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Atricle Dump - Brand Loyalty...Construction or Destruction Through Service and Value
If you’re writing advertisements for your business follow these 23 principles to ensure you get maximum return for your advertising dollar.These 23 advertising ‘rules’ are based on direct response advertising principles from books like ‘Tested Advertising Methods’ by John Caples and ‘Scientific Advertising’ by Claude Hopkins.1. Have you clearly researched and defined your ideal target market?2. Have you written your advertisement directed solely to your ‘ideal target market’?3. Is the marketing piece being placed/sent/posted where your ideal target market will easily see it?4. Have you calculated how many sales you need to make to make a profit on this advertisement?5. Have you considered any other ways that you can reach your target market that may be more cost effective for you?6. Have you made an offer that’s easy for your reader to understand, and irrisistable for them to refuse?7. Does your headline ‘sing out’ your ‘ideal target market’ so that they know, that your advertisement is written especially for them?8. Does your headline ‘grab’ your ideal target market’s attention and excite them?9. Does your headline offer or describe to your target market a major benefit that’s important to them?10. Have you written your advertisement so that your headline is approximately 5 sizes larger than the body copy font size?11. Does the body copy of your advertisement naturally continue on from what the headline suggests/says?12. Through out the body copy, have you continued on with the benefits suggested in your headline, and described more benefits to your target market of using/owning your product/service?13. Have you focused your writing on what your product/service will do for your target market, rather than just mentioning how good your business is?14. Have you used ‘sub-headings’ above some paragraphs to allow ‘skim readers’ to get the main thrust of your advertisement, just by reading the sub-headings?15. If you have included a picture of a person, is the person (or people) positioned so that their shoulders are facing into the body o
Making the Point
This idea applies to any business that desires to move beyond traditional transactional business toward building long-lasting business relationships. As a professional speaker, I frequently have the opportunity to visit New Orleans. Because of the conferences, I generally stay in or around the French Quarter—frequently at the Sheraton.
A year ago, in New Orleans, I attended a convention of a group for which I’m a member. This trip, I stayed across the street at the convention headquarter, a
There are several marketing strategies businesses can use today. Online marketing, television commercials, and radio plug-ins are some of the popular methods. Banners and flyers are still used to advertise sales and other promos. But these advertising strategies don't really give prospective consumers something. If anything, the flyers usually end up in the trash and the TV gets switched off. Nobody bothers with online ads for fear of viruses. If you're a business owner looking for a quick advertising fix, logo fitted hats, hats with embroidery, and marketing hats are good choices. Hats are effective marketing tools that serve two purposes. Plus, these logo-fitted hats, hats with embroidery, and marketing hats are easy to produce.Using hats as advertising tools is very easy. Just find a manufacturer of custom-made logo-fitted hats, hats with embroidery, and marketing hats. With the use of advanced techniques, even non-designer hats are quality hats. Buy the hats from the manufacturers by bulk. This is way cheaper than buying each piece by retail. Provide the manufacturer with a copy of your business logo and a catch phrase. The manufacturer will embroider or print your design on the hats. It's cheaper if you had the two services done by a single manufacturer. But, if you can't find a manufacturer with embroidery services, find an embroidery business specializing in hats. Ask to see samples to check for quality. Even if you gave the hats for free, nobody would wear them if it looks gaudy and of poor quality. Give the embroidered hats to your patrons and as promotional material to your future customers.As mentioned, the hats have two purposes. First, they are gifts. Nobody can't help but feel elated when they receive something for free. When you give your clients and patrons the hats as freebies, they will feel that they are receiving something for doing business with you. By giving logo fitted hats, hats with embroidery, and marketing hats, you show your appreciation for your clients. Score one point for customer care. Second, the hats are promotional materials. Whether it's hot or raining, in the beach, in the mall, indoors, outdo
Every point-of-contact you or your employees have with your customers is an opportunity to increase or decrease your customers’ perceived value of doing business with you. The key idea here is perceived value. No matter how important you believe customer service to be, it is nothing more than a conduit for customer perceived value.
The crucial question to you, “Are you embracing, or squandering, your opportunities to deliver perceived value to your customers?” Too many business people today simply focus on customer service, erroneously believing that service is the end game. Further could be from the truth. Delivering customer perceived value is the end game for today’s successful businesses.
A few years ago, I delivered a full-day partnering workshop for the management team of a nationally branded downtown San Diego hotel. The lead hotel executive indicated that he wanted to increase the average room night rate by about 12 percent. He suggested that better customer service was the answer to increasing room night rates.
