Unearth your Marketing Creativity

Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

Janice Fowler asked:




If you are thinking of opening your own house cleaning business, you are certainly excited on becoming your own boss. However, most people who go into such venture also fears that their lives will be dominated by work, and too much work. Well, if you’re the artsy, creative type of person, don’t worry because you’ll have lots of chances to be creative while owning your own business.

During the startup period of your cleaning business, opportunities to be creative are up for grabs. You get to think up of nice, witty, catchy name for your business, you get to design and layout your website (if you have one, since most businesses do), and you’ll be putting your creativity to the challenge in coming up with your cleaning business marketing strategies too. Now, that doesn’t sound dull and boring, does it?

The Creative Business Owner

If you are the kind of business owner who loves to work with your creative side, then you are sure to enjoy certain tasks in during your business’ startup period. First things first – come up with a business name. The more unique and witty it is, the better it is in catching the attention of your market. However, beware of the most common cleaning business marketing blunder: picking a name that sounds similar to an established company (in the same industry). This doesn’t only confuse people between you and that company, but it will also lose your cleaning business opportunities that should have been yours. Instead of going to you, they might mistakenly go to them and hire them instead of you. That would be a loss.

Next, if you have already come up with a name, come up with your color schemes. That color/s will be associated with your company, so choose the ones that you like. It might even be the color of your cleaning crews’ uniforms or your cleaning company’s vehicle. These colors will also be used in your website.

And last but not least, your sales pitch. It takes an equally creative and logical mind to come up with a good sales pitch. So you may focus on the facts that you would like to point out about your business (that’s the logical part), but how you deliver it and connect everything to make it sound smooth is another challenge (that’s the creative part).

However, what happens if you are not really that into creativity? That’s alright. You can always secure the services of professionals who do that – there are many freelancers who you can hire to help you out on your house cleaning business’ creative dilemma.

Grace Kisner asked:




The idea of verifying your creativeness may appear peculiar because audits and creativeness sound like opposites. But because creativeness is an essential component of your marketing success, you should manage it, just like every other critical business activity or asset. How does one know whether you’re being creative? Consider the following:

* Creativeness means doing things differently and doing new things. If your marketing appears routine, tame, and very familiar, it does not pass the 1st creativeness test: freshness. You actually should try something new.

* Creativeness equals originality. If you are not leading the way with a new concept, strategy, or approach this year in your industry or market, then you are not being really original.

Yet you’re a unique individual: Your company is like no other, your products have many minor differences, your people have unique cultural and geographic roots, and such like. Tap into these differences to come up with original ideas and approaches.

Attempt to make your marketing characteristic and special, not me too and imitative. Why? As the first person or company to try something new often gets additional money and success out of it than any imitators.

When you weave creativeness into your marketing, it gives your marketing activities more impact and helps your business grow. A dollar spent on a lifeless, everyday ad, mailing, leaflet, or internet site has not got much impact. Any company, small or big, in today’s tough market and uncertain economy has to work out the way to maximise each buck. if you have limited funds, then you do care how much impact your marketing has.

A creative approach can boost your marketing’s impact by ten % or more. That is how forceful creativeness is, so please give this last section of the audit focused concentration.

Joe Cavell asked:




Understanding that there is a distinct difference between strategic marketing and tactical marketing will aid any marketer in their development of a solid marketing plan. If you are like me and used to be a good Direct Mail or traditional Brick-and-Mortar marketing professional than you may be offended by what I am about to tell you. If you read this introduction with an open mind, you may just find that what I am about to say is true and has been for years.

There are two types of marketing:

1. Strategic Marketing and

2. Tactical Marketing

Strategic marketing has to do with What you Say, How you Say it and Who you Say it To. In other words, it’s the content of your marketing message.

Tactical marketing is the execution of your strategic marketing plan as far as generating leads, placing media, creating marketing tools and implementing a follow-up system. In other words, it’s the medium your message is delivered in.

How Big Is The Distinction Between Strategic and Tactical Marketing?

The distinction between strategic and tactical marketing is huge. Most people mistakenly assume that when you talk about marketing that you’re automatically talking about Tactical Marketing such as:

* Placing ads

* Lead generation

* Creating brochures

* Sending out mailers

* Attending trade shows

* implementing a follow-up system

They fail to realize that the strategic side of the equation:

What you Say

How you Say it

Who you Say it To

- is almost always more important than the marketing medium where you say it. To succeed as an Internet Marketer, a thorough understanding of this difference is crucial.

The basic definition of good communication is:

* Have something good to say

* Say it well

* Say it often

The best marketing and advertising in the world can not make a bad company good. Oh it may generate some attention and make some advertising agency a lot of money or win them an award (Pets.com), but saying something good about a company that can not execute what it claims is a recipe for failure.

A traditional advertising agency will use the C&R method of marketing Creativity and Repetition tries to capitalize on some creative ad using something that is unusual or exciting and then blast it all over the world using TV, Bill boards, newspapers, magazines, etc. in an attempt to build “Brand” awareness.

It is my hope that by reviewing this website and some of the articles you find here, you will begin to realize that there is a very specific strategic approach to internet marketing and begin to use some new methods in the way you approach internet marketing After all, where else can you create a headline, and ad or an offer and get feedback on its effectiveness within hours?

David D Thornton asked:




Marketing and Promotion can occur through various avenues. Creativity not withstanding, all marketing and promotion can be categorized in 1 of 6 primary forms.

These 6 primary forms of marketing communication are as follows:

1. Media

Media marketing communication refers to any traditional mass distribution broadcast or publication with a large volume of viewers, listeners, or viewership. Television, Radio, , Internet Banner Ads, Magazines, Newspapers, Billboards, etc are all forms of traditional media marketing.

A more recent addition to this type of marketing communication is the webinars and social networking sites on the internet.

Regarding up front costs, media marketing communication tends to be the most expensive type of marketing. This is due to the value related to the mass volume. The back end reward is that because of the volume, the actual cost per lead can be less if a high volume responds to the marketing effort. So, the trade off is that it may cost more up front but can produce more leads by volume.

2. Mail

Mail is an equally popular method of marketing communication. Whether it is direct and independent or bundled in a mass mailing, millions of marketing message are sent by mail daily. Distributing marketing messages by mail is difficult, though. It is so easy for the message to simply hit the trash.

Ideally, if marketing communication is performed by mail, it should be to a targeted list. A target list is list of subscribers who indicated an interest for a particular product or service. Since mail is paid per unit delivery, it is more cost effective to mail to individuals who expressed interest or who have demonstrated interest by previous consumption.

3. Telephone

The telephone is another obvious form of marketing communication. Whether there is a live human dialing you or if contact is accomplished by an auto-dialer, the telephone can be an efficient way to contact a large amount of people in a short period of time. The telephone, due to the number prefixes, also, allowed for targeting specific geographical areas. Limitations with the phone, however, include the requirement that someone answer, or have voice mail, and short duration of exposure to message. Additionally, legalities must be considered due to the “do not call” list which allows numbers to be opted out from direct marketing.

4. Electronic

Electronic marketing communication is best know by fax or email. These are very cost efficient mediums with email marketing being near infinite return on investment when successful due to the negligible cost associated. Also, the available message space is virtually infinite, as well.

Another rising form of electronic marketing communication is SMS and MMS through the mobile phones. These are otherwise known as text or picture messaging. Systems are available now that can mass text to multiple mobile numbers at once, or allow consumers to text in a particular message to a 5 digit number in order to receive a pre-formatted message. This is usually associated with contests for sufficient enticement.

The issues with electronic marketing communication, quite similar to mail and telephone, is that you must build a list of names and associated email addresses, or numbers, in order to market in volume.

5. Direct Contact

Marketing communication by direct contact is less efficient unless talking to groups. And, even then, it is usually limited to a very finite number. This is in stark contrast to the other forms of marketing mentioned above.

Additionally, direct contact can be a more aggressive, or assertive form of marketing and requires a special verbal communication skill set. If direct communication is not handled correctly, prospects can be easily alienated.

The underlying theme to direct contact is that efforts must be made to determine the interests of the consumers and to tailor solutions which accommodate their needs and interests, versus the needs of the marketer.

This is true for all forms of marketing, but especially poignant and noticeable with direct contact.

