Keys to Success: Expand Your Communication

Communication is an important tool towards the success of any business either small or large.  It’s imperative to create a relationship with your market.  Due to being so competitive, the only way to win new customers and keep existing ones is to create a line of communication. A great way to capture this is to use social media such as Facebook and Twitter.  These are great tools that can connect your business to thousands of potential customers. These not only help promote your expertise and what you have to offer, it also creates a line of communication which, at the same time, helps build your brand. I will talk more about this in the “Keys to success: Building your brand” blog post. 

Communication is a key part to a successful business.  It gains trust and loyalty from your followers.  People are more likely to buy a product or service from a company they know and have a relationship with.  In other words, the best way to keep and grow your customer base is to listen and communicate.  Take some time to listen to what your customers are saying about your company, if it’s all positive, that’s great, thank your customers and encourage more feedback. However if its negative, this gives you a chance to improve your business and make it  a place where your customers can say, business xyz actually listened to us and changed the way they do things based on our standards. 

So why is communication a key factor for success? It creates relationships and helps build your brand.  It puts your business in front of your customers and shows that you care. 

For more information on the Marketing Keys to Success: Communication email me at alan.mktg@gmail.com

Stay tuned for more postings on my marketing keys to success.

Follow me on twitter:@alantsao2

Visit my website at www.alantsao.com

Marketing Keys to Success Introduction

Happy New Year everyone! To start off on the right foot I’d like to write about the keys to success.  Many people have written and blogged about their thoughts on the keys to success for small businesses.  So I thought I’d give it shot. Within the next few days I will be posting my keys to success based on marketing.  They will include communication, branding, market analysis, digital media, and creativity. So stay tuned and again, if you have any marketing questions that you’d like to get answered, I’d love to help.

Best regards,

Alan Tsao

Follow me on twitter @alantsao2

Visit my website www.alantsao.com

Email me at alan.mktg@gmail.com

Marketing During The Holidays

The holidays are just around the corner with opportunities to increase revenue for any small business.   It just takes the right marketing strategy to attract customers and compete against the larger businesses during the holiday season.  Here are some tips to help get your small business to achieve holiday sales and company goals.

•        Focus your advertising.  If you measure your advertising initiatives, which are a must, you should have a good grasp of where your audience is.  Once you identify the top marketing sources that reach the most of your audience you should focus your advertising, especially during the holidays.  Consumers have a higher likelihood to purchase during the holidays than any other time.  In other words, the market becomes very competitive, which should give you enough reason to focus on what works best. 

•        Name your special. Creating a holiday special is an important strategy to help draw in current and prospective customers into your business.  The special should be connected to the actual holiday, that way it can be associated as an exclusive event that only happens once a year.  Giving the intent for consumers to act and acknowledge other discounts that you are providing. 

• .       Timing. Consumers respond to deadlines in very positive ways. Therefore your business should create a time sensitive discount that gives consumers a deadline.  The end of the holidays is a great way to do so.  Your small business can create awareness while gaining new customers.

• .       Bring everyone together. The holidays are meant to bring families and friends together.  Therefore you should offer discounts for families, groups, and friends that require customers to buy multiple items for a cheaper more affordable price to them while increasing your overall revenue.  A great example is a “buy a gift, get a gift” campaign, which can work for gift cards as well as other products that you’d like to sell in pairs. 

• .       Social Media.  Use this to help deliver your message.  Although this isn't a seasonal tactic, it should always be implemented to communicate your business and any special discounts that you may have, especially for the holidays.  Social media is an important marketing tool that can communicate your products while gaining customer awareness and market buzz.  The best thing about social media is that it’s little to no cost to you. Consumers look everywhere to find a great deal, so the best place to create buzz is to establish the platform of word of mouth using Facebook, Twitter, or other social tools that help communicate what you have to offer.

The holidays are a great way to build relationships and test new marketing initiatives to gain more customers, while increasing sales and accomplishing company goals. It doesn’t take a holiday miracle to improve your business revenue, just some innovative ideas, new marketing tactics, and a few simple guidelines to truly have a successful holiday season.