To the hotel executive’s amazement, I told his group that customer service was not the answer. In the hospitality industry, this is sacrilege! Customer service is simply a conduit to deliver perceived value. I continued to tell the group that their answer was to increase their customer’s perceived value of staying at their property. It’s the amplified customer perceived value that would build brand equity and give their guests a reason to pay more.
Regardless of your industry, every interaction with a customer is an opportunity for you to bolster or diminish their perceived value of you, your service or product, and your brand. The important issue upon which you should focus is the fact that one’s reality equals the conversation they have with themselves about you. What are your customers saying to themselves about you, your location and your brand? What is their reality?
Making the Point
This idea applies to any business that desires to move beyond traditional transactional business toward building long-lasting business relationships. As a professional speaker, I frequently have the opportunity to visit New Orleans. Because of the conferences, I generally stay in or around the French Quarter—frequently at the Sheraton.
A year ago, in New Orleans, I attended a convention of a group for which I’m a member. This trip, I stayed across the street at the convention headquarter, a
I did a quick, very unscientific survey of 25 of my friends. I asked them to put the mail that they do not open or read in a specific trash bag. At the end of one week they gave it to me to be weighed. Guess how much the bag weighed? Remember, most mail is a fraction of an ounce. 63.4.....not ounces....lbs! Something is wrong with this picture! That's like 2 1/2 pounds per person per week! Holy Cow! Also this was a March survey, what if it had been done in November?Let's get a grip on this absolute waste of paper, ink, money and time! There are some common sense points we need to look at here.Direct mail, at 2-5%, has a totally unacceptable response rate.Bad will generation must be factored into the cost of marketing this way. How many people vow never to do business with the company that sends endless streams of junk mail?The sophistication and alienation of the American consumer will not support this system for much longer. (Did we learn NOTHING from the "Do Not Call" list?)Moving to e-mail is not the solution! It is much easier for a person to close an email account than it is to move.If each of my friends got over 2 pounds of junk mail in just one week.. how can you set your important marketing material apart from all those peices of junk mail?Solutions? Can't think of any? Wait for my next article on April 13th.
A few years ago, I delivered a full-day partnering workshop for the management team of a nationally branded downtown San Diego hotel. The lead hotel executive indicated that he wanted to increase the average room night rate by about 12 percent. He suggested that better customer service was the answer to increasing room night rates.
To the hotel executive’s amazement, I told his group that customer service was not the answer. In the hospitality industry, this is sacrilege! Customer service is simply a conduit to deliver perceived value. I continued to tell the group that their answer was to increase their customer’s perceived value of staying at their property. It’s the amplified customer perceived value that would build brand equity and give their guests a reason to pay more.
Regardless of your industry, every interaction with a customer is an opportunity for you to bolster or diminish their perceived value of you, your service or product, and your brand. The important issue upon which you should focus is the fact that one’s reality equals the conversation they have with themselves about you. What are your customers saying to themselves about you, your location and your brand? What is their reality?
Making the Point
This idea applies to any business that desires to move beyond traditional transactional business toward building long-lasting business relationships. As a professional speaker, I frequently have the opportunity to visit New Orleans. Because of the conferences, I generally stay in or around the French Quarter—frequently at the Sheraton.
A year ago, in New Orleans, I attended a convention of a group for which I’m a member. This trip, I stayed across the street at the convention headquarter, a
It is normal for employers to hate paydays, although not so much because it is the day they have to pay their employees their due but because doing so involves a lot of counting and computing. Computing individual salaries and giving the accurate amount to every employee is definitely taxing and may cause much confusion. To avoid all these troubles, many employers have opted to release payroll checks instead of actual cash during paydays. With payroll checks, employers no longer have to worry about counting cash.But while payroll checks offer convenience for employers, they offer the opposite for employees, especially if the employee is 'unbanked' or 'under-banked.' Long lines, limited banking hours and tons of requirements often pester employees each time they cash their payroll checks at the bank. There?s also the additional trouble of paying a check cashing fee, although often minimal, for every payroll cashing transaction for the 'unbanked' and the 'under-banked.'Because of various business developments and technological advancements, payroll check cashing is no longer very inconvenient for employees. Banks are no longer the only establishments where you can cash payroll checks. Nowadays, you can cash a payroll check from a check-cashing center, which often requires a very minimal check-cashing fee and can process the check in less than 5 minutes. For more convenience, you can also cash your payroll check from the various check-cashing kiosks that can be easily found in major shopping centers and many convenience stores.Another technology being developed today, which is, in fact, already being used by many companies today, is the payroll card. The payroll card is a plastic card that employers can use in place