Experiential Marketing Turns Traditional Marketing On Its Head

We’ve all felt bombarded by advertising at every turn. On the floor of the grocery store, the side of buildings, overflowing our email boxes, and every place in between. People are even selling body space these days. The average U.S. citizen receives an unbelievable 3,000 marketing messages a day.

The barrage of messages is greatly reducing the effectiveness of traditional marketing. People have had it with the disruptions and are beginning to ignore all advertising, even for products they care about. The Do Not Call list, SPAM blockers, pop-up blockers, digital video recorders and satellite radio are just some of the ways consumers try to escape.

So what is a marketer to do? Well, start brushing up on a new strategy: Experiential Marketing. Don’t just talk to your customer, interact with them!

According to Marketing Week, 71 percent of senior executives in the U.S. and U.K. agree that customer experience is the next big battleground. What is Experiential Marketing? Quite simply, it means creating a live, interactive experience between the consumer and the product or brand instead of just telling them about it. It’s a new way of thinking about marketing.

What’s the benefit? The customer connects in a much deeper way; the company builds a unique connection with customers, gains valuable information about them, and provides more personalized communications. As an added bonus, the customer shares the experience with friends, providing viral marketing for the company.

Let’s look at the services of one company in this space, Picture Marketing, Inc. Quite simply, they provide Experiential Marketing applications and services to leading brands across a variety of industries.

Imagine this. You’re at a car show and walk by the Lexus display. There it is, the car you’ve been wanting. Lo and behold, you can get your picture taken with the car and be seen on the cover of Car & Driver magazine. You wait in line, get your picture taken, go home, fill out an online survey and, there it is, your first magazine cover! You forward the cover with your picture to your friends. And all around your picture is messaging from the car company. A few days later you receive a direct mail piece with your cover, directions to your nearest Lexus dealer and information on the car that caught your attention.

What’s the benefit for the car company? You’ve connected in a much more personal way with the product via a memorable experience. Lexus had you around that car for several minutes as you waited and finally got your picture taken. The experience continued for days as you got your picture and forwarded it to friends. You felt a much stronger connection to the brand and the car. And Lexus got valuable information through the survey--a lead. This lets them market to you with personalized communications that relate to your interests. Ultimately they generate a much greater return on investment for their marketing dollars. Everyone wins!

Research supports the success of these efforts. According to a survey by Jack Morton Worldwide, 53 percent of consumers said Experiential Marketing enhances their brand perception; 90 percent said it makes them more receptive to other advertising; and a high percentage say it drives a quicker purchase.

Explains Art Michalek, director of marketing at Yokohama Tire Corp, a user of Picture Marketing: “We’ve planted a seed in their minds for the next time they consider tires and furthered our relationship with them. We’ve given the consumer a valuable keepsake, and they’ve given us permission to follow up with them with future offers and information. In the end, long after we’ve dismantled the booth and gone back to our offices, the Picture Marketing program helps us continue to be top-of-mind.”

This is just one type of solution with one industry. There are many others. Big company or small, tradeshow or festival, expensive car or inexpensive soft drink, Experiential Marketing is working. Consumers say that these types of interactions with the brands make them more likely to purchase the product. Experiential marketing begins an ongoing dialogue with the brand. And it cuts through the clutter.

Email Marketing: Affordable Internet Marketing Technique

Email marketing is labeled as a killer method when it comes to effective low-cost Internet marketing endeavors. This is because it is the most widely-used and has the best reputation in bringing targeted traffic to websites. It is used to stay in touch with your customers or prospective customers, send out invitations, or make special offers.

It's as easy as writing an e-mail that may be in a form of a newsletter or a plain announcement, and sending that to as many targeted recipients as possible. However, there's an ideal way of going about it. Email marketing is not just about writing any email that you will be sending to anybody. To clarify that, here are some simple tips in doing email marketing the best way possible.

1. Join the "Can Spam" campaign.

Email marketing is not at any rate tantamount to spamming. You are not supposed to send information that your email list will not have any valuable use for.

2. Make your email list open it.

Your email might get lost together with the hundreds of emails that inbox owners are confronted with everyday. Improve your subject line by using extra white space creatively, adding text symbols, starting each word with a capital letter, asking compelling questions, not making any unbelievable claims, and not using the word FREE.

3. Keep it real.

Not including any too good to be true statements is not only applicable to your subject line. Your email content must never embody any promise your business can't keep. Make your offer genuinely of value to your recipients.

4. Don't go too low.

If you inform your customers regarding discounts, minimal discounts are not that effective compared with substantial discounts. But never offer discounts that are lower than your profit. It will defeat the purpose of this email marketing effort.

