Marketing Resources|Research on the Cheap

So being a marketing student, you get pretty bogged down with marketing homework, and other misc. projects and forget you even have a blog. Sorry.To aid you guys in an attempt to redeem myself from my absence, here are a few resources to help you with some marketing research on the cheap; GOVERNMENTAL RESOURCES|put those tax dollars to workOne thing a lot of people either don’t know or realize is that there is a plethora of information available to them for free from the U.S. Government. A key example is anything and everything here census.gov. Now this website is pretty hard to understand, I will admit, but one of the key things to note when using the information from this site is that it’s best used in conjunction with something else. For instance, a great cross reference would be mybestsegments.com. Mybestsegments is information compiled by a company called Claritas and it breaks down information for you by zip code. A good cross reference would be grabbing census information about say Abilene, TX and then cross referencing that with the demographic information on Claritas. you would be surprised how much this little combo can tell you about your target market with just two little websites. More to come. 

Our Own Little World|Customer Individuality

One thing about every person that is unique is that we can all sit alone in a room and think about something that will make us smile. Everyone has the power to control their own happiness and can unlock the beautiful expression that is a smile.

I purpose to you this: If you want to make your product successful, if possible, your product should be transparent. So much so that your consumer when they are in their own little world–alone–your product is a cause of such happiness inside of them that it creates, or is able to stimulate a feeling of happiness that isn’t plagued by anything.

Marketing:Genesis|Mission

My goal for this blog/website is to challenge you as industry professionals, or industry infants, to think critically about your  trade and how you execute your daily activities pertaining to marketing, advertising, and management.

I hope to effectively engage you in any way possible, and in doing so, I will entertain any and all comments and or suggestions I receive that will help me further the cause of creating better viewer interaction with my present product: this website.

I will entertain any and all comments, be they harsh or content, with the same open mindedness with which I have created this website.

Optimism is my tool, and conflict is my medium of creating a better and more effective website.

This is my pledge to you — Jonathan Davis

Ad Sense|Wise Words From a Friend

Selling Yourself and Your Company.

I am a student at Abilene Christian University, and as such some of my friends are professors. One in particular is a gentlemen named Matt Boisvert (pronounced Boi-verr, It’s French or something). Anyways, he is my Marketing professor, and as I was talking to him about some of my outside studies, he introduced me to a concept of selling yourself that changed how I thought about presentation.

The full-story on presentation at the click.

Customer Centric|Creating Good Media for Clients

This one doesn’t pertain as much to creating good ads or marketing strategies as it does learning to do so: not at this  website.

X-Train Studios (www.xtrain.com), a division of Splash Media Inc, has a few phenominal courses on Graphic design. One in particular is about “Document Creation Workflow” which is taught by Shellie Hall. In the first introductory video, I didn’t learn anything, but as the course has been moving forward, there is a lot in there that deals with creating documents; that has more to deal with marketing than most people would give you credit for thinking.

Creating documents for your company–IS marketing. Anything you do for you or your company that goes out to others is marketing, and will reflect on your company in some way shape or form, so if you want to shed some light on great ways to do good for your company with how you present things hit up xtrain.com and their graphic design course. It’s well worth every penny.

Smart Ads|Smart Products Needed

Quick. Witty. Funny. Insane. Touching. Just a few words I would just a few words I would use to describe the advertising world of today. But who cares?

Consumers.

You. Me. Everyone else who spends money on products or services day in and day out. But what drives these ads, and why are they created?

Customer Centric|Advertising and Marketing that works Pt. Duce

Marketing was namely what I talked about in my last post, with the products being centered around that Customers, but what about the ads?

What different ways are there to make better People Centric Ads? Ads that scream, “Hey Mr. Anderson, Nice Car; Wanna get the most out of it” or “Molly, you’re looking sharp today, but you know what you look like you need”, and to do this without a hitch, in a single ad, a few million times over.

How this can be accomplished, I honestly don’t know, but that is the question I am hoping to find an answer to myself sometime this semester. I am interested in figuring out the best way to advertise to a group of people, and yet make each person in that group feel like I am speaking directly to them, because I am speaking directly to them.

Easier said then done I know but, any thoughts?

Customer Centric|Advertising and Marketing that works

If you want to succeed as a business everything you do must depend on your boss; the customer. This concept is from a quote by Wal-Mart creator Sam Walton, and has been tried and tried again, and proven correct, over and over again in today’s ever changing market.

What is it about this customer centric style of marketing and management though?

Unproductive Days|Bouncing Back

There will be days that you make a multi-million Dollar Ad campaign that is praised for years to come. There will be days you can’t sell a product that almost sells itself.

The key is learning to adapt to what kind of a day you are having, and being able to make either type of day a productive one.

Today is not one of those productive days for me. I spent all day in bed. And being sick is a horrible excuse. The world never sleeps.

Good Ads:Good Stories

Good Ads have Good Stories.

Presently I am in the middle of “Story” by Robert McKee. To be blunt, the book is brilliant.  However it is thicker than almost 95% of the Amazon in most places, and thus takes quite some time to wade through. But it’s well worth the time.

The key to keeping anyone’s attention is story. Period. If I want to know more, I will pay attention. If I want to understand why Person A is standing on or around Person B’s head, I will wait and find out. That’s the skinny.

Stories are what make everything we do–well, everything we do. Right now, if you have gotten this far, you are curious about the story, and thus you are continuing in your trek to understand what I am talking about. Good ads have this sense of drive, of flow, of story if you will. Something that the Audience is looking for, whether it’s information about the product or more information about what is happening in the ad.

The brilliance behind the Geico Ad’s is the hiatus in the stories of them. They are brilliantly concocted to drive themselves nowhere. From start to finish, the story is completely ridiculous, and thus all of the attention if changed from the content of the story to the fact behind to story–Gieco 15 Minutes could save you 15 percent or more. That’s it. And you remember it because it doesn’t follow the mold of story.

Interesting way to play with story–not to have one.

*Sigh* Oh to complexities in this God-Created World–What a tangled web we need to survive.

Banter| 1. Comments on Personal Image

Stephen: You said good way to get your name out there.
Anything can be used to increase our image,
you put into words what I’ve always thought of people. That all of us are products, trying to sell ourselves to the world in different forms and fashions, and its just a matter of shaping our image to suit our demographic.

Jon: Welcome to the world of business.

Stephen: What made you think of the image thing?

Jon: That’s how I think. That’s why I am who I am,
because I know that what others think of me
has a HUGE impact on whether or not I’ll be successful in life
that’s why I’m so excited about life.

Stephen: Its a really smart way to be, I think I need to be more like that also, I am a brand so i should make sure I’m a well known long lasting brand.

Jon: No. You are Stephen, and when people think of Stephen you want them to have fuzzy feelings of kindness and yearning to have more of Stephen.

Brand is just a word, and if you negate to make it personal it will never stick.

Stephen: Yeah, but if I want to have a political career I will have to brand myself in such a way that I will be memorable you know what I mean. but I do agree without being personable it’s not going to work at all.

Jon: Yea, I see where you’re going, but I think the big thing is, you need to brand yourself, but if you are doing it right you don’t even realize that you are branding yourself, because you are just being the brand you want to be

Stephen: That makes sense.

Jon: If you can be apple then people know you are apple. They don’t need you to tell them you are apple because when you are around they expect you to already be apple.
You don’t have to prove to them you are apple and if they have never experienced apple before, then they are in for a surprise because when they realize who apple is, they get excited the next time they see apple.

Stephen: I see what you mean.

Advertising - Unlike this site - Doesn’t Stop when You stop Writing

Advertising is happening|Always.

It’s in the things you say, the way you say them and who you say them to. Your name is your brand. Hi I’m –. You just gave someone a brand to look for. Your name. Don’t take this lightly when you are out in the real world, especially when you are with potential clients. Even just hanging out at a coffee shop and talking with complete strangers is an opportunity for you to tarnish, or build up your brand name.

Something to keep in mind is that you don’t need millions of dollars and an Emmy-winning television spot to make your name a smash hit among your peers and prospective customers. All you need is a little bit of responsiblity. To your brand, and your customers.

Don’t let anything fall through to cracks, and brush it off as if it were nothing. ANYTHING that will fit through the head of a needle is capable of causing problems more Titanic than you could even dream. And on the reverse, anything that might seem like something minuscule to you might mean all the world to the right person and could send you catapulting in the right direction.

It’s not why you accomplish the task, it’s how, when, where, and with whom.

Image is everything. I can’t say that enough.

And right now, mine with this Blog is pretty sorry.

Time to step back up to the plate and hopefully hit some fastballs wide left-

Team Building|An Exercise in People Management

One thing you need to have any business “go” is people. Customers, and employees alike are people, and both are necessary for any business transactions to happen. Duh. We know.

The hard part about this is defining both styles and sets of people. Is my customer someone who is going to be buying a lot of what I have or only a few things? Do I want to target someone who is going to be a repeat customer, or is possibly going to draw in their friends and hopefully increase my market share? Do I need a large or small market share, and which groups can I gear my ads and product appeals to for this?

There are millions of questions we need to ask ourselves before we do anything regarding our product outside of understanding what it is.

We need to understand our product before we can sell it. If you don’t believe in it, or understand it, you are only setting yourself up for future failure. (It may work in the beginning not knowing everything about your product, but in the end get ready to grab your ankles, because it’s going to be a rough ride, with you in the gunners seat.)

Not only do we need to understand our consumers though you need to understand and trust your employees (if any besides yourself) and you need to make sure they will come through in the clutch of things.

Right now, I’m building my database of possibly employees for my Advertising business.

Current Assets and Employees; My Laptop. Me.

Start your engines.

Things to Measure - Defining the Stick

Today I dedicated to mostly figuring out things to actually measure to get a sense of ad effectiveness.

Now I am sure every company has it’s on measures, but I am curious what would work best for any situation. I know there is definitely not one universal one size fits all measure, and if you try and make it cookie cutter, or one size fits all, I think you have another thing coming. Here are the measures I came up with today, and some possible applications;

Attendance - An annual function measures attendance and reports a significant (i.e. noticeable) spike in their yearly attendance the year after the ad campaign is instated (or rather the year the ad campaign is targeted for).

Sales  of Services - A service sales company sees a spike in the amount of sales they have of their services.

Sales of Goods - A goods company sees a spike in the amount of sales they have of their product

Revenue Increase (NET) - After the growth of sales, that growth is not only measured in quantity of the sales but in the economic quality and benefit for your client.

Public Opinion Polls - A positive increase (better than a previous poll which needs to be taken) in the overall emotional appeal/idea that someone gets in their head when they see or recognize your brand.

There are more to come, but It’s 11:37 pm, and it’s time for me to close up the books and get into the sack. Until the sun rises again… in 8 hours.

Introduction to Need

Something interesting about me is that I like to work alone. This weekend I was thrown into a situation where it was made excruciatingly clear that flying solo wasn’t going to work.

Going against my personal grain is something that will most likely haunt and plague me during this daunting task to starting up my own Advertising Giant, but it is something that I must overcome. I need to work better in an environment where everyone involved is capable of aiding in the creation process of whatever it is we are doing.

Advertising is not just ads and ad campaigns. It is relationships. It is numbers.

Advertising doesn’t just mean, you make someone a pretty “screen-pleasing” video with some who-ha big named actor, or some cool effects. Advertising is about measuring how well that ad with the who-ha or that radio sound-byte effected your clients income, and revenues, how well it increased their market shares and sales, how well or poorly it affected their business.

This concept is one I am very new to personally but will keep you posted on my progress in understanding of such. Here is the skinny so far;

Accounts (Clients/Consumers of your Ads–call them what you want) have a basic need when it comes to advertising, and you need to figure out what that need is before you can go anywhere or do anything. Whether that need is more exposure in a given market, or increased sales revenue, you need to have something to measure so you can see whether or not your client is gaining something from your company as a whole, your advertising as a product. Ads that sell, are good ads. Ads that look pretty and do nothing are just that, ads that aren’t worth anything.

SKINNY: Good ads are those that have a purpose and fulfill that purpose. ex. Purpose is to increase sales for Client A. Ad runs. Client A sees increase in sales after Ad runs. Good Ad.

Now that we have Ad purpose out of the way, stay tuned tomorrow for - the measurements.