6. Referral

This final form of marketing communication is very strong and highly effective. It relies on the testimony of previously satisfied consumers to market. It is really marketing based upon strength in relationships. It has been reported that it is 6 times easier to market to someone where a relationship has already been established than to a new contact.

Referral based marketing communication is the truest form of flattery or complement that a business can receive as it reflects upon the genuine acceptance, appreciation, and approval of an established relationship. Theoretically, as a quality business grows, referral marketing of satisfied consumers can be a perpetual source of new clientele.

A key concept to remember when employing any form of marketing communication is that studies show that it typically takes an average of 7-9 exposures to a message before a consumer will respond to an offer. This means that your budget should take this into consideration when deciding on a particular form of marketing communication.

A second key concept is that you have to do split testing and statistical analysis to objectively determine which marketing messages, and marketing communication avenues, are producing.

Brett M Howard asked:




With the American economy in the tanks, small businesses are turning to inbound marketing because it’s efficient. Inbound marketing depends more on your efforts and creativity than size of your budget or wallet. Here are a few examples how inbound marketing can help your business.

1. It’s Cheaper – As opposed to outbound marketing which equals spending more money, inbound marketing depends on creating great content and sharing it. Setting up social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook cost nothing but your time. After you have established yourself you have the opportunity to bring in thousands of visitors to your site. The ROI of inbound campaigns are higher than outbound marketing.

2. Ability to Target Your Market – With outbound marketing techniques such as mass mail or cold calls are shots in the dark. You receive a name and go to work knowing little about the person and even worse, the person on the other end feels like he or she is being disturbed. No one likes receiving a cold call during dinner. When you poorly target your market your chances are gaining a new customer are slim. When you inbound market you are providing information for those that want to be marketed. They demonstrate an interest in your content which means they are more likely to be interested in your product or service.

3. It’s Not a Monthly Expense – When you inbound market you are planting seeds for the future. If your content is update regularly and optimized you will eventually rank well in Google’s organic results. Think of inbound marketing as an investment rather than an expense.

Andy Cravenplan asked:




Marketing is as much about tracking and recording results as it is about creativity and flair, knowing what marketing brings in the best return on your investment is key to the success of your project, using 0845 numbers can help with this process.

The places you can use for marketing are as numerous as places you are willing to spend money at, so how do you make the most of your marketing budget to ensure you are not spending too much money with out getting the results you need. This is the core question advertising experts and marketing gurus get asked day in and day out. There are some tips the experts use and I am sharing them with you now.

‘AIDA’ – Attention Interest Desire Action, is the acronym we use to remember how we speak to an audience, it is not specific or restricted to any one group or section of the community it works every time.

Attention is the first element, you now need to make the audience sit up and become interested in what you are showing them, this can be done in any number of ways, think of your favorite advertisement, did it have a famous face or a big headline, were buzz words such as free or sale used, what made you continue to be engaged with the message.

Interest, Once you have grabbed the attention of your audience it is time to keep the interest, talk about the issues your audience cares about, how will what you are marketing help the audience achieve their goal or improve their life.

One of the best ways of creating desire is social proof, the guy who looks like you, but not quite as good, gets the girl after using this deodorant, in your mind you too could get the girl if you used that deodorant, that is social proof, someone who you identify with has got results using this product or service therefor you can too, it is all about building desire.

The over all aim of your marketing is to convert a member of the audience in to what ever qualifies as a conversion in your marketing campaign, this could be that they buy something or register an interest in your information what ever it is you need to use action to tell them what to do, call this 0845 number now to speak to our sales team, buy this product when you next shop at, they are a number of action messages but they need to instruct the audience to do something.

By telling your audience what you want them to do it will increase the chances of you getting what you want, a good call to action can more than double the conversion rates when done properly. It is difficult to express how important the call to action is for the success of your marketing and promotional campaigns, professionals who specialise in this area are in demand and the reason is obvious when you consider the difference it can make.

My top tip for marketing is track and record everything, you need to know what marketing brings in the most conversions for each $ spent, to help with tracking I like to use 0800 numbers and 0845 numbers in my marketing calls to action, these numbers are excellent for providing statistics that can tell you a lot about your audience such as where they rank from and how long they were on the call for, what I like to do is use a different 0845 number for each advertisement so I can see what one works best and the I concentrate my marketing on that.

