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The Many Different Forms of Marketing

Marketing deals with so many different things, you just cannot simplify it into a single kind of advertisement. I have seen many occasions when I felt a company was attempting to do just that.

The time comes around for more marketing material so they immediately fall back on the staples of the industry. They might print off some more brochures or put up some more posters, maybe churn out another TV commercial, write up another radio ad, but they do not go into new territory.

Marketing is anything that helps promote your business, and even that statement can deal with a lot of different things.

For instance, there is what could be considered direct marketing and indirect marketing. A postcard promoting a sale or a brochure talking about how great your services are is going to be a form of direct promoting. It tells people to buy from you and everyone who picks it up knows that it serves no purpose other than promoting.

Now, that is not a bad thing, but it is still exactly what these kinds of marketing devices are.

The next is indirect marketing, where the point is not to tell people to buy from you, but get your brand name engrained in their minds. Calendar printing is often a great example of this style of marketing.

Often when it comes to calendars that companies hand out, they do not directly divulge about their company at all. They will have calendars dealing with natural wonders in nature, or tips for improving something in a person’s life, maybe funny jokes each month. In short, nothing that tells people about how good the company is.

However, there will be a company logo in the bottom corner of every page. You will know when you look at that calendar which company covered the costs of the calendar printing, and that is all it really needs to do. The purpose of direct marketing is often to make your name always close to people, so when they naturally need your services, your name will be there for them to find.

There are so many different kinds of marketing that work well with both of these forms of marketing, and the same kind of advertisement can be interchangeable between the two. For example, a calendar can be more direct in the way it markets. You can have posters, which are very subtle, just as you can have posters that make their point very clear.

Each situation will dictate which kind of marketing you should use for your company. However, to know what the right kind of marketing to use you need to first understand exactly what they are. Figure out whether direct or indirect is the best for your customer base, and go from there. You never want to use the wrong type or you will end up wasting your marketing budget.

Katie Marcus writes about the calendar printing technologies used by businesses for their marketing and advertising campaigns

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About the Author: Katie Marcus writes information about printing company and printing technologies.  

 

 

 

 

  

 

The Importance of a Marketing Plan

There aren’t many things in life that you would get into with out a plan. Marketing is no different. Your overall marketing plan should cover about a six month period, and should be made up of weekly and monthly marketing schedules.
 

This is how you do it:

1. Figure out how much money is in your budget.

As we all know, marketing of any kind costs money. How much money you are willing to commit to the cause is going to determine some key factors about how that money can be best spent. Remember, you want to be economical but you also need to be realistic on what it will take to pull in the leads you need to close new and repeat business.

2. Determine your target market.

Who is most likely to buy your product? Are they married? Are they business owners? What is their income level? These are the people that you want to target. One of the most common mistakes in marketing is answering "Everyone" to the question "Who is your target market?" It may be that you have more than one target market, but there is no product in the world that appeals to each and every person. Even Coca-Cola targets different people with different messages. Decide who is MOST LIKELY to buy what you have to sell and target them. Your message to teenagers will be different than your message to housewives even if the product is exactly the same. Different markets may require different mail pieces or advertisements.

2a. Using the Right Mailing List.

In making sure that your message is getting across to the right people - people who are in the market for what you’re offering – it usually comes down to finding the right mailing list.

There is a great deal to know about mailing lists. There are pointers you could follow when buying a mailing list that tell you what to watch for in a mailing list company to make sure they’re reputable. They are:

i) Get references. Talk to other people that have purchased mailing lists from that company.

ii) Do they guarantee on delivery? That means due to the inevitable number of bad addresses there are in a list, can they still guarantee a high percentage of deliverable addresses. That number should be 90% or better. People move all the time so a mailing list company cannot guarantee 100% deliverability – but they should guarantee at least 90%.

iii) How often do they update their information? They should be able to answer this question and should be updating their information monthly.

You can get burnt on mailing lists – it is the most expensive part of your campaign. Ask friends who own businesses. Don’t just purchase from the first person that tries to sell you mailing lists. Do your research.

3. Select what media to use. (i.e., Direct Mail, Television, Radio, etc.)

This decision will depend on both your budget and your target market. If you have not done a good deal of marketing in the past we recommend picking one media to start. This is much easier to keep track of and you will better be able to tell whether or not it is working. Also, since repetition is the key to marketing success, using one media to begin with will help you reach the same people multiple times. If you run a newspaper ad and send out a postcard, you run the risk of the majority of the people only seeing your ad once. However, if you send out the postcard twice you can guarantee that you get your message to the same people twice and you will start to build recognition.


Once you are getting the returns that you want from the first media, or if you decide that it is not working for you, you can branch out into another form of advertising. Over time you will build up a very diverse
marketing plan.

4. Make a Schedule and Stick with It.

Figure out how many people you have in your target market. For this example we will use Direct Mail Marketing. If you have a mailing list of people in your target market that has 1500 names, figure out how many times per month you can mail a postcard to them and still stay within your monthly budget. Once you come up with this number, do it!

The importance of having a marketing plan cannot be stressed enough. Create one and follow it and you’ll start seeing the benefits.

About the Author: Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania (www.PostcardMania.com) in 1998, her only assets a computer and a phone. By 2005 the company did over $12 million in sales, employed over 100 people and made Inc. Magazine’s prestigious Inc 500 List as one of the 500 fastest growing companies in the nation. She attributes her explosive growth to her ability to choose incredible staff and her innate marketing savvy.