5. Make it eventful.

It's not about contradicting the advice that you should keep an email short and sweet. This tip is on including seminars, conferences and other events in your email. Businesses that require training benefit much from this method. With these RSVP-requiring emails, repetition is important. Just make sure that an ample interval is considered before sending out a reminder email.

6. Post news.

Sending newsletters and postcards provides useful information for your subscribers. These are the best forms of reaching out to your customers or prospects. You should keep the information short, simple and direct to the point for this feat to be effective.

With these simple ways of going about your email marketing endeavor, your business will prosper in no time.

8 Part Strategy For Constructing Your Advertising Message

Strategies to help produce your brochure, advertisment or direct mail. And make it achieve more sales.

1. Attract & keep the customer's eye

Your customer must be kept glued to your words. They may leave at any point of your copy so keep it attractive and relevant to their needs, right through to their decision to purchase.

Words, pictures and the customer:

Don't go overboard with pictures, its words that sell. You'll need your product photo of course but its the caption or headline that will make the difference. And the headline will be a benefit.

People buy products for what it will do for them, not what it looks like. Quite often, you'll see products like printers with features listed below an image. Here the advertiser has assumed that everyone knows the benefits of their printer and just need to know the specific features.

However a lot of people don't respond to pictures and lists of features, but they may respond to a photo of the product in use. For example you could show a child sat using a computer.

But that's not enough. Add a headline such as...'Now YOUR child can obtain higher grades' and that should get parents interested. You get the idea. The body text would describe how the computer helps children to learn.

Be very wary about using an agency to produce your copy writing. They may not know the principles involved in successful selling. The only way you can be sure is to have control over the production..usually unlikely when dealing with agencies... or produce the content yourself.

2. Content strategies

a) Descriptions: A lot of promtional documents leave the customer to guess at the benefits of the product or service advertised. They just describe it and their company. This is not good. Don't do it this way.

b) Comparisons: Here you could compare your product/service with your competitor's and specify how much better your's is. You could get in trouble if you name the other company and/or can't back up your claims with evidence. Works best by you having a major provable advantage over your competitors..and not naming them.

c) Storyline: A favorite with lots of folk. Tell a story involving the person the customer will relate to in a situation that shows the benefits your product/service gives that person.

Use a 'before using the product' and 'after using the product' strategy. At the end the person will summarise how much better their situation is nw after using your product. And you tell your readers how it will help them as well.

The hard bit is writing a true story. It's less effective than a made up one.

d) The most effective strategy is to use the well-known AIDCA formula..see section 8 further down.

3. Inspiration

My answer is to go for a walk in the countryside. There are two halves to our brains; the left being for logical functions and the right half for creative thinking. Apparently few logical people are able to take advanatage of the creative side at will. You have to relax and trick the brain into releasing your ideas.

Walking and daydreaming are a couple of techniques to employ.

4. Ideas for copy

You need to saturate your brain with all the elements about your product or service. Study what your product is made of, how strong it is and how it is put together. Consider the manufacturing process and the care taken throughout the production.

Write down all these details with the angle of 'how much better than our competitors is our product' and 'in what ways?' Write down your conclusions.

Do the same for your service. Take your service apart and study it as individual steps. Do your customers know about these steps? What benefits do these steps have for your customers? Maybe your competitors don't mention theirs and you could take advantage of this.

Your customer needs to be in the fore-front of your mind. Particularly your main customer group, the ones who share a common need. Don't forget, you'll want to aim separate message if you have more than one target customer group.

5. Producing your copy

Don't overdo it when you first start to put your ideas down on paper. Go over your notes and details about your product or service a few times and have a break from that particular subject for a day or too if necessary. I'm not saying take it to easy but don't try to force yourself, it won't work.

During this initial period you may well be getting flashes of inspiration and ideas ay odd moments. Write them down. I would advise always carrying a notebook or maybe a voice recorder to ensure all your creativity is not lost.

When you have decided to formally put everything down, find yourself a quiet room and ideally use a large A2 pad (which can be found in art stores) to record your information. Remember, you are writing down what it is you want to say to your customers to make them buy.

Write down the most important 'buying factor' on the pad. Then continue to put down all the others related to customer needs and buying factors. Forget any logical order, put them down as they come to you, adding detail as necessary. Keep relaxed and don't censor any ideas you have (unless they are too far removed from your area). You could intoruce others into this exercise and in effect hold a group brainstorming session.

You should end up with several pages of ideas.

6. Compiling messages needed to sell

You will see many ideas that you are familiar with but there may be some that you are not. Do some research on these. Your competitors may not have bothered and there could be some gold here.

Next you need to group together related ideas with colored pens. You'll find some remaining that don't fit in a group, but keep these. They may come to life later.

Now you need to structure your results so that you can develop your 'story' to relay to your customer. Put the group headings around a circle and then like the legs of a spider put the related ideas along them in order of sequence, importance or whatever criteria you have decided.

As you do all this your creative side will flag up more ideas to add to the pool. Now you can get some feedback from colleagues or even customers on what you have produced. This will optimise your results even further.

7. Producing your copy framework

You have two choice here. Hand your work over to a copywriter or carry on yourself. If you are carrying on yourself you need to decide on the most appropriate approach as defined in section 2 above; descriptions, comparative, situation or benefits.

Your message will be built around the AIDCA structure.

Attention: You must get the readers attention within seconds using your headline.

Interest: Get your prospect interested in your product.

Desire: This is where you detail how their needs can be fulfilled.

Conviction: Provide proof that this is the product that they need.

Action: Here you tell them what they must do to get it.

8. Using the AIDCA formula

Attention seeking headlines: Often the headline is left till last as it is the most difficult part of the message. And you may find it in the main copy itself. Short headlines rarely work. Remember, if you are using a picture its the wqords that will matter. The picture is a supporting element.

'Benefit' type headlines are best (even better if they are tiny storylines) with 'News' type second best. Generally you should include your product and the main benefit. Length is less important. Brochures, mailshots and magazine adverts tend to have longer headlines than straightforward advertisements.

Interest to be aroused: This is where you tell your main story using one of the strategies described earlier; description, comparative, situation or benefits.

Concentrate on how your product or service fulfils primary and secondary needs. Relate how it satisfies the customers buying factors and success factors that you have defined in your marketing assessment.

Desire to be created: You need to be enthusiastic here in describing what the product or service can do for the customer. Convince them that they will really benefit from your product. Expand on the detail. For example if your car is economical to run then write about how much money they will save and then buy a holiday with it.

Conviction needed: Here you need to prove to the reader that your claims about your product are true. Assume that they will disbelieve your cliams. If you have statistics use them. Show graphs. Show testimonials or endorsements from satisfied customers. Don't make them up. How could you prove they were real?

Action: It is imperative that you tell your readers what action you want them to take. And include a benefit along with it. For example; "Send for our full color catalogue. Its FREE, there is no obligation to buy."

There you have it! An 8 part strategy to help compile your advertising message and get you more sales.

Is Your Advertising Working?

How do you know your advertising is working for you, do you know exactly who is buying your products or services. Many companies and businessmen even those who are making a reasonable living have no idea where their income is generated from.

Keeping good records of customers will help to expand your marketing ventures. Where they are buying, how did they get to know about your products or services these are questions you need to be asking yourself.

Placing adverts in a magazine is no guarantee that sale will come rolling in. If you are butcher and you supply special exotic cuts of meat and you are advertising in a butchers magazine you are still not guaranteed the sales will happen. This magazine might have a lower income audience so your $200 steaks are definitely not going to hit the tables.

A simple market survey to identify where your customers are coming from will ensure your advertising dollars are spent in the right places. If contacted by a customer ask him: how, where, when and obvious questions related to your products or services.

Trying to create the right marketing mix is a constant battle especially if you are starting a business. Where to advertise and what guarantees do you have that your magazine advert will work. For starters find a magazine that relates to your services or products, this is a start. The next step is to contact that publication and find out what bracket their readership falls into. Other than this without a track record of advertising in that particular publication you will have know idea if its the publication best suited for your needs.

Your customers are your best form of advertising without them you are nowhere. It is vital to know everything about him/her, attach a simple questionnaire to your products and make sure your employees sell solutions to your customers.

Another tip in closing about placing an advertisment, always make sure your advertisment is placed on the far right of the right hand page. Natural reading patterns are from left to right so the eyes tend to come to rest in this position. You are paying for this advert so stress this to the publication, i am sure they can accommodate you in this regard.

The Main Purpose of Advertising from a South African Perspective

The main purpose of advertising in the business world is to promote sales in order to boost profits. As such, advertising has three basic aims:

To inform To persuade and To remind

One of the most underestimated points is to REMIND. The cost of advertising is extremely high. One may therefore wonder if it is not a waste of money to advertise a product which is widely known and which has a good slice of the market. Take Coca-Cola for instance. It is known and is readily available in almost every city in the world and yet the company continues to advertise it. Why is this so, and is the company wasting profits?

As i have already said, advertisers aim to inform the public about new or improved products and services and to persuade them to buy or use them. However, once the company has a slice of the market, it needs to remind the public that the products or services are still available, or it may well lose out to its competitors. I would be willing to bet anything if Coca-Cola stopped informing the public about their products a company like Pepsi would be the next giant.

