An increasing need for marketing expertise in our new business environment has lead my AlphaGraphics centers to become more marketing consultant oriented. I not only want to provide the best possible advice to my customers, I also want to be the best in marketing my three business centers.
To be effective in our marketing efforts means to learn all the tricks of the trade. I have been reading a lot of books on marketing, advertising, public relations, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and email marketing. One of the "stand out" reads has been David Meerman Scott's book, "The New Rules of Marketing and PR". It has valuable insights and advice on how to market in this new Web 2.0 environment and how to save money in this area over traditional methods.
With apologies to David for copying the following points, I believe that he said it best. Here are some of David's old rules of marketing and PR:
· Marketing simply meant advertising and branding
· Advertising needed to appeal to the masses
· Advertising relied on interrupting people to get them to pay attention to the message
· Advertising was one way: company to consumer
· Advertising was exclusively about selling products
· Creativity was deemed the most important component to advertising
· The only way to get ink was through the media
· Companies communicated to journalists via press releases
· The only way to measure the effectiveness of press releases was through "clip books," which noted each time the media deigned to pick up a company's release"
David then went on to talk about the new rules of marketing and PR, namely:
· Marketing is more than just advertising
· PR is for more than just a mainstream media audience
· People want authenticity, not spin
· People want participation, not propaganda
· Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it
· PR is not about your boss seeing your company on TV. It's about your buyers seeing your company on the Web
· The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media
· Companies must drive people into the purchasing process with great online content
· Blogs, podcasts, e-books, news releases, and other forms of online content let organizations communicate directly with buyers in a form they appreciate
How can you begin benefiting from the new rules? Start with a blog and work from there. Here are some things I've done for my three AlphaGraphics centers.
· Started my blog
· Submitted blog postings as articles at ezinearticles.com
· Re-purposed postings into news releases
· Issue a monthly email newsletter to customers using key points from the blogs
· Improved keywords on my website
· Became active in the blogging community, commenting on blog postings and reading as much marketing information from this source as possible
Do you need help developing a comprehensive marketing approach for your business? You can reach us at the following websites:
