From the category archives:

General Business Marketing

How the Shopping Experience is Superseding Brands

General Business Marketing

There is growing evidence and data about a significant shift in preferences and priorities in the way people shop and buy goods. There is no doubt that we are in the midst of a long-term fundamental shift in consumer and business buying behavior. Research from The Hartman Group based in Bellevue WA adds further and [...]

Read the full article →

5 Questions to Ask Your Customers

General Business Marketing

A previous article – How to Measure Customer Loyalty for Generating More Sales – recommended asking customers a few additional supporting questions to help analyze where to focus attention for improving customer loyalty and Net Promoter Score (NPS).  I received several follow-up inquiries for suggestions on what type of additional supporting questions to ask.
I’ve completed [...]

Read the full article →

How to Measure Customer Loyalty for Generating More Sales

General Business Marketing

Every business understands the importance of customer loyalty and retention to generate a continuing stream of revenue from existing customers.  It’s always gratifying to see customers returning to buy again, but how do you know whether and how many of your customers are inclined to return?
A major benefit of customer loyalty is referrals from existing [...]

Read the full article →

The Suggestion Box – Old Idea for New Ideas

General Business Marketing

The suggestion box has been around forever.  Many companies used to have a physical box with available comment cards placed in lobbies, employee lunchrooms, factory floors and other areas to encourage employees, customers and visitors to submit suggestions and ideas.  While the physical suggestion box is becoming extinct, there are many online options that make [...]

Read the full article →

Consumers Seeking Value but Response to Offers Varies

General Business Marketing

According to the August 2009 Consumer Insight research from Nielsen, most US consumers are seeking value in what and how they buy, in response to the recession. The research from 47,000 consumers shows:

12% are recession indifferent and unlikely to change how they shop.
21% are recession insensitive and primarily cutting back on highly discretionary spending.
61% [...]

Read the full article →

How to find receptive buyers with Occasion-based Marketing

General Business Marketing

Most businesses and marketers want to improve their marketing response and conversion rates – i.e. the number of responses to a marketing campaign and subsequent conversions to a sale. There are many ways to improve response and conversion rates with research, analysis and targeting including the use of demographic and psychographic segmentation, value propositions, [...]

Read the full article →

How to use Psychographics to improve Demographic market segmentation

General Business Marketing

Marketers use demographics to segment customer groups by various physical or tangible characteristics. In B2C companies marketers would typically use demographic characteristics such as age, gender, income, geography, home ownership, marital status, etc. to define market segments or demographic profiles of target buyers – e.g. single males, 18-35 years old who live in urban [...]

Read the full article →

Price and Service are highest customer priorities according to survey

General Business Marketing

There are interesting insights for businesses in the August 2009 edition of the twice-yearly CMO survey sponsored by the American Marketing Association (AMA) and Duke University Fuqua School of Business. The survey sample included 3,363 top marketers at Fortune 1000, Forbes Top 200, CMO Club Companies, and marketers who are AMA members or Duke University [...]

Read the full article →

Are brands a victim of the changing economic situation?

General Business Marketing

An updated version of this article is posted at: How the Shopping Experience is Superseding Brands

Read the full article →

Putting the “Service” Back In “Customer Service”

General Business Marketing

The future of customer service is here. Technology has made seeking out support faster and easier than ever. But, has your digital age company sacrificed true service in the name of automation?
Today, finding customer support is as simple as writing an e-mail or picking up the phone. But, even though you’re not face-to-face with your [...]

Read the full article →

Generating more business activity with Relationship Marketing

General Business Marketing

During heady boom periods companies focus a lot of marketing activity on traditional transactional marketing processes to find and close individual deals (transactions). Demand is good, buyers have budgets, businesses are busy and deals abound. Transactional marketing as the name implies is about each party maximizing the return on individual transactions. It’s [...]

Read the full article →

Focus on Positioning before Branding

General Business Marketing

Two interesting observations I’ve found over the years during discussions with companies about Branding and Positioning:

There always seems to be some confusion about what constitutes Branding versus Positioning
Too many seem to want to start with Branding or do a Branding exercise.

A Brand is a visual, emotional or cultural identity in the minds of your buyers. [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries