ohiobeekeepers | Small Business Ideas

Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

When creating professional looking brochures and informative flyers the written sentences and phrases must be perfectly constructed. Spelling, grammar and punctuation must all be absolutely flawless.There is nothing more off-putting than reading a company’s marketing materials and becoming distracted by poor spelling and atrocious punctuation. If you’re as pedantic as I am, you’ll probably whip out a red pen and make all the necessary corrections by hand just to satisfy yourself. And then you’ll find you’ve lost the will to read any more of this sub-standard marketing literature.

This kind of sloppy approach also places a seed of doubt in the potential client’s head. If a company can’t produce marketing materials that are grammatically correct, what does that have to say about their eye for detail, professionalism and ability to finish projects on time? In short, bad grammar has the power to drive customers away.

Think I am exaggerating? Well how would you feel if you read a patient information leaflet from your physician, which stated: “How To Prevent Head Lise” or “Your Childs’ Anaesthetic”. Neither of these would fill you with confidence. For businesses the same holds true. When marketing materials are peppered with grammatical and punctuation errors many clients will just walk away. Even if clients don’t know the definition of a misplaced modifier or a subordinate clause, they will soon pick up if the sentence construction does not flow.

Imagine a hairdresser’s promotional flyer, which states, “Come and visit our newly renovated salon for your next haircut which will impress you with its great modern look.” How very confusing! Is it the salon or the haircut that will have the great modern look? For people who are quite happy thank-you very much with their existing style, this could cause them to think twice before booking a cut and blow dry.

Business owners are normally far too busy to spend time writing copy and checking it before marketing materials are produced, and often don’t have the finely honed skills to get it perfect – that’s why copy writers and editors are needed. It will be far cheaper to use skilled copy writers and editors to create excellent copy than having to reprint an expensive, glossy brochure because a smattering of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors were overlooked.

1. The writer

Whoever writes the marketing material content should know how to write, how to punctuate and how to spell. If a writer is confused by his ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’ and can’t help but misplace the apostrophe around the ‘s’ they need to be replaced.

2. The editor / proof reader

A qualified editor / proof reader will tweak the text so it flows perfectly, check all punctuation and spelling, and will give the final approval before the item goes to print. Some business owners mistakenly think this is a luxury and try to bypass this step. But no-one can write his or her own material, then edit it and proof read it. It just can’t be done. Fresh eyes are essential to check the final text.

Visual marketing has had a little renaissance in recent months, with Facebook moving to the new timeline and the emergence of Pinterest and Instagram, the continuing force of YouTube, visual marketing has now moved to the forefront of marketing strategies. Why? Visuals grabs your audience’s attention, it’s quick and easy to consume, it’s shareable, and is often a quick replacement for businesses with time-restraints to create content.

Now is the time you should be thinking about the role visual content plays in all of your marketing channels, from social media, to organic search, to your email marketing. This article will cover 5 reasons why visual marketing is a must.

1. Brand identity

Your brand identity showcases what your company promises to deliver to all of your customers. The brand identity includes a number of functional aspects of your company, such as the value, your business objectives and the various features of your company. It is a tool to market your products or services to an audience. Using your brand identity to market your company shows how you portray your business and how customers perceive your business.

2. Simplification of data

Infographics has become the most popular and effective online tool for communicating and engaging people with lots of information or data.

It is an extremely effective approach to getting your content out there and for making sure that people not only read what you are sharing but also share it with other people. Using bright colours, fantastic graphics and interesting points, mean people will engage quickly with your key messages.

3. Increases engagement in your brand

The trend toward the visual is heavily influenced by the shifting habits of technology users. As more people engage with social media via smartphones, they’re finding that taking a picture is much less tedious than typing out a status update.

Many people are more likely to engage with brands if they post pictures than any other media. A picture really can paint a thousand words. So in a time hungry environment, pictures are becoming the best way for people to sort the vast amounts of information they are exposed to everyday.

Inspiring fans to create and spread images, brands can use visual content on their social media channels to increase engagement, inspire sharing and utilise viral marketing. When it comes to their products, businesses need to show and not just tell. Those brands that use great photography and innovative design will do well in this environment.

4. Influences buying decisions

Visual marketing is an effective tool in the marketing mix, it has the power to emotionally motivate consumers to buy products.

Visual marketing is to create brand awareness, preference, and highlights a wide selection of product or services. Telling the story of your product using visuals can have a huge impact on customer’s attitude to your brand. Simply put, position your product in the world customers aspire to be part of, connect with and understand, this links your product directly with their buying psyche.

5. Drives referrals to your website

In 2012, Pinterest has become a force to be reckoned with. More than just a social network, Pinterest has emerged as an efficient and effective way to build brand awareness, referral traffic, and sales. According to Forbes Magazine, “Pinterest is well on its way to becoming the next household name in social media.” As a business owner, you can’t afford to dismiss it as just another social network or as one more pretty-but-fluffy online photo album. Pinterest is here for the long term as part of a major trend toward Visual Marketing, firmly taking its place beside YouTube, infographics, and Instagram.

Everywhere we go, we see pens with a logo on it, and even I have been guilty of thinking, oh, just another pen, why don’t they get something more exciting? The truth is that pens are still an extremely effective marketing product. People take pens keep it in their purse, car, or it ends up in their office or home where a family member or co-worker ends up walking off with it, they use it a while and it goes on to the next person. For some reason people don’t respect pens as “someone’s property” so they don’t think twice about walking off with a pen, in fact, most don’t even realize they are doing it. As silly as this is, it makes for great marketing, because people are distributing your logo all over the place, you couldn’t get that much exposure yourself with any other product if you tried!

At our company each sales person has their favorite items to show clients, one refuses to show pens because she believes they are boring and we have so many more cool products to present. Another we call the pen queen because she sells thousands upon thousands of pens every year. Knowing some of the statistics about how people use pens may change your mind about presenting pens to your clients. After all, just about everyone uses pens every day and most clients can fit some pen into their budget somewhere, even if they have to use an office supply budget.

PPAI (Promotional Products Association International) did a survey on the use of pens and found that 73% of people always carry a writing instrument with them. 83% use ballpoint pens on a daily basis and will keep and use it if given to them as a complimentary gift. What more can you ask for from a promotional product? If you can get 83% retention of your item, you know that most people aren’t just going to stash your item or give it away. Pens are both a functional product that everyone uses as well as an effective promotional product, so making sure to present some pens to every client is essential!

Some interesting facts to think about when presenting pens or other writing instruments: Of the people surveyed about the types of writing instruments they use on a daily basis 83% use ballpoint pens as mentioned above, but 36% also use pencils, 31% use highlighters, 30% use gel pens and 25% use markers with 20% using mechanical pencils and 20% using roller balls. So, if someone does want something a little different, there are other options in the writing instrument category. Of course as everyone in the industry knows, there are probably millions of options that we can present to our clients.