Marketing: How To

A friend of mine asked me to review her company’s brochure today and I gladly accepted. Based off of my friend’s brochure (and the hundreds, if not thousands I had seen throughout my professional life), I wanted to provide the following advice:

1) Be sure all of your images are of the highest resolution. Customers will be turned off by a pixelated graphic. Not sure if your graphic is fuzzy? Blow your .pdf (or image) up to 300%.

2) Print the brochures at your local off-set or online digital printer. I do not recommend that you use your desk jet, due to poor print quality and toner expense.

3) Do not try to force all of your segments into one brochure. If your segments range from physicians to veterinarians; create 2 separate brochures.

4) Write the brochure to the benefit of your target audience! Meaning: how will your target audience benefit from your service or product?

Not sure your brochure is working? Send me a note via this contact form and I’ll reply with an email address for you to send the .pdf to.

Cheers! Abby, Sprite Marketing

OK, this is not really related to marketing. Let’s just imagine that you are a market researcher trying to gauge the population’s interest in local industry…. In which case, this might be of interest to you.

As a newbie (and borderline obsessed) gardener, I wanted to post an interesting tidbit from one of my favorite blogs: You Grow Girl.

It seems that this year “vegetable seed sales outstripped, …those of flowers for the first time since the 1950s.”

I am just in awe and so delighted! If you are interested, the article can be found here.

While I have a very diverse marketing acumen, I do struggle with networking. So what is the best way to overcome a lacking skill? Answer: jump right in and figure it out. Or, as Tim Gunn would say, “make it work“.

In late 2007, I jumped into the Portland, Oregon networking pool and received mixed results. I want to save these results/insights for another post. But, in the meantime, I wanted to share with you the most effective advice procured: how to build an initial networking circle.

The initial networking circle is so simple, here are the short Sprite Marketing notes:

1) Grab a pen, paper or TextEdit and determine 10 industries that associate with your business. For me that includes: programmers, accountants, general business consultants and ect.

2) Once you have determined these industries, branch out and determine 10 individuals within each group.

3) You now have 100 potential partner relationships. Send them an email, stop by their shop or give them a call. Have a relaxed conversation on how you can help each other. You may decide to set up a commission partnership or just a plain ol’ referral network.

Extra Tip: Don’t be afraid to include your own industry! I have had great success handling extra work from other marketing firms. You never know when your competitor will have overflow.

Cheers!

I love Google.

I love their free Analytics platform and how I can safely store and share documents with clients online.

I have been reading about the new Google Alerts platform and definitely wanted to recommend this platform to you all. What does this fantastic platform do? Google Alert uses its unique technology to track the entire web for your personalized topics and send you new results by daily email.

Of course, this is the perfect way to keep tabs on what your customers are saying about you and what your competitors are up to. Let’s face it, even if you are not embarking on Web 2.0 initiatives, your clients may be telling the world all about your company; you need to know what your clients are saying about you.

Check out Google Alerts here.

With more competitors “green washing” the minds of consumers; what is a truly green company to do?

The onslaught of green propaganda creates three problems that you, the marketer of your product/service, must tackle: 1) the consumer does not know what constitutes as a green product or service, 2) the consumer does not know what green product/service to trust and 3) why should the consumer care that your company is a green supplier?

Tackling problem #1 and #2 can be packed into your positioning statement, then reiterated in all of your marketing messages. With any positioning statement, you must live your business philosophy to the fullest. This means if you position yourself as a green company; your product development, your marketing, your business logistics and all of your shareholders must truly believe in the green ideology. Tackling problem #3 is getting easier day-by-day as the consumer’s paradigm shifts to concern for the environment. Read the article in its entirety here.

- Abby Herrera, Sprite Marketing

I belong to the Portland ECO Business Network and I have witnessed a trend involving my colleagues eliminating all direct mail from their marketing mix. In fact, most green conscious business owners are quick to move all of their marketing online. While I do agree a diversified marketing mix is very effective, I am hesitant to recommend that businesses just toss out their direct mail initiatives. In fact, as much as I love online marketing initiatives, just think about the energy your computer is consuming just reading this post I wrote. A 24kg desktop computer (with monitor) requires 10 times its weight in fossil fuels and chemicals to manufacture. Once we get past the manufacturing of the computer, let’s think about the energy consumed to run server farms.

I am definitely not advocating wasteful marketing initiatives, but don’t be so quick to unload your direct mail initiatives. Mail out the materials on recycled paper, use soy inks and incorporate proper CRM (customer relationship management) techniques that will allow you to segment your message and audience for maximum impact.

Best,

Abby Herrera, Sprite Marketing

My fantastic sister-in-law and her business partners are launching a very niche service down in San Fransisco this year and she asked me for some general marketing advice. Flattered, I shouted “PR”!

Although every business can benefit from any form of free publicity, her business in particular will attract publicity better than most other business types. Why? Without giving the business idea away before launch, let’s just say she owns the San Fran market with this new service. Truth be told, most first to the market services or products are notably more newsworthy.

Even with the minor disclaimer that publicity will come easier to some businesses when compared to others, I still recommend that every business actively prepare for a public relations initiative. Here are my initial recommendations for DIY public relations:

1) Audit all of your local media (read and watch every outlet that covers your local area and don’t forget local online media outlets). Create a spreadsheet of all local media outlets and the reporter/writers that cover stories that relate to your industry or topic. Be sure to research contact information.

2) Stay abreast of all articles the writers/reporters create and keep copies of items that are relevant to your topic or industry within an organized folder.

3) Learn what types of organizations the writers/reporters are involved in, this may open you to a great sponsorship opportunities and publicity.

Items 1-3 should be an on-going discipline; enabling you to maintain familiarity with your local media.

- Abby Herrera, Sprite Marketing