Many large companies have fallen into this trap, once they have their market they automatically assume people will carry on buying the products or services they offer. The ability to constantly inform consumers of a companies products and activities is an ongoing commitment that keeps major share holders in a specific line at the top.

People (consumers) are highly complex creatures and do not always behave or react as rationally as one would expect. Advertising and marketing companies realise that consumers DO NOT BUY COMMODITIES, there are only two things they buy, 1. good feelings 2. solutions. One does not need a degree in psychology to know that everyone wants to be accepted, that people fear rejection, and that most of us wish to be successful, wealthy, attractive and one step ahead of the Jones'es. Take for example toothpaste, the fact that oral hygiene is the most important 'feature' this alone won't sell the product. Constant advertising to inform consumers of the fact that toothpaste makes you 'nicer to be near', 'keeps your mouth tingling fresh', and gives you advanced breath freshness are the 'sell ilnes' used to sell toothpaste. Don't just sell me a suit, sell me a sleek look, a tailor made fit and custom label that will turn heads.

A product or service that has been around for a long time has to find new an innovative ways to sell their 'wares' as well as emerging products. How to inform potential customers of what they should be buying, or why they should be buying are as varied as mass of different products for sale on the global market.

The advertising industry is, of course aware of our desire to be as good as, if not better than, others and exploits this to their own advantage. By using all they know about consumer behaviour, advertisers manage to persuade the public to buy the products they are promoting. Powerful appeals to human nature are often hidden within the advertisment. The subtle way in which these messages are used to inform the consumer is what makes advertising such a fascinating study.

Profitable Affiliate Marketing Using Incentive Offers

The biggest companies want to sell their products and services on the Internet. One of the best ways to market their products and services online is by offering a commission to website owners. This is done by setting up an affiliate program where webmasters can pick up the links to offers and promote them on their web sites in exchange for affiliate commissions for each sale made.

Webmasters have many ways to promote these affiliate offers - on websites, by email, with pay-per-click search engines, writing and distributing articles, etc.

However, a little-known way to promote these offers is by using incentives to online surfers who agree to buy a product or service from the webmaster.

One of the best ways to market incentive offers is by building a membership-based website and giving free cash to members who agree to accept affiliate products and services.

Here are the steps for setting up a successful incentive-based website:

1. You'll have to build a database-driven website where new members can sign up and start browsing offers after logging in. Such websites usually promote at least a hundred of various offers. You should offer your members about 50% of the commission that you recieve from an affiliate program.

One of the biggest disadvantages in starting an incentive-based website is that the scripts for running such program are quite complicated. However, if you don't know Internet programming and cannot build the website by yourself, you can hire someone to create the scripts for you or purchase them online.

2. After your website is up and running, you should apply for affiliate networks that allow incentive traffic. When your application is approved you should set up offers on your website.

3. You should market the incentive offers not only on your website but by email too. Sending paid email to your members is one of the best ways to increase your profit. You should reward your members with a certain amount of cash for reading each paid email and redirect them to affiliate offers where they can earn even more extra cash by accepting the offers.

4. Since the incentive traffic is usually limited to certain countries, you should promote your website to the visitors of these countries only. The best ways to drive targeted traffic to your incentive-based website are: pay-per-click search engines, email marketing and affiliate marketing (by setting up your own affiliate program).

5. You should manage your website by setting up new offers, paying members their earned payments, suspending fraudulent accounts and tracking your website advertising campaigns.

Some incentive-based websites offer a point system. It means that members earn points instead of cash. Later these points can be redeemed for cash or any other items.

Incentive marketing on the Internet can be very profitable. Anyone can start an excellent home-business online within several weeks and run it spending only a couple of hours per day. It doesn't require any complicated and time-consuming content writing for websites and newsletters. The investment in scripts is low.

Promote Your Band Using Various Marketing Methods

This is a paper on how to promote your band, over the past 12 months I have been in contact with a hundreds of bands looking to become famous in LA. Everyone wants to a hit! Well it all comes down to being discovered! You can be the best band in the world and if you don&;t market yourself right well good luck! Lets analysis fortune 500 companies. Take a look at there budgets They dump 35% to 65 % or more of their profits back into marketing and advertisements every year. Becoming and remaining number one requires a lot of work. Advancing to more and more new customers not only requires more and more marketing but keeping the old ones happy!

Wanting to Promote your band with Live performances and marketing new ideas well you have come to the right spot.