Victoria K. Munro asked:




Marketing is the lifeline of your business. As an entrepreneur, you can’t afford to neglect it. Growth and survival won’t happen without marketing. Unless your current marketing is working really well and you have more customers than you know what to do with, don’t keep doing what you’ve always done! Unleash your creativity and try out some new ideas! We’ve listed several to start your creative juices flowing.

Hold a brainstorming session

Gather a group of friends, colleagues or employees to brainstorm marketing ideas for your business. Make it worth their while — perhaps treat them to dinner first. Make and follow a clear agenda.

Possible topics might include:

o Explain your current and past marketing activities and the results. Ask for suggestions on how each could be more effective.

o Have participants take a critical look at your marketing materials and offer suggestions.

o Describe the major obstacles your business faces and ask for ideas on how to overcome them.

o Discuss ways to increase the number of qualified leads.

o Ask for ideas on services or products you could offer that meet a current need in the market.

Brainstorming can be invaluable, but will only work if you resist the temptation to become defensive or comment on ideas generated. This will quickly stifle creativity. You may have already tried a suggestion made, with pitiful results, but keep quiet and keep an open mind! Record everything and take time to review it later.

Never shoot down wild ideas. In his best-selling Marketing Outrageously, Jon Spoelstra writes about his time as president of the New Jersey Nets. They had a page in their company manual that said: “If people fall down laughing when you present an idea, that idea has a chance of becoming a breakthrough idea. When an idea is so outrageous that it causes people to laugh at the idiocy of it, then it’s time to push the outrageous envelope and see if that idea can be developed.” Joe’s marketing efforts with the Nets proved to be wildly successful.

Study your competitors

How are they marketing? What is working for them? Why is it working? Are they using methods you could adopt and improve on?

Take a trip

Visit or talk to those in similar industries or professions in other cities and states. Find out how they are marketing and what is working in their area. Keep in touch and trade marketing suggestions.

Start a ‘Marketing Ideas’ file

Always be on the lookout for fresh ideas. Every time you come across an article, a brochure or an ad that appeals to you, drop it in the file. When you need to create a new marketing piece, write an ad or rewrite your marketing plan, you have a file full of ideas and you won’t have to start from scratch.

Avoid Creativity Killer Comments Like:

o That will never work for us

o Great idea for another business

o I don’t have the time it would take to do that

o Our budget won’t stretch that far

o People in our profession/industry don’t do things like that

o Sounds like something my kids would come up with

o We tried that last year and it didn’t work

If you don’t feel very inspired and imaginative, remember creativity is like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes. Start working out today with some of the above ideas!

Nick Rice asked:




I read somewhere that the best test for creativity in business was simply to ask “are you creative?” So I tried it. And for the majority of people it seemingly proved true. The people that we all see as creative (designers, PowerPoint gurus, out of the box thinkers) said yes; and the planners, project managers, sales people said no. So I naively believed it to be true.

Watching my two year old daughter run around and play reminds me that we’re all creative. We all have boundless imaginations. We always have. Unfortunately our educational system has progressively worked that aspect our being out of our nature. No educational system on the planet puts as much emphasis on creativity as they do logic. Think about the number of math and science classes you took versus the arts and humanities. Not that logic is bad. In fact, it’s a critical element of life. I just believe that we are over-balanced on logic compared to creativity.

I believe the lack of creativity is slowly killing business. That lack is driving everything to a commodity price-driven market. It’s creating an environment that puts cost cutting before customer satisfaction. Without creative thinking how will the engineering team discover the next breakthrough product? How will the marketing team develop messaging that stands above a crowded market place.

Creativity isn’t solely the realm of designers and ad agencies. It shouldn’t be associated with art. It does not equal wild and crazy. It doesn’t equal foolishness. And being “creative” not a job title.

When you hear “out of the box thinking”; that’s the call to creativity. It’s your management team asking you to come up with a new approach. It’s daring to think differently. It’s not copying the competition. And after all, when you boil it down isn’t creative thinking what we’re paid to do? If everyone has the same view, the same ideas, the same approach, and the same results why are we all still here?

