When you’re first starting out in your business, it’s easy to jump at whatever advertising opportunities come your way. Discount magazine ad? Sign me up! Free month of radio ads when you buy one month? Where do I sign?
But you have to research all advertising opportunities. If the medium doesn’t have your target audience or [...]
Beware of Advertising Scams
Using Traditional Advertising Over Google AdWords
I don’t have anything against Google, per se, but its AdWords program is getting worse. People just aren’t making more than beans off of most of their AdWords ads. When it first started it was easy, but now it’s gotten complicated and people aren’t clicking as much as they used to. And what about those [...]
Have You Heard of Place Branding?
I hadn’t heard of place branding until today. At first I thought it seemed odd that a place like city would need branding, but then I thought of Las Vegas. New York City. Those places definitely have brands attached to them. Now it’s starting to all make sense.
Place branding is being used by more and [...]
Integrating Marketing into the Product
I came across a good slideshow (yes, slideshow!) about marketing – “Future of Marketing and Advertising” is actually the title. It’s a frank, somewhat humorous take on what works in marketing now and the trend of integrating marketing into the product. The slideshow is full of good quotes from marketing greats and CEOs, ranging from [...]
Sensory Branding: Crayola’s Mistake
Advertising Age has a correspondent named Martin Lindstrom that finds new and innovative ways of building brands. Lindstrom goes around the world, finding new branding techniques.
In one interesting video he explores branding through smell. He goes to a Crayola store and says that there is no smell in there whatsoever. How can that be?
Everyone remembers what [...]
Unintentionally Funny Logos and Ways to Avoid Them
I checked out the following post about a bad logo that got corrected within a few weeks’ time: http://www.jay-han.com/2008/04/22/small-changes-big-difference/. But that led me to look for other bad logos. I found a goodie page full of them at a real estate blog of all places! Check out http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/logos/when-logos-go-bad/2007/04/19/.
The logo from the first Web page mentioned, [...]
Unbranded = Unmemorable
Don’t make the mistake of generic packaging. Anytime you have an opportunity to connect your product with your corporate image, take it. Not only will your customers have one more point of exposure to your brand, but this also increases the likelihood of exposing new customers to your brand.
Examples abound: unbranded envelopes, basic business cards, [...]
Nike Sues Sporting Goods Store Over Google Search Term Policy
Nike has sued Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS), a New Hampshire outdoor-sporting-goods store, for bidding on Nike’s trademarked term “Dri-FIT” in Google’s ad system. When a user searches for Dri-FIT on Google, EMS is one of the first paid ads featured.
When the user clicks on the EMS ad, she is taken back to EMS’s Web site, [...]
Setting Up Goals for Growth
Every business owner has dreams. Unfortunately, most of these are vague dreams like to become wealthy or have a great business. If one desires these dreams to actually come true, then it becomes necessary to attach tangible real world targets which can be measured objectively.
Assume you owned a postcard printing company. Creating [...]