Once people have bought a bands CD and their tee shirt, and seen the band live now what? Note, promoting a band is a lot of more then just t-shirts and cd&;s hell anyone can do that! You need to promote in many ways, just look at fortune 500 companies they email, do giveaways, mini dvd discs promo&;s, cold calling, internet marketing etc. You must do at least 3 forms of promoting to get a response out of your audience. The newsiest one for bands is musicmp3 ringtones which we will get into later.

We will go over many ways of promoting your band:

1. Great item that I have seen so far are mini DVD discs called pocketreels. These mini dvds can go a far way just think what people would do if you handed them a mini dvd. They go crazy and they are super impressed! Place a nice video of your band on it and see how many new customers you receive at your next show!

2. Having a photograph or videoagrapher at your shows to help promote your band is a good thing. They can take pictures and or videos and upload the images or videos to your website which can boost mailing lists and a fan club! And then they may be compelled to come to your next show and bring more friends or soak in the opportunities for fame and the live music experience itself. For video or photographer outlets call PR Productions at 310-694-8350 for CALIFORNIA only. They have the best crews around but they are not cheap. Shoots start at $400 + editing.

3. That brings us to a mailing list, each visitor to your website you should be collecting their email address so you can send them useful information like when your next show is going to be.

4. Promoting your band is not easy so do your self a favor and get a good publicist to promote your band. A good one can get you in 3 to 4 magazines and newspapers in one month for free, of course you have to pay the publicist but it will be well worth it. It can range from $400 to $2000. Note you can do this part yourself if you know how to negotiate with editors.

5. Promote your band by creating a really cool website! CMS stands for Content Management system A good website will cost: starting at $1000 but it will have video, email list generators, photo section and best of all easy management. They are a little bit more then a regular website but the ROI

Or return on investment is greater then a plain website. You can change show times just like myspace and it makes it really easy for owners to manage so in the long run you save big!

6. Make a professional music video for your band or gig. This will help with promoting your band.

7. Saving the best for last Another great way to promote your band is by making a mp3 ringtone, or polyphonic ringtonefor example you can download a nickelback ringtone and wow free advertising everytime someone calls that person and bam there is a song on your phone. You need help making your own mp3 or polyphonic ringtone please goto A-FREE-RINGTONE.COM By making a ringtone like nickelback you can have your song ringing all over the world!

Your goal is to continue to reach more and more locals. Develop more ways to attract people&;s attention. Always have something on you to promote yourself with.

Just for example. In an area with one million people, if you are getting less than 100 people to every show, perhaps you could be doing much more to reach more of the people in the community?

It's tough out there, and you must be relentless every day to meet new people, shake hands and hand out your mini DVD discs or if you can&;t afford mini DVD discs get free business cards by click here and smile at people who are passing by you on the street and in stores when you are out shopping alone or with friends, in bars carousing. Go out and meet new people. Walk up to people, introduce yourself, Hi, my name is Scott I play at ___ ___ place on blank night. What do you do? Here is my promo disc (mini DVD) with my video or here is my business card with my website on it. You can download my mp3 ringtone (or my polyphonic ringtone) for free at this address. “ Hand them a card with the information on it. Note always test all information you hand out before hitting the road. Nothing is worse then a fan going home and something you handing them not working!

Have a stack of Mini DVD discs or business cards or flyers in your pocket at all times ready to hand out. Make sure on your Mini DVD, Business card or flyer you have your contact information, website, and the next local performance. You do this 20+ times per hour for 2-3 hours and then youre distributing at least 50 mini DVD discs or business cards or flyers in those 3 hours.

You then go back to your car and re-stock. Grab something refreshing to drink, munch on a a sandwich, or whatever, and move on to the next part of town, or the next gathering of people. Or go to the next live gig, the next bar, the next scene etc. and you keep it going.

Once or twice a week, you hit Kinko&;s, or the copier next to your office desk and you photocopy flyers and any designs you&;ve created for promotion of your demos, etc. Better yet think ahead and goto gotprint.com much better deals then Kinko&;s. (EXAMPLE 5000 post cards for $99 full color first side!)

Sell yourself. Meet with people and sell yourself. They dont know what youre doing. And unless you sell yourself, they wont care about what youre doing. They want to care, but they depend upon YOU to make that happen. People want so badly to care about something besides there problems. They want something to believe in. Entertainment helps take them there. You can be that entertainer, that leader of willing people of all ages that helps them to believe that there just might be something in this world worth caring about. They want to listen to you, and they want you to tell them about something that really matters to you. So, stay informed and develop interests in topics that may be discussed, even debated. Maybe you are trying to make a difference in the world - one person and one performance at a time. People want to believe in this and they want to believe in you. so, get out there and make it happen.