood

One of the most effective ways to convince your prospects of your value is to show them. While demonstrations might sound like a relic from the days when drummers peddled their wares from door to door, the technique is as powerful as ever, for everything from consumer products to business services.

When container ship line APL was trying to convince shippers of the many advantages of double-stack intermodal cars (the ones that look like a truck trailer sitting atop another), executive Don Orris kept hearing concerns about the quality of the ride within the shipping containers. Shippers worried that their delicate merchandise would be jostled and damaged during transit.

SUCCESS STORY: HERITAGE ON RYE

September 28, 2011 by Scott Flood

You operate a century-old restaurant that everyone loves, but often forgets when faced with all sorts of well-advertised chains. How do you bring people back to the table?

Shapiro’s Delicatessen has been serving corned beef and pastrami sandwiches and other Kosher-style deli fare to Indianapolis residents since Louis Shapiro found his way to the Circle City just after the turn of the last century. The restaurant was still a local favorite (and even managed to impress visiting New Yorkers), but saw its business facing tougher competition.

SUCCESS STORY: DIFFERENTIATING WITH A COLORING BOOK

September 14, 2011 by Scott Flood

If you’re selling a high-quality product in a category that’s considered to be a commodity, how can you set yourself apart?

Plymate Image Mats provides a higher-quality product with far superior service in a market that’s saturated with – and accustomed to – low-end competitors. Their challenge is twofold: convince prospects that they need more than what they’re already buying, then sell it to them.

SUCCESS STORY: LIVELY FUNERAL DIRECTORS

August 31, 2011 by Scott Flood

How do you convince people that your business is truly a part of the community when they only associate you with death and sadness?

Like most family-owned funeral homes, Ziemer Funeral Homes had been experiencing growing pressure from roll-ups of local competitors and other national chains. They wanted to remind potential customers that they are truly local businesspeople who hope to serve the community for decades to come.

ONE STEP TO MAKE ANY PRESS RELEASE MORE EFFECTIVE

August 24, 2011 by Scott Flood

As I’ve said before, most editors are inundated by press releases sent by companies and organizations that desperately want to be covered.

Amazingly, many of them miss a simple step that can dramatically increase the likelihood that their release will be among the few that will actually be picked up and used.

SUCCESS STORY: BREEDING BETTER BABIES

August 10, 2011 by Scott Flood

How do you convince mothers-to-be that your local hospital is a better place for giving birth than the big-city hospitals that are just a short (if frenzied) drive away?

Bloomington Hospital faced just that situation in trying to promote its maternity services. They knew that a hospital’s image is particularly important when it come to maternity. Parents-to-be labor to choose the right site for their arrivals. With powerful challengers less than an hour away, this hospital needed a campaign that could deliver.

WHERE’S THE PEE-ZONE?

August 3, 2011 by Scott Flood

If you’re going to come up with a cleverly invented name or spelling for your product or service, make sure it doesn’t create any inadvertent pronunciations.

Case in point: Pizza Hut has been promoting its line of calzones as P’Zones. They want you to pronounce that as “puh-zones.”

COWERING CAN COST YOU BUSINESS

July 20, 2011 by Scott Flood

Sometimes, businesses have to deliver bad news to customers. That’s a fact of life, but it’s rarely easy to do. In most cases, the best way to do it is just that — do it, get it done, and move on. If the business relationship is solid, it will withstand one instance of bad news.

Not long ago, a service provider with whom I’ve worked for well over a decade decided that it was just too tough to share some bad news. As a result, they damaged their working relationship with me, and I’m willing to wager they’ve done the same with other clients.

ON THE CARE AND FEEDING OF EDITORS, PT. 2

July 13, 2011 by Scott Flood

In my last post, I talked about the role of editors and why most are comfortable with publicity. This week, I’d like to offer some simple advice that will make you a valuable resource for an editor instead of being viewed as that most despised of creatures, the “flack.”

The most important advice of all is to never send an editor anything that doesn’t have relevance to his or her audience. If the editor runs a magazine for chicken farmers, his readers probably won’t care about a new device to floss swine teeth. Not only will the editor delete your news release; he’ll store your name in his memory as someone who wastes his time. Each time you do that, you lose more credibility. Eventually, your emails will be filtered directly into the trash.