Operating a small business using Advertising and Promotion

You are an expert in your field. You know the history of how your product was developed and produced, how your service has evolved to meet the needs of today’s consumer. You know how you can make your customer’s lives easier. And you know how to budget for payroll, production, purchasing, warehousing, and transport.

But it amazes me how little most business owners know about how to get the word out about their product or service. They don’t think twice about spending to produce or stock more products, or designing a beautiful storefront or warehouse, but that same owner will not spend much at all on advertising.

This tends to be the same business owner who wonders why advertising “doesn’t work for me”. This is woman who won’t take calls from advertising salespeople. Receptionists who are trained to screen out the ad reps. And if a call does get to the boss, he sounds utterly disgusted to be listening to – ick! – an ad salesperson.

This may be understandable. None of us want to be scammed or taken advantage of, and we feel this especially in areas we don’t know much about. What we fail to realize is that most salespeople are extremely knowledgeable about their product and may be able to educate us in new areas if we allow them the privilege.

My advice to the business owner is to make appointments with as many ad salespeople as possible, and take all the information you can—you’re not obliged to purchase. When you do purchase, you will know what you’re buying. Ad reps are happy to invest the time to educate you. Talk to the newspaper guys, the radio gals, anyone who can add to your knowledge base about promoting your business. You are bound to learn something new. People aren’t going to become a customer if they don’t know you exist.

I especially advise business owners to talk to advertising and marketing people daily to discover what is happening in their market. Salespeople have access to research data that would cost a business owner thousands of dollars to produce.

As a business consultant I do a lot of research so that I can make intelligent recommendations to my clients. I receive some of the most current data from salespeople who have to be knowledgeable in order to sell their product. When I make a recommendation to a client about what they should or shouldn’t be doing with their advertising dollars, that decision is generally backed by hours of research that validate any claims.

There is more to come on this subject. One final thought, if you do not learn more about how to get customers in the door, your competition will.

Gladstone & Associates assists You in Building Your Brand

A Brand is Not a Logo or Slogan - How to Build Your Own Brand with Style
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Doug_Dvorak]Doug Dvorak

Remember that it is not just a logo or a tag line that makes a brand. There are any number of companies that have very attractive logos and even catchier tag lines. But they are not necessarily strong brands.

The logo and the slogan merely represent your brand. There are a host of factors that contribute to the building of a brand. Your product/service, customer service, pricing, history, your own reputation as a person, your company's reputation, legal wrangling, hiring policy, environmental concerns, ethical quotient, transparency with shareholders, sharing profits with stakeholders, and of course the logo and the slogan - all these determine your brand.

Each one of these factors holds a lot of power over your brand. A glossy sign and a catchy tag line cannot fool people in to buying from a store that treats genders unequally. Wal-Mart is experiencing a dip in its customer base as the number of employees' gender inequality cases are piling up against the retail giant. Seventy five percent of Americans felt that Wal Mart to be the number one destination for discount shopping two years ago. Now the number has dipped to sixty percent. Obviously any self respecting woman would have questions in mind while shopping at a Wal Mart store, "Do these people treat women employees unfairly?" "How do they treat women customers?" That's not a comfortable situation. Of course, there are other factors like steep competition from trendy stores like Target. But a sullied reputation undermines other advantages like low prices and a one-stop-shopping experience.

So, building a brand carefully takes into consideration all the above mentioned factors, and does not just concentrate on designing a logo and adding a slogan. There are discerning customers that would prefer a company that pays handsome dividends to its shareholders or treats its employees without any discrimination. Americans value values.

First Things First

The first and foremost thing that comes in to building a brand is - answering some vital branding questions:

How good is your product or service?

Get the Basics Right. The product or service that you stand for is the foundation of your brand. No amount of brand promotion is going to help a product or a service of inferior quality. Any kind of brand promotion will be an exercise in futility for low quality products or services. Your product or service must be good. In fact, it is suggested that you develop an unbeatable quality product or service. It will make your brand building easier. If you cannot make your product or service stand above the rest of the crowd at least make it visible among them. Let it have one distinguishable feature.

Next ask yourself:

• "Why am I here"?

• "How can I serve well"?

• "Who can I serve"?

Then the next set of questions should be:

• "What or how I can produce or serve differently"?

• "What unique way can my product or services be useful to people"?

Well, the answer you get is going to be your brand.

Doug Dvorak is the CEO of DMG Inc., a worldwide organization that assists clients with productivity training, corporate humor and workshops, as well as other aspects of sales and marketing management. Mr. Dvorak's clients are characterized as Fortune 1000 companies, small to medium businesses, civic organizations and service businesses. Mr. Dvorak has earned an international reputation for his powerful educational methods and motivational techniques, as well as his experience in all levels of business, corporate education and success training. http://www.dougdvorak.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Doug_Dvorak http://EzineArticles.com/?A-Brand-is-Not-a-Logo-or-Slogan---How-to-Build-Your-Own-Brand-with-Style&id=998698

Branding is the Key to Business Success

IBM and GE - How to Brand Like the Big BoysBy [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Doug_Dvorak]Doug Dvorak
Started in 1880 as Computing Tabulating- Recording Company (C-T-R), IBM has been rolling out one innovative machine after another every few years. It has been involved in the invention of the first computer for space programs. From helping the US government in calculating the census and to launching space shuttles, IBM has been doing a yeoman service for the country where brand promotion through advertising is not required much.
IBM still remains the world's largest provider of computer services. Yet the first manufacturer of computers needs to spend $632 millions a year (in 2006) on advertisements to beat out the competition from its closest rival Microsoft.
GE
'We bring good things to life' is a very familiar slogan that any American can easily recall. The slogan has been recently replaced by the slogan 'imagination at work'. GE has remodeled its logo and given a new direction to its business. It has launched an "Ecoimagination" initiative to project itself as an eco-friendly and 'green' company.
Thomas Alva Edison, the founder of GE, invented nearly a thousand products. Out of them the incandescent electric lamp is the most prominent one. Today the company manufactures jet engines and generates wind energy. GE has stayed in business because of a series of innovations and the invention of a number of products over the years. If it was a dynamo and an electric fan back in the late 1800s and the early 1900s, it's the light VCD to detect health defects faster, which GE has come up with recently. There are a myriad of products that GE has given to the world in addition to these.
Right from day one, even before the company had a logo, GE advertised for its products in the print media. It was in 1892 that the logo 'ge' was created. The company regularly promoted its brand in the print and visual media. Now its ad copies have a lot of white space signifying the company's openness and accessibility.
Doug Dvorak is the CEO of DMG Inc., a worldwide organization that assists clients with productivity training, corporate humor and workshops, as well as other aspects of sales and marketing management. Mr. Dvorak's clients are characterized as Fortune 1000 companies, small to medium businesses, civic organizations and service businesses. Mr. Dvorak has earned an international reputation for his powerful educational methods and motivational techniques, as well as his experience in all levels of business, corporate education and success training - http://www.dougdvorak.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Doug_Dvorak http://EzineArticles.com/?IBM-and-GE---How-to-Brand-Like-the-Big-Boys&id=987161

Internet Marketing Techniques

Profitable Internet Marketing - Latest 4 Persuasive Methods to Excel at Internet Marketing
By Sean R Mize

Compare to traditional media, the internet is by far effective in creating brand awareness and reaching your target market from across the globe. It is also considered cheaper considering the amount of exposure it can give your website and your product which can lead to impressive sales and profits.

Here are the 4 persuasive methods to excel at internet marketing:

1. Make your website search engine-friendly. Search engines are still the best sources of qualified traffic in the internet today. Thus, if you want to drive interested people to your website, you need to optimize your content so it will match relevant searches that are being made by your target market. This can lead to improved page ranking and additional page views.

2. Use autoresponders. Promoting your business online can be time-consuming, tedious, and downright exhausting. That is why, you need to automate your other tasks such as providing quick replies to your email inquiries, managing your email marketing lists, and promoting your business through email marketing. These can be handled by one powerful marketing tool called autoresponder.

3. Know how to convert your online visitors to potential clients. Every visitor on your website is a potential client. However, there is no assurance that your visitors will come back after their initial visit. So, how can you make sure that you can still get in touch with them? You can do so through list building. This is a marketing technique that allows you to capture the email addresses of your potential clients so you can send them follow-up emails or email advertisements.

4. Build and strengthen your credibility online. As you know, people will only buy from marketers whom they trust and consider an expert on their niche. Communicate your knowledge by writing and submitting articles on publishing sites to easily win the trust of your target market.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize
http://EzineArticles.com/?Profitable-Internet-Marketing---Latest-4-Persuasive-Methods-to-Excel-at-Internet-Marketing&id=971743