The Art of Greenability
As environmental issues continue to have a bigger say in the media, we see a marked increase in preference for anything “green”. Let’s not confuse going green with eRecycling solutions, such as ROUND2, Inc. Typically eRecycling offers 100% green compliant e-recycling and computer demanufacturing solutions. Think of them as the final destination for your used and abused electronics.
Today, both advertisers and consumers are showing an increasing interest in the environment, in the organic, the natural. Thus was born the concept of greenvertising , green advertising, both in traditional media and new media of mobile and online. That’s the green we are focusing on in this post.
What does being green mean? The definition most used refers to being conscious and living in harmony with the environment. But the concept goes much further, and reaches the health sector (organic food, toxic-free products) and the general welfare (botany, homeopathy). Today, even products outside these areas begin to send “green” messages.
Various factors contributed to this trend, mainly the growing concern of consumers. Many experts point to the documentary by Al Gore, An inconvenient truth , as the source of this awareness, while others opt for the obvious visual effects of climate change. Green advertising trends go a little further back in years. For some time now, companies have been making large investments in going green, such as in the automotive sector. What we see now in advertising is a reflection of that effort.
But there are apparently different tones of green. Recent interest in ecology has been labeled light green . The other side of the coin are the greenies , those whose lifestyles revolves around ecology. These two share different messages. “The average consumer needs more general messages, while the greenies need more specific messages, “says Holly Bornstein, director of marketing for Clean Well .
Some problems
But greenvertising also faces various challenges. The largest of these, according to a study by USA Today is that consumers perceive “green” products as more expensive and hard to find, so that messages need to be more “friendly,” says Larissa Kundanmal, vice president of marketing. Another problem is that some advertisers try to sell “green” when they really aren’t, and this discredits everyone.
Online advertising offers great opportunities for advertisers who are following this trend. Many websites offer contextually relevant sections appropriate for those who want to sponsor a “green” site. Blogs and online communities are also ideal places for this type of advertising that caters to a very specific audience. So check it out, this niche good put more ‘green’ in your pocket…
Go Mobile – Now!
Remote digital payments for goods and services amounted to 167,000 million in 2010 and is estimated to exceed 633,000 million in 2014. Long gone are those days when stores were the only point of contact with the consumer in the sales cycle and the only environment to establish a relationship of trust with the customer. Consumers today have higher expectations and demand a personalized shopping experience through multiple channels and value added services. This creates an opportunity to capture more customers and build brand loyalty through mobile marketing. But what can organizations do to go mobile?
Loyalty through mobile coupons
Retailers in particular have a great a opportunity to lead the mobile channel and its adoption by end users through mobile coupons. According to the research firm Aberdeen Group, 57% of retailers are seeking new sales channels. Consumer mobile phone use is at an all time high, providing an opportunity for additional revenues streams for savvy businesses. A study by ComCost states that 52% of Smartphone users make purchases via mobile as a result of the coupons.
Mobile coupons create value for both customers and retailers because of its simplicity. In the U.S. mobile coupons have become very important in the sales arena. One simple way to create user engagement via couponing is with the use of a mobile tagging platform. These have built-in QR code generators for creating and managing content on line, bridging the gap between business and consumers.
Affinity Growth via mobile
Besides retailers, the consumer products goods (CPG) industry is trying to find ways to communicate with consumers via mobile. The mobile phone allows this industry to connect directly with consumers, providing more value than through other traditional channels. Using the phone, they can build brand loyalty collectively, and not through individual brands. In an industry where some of the biggest CPG companies offer thousands of products, companies are using mobile to increase customer value through multi-brand-in-one strategies, as evidenced in TV spots by companies such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and others.
Conclusion
Don’t be surprised to see many companies begin to engage and experiment with mobile to enhance brand loyalty programs. Mobile marketing, specifically through coupons, will be the catalyst for growth in helping consumers make informed choices by offering value to them. The channels may have changed but the message remains the same. Technology allows business to acquire more consumers, but always as a result of it’s successful implementation.
Local Business Marketing
Business leaders today are so obsessed with going global that they risk loosing foothold on local markets. But usually, the best global brands are those that are also the best local brands. McDonald’s, for example, penetrates into local markets through agreements with local businesses in order to adjust their menus to local tastes.
At HSBC , “The world’s local bank”, global and local go hand in hand for two reasons: local customers believe that you are accessing the best services if they are with a global bank, while global corporations want you to believe “Your” bank really understands local needs so that they can penetrate those markets.
All this really does underscore that the world is getting smaller. As social networks go more location-based, and hyper local communities and local searches continue to attract the interest of users, smaller brands are realizing that they have no choice but to go local. Does it pay? According to the results of a recent study, the vast majority of national brands in North America (88%) are investing a good portion of their budgets on local business marketing.
“Brands recognize that while they don’t market on a local level, many purchases are made locally by consumers”, Pete Gombert, CEO of Balihoo, said in an interview with eMarketer. However, measu
On the other hand, 37% of advertisers say they their local ROI is higher than national trends and 44% expect an ROI similar in both markets. Only 19% expected that their national marketing ROIs are stronger than the local marketing efforts.
As brands maintain their local presence and strive to integrate their local and national strategies, the process of creating a more detailed picture of their marketing ROI is increasingly necessary.
Discounting Your Way to Profits
According to recent statistics, the use of coupons has reached an all time high. In fact, coupon distributing sites have popped up everywhere. Why? Because coupons create interest and generate traffic and have high redemption rates. Or, in plain English: millions of consumers are using them. And there are no short order of companies offering them: from discount codes for Abercrombie to coupons for walgreens, you’d be hard pressed not to find companies offering them, meaning your competition is offering them as part of their marketing mix too and you should probably start thinking about developing one for your business. Let’s discuss some basics.
Design – does the coupon flow with your overall branding strategy? A good design focuses not only on the discount received for the product or service, but should also create brand recognition. Secondly, does the promo make sense? Not all promos are good promos. The last thing you want to do is have so many awesome deals that you lose your shirt on all of them. Many companies have complained about market and profitability erosion by using those Daily Deal sites. So use due diligence and make sure your coupon doesn’t dilute your brand or your revenue stream.
Distribution – There are many ways to get them into your customers hands. Create coupon codes and syndicate these via social networks, create an email blast, use Google offers, etc. Get them out, track where they came from, and how much they converted for.
Some final words. Redemption rates go down you if have too many offers being distributed simultaneously. To overcome analysis paralysis, provide a clear detailed objective, include a product image, use your logo, make sure you have some sort of tracking, and a expiration date. Do this and you will increase your paying client base, your branding and repeat business. And those aren’t bad results when you figure you are now discounting your way to profits.
The ABC’s of CRM
by Mc.Clown on February 21, 2012
in Marketing, Super Affiliate Training
Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) implies building relationships with your prospects and customers. It is a proven way to close deals both pre and post sales. So how does this work? There are many ways in which you can build relationships with your prospects and customers. Let’s discuss a few of them.
One of the most effective marketing tools to build relationships is ‘correspondence exchange’. These are predefined messages that are sequentially sent via your autoresponder. Your audience clicks on a link for more information, which will initiate a sequence of messages. This link can be placed in your website or in your newsletter. This can be setup to work before a sale, and after the sale (i.e.: “Thanks for your order” and then continues with the intent of offering additional products or services). Additionally newsletters are a very powerful tool to build relationships with your subscriber list. Each subscriber to your publication is a potential customer. If they continue to read your newsletter, a relationship is created. Over time they will trust you and your offerings and become customers.
How’s your Customer Service? This area is crucial to your CRM. No matter how good a deal they got from you, if your customer service skills are lacking, kiss that customer and any future purchases goodbye. Gaining trust is hard. Losing trust is easy. Treat all your customers as VIP (within reason) and they will remain trusting (and paying) customers for life! Speaking of trust, go through your landing page as if you were a potential client. Your content can help you build rapport with your visitors. When you create professional looking and sounding content, your credibility starts to increase, which leads to trust and ultimately, a sale.
Lastly, consider this bit of advice giving to me years ago: the IM space is not about money, it’s about people. Get the people and they will bring the money. So build solid relationships and reap the financial rewards.
Seeing Value
I wear glasses and sit a computer all day. Glasses have become a fact of life for me, but are warranted – without them, life would be too blurry.
So being a savvy/frugal shopper, I look for deals on things, including glasses. Eyeglasses are expensives. And just because you can buy cheap eyeglasses, it doesn’t mean they are cheap. So ZenniOptical.com gets my vote. They use the latest modern materials, manufacturing and marketing systems to bring me, the average Joe, a factory direct product. These aren’t name brand glasses, but so what? Their frames are modern and stylish and their prices are hard to beat.
Which brings me to my point. In 2012, marketers need to continue to provide value to their prospective customers. Give customers what they want. If you know what they want, you’ve built a relationship (and what do most people want? Usually it’s a great product, with great service, and hopefully at a better price). Having these relationships not only brings in clients, but happy brand advocates, which will continue to tell your story long after the sale was consumated. Ask yourself, would you buy your own product? Does it deliver quality and value?
If you see legitimate value in it, chances are, your prospects will too…
Top Of Mind
by Mc.Clown on November 15, 2011
in Marketing, Super Affiliate Training
In this day and age, competition is fierce and is everywhere. Differentiation is what gets you noticed and keeps you top of mind. One way of staying top of mind is by providing gifts of appreciation to clients and vendors.
One elegant way to express congratulations to clients and employees is with the traditional gift basket. These attractive offerings come in different sizes to fit your gift giving needs (and budget), and can also be the centerpiece of any special event, including company parties, grand opening celebrations, trade shows, table favors, promotions, retirement parties, etc.
These baskets can be decorated with poinsettias, pine cones and berries and/or scrumptious gourmet See’s candy, including milk/dark chocolate, brittles & toffees, truffles, candy bars and old school but delicious lollypops.
Craving baked goods? Your business contacts may too. Convey your warm regards by sending them a muffin gift pack that includes 6 fresh muffins, some flavorful coffee eggnog, and some powdered instant hot chocolate packets.
The gift of cheese is one not to be overlooked for your lactose tolerant business contacts. Gift packs may include roasted garlic, cheddar cheese, cranberry, apple, tomato and basil cheese, gourmet mustard, Bavarian Halle sausage, beef salami, cheddar cheese spread.
Coffee connoisseurs would appreciate a java pack. Many times these contain special mugs, and all sorts of coffee goodies including: chocolate cookies, stuffed pastry cream puffs, chocolate caramel cappuccino, Irish coffee syrup, vanilla hazelnut coffee, some cream and more.
It’s been said that there is more happiness in giving than there is in receiving. So go ahead – reap the emotional rewards, but enjoy the continued flow of business…
Effective Blog Post
by Levi Jones on October 17, 2011
in Marketing
If you’ve been into Internet marketing even for a while now, you should know how important it is to have your own blog. It helps you to contact your targeted market and provides the chance to promote and build a brand. There are a lot of internet marketers that begin a blog, but do not know how to create blog posts that get responses. If you want to be ahead of the curve then this is the one thing that you should know how to do. In the following article we shall be discussing three effective tips on writing interesting blog posts. By the way, keep in mind that reliable web hosting is absolutely a must. We use and recommend HostGator webhosting.
1. A very unique approach is to write blogs about the professionals in your area of expertise and talk about the positive things that they have done. You will provide appreciation for their success. This will get you a lot of readers and your post will go viral because your made the effort and made the list, which is advantageous to you. There are tons of bloggers that are already doing this and it not difficult to be done in any niche. For example, if your blog is in the weight loss niche, you can talk about the top blogs in weight loss. If you do this correctly, you will get plenty of ongoing traffic.
2.Conduct a survey related to your blog’s topic where you will reveal the results down the road. This again, makes the blog post engaging because it pushes your readers to take part in the poll, which invokes the curiosity factor. This will make your visitors want to come back to your blog and see the survey results and also participate in new polls.