To succeed in business is to be creative in your role. Growth demands creativity. It will separate you from the competition. As humans we’re trained to only notice what’s different in our environment. Therefore, standing out is the best way to raise awareness. The lack of creativity across the board is not only hurting your brand, it’s ultimately hurting your profitability. And it’s hurting your employees.

Creativity isn’t a special gift – we’re all born with it. It never leaves, it’s just hiding behind years of logic. I challenge you to find time to let the two year old inside of you come out and play. Your employees, customers, and shareholders will thank you.

Grace OMalley asked:




Not so long ago it was exciting to be a direct marketer. If you had an ounce of imagination you were given free-reign to take that creativity and make something special. Those were the days when the piece itself held the power in marketing.

It used to be that the focus for a marketing campaign was fairly cut and dried. You either marketed directly to a male or a female. Granted looking back now on some of these ads we might wonder what the heck the marketer was thinking when he designed a campaign to begin with!  They did however make an impression.

Previously a direct marketer only needed to devise an ad and then find a simple slogan or jingle that coincided with the graphics and copy. Bingo, companies were noticed and products were sold. Today that creativity is being stalled by the mechanics of marketing. No longer can a designer fly by the seat of their pants and create something significant without looking at analytics and metrics first.

SEO, PPC, ROI, B2B, B2C, PPL, SEP… Marketers now have an alphabet soup of mechanics to be aware of before they attempt putting pen to paper (or keyboard to computer). Creativity is now relegated to not only grabbing the attention of the public but to making sure every graphic works in multiple venues and every copy-written phrase is checked for keyword strength. Let us not forget that after all that, the campaign will be changed multiple times as it is tested again and again, looking for the strongest optimization before final launch.

Excuse me a moment while I react to all of that.

ARGH!



Google has given us many spectacular technological ideas. By being able to “rank” a website, drench the internet with banner ads and the ability to analyze website visitors to the nth degree, business owners are more informed about the results of viral marketing than ever before.

Clever software developers decided that it was not enough to only analyze web based marketing. Every day more and more technicians are devising software that tracks and analyzes emails, television ads, radio spots, direct mail pieces, subscriptions… The list goes on and on.

What I want to know is what happened to the creativity?

Reading an article online titled “Grab On Tight and Enjoy The Ride” sounds much more interesting than one titled “7 Ways to Increase Website ROI”. Personally there comes a time when seeing a number in a title becomes off putting. Enough already! If a direct marketer employs titling that is unique but does not reference the keywords of the article needed for ranking purposes, then forget about being found through any common browser.

When it comes to inventiveness, today copywriters are the ones being creative in the direct marketing movement. Thanks to pay versus organic ranking strategies finding a two word phrase that depicts the idea of a campaign is easier said than done. Marketers are now in the position to construct three and four word phrases instead. Before long it will be five and six words as optimization keywords over-saturate the viral world.

Where does it all end? Will direct marketers ever again be allowed to let their imagination flourish? Is it possible that direct marketing campaigns shall once again be based upon originality and intrigue? Or will scientific and mechanical instruction be embraced instead.

Belsheba Nyabwa asked:




An enterprise whether offline or online business, must make sales in order to survive especially in these current competitive markets. In selling, most emphasis is placed on actual sales. In marketing, the needs of the buyer are of paramount and a product needs to satisfy the needs of its customers.

The ideal marketing strategy should be to produce goods in volumes and make sure that quality production is maintained at all times. This in return will ensure that a company make sales and thus generate profits.

The marketing planning element is important as it ensures that the business remains focused in making sure that sales are high. In planning, the business sets objectives and describes how these objectives should be realized. It is by having clearly defined objectives that the employees will perform their duties diligently knowing what is expected of them. It is also important for a marketer to know how to inter-relate various marketing aspects in order to adapt to market change, this then will guarantee product promotion.

Always, a marketer should be innovative enough to come up with perfect promotion plans of achieving his marketing goals. Creativity helps you stay ahead of your competition and in the long run have a significant market share.

Finally, vision without action is a daydream. It is said “destiny is not a matter of chance; it’s not a thing to be waited for but a thing to be achieved.” Therefore, if you what to successfully promote your big or small business, act now and implement effective marketing strategies that have been proven to work.