To compete in this new environment, many marketers are finding themselves at square one, revisiting the basic tenets of connecting with consumers. Along with the economic shift, we have also seen a shift in the media landscape and audience media-consumption habits. So the fundamentals of how marketers approach and engage consumers must change as well. Here are a few marketing axioms and a look at how various brands are successfully approaching consumers in the new economic environment.

Connect on a personal level
Create opportunities to connect with consumers on a personal level. Find out what they think, what they dream and what they want. This affords you insight into their perspectives, motivations and needs. In turn, you can leverage this knowledge to benefit your brand as you provide real answers to the needs of your consumers.

Asus and Intel did this with the development of WePC.com. The two partnered with FM Publishing to create a site where users can share their ideas for computer features and uses, thereby giving the technology producers acute insights into consumer motivations. The crowdsourcing experiment has a yield of over 2,138 ideas submitted, 13,566 votes received and 3,944 “dream PCs” described.

This past year, the marketers at Lufthansa Airlines devised a method of connecting travelers with friends and family via MySkyStatus.com. Lufthansa established the site as a social utility to keep travelers connected with their social networks while flying. I had the pleasure of working on this campaign while at Profero NY (Lufthansa’s digital agency) and found that in the course of keeping users connected with each other, the airline successfully kept them connected with their brand.

This year, American Express put a social spin on crowdsourcing with its “Members Project” campaign. Leveraging social-media tools, American Express allocated a portion of its philanthropic spending and energy toward the causes advocated by voters at its site. Not only has the campaign been effective in generating a great deal of media exposure for the brand, but it also provides the team at American Express extensive insight into the values and motivations of its target consumers. This is precisely the type of intelligence brands need to facilitate connections with consumers.

Wear your heart on your sleeve
Develop a set of core values and create opportunities to communicate those values to your consumer audience. The more honest and revealing you are in communicating these values, the greater your brand’s potential to live in the heart of consumers as more than just a name.

As a corollary, join a cause that aligns your brand with a social initiative that reflects its core values. Social-cause marketing is an effective means of communicating that your organization shares a common set of values with your target consumer. Also, create opportunities for your consumers to get involved alongside your brand (either through sponsored events or purchase options that support your given cause financially through a portion of the proceeds).

Yoplait employs this strategy with its “Save to Save Lives,” where it donates $.10 in support of breast cancer research for every lid sent in by consumers (up to $1.5 million) with a guaranteed minimum of $500,000. The project successfully affiliates the brand with an issue that is of great importance to its largely female consumer base.

This year, Puma (in partnership with Fuse Project) is exhibiting this principle with the brand’s “Clever Little Bag” project. In attempt to reduce waste for the sake of sustainability, Puma has re-thought the consumer-packaging experience and reinvented the shoe box into something more eco-friendly. This initiative reaches beyond immediate commercial goals to satisfy larger social initiatives. Clever Little Bag is part of Puma’s corporate sustainability program that intends to cut its water, energy and diesel consumption by more than 60%.

When your brand stands for social progress, consumers will stand with your brand.

Constantly innovate
Innovation is the hallmark of a premium brand. Constant development and improvement distinguishes market leaders from their competitors. The economic performance of brands such as Apple, which has maintained a sales growth rate of 89% over the last three years, demonstrates that consumers recognize this commitment to excellence.

This year, Apple continued its legacy of innovation with the introduction of the iPad. At product launch, Gap was among the first set of marketers to establish a presence on the new device with its “1969 Stream” app. Gap partnered with AKQA to create a multimedia experience full of robust content intended to showcase all that the new platform has to offer. As an early adopter, Gap gained a competitive advantage as one of the few marketers with a presence on the iPad at launch.

This year, Domino’s Pizza communicated a sincere commitment to constant improvement with its “Pizza Turnaround” campaign, created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky. The campaign employed a viral documentary in tandem with a microsite and guerrilla-marketing tactics, all highlighting the company’s proactive response to long-standing criticism. It improved its organization. Its improved its product. And it improved dramatically. So far, the campaign seems to have resonated with consumers, as Domino’s celebrated $1 billion in online sales in February, just over a month after the campaign’s launch.

Remember the love
Probably the most important of steps, remember — or discover — what you love about your product. Remember what your consumers love about your product. And most importantly, remember what you love about your consumers.

ESPN employed this axiom when it teamed up with Wieden & Kennedy to produce the “One Game Changes Everything” campaign in support of the sports network’s FIFA World Cup coverage. The campaign led with a spot featuring a voice-over by U2’s Bono emphasizing the power of sport to unite men in the face of opposing politics, religion or other issues that divide humanity.