Everyone wants to give their viewpoint and see if others agree with them. We are using this easy ploy to get the readers to interact as much as we can.
3. You also have the capability to talk to other experts in your area and share this information with your blog visitors. Again, this offers real value because your readers can learn from this particular expert’s interview. In exchange the expert corresponds with a larger audience and build up the brand. Another good idea is to have an questions and answer period between the professionals and regular readers where they can ask specific questions. There is a lot you can improve once you begin doing it, so go for it. In conclusion, from the above article we can clearly understand how easy it is to create effective blog posts. It really is easy to accomplish and not difficult at all. You must have a creative flair, be smart and not work hard. Anyone can write a blog post but writing one that gets read is what’s important. Again, these posts do not have to be over the top; they can just be easy and get the attention of your visitors. When you start using these recommendations, you will start to see the real potential of blogging and will start using it for your own use. Last but not least, don’t forget to look to see if there are any new HostGator coupon codes.
Proven Google Adwords Tips
by Levi Jones on October 16, 2011
in Marketing
As a pay-per-click advertising model, Google Adwords thus far is the standard when it comes to success and visibility. Writing ad copy that moves people to take positive action is tremendously useful in many advertising mediums, and Google Adwords is just another one of them. The remainder of this article speaks directly about 3 proven and effective tips to get you started with writing Adwords ad copy that will boost your conversion rates.
There are several components involved, and just one of them is the call to action. Of course you can always test your ads, split testing, and see how it works for you. This is something from copywriting and direct response ads, and there is no doubt at all that higher conversion rates result from using a call to action statement. It is so important that the reader understand why they should care about your product or service, and the way you make them care is by telling them of a great benefit. In a way, for the searcher you’re nothing but another ad in the many ads on that page full of links. Your benefits offered in your ad are your only means to convince someone to give you their precious time. Google Adwords is all about being relevant in your ad copy, landing page, main website, and everything else in between. If there are any surprises, as in unexpected information, then the reader will only get annoyed and leave you forever. The second AdWords ad copy writing tip is to highlight your unique selling point in your ads. The best approach to writing effective PPC ads is to find out how to write great classified ads. Just remember that all buying decisions are based on emotions and not logic. Ask yourself what are the benefits that your service or product provides to people. But your ad must do more than offer a benefit, you also need to get people’s attention with your headline. How well you can confer your uniqueness and advantage over your competitors will affect your results. Your readers should read your benefits, and it must make them feel that only you have what they’re looking for.
Don’t be afraid to experiment a little bit, and you can offer a glimpse into a personal story with your ads. If you can imply some kind of personal experience in an ad, then that is fine but remember you need to mention the product benefit, etc. Tell them a clear story as to how you achieved something and how they could to.
If you’re not sure if these ad copywritng tips will help you, we understand; so then the thing to do is test them in your campaigns, today. Here, we just touched the tip of the iceberg, so you’ll find there’s more to learn and apply as time goes by.
Better Landing Pages
by Levi Jones on October 13, 2011
in Marketing, SEO, Uncategorized
A big hurdle to overcome in the Affiliate Marketing space is the conversion of your traffic into sales. Why has this been a problem for so many? More than likely, the marketer didn’t focus on the quality of the page but instead on where his traffic came from. Sure, you need targeted visitors, but if you cant get them to buy, whats the point? Therefore, creating a page that converts should be priority number 1. How is this acccomplished?
How are your buttons? Let’s imagine you’re selling rain water barrels and you have your “order now” link buttons all over the place (that’s OK). More than likely they won’t distract a reader from your main value prop. However, if you want your visitors to follow through on your call to action, you need to include a highlighted button that demands they take action to buy your rain harvesting product. Ensure good button size, colors and good wording flow.
Something else to consider is the length of your paragraphs. Keep these short. This is a must! Short paragraphs take less time and energy to read. People are lazy and don’t like to read. Make your paragraphs 2 or 3 sentences long. Less is more in this case.
Lastly, think about what people generally want. Make the pitch about them and not you. Show them how the product solve their problems. This build rappor and trust.
So there you have it – the secrets to profitable landing pages…
