Driving Sales

Getting More Bang From Your Business Blog

In what seems like the blink of an eye, blogs have risen to the forefront of the online landscape as a powerful and personal tool for businesses. Quickly and cheaply, a blog enables you to reach out to prospective customers, create buzz for products, services and ideas, and enrich understanding and appreciation for what you have to say and offer. 

As easy as blogs are to set up, seed with content and update, using them to build trust, visibility and mutually rewarding relationships takes a host of ingrediants and techniques that add up to initial and ongoing success. Here's a few choice tips that can make the process of blogging to build your business more productive.

Make the title of your post a "grabber" that will get people to stop and take notice. "Canned Advertising Kills" was the title of our recent post on the low readership and recall of generic, recycled advertising. We could have called it "People Don't Pay Attention to Uninteresting Ads," but the "grabber factor" was missing in action.

As a rule, brevity is a blog's best friend. More people are drawn to blog posts that offer them something useful, entertaining or interesting in a "snack-size" portion than those that read like a State of the Union Address.

Write "open-ended posts." By not structuring every post with a beginning, middle and end, you encourage others to jump in and add to the discussion. This increases participation in your blog and the growth of an engaged community of potential customers and partners. Sometimes all it takes to open the lines of communication are ending a posting with a simple "What do you think?"

Link out to other blogs as often as possible and comment on other blogs when you have something to contribute. Nurturing relationships is one of the most reliable ways to expand your community and build traffic to your blog.

Be committed and consistent in your blogging. Blogging daily may not be a realistic goal, but once a week should be a minimum and more is better.

For more ideas to drive sales check out archives or visit Ambit Advertising and Public Relations.

Shift Your Thinking and Jump Start Your Marketing

When dollars are tight and alternate options are needed to keep your business top-of-mind, it pays to take a fresh look at every aspect of your marketing. Consider nothing sacred and open your mind to all possibilities - you never know where a new idea or unconventional approach might lead. Food for thought . . .

This may be the time to renegotiate your contract with the print media. They are hurting, too - and there are deals to be made.

Maybe your ads have to change their emphasis. Ads during a recession need to reflect the current consumer mentality. Can you reformat your offering? Is there a price program you could offer that would help you hold on to your existing customers? What about special discounts or temporarily lower pricing?

What about taking a booth at a trade industry show or community event?

Have you used social marketing to promote your business on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other popular social media platforms?

Are you creating and using press releases to increase exposure for your business and drive visitors to your Web site for more information?

What about partnering with a sponsor who would benefit from reaching the same audience you are?

Marketing during a recession is smart business when you approach it with a fresh eye for opportunity and an emphasis on resourceful alternatives.

Find a way to keep your name out there. It will bring back dividends to you now and, most assuredly, when the market heats up again.

For more ideas to drive sales check out archives or visit Ambit Advertising and Public Relations.

"Canned" Advertising Kills

You can gain market share and increase sales in a tough economy. But not if your advertising is doing the same old, same old.

Smart companies have changed the way they get new business, and "canned" advertising is the kiss of death in an era where hatching fresh ideas  and harnessing the power of new technology are the keys to survival and resurgence. 

What is canned advertising? It's the generic trash that 90% of the ads, Web banners, landing pages, radio spots and TV commercials produced today are made of. The worn-out generalities and trite cliches used to describe products and services could apply to any business. Worse yet, such advertising fails to separate you from your competition.

Today, the best way - the only way to - to get your audience's attention is by packing substance and originality into every message and spreading the word through media that they're personally invested in. If a promotional idea or marketing strategy feels familiar, recycled or just flat-out boring, roll it up into a big ball and toss it in the trash.  

If a zero tolerance policy against canned ideas makes your ad agency uncomfortable, maybe it's time to can your ad agency. 

For more ideas to drive sales check out archives or visit Ambit Advertising and Public Relations.   

Gaining Business in a Sour Economy

To market or not to market during a recession - that is the question.

The straightforward, historically-proven answer is:

When the economy dips, opportunity knocks for those who view marketing as an investment, not an expense.

It has been demonstrated again and and again that businesses that have expanded their marketing during downturns positioned themselves to benefit when the upturn occurred.

Kellogg's, Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, Pillsbury, Levi Strauss and Chevrolet are just a few familiar companies that can vouch for the benefits of maintaining or increasing their ad budgets during recessions.

The fact is, advertising during a downturn provides an ideal window of opportunity to reach new customers and re-energize your existing customer base; build brand equity and get your name recognized; and make inroads on your competitors who have cut their advertising.

Ambit can work with you to:

• Make your marketing budget more efficient by merging social marketing opportunities with your traditional advertising and public relations.

• Refocus your marketing messages to be more responsive to changing consumer needs during the recession.

• Find new places and ways to promote your business and gain exposure.

• Explore partnerships with other companies or sponsors who would benefit from reaching the same audience as you.

Why wait for better days when you can raise your visibility and sales results now? For strategic marketing ideas designed to bring you real bottom-line breakthroughs in difficult times, contact us today at (954) 568-2100.

For more ideas to drive sales check out archives or visit Ambit Advertising and Public Relations.