Archive for September, 2009
Ad Tracking Increases Your Profits
Posted by: | CommentsHow do you know whether your advertising is effective or not? The answer is to track advertising response for each ad you run.
Whether you operate a retail store, a service business, a mail order operation, or an Internet marketing business, you can measure the effectiveness of your advertising.
1. Which Publications Produce Profits?
When new customers phone or visit you, ask how they found out about you. They might say they found you through your yellow pages ad or your newspaper ad.
Record the responses and resulting sales from each ad. Then, analyze whether each particular advertisement is producing the desired results.
If an advertisement consistently produces profits for you, keep running it. On the other hand, if an ad consistently performs poorly or produces a loss, discontinue it.
In mail order, you can key each ad so that you can measure the resulting sales from each publication.
For example, you could add “Dept. A” to your name or address in the ad to indicate the July issue of a particular magazine. Key it as “Dept. B” for the August issue of the same magazine. “Dept. C” could indicate the July issue of a different magazine you advertise in.
Thus, as orders come in, you can track the response and sales made from each advertisement. From that information, you can easily determine the profitability of your ad in each publication.
2. Which Ads Produce Profits?
Not only can ad tracking show you which publications are profiitable to advertise in, but it will also help you measure the effectiveness of the ads themselves.
If you change your ad, and the results for the new ad are consistently better or worse, you can take the appropriate action; either continue or discontinue the advertisement.
Change only one element in an ad at a time.
For example, if you decide to change the price, don’t change the headline. Otherwise, you won’t know if the difference in results was due to the changed price or the changed headline. For greater certainty, change only one thing at a time when testing your ads.
On the Internet, you can use tracking software and services that will aid you to determine the source of your sales and the effectiveness of your advertising, article writing, and other activities.
So, whether you operate a retail store, a service business, a mail order operation, or an Internet marketing business, use ad tracking for increased profits.
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Action Figures: Antiques for the Common Man
Posted by: | CommentsGiven enough time, one boys toy is an antique collectors prized possession. Strange as that may sound, there are many collectors who would love to see an original G.I. Joe or an original Star Wars action figure. Remember He-Man? Action figures tend to be based on shows, movies, or comics that always have a following, and therefore even years after companies stop producing the figures, there are individuals who still seek to collect them. There are many a man who think of all the G.I. Joes they blew up with fireworks, only to find out twenty years later how many hundreds or even thousands of dollars their collection would have been worth if it remained in mint condition!
One interesting story dealing with action figures involves Takara, a Japanese toy company. They are best known to modern toy collectors as the company that built the original Transformers action figures. In 1974 Takara created a 4-inch humanoid action figure, which was called “MicroMan.” In the late 70’s and early 80’s this toy was brought over to the United States by the Mego Toy company, which was desperate for a hit after they made the famous blunder of passing on Star Wars. They re-named the line “Micronauts”, and created enough of a back story for Marvel Comics to get a good run of comics. Mego got several years of good sales, which was about the same size as Star Wars figures, before the whole company went down.
The basic construction of the Micronauts action figure would soon be utilized by Hasbro for their new action figures: the now famous and very collectible 3-3/4″ G.I. Joes (an action figure famous amongst young boys of the time for their propensity to have bad run-ins with fireworks). In recent years, the Micronauts concept has enjoyed somewhat of a resurgence. There has been a decently successful series of comic books, a trilogy of paperback novels, and a toy company called Palisades managed to re-create many of the original Micronauts molds. Now the original company is coming out with larger action figures based on the originals. Like many classics, companies want to keep dipping back for more. Why mess with success? Still its the old action figures that gain the most attention from collectors, so if youre thinking about putting out the old toys from twenty years ago out in the garage sale, maybe think twice and take a second look before putting the boxes out. Who knows what you might find?
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A Right Media Mix Can Make the Difference
Posted by: | CommentsBranding is no longer simply about visual appeal (or the cherry in the apple pie example, as given in my earlier article). Unfortunately, many graphic design firms who position themselves as advertising agencies believe that branding your corporate identity is all about developing great looking visual solutions.
However, there is much much more to branding than just looking good. Particularly in this web 2.0 era, where a powerful web presence has become a vital ingredient of your branding strategy, developing the right media mix holds the key to building a powerful brand equity.
In other words, a right media mix would mean:
Creative design solutions (the design, color, and content of your ads, marketing collateral and website enhance your brand equity, attract customers, and generate sales)
Web development (every product/service worth its name has a web presence these days, some have truly interactive, animated sites encouraging customer involvement),
Viral marketing (vitally important in todays age of social networking, tagging, podcasting, blogs, forums, wikis and what have you)
Television commercial production, print media advertising (traditional media cannot be overlooked)
Strategic films (have become necessary elements of roadshows, exibhitions and other promotional campaigns)
Corporate video production (a very important tool for branding your corporate identity)
Direct marketing (marketing collaterals need to be just as effective and resonant with the overall branding scheme as the communicate directly with the customer)
Outdoor advertising (hoardings, roadshows, participations in business fairs, exhibitions, etc)
There are some interactive advertising agencies that have recognized the need of the hour – developing creative design solutions that employ user-centric investigation and involve critical and systematic thinking. User-centric means understanding of needs and priorities of end user; the clients’ customers, their channel partners, users, and brand communities.
So if you want to register your brand as one that is synonymous with customer loyalty, you must develop a complete package, keeping the customer as the prime objective and organizing product stories around the way they prefer to learn about, compare, select and confirm purchases, connecting brands and their experiences.
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