Have a question or a new topic to discuss?  Feel free to contact me at alan.mktg@gmail.com or through my contact page, www.alantsao.com

Happy Holidays,

Alan Tsaohttp://www.alantsao.com/

Comment by Amer Jaber on December 7

Question:
When studying marketing, practices companies may use sometimes come into question of its ethical standing. Most or all the questions asked involve subjective answers to find whom the scale of fault shifts to the most (the consumer or the company). 
Does marketing influence the behavior of targeted stereo types (individuals who are grouped into classes of age, gender, race, geographic location, etc.) or do groups of people in the classification effect marketing? 
Does a company’s marketing technique have a social responsibility to respect the moral guide lines of society or does it just follow the change in society’s behavior?   

Answer:


These are great questions Amer. In terms of marketing ethicality, many have argued that marketing is somewhat evil and plays a large role in damaging personal values/beliefs, manipulation of social values, and self-images. I believe it all depends on how someone perceives a marketing campaign and how it affects them individually.  However, marketing most definitely can influence the behavior of different groups.  Remember, marketing is creatively communicating to a target market. Marketing must be focused to a certain target in order to truly gain a customer base.  There is no such thing as a generic marketing campaign that impacts the entire world, everything must be analyzed and targeted. In order to do so, a market must be funneled down to a designated target group with similar background (i.e. stereotypes).  Once a marketer is able to identify the niche market or target market, they will be able to identify which strategy to use and how they can use it. At the same time, groups can also play a large role in affecting marketing.  Based on constant changing values, goals, beliefs, etc. marketing must always change and adapt to new trends.  In order to focus on a certain market, the campaign must evolve and communicate to the group by creating a connection or something that relates a product or service to a consumer.  For example, let’s say Baltimore city contains 50% males, 40% are in the middle class, under 30 years of age, and all love dogs.  If a large company that develops pet food wants to focus on males in Baltimore city they would create a marketing campaign focused on dog food. If 40% of the males that love dogs suddenly change to love cats, the entire marketing campaign must be shifted and start focusing on cat food.  With that said, both marketing and the “groups” affect one another. It’s somewhat like evolution. You always have to adapt to survive, or in this case adapt to successfully communicate.

Marketing is a very difficult field to truly respect the moral guidelines of society.  The main reason is because “morals” is very broadly defined, and therefore a marketing technique cannot satisfy everyone’s ethics.  Like Newton’s Law, “To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction” Same, applies to marketing.  No matter what type of technique is being used a different reaction will take place, either good or bad.  Everyone holds different ethics and a society can’t necessarily create a universal morality code, it all depends on the individual viewers or customers that the marketing campaign is truly affecting.  Of course there are morals that should never be crossed, for example directly discriminating against a certain demographic or anything that directly causes someone harm, either emotionally or physically.  Based on your questions a company’s marketing technique really depends on both the change of society behaviors and the universal respect to individual morality.

I hope I was able to answer all your questions. If you need a more detailed answered please email me at alan.mktg@gmail.com

What does marketing mean to you?

Marketing-What it means to me

Marketing is creatively identifying and implementing a communications strategy that connects a product or service to a target market.

Marketing is creativity at work.  In order to sell a product/service or express ones ideas/values, marketing tactics are being used.  Marketing can range from sales, graphic design, e-commerce, social media, and everything in between.

I have always been intrigued by the marketing/advertising industry, ranging from traditional tactics to new and upcoming tactics. Marketing is always evolving which means there's never a single marketing tactic that can be applied to all consumers. It takes several different forms and trials to successfully communicate to different markets.  It can be a long process, but a very important and necessary one in order to truly gain a customer base. Understanding even the basics of marketing can help a company strive in their daily lives, as well as in business.

Marketing is creatively communicating to a target market.

We live in a very competitive world.  It's getting harder to reach certain markets because of so many options that consumers can choose from.  Like it or not, but many consumers base a product/service on first impressions.  If your product or service doesn’t catch a consumers eye within the first 10 seconds you’ve already lost them. For example, if your website doesn't look appealing enough or your product is perceived to be too difficult to use, the prospective consumer is just going to forget about what you’re actually selling and remember all the negative features that you have to offer. What a successful marketing campaign can do is, creatively communicate your service/product in a way that projects the great features, which allow viewers the opportunity to remember the great things about what you have to offer and potentially tell their friends, and their friends of friends, and so on.  That's what marketing can do.  It can create an initial buzz that will then start a natural human reaction through word of mouth.

For any questions or comments please feel free to comment on this post or just send a message to me on the contact page.

Thanks for reading; I hope you find this article very informative. If you have any marketing topics or questions that you’d like me to discuss or answer, I will be more than happy to.

Best regards,
Alan Tsao