Another example of this principle at work is how BMW introduced its new “Efficient Dynamics” engineering, which the company touts as the linchpin for new innovations in its 2010 line. Instead of getting lost in science and tech speak, BMW simply states that “Joy is Future-proof,” reminding us that, beneath it all, it is the same car consumers have relied on for the ultimate driving experience for over 80 years.

In a study out today, Forrester finds that only 4% of U.S. online adults have ever used location-based mobile apps such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt. Only 1% update these services more than once per week. What’s more, 84% of respondents said they are not familiar with such apps, leaving the vast majority of Americans online still in the dark about location-based apps, which have had the marketing world obsessing over them in recent months.

The report could also be a wake-up call for social media on mobile phones, especially when comparing the location services to the last social-media darling, Twitter. The micro-blogging service reports 35% of its 125 million registered users are in the U.S. and only a fraction of that number access Twitter via mobile. In April, Twitter said 37% of its usage comes via mobile clients. Apply that percentage to U.S. tweeters — we must extrapolate because the company does not break out U.S. users via mobile specifically — and the 16 million Americans using Twitter via mobile is about comparable to the location-apps audience in total.

Almost 80% of location-based service users are male. Close to 70% of them are between the ages of 19 and 35, and 70% have college degrees or higher. Forrester also found these location-app users to be influential (the report finds they’re 38% more likely to say friends and family ask their opinions before a purchase) and they are especially receptive to mobile coupons and offers. This set is up to 20% more likely to consult their phones before a purchase, and are far more likely to research products and services and read customer reviews.

This small audience is still attractive to some marketers. Forrester recommends that gaming, consumer electronics and sportswear marketers lead the way with testing these apps. Location apps have already proved they’re not only for male-oriented brands. PepsiCo, Starbucks, Oil of Olay, Bravo and, most recently, Campbell’s Soup have all launched campaigns with location apps.

Forrester analyst Melissa Parrish believes that male-oriented brands should forge the way and other marketers should hang back until these apps get bigger audiences. To date, Foursquare has more than 2 million users; Loopt 4 million and MyTown 2.5 million. Scale could come to the category if digital behemoths such as Facebook, Google and Twitter, which have already made moves toward location services, develop their own products.

1. Maintain a good balance of graphics to text in your HTML emails. Many experts recommend you try to maintain a balance of 60% text and 40% graphics.
2. Never send an email that is one big graphic.
3. In addition to the HTML version, always include a text only version. The filters reward those who take the little bit of extra time to create both versions.
4. AVOID HYPE!! Ideally, you would avoid exclamation marks and ALL CAPS and in the subject line and the content or use in moderation.
5. Do not use phrases that seem too good to be true. Yes, there are “once in a lifetime opportunities” but they don’t arrive in your Inbox.
6. The filters don’t like “money back guarantees.”
7. “Urgent!” It is not that urgent if the email ends up in the junk folder.
8. Don’t claim you have made a “breakthrough.”
9. Avoid using unusual fonts, all red type, flashing objects, and other assorted weirdness.
10. Avoid very small fonts.
11. Avoid excessive text about money. Of course, if your topic is money you have to talk about it but try to be economical.
12. Configure a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record in your Domain Name Service (DNS) records for your domain name (yourcompany.com).
13. If you are getting too many spam complaints, then consider putting the unsubscribe link at the top of your email. Many times if people cannot find the unsubscribe button right away, they will default to pressing the complain button or spam button (found on email services provided by AOL, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo and Google). It is much better to have people unsubscribe than to register an electronic complaint.

Dailey Marketing Group can help you with any of the issues you might be experiencing with your email blasts.  Dailey Marketing Group’s email system is a recognized white listed email system which allows us to provide our clients with the best way possible to get their message to the Inbox of their customers. Call us today to get started. 888.364.6584

Sure it’s a cliché. It seems every book I have read on branding contains that sentence. Yet, the Internet has created an environment that makes that statement truer than at any prior point. The Internet enables incredibly fast access to an enormous amount of information and provides connectivity and community that can empower buyers.

According to a popular branding theory, when marketplace choices increase, buyers tend to have an increased preference for familiar brands, thus, saving them research time and limiting their exposure to risk. The Internet has, without question, increased the amount of choices for business-to-business buyers.

Buyers increased access to information often results in increased expectations. In markets where products and services are largely perceived as commodities, or  strong weight is given to technical  specifications and price, given that all other things are equal (e.g., delivery time, etc.), a strong brand may be the single characteristic that differentiates a product from competitive offerings.

The significance of geography, which had once created advantages for many companies and obstacles to others, has, in many instances, been greatly reduced. Customers can now quickly and easily research product information, detailed specifications, experience computer-based presentations, search competitor offerings, find peers through professional associations or affinity groups where they can ask questions and share experiences, as well as make purchases online.

PROPAGANDA IS OUT. DELIVERING ON PROMISES IS IN.

There’s an old saying in the advertising world: “Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising.” With the mainstream adoption of the commercial Internet, the time it takes to kill poor or undifferentiated products (for the sake of simplicity, this paper uses the term “products” to describe both products and services) has been shortened considerably. Innovations are quickly imitated by competitors, rarely providing long-term sustainable advantages.

It is clear that the most sustainable advantage any company can have is a strong brand.

In the age of the informed customer, the concept of “image is reality” is dead. The revised formula is: Image + Information + Customer Expectations + Customer Experience (delivery) = Reality.

Customers new found access to seemingly endless amounts of information results in their being more demanding than prior to this access. While image remains significant, the new access to information often results in placing increased weight on specifications, capabilities and price during the buying process. This complex situation may appear to lessen the significance of brands, but, in actuality, it has elevated the significance of the brand.

Great B2B brands have the right technical specifications, connect with customers, deliver on promises that matter, exceed expectations and have a positive buzz within the buying community.

Consider the popular mantra of IT professionals: “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” This is a good example of a brand that stands for quality in the minds of customers and provides them with a shortcut in the buying process that helps them avoid risk.

The ideal brand connects with customers on an emotional level.

Think B2C brands are the only ones that do this? Consider commercial photographers and Kodak; graphic and multimedia designers and Macintosh; business executives and recruiters and Harvard Business School; computer professionals and IBM; and mechanics and Snap-On.

Smart B2B brands use the Internet to deepen emotional bonding between the brand and customer. These marketers will often create places customers can go online that help encourage their bonding where they can find out more information about the brand, communicate with other brand advocates and feel a sense of a community that is connected by the brand. Microsoft is excellent at creating emotional bonds with the developer community through its various developer groups. These groups have their own special sections of the Microsoft Website, training (including some at no cost), special access to information (they can receive advance notification of announcements prior to the general public), membership, online events such as seminars, discounts on Microsoft products (software and books) plus offline meetings and events.

Microsoft understands how to meld the offline and online worlds together for the benefit of its brand.

THE FALLOUT FROM THE “NEW ECONOMY” HYPE

During the dot-com explosion, the Internet became so over-hyped it seemed that many people had lost touch with (or never understood) sound business principles. Huge amounts of cash were spent in a mad rush to be first to create strong brands in “Internet Speed.” Now, long after the Internet bubble has burst, in many instances, there has been a reactionary backlash –a tendency to discount all things related to the Internet.

Either extreme is unwise.

The Internet is certain to play an increasingly significant role in how business is done and the management of brands. Those interested in building and maintaining strong brands need to understand and exploit the Internet’s power, integrating it with offline efforts.

The Quality Is In The Keywords

No matter what you eventually sell on your website – whether it’s a complete product range regarding something, or some services, or even a simple affiliate marketing plan – you must have quality content on your website. The quality of your website content determines the price of your AdWords advertising. It also determines the amount of revenue generated by the hits resulting directly from this advertising.

It might seem like a good idea to use a misleading keyword phrase in your Google AdWords campaign in order to direct more traffic towards your website. But always remember internet surfers aren’t stupid, and they know what they’re looking for.

And if your AdWords advertising and marketing says you’re marketing carpets, but there’s no reference of carpets anywhere on your website, your visitors won’t turn into customers just because they’ve reached your website, so they might as well buy something.

On the contrary, this kind of misleading AdWords advertising can have the very opposite effect. It can totally destroy your brand name and market trustworthiness. It can cause the search engines to hate you. It can even lead to a “Google Slap”, which is what happens when Google increases your bid prices for keywords because of irrelevant website content and low page ranks on the search engines.

The Targeted Audience

The importance of relevant keywords can’t be emphasized enough in making your Google AdWords campaign a successful marketing venture. Internet surfers like websites that provide what they advertise. Even more important is that your ads should be relevant to the particular market segment you’re targeting.

For example, if you’re selling health products related to asthma, mention something about the discomfort experienced by asthmatics – in such a way that it touches an emotional chord inside them somewhere, compelling them to check out what you’ve got to offer.

Almost all Internet marketers are however aren’t capable to make optimum use of AdWords advertising. Consequently, they simply end up paying needless costs without adequate conversions into revenues. Furthermore, the bid prices of the AdWords also increases, if the landing page of your website isn’t totally related to the keywords employed.

If you make use of the simple tips provided above, you can easily gain a pretty decent advantage over your competitors, with increased revenues and a reduced cost of advertising.

 Provided by: Charles McDuffie

“Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use preexisting social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, images, or even text messages.”

If you’ve ever used hotmail, yahoo or G-mail account, you’ve participated in a viral marketing campaign every time you sent an email to someone – because the company inserted a small (and usually discreet advertisement) at the bottom of all of your outgoing email messages – inviting the people you were communicating with to receive their own free email account.

So, how can you put a viral marketing campaign together for your own online business to get the same advertising buzz like these major companies for free?

You don’t have to look very far to find the answer these days. Viral marketing has taken off with a bang with the introduction of web2.0 web sites like Youtube, Facebook, Myspace and twitter – to mention a few. Bookmarking and social networking sites have made it easier for you to engage your friends in spreading any message you want to promote.

According to a recent survey done by Forrester Research, people are almost 65% more likely to trust a review posted by a peer – or even a complete stranger – than they are to trust the marketing or sales information put out by the company.

Companies like Amazon and I-Tunes have used these tactics to build their brands to mega corporations, and now all the celebrities and broadcasters are using Twitter and Facebook to spread their messages and expand their brands.

Why is this the case? Because as consumers we tend to think that the average “Joe Blow” has less of a personal agenda when posting his review about the latest “Dixie Chicks” album and so we give it more weight.

And, by the way, this is a normal reaction – it’s one that’s kind of hard-wired into all of us. People have always shared the things they like – or hate – with their friends and family members. Back in the 50’s and 60’s, our grandparents used to talk to their neighbors over the “back fence,” call each other on the phone or tell their friends during lunch. The difference is, these days we use the Internet and cell phones.

What’s interesting though, is that with the popularity of the Internet, our trust – and believe in “social proof” – has become even stronger.

By creating your own viral marketing campaign, you’ll be doing more than getting the word out about your new product or service, you’ll be gathering social proof – and that will help your sales to go through the roof.

If you don’t have your own product or service as yet, you can start promoting affiliate products. Affiliate products already have a brand name presence and an established market.

So, how do you set up your own viral marketing campaign? The first thing to do is to get back to the basics.

Then make sure that you’re sending out the right message – an in the right way. If you’re marketing a product to teens, you’ll want to make sure that it’s something they want – and you’ll have to reach them where they’re hanging out. That might be on MySpace, twitter or even Friendster.

What’s the right message? Maybe it’s a special report. But it could just as easily be a video. Or an audio mp3 file. Match your message to your audience. And finally, make sure that you’re getting your message out at the right time – when your audience is ready to buy it.

Make your viral marketing campaign stand out from the crowd – because that’s how it’s going to get passed around and become viral. By understanding the basics – who your audience is, what they want, how they want to get it and when they want it – all you have to do next is to create something that your audience loves – or hates – or finds interesting enough – to pass around to their friends. And because your product comes with an implied endorsement – social proof – those people will pass it around to other people – and the buzz goes on…and on…and on…and you’ll start hearing the “ka-ching!” of your cash register going off a lot more often.

Writen by: James Max

When you put up your first website, it was a snapshot of your business at that point in time. As your business evolves your website should reflect that. Have you added new and different products? Have you changed the focus of your services? Like websites, the businesses they support are organic. They grow and change. Your strategy for meeting those goals and objectives must change with it. Adding content piecemeal is necessary to keep your site updated, but at some point during each year you need to re-assess the big picture.

Make time to sit down with your key staff and review what your main business is today. Don’t cling to old notions about what it was or should be. Decide what it IS. Make sure that you are taking advantage of opportunities that will propel your business to the next level.

Analyze your Website Content

Does your content match your current goals? I recommend using a tool called a webmap to analyze your website. You can use any tool that allows you create a map showing all the main branches on your home page. The key here is to strip away the graphics and really look at your content and navigation path. Don’t be distracted by pretty colors and pictures.

Take Action: Create a specific path on your home page for visitors to “walk” For example, if the main goal of your website is to get visitors to call, don’t put up extraneous links to distract them. You want to them to write down your phone number and call you. Everything on your home page should support that! An 800 number in the banner area is a great idea. Links to books they should read on the subject is not.

Compare the Competition

It’s always a good idea to look at what the competition is doing on their website. Create maps for their home pages as well. But don’t assume that because they are bigger, that their website has a better strategy. Deep marketing pockets can often mask website failures.

Take Action: Compare your maps and see what emphasis the competition places on their home page. Do they focus heavily on promotions? Are they using free content to attract visitors? Note the best strategies and see how they apply to you. But have confidence that your content has value.

Revise and Test

Be prepared to change your home page content based on what you learned. Be bold, try new things. But be sure you test what you’ve done. You don’t want to change something that was working. Your webmaster should be providing you with the statistics you need to test and revise.

Take Action: Carefully analyze the changes you’ve made. Buy the best website analysis tool you can. Make sure you know what kind of content generates sales. Then pour it on and watch your revenue grow consistently!

However, don’t get over-zealous. One issue you must avoid at all costs is spamming. Spamming otherwise known as “spam mail” is still used widely, but with government establishing more restrictions and fines you don’t want this to be a source for income. The professional image of your site will also suffer greatly if you send mail blatantly.

To create Spam mail you typically need a database that contains a huge list of email addresses where you can deliver your message with one click. Unfortunately, Spam mail takes us back to the days of broadcast faxes. It irritates the recipient and kills the validity of your company, which in turn kills the factors that would motivate someone to refer your site.

However there is good news, you can get your message out in a way that motivates people to check it out and keep coming back for more. Let’s look a little further at the next four avenues you should consider.

• Personalize - Create your website with personal appeal. In other words, design it where customers can go in to setup their own personal profile. This will help to give your customers a feeling of comfort. Let’s face, it people instinctively think about themselves and their own needs above others. So give them the ability to use your site in a way that they feel safe secure, and cared for.
• E-mail - Email is very important, because it is going to be one of the most affordable ways to keep in touch with your customers. The proper way to handle email permission is to first let your customer know that you will not transmit their email to third party companies. Then you will want to attach the need for their email to the benefits they can receive. For example: Coupons or discounts that are only available to members that receive email notifications.
  With each e-mail, you send, the viral marketing effect takes place. If the receiver feels good about the information they received, they will pass it along which is exactly what you want to accomplish. Another good viral marketing method to use with e-mails is to offer another piece of viral marketing material in your e-mail. Incorporate things like a free report, free e-book, or a free newsletter. Anything free will attract attention and help to build your prospect list through viral marketing.
• Scheduler - Building a way of reminding people of certain events or sales on your website will go along way in customer retention as well as keeping your site on their minds. Basically, the more you stay in front of your customers the more they will be talking to others about your site. Offering simple services like this can keep your name in front of potential customers on a regular basis as well a generate the viral marketing results you want.
• Web Forums - Once you have obtained your customers email address you will want to setup a link that will allow them to discuss products or services that you offer with other customers. This helps in building bonds, but more importantly people typically like to include their friends in the arena. Look at gambling sites; the majority of business that they receive is via referrals. Once you’re on the site the majority of them have rooms that you can go to and talk and play with others from around the world.

By properly building a web forum community, you will create a buzz and with the right preparations will cause your business to grow significantly.

These sites direct and exclusive promotional services are great and these services main target are targeting customer’s message to real online users. If you promote your business with sites which have good PR and high volume traffic then your exclusive mail outs will be delivered and available to many enthusiastic consumers and your business will reflect in the best presentation. During this slowdown, if your advertisement doesn’t get attention of adequate number of customers then you will not get the maximum benefit. You must know you are facing large competition in the fast growing market and your competitors are promoting their businesses with good advertisings. So getting more attraction is important for a good business. And that’s the reason why social networking sites are getting good popularity.

In this advertisement your point will be delivered to large number of subscribers. With high-quality sites, customers get outstanding responses. There are so many variables in online advertising, and it is realistic to know that results cannot always be perfect for everyone but no can guarantee results. But they do their best to be of the best service to you that they possibly can.

From your advertisements, you have the numerous options to choose and ads ranging from cheap classifieds to free classifieds are all available options. To get noticed by customers it is necessary that your advertisements should be on the top. When I first started marketing on the Internet, I had no hint that there were so many special choices and options accessible. I purchased whatsoever marketing I could manage to pay for, from whoever had the best specials.

Six months and I can only figure how much money later; I have well-read a number of essential information on social networking sites. By tracking my ads I have well-read that the most cost efficient form of promotion I have found are cheap classifieds.

The first step to selling anything is to get the buyer’s interest. If you want buyers’ attention, you have a better chance of getting it if you provide an incentive. And the successful marketer understands that one of the best payoffs they can get is being offered a chance for more advertising

This ruling underscores the need for email marketers to be sure to send emails that meet the following criteria:

• To only those who have opted-in
• The email has a properly identified “from” line
• Your organization’s name and address are included in the email
• You have an unsubscribe link easily seen by the recipient

Email is an excellent tool to communicate with your audience. It can be an excellent medium to build your brand, your products and your company. However, if abused or misused, the consequences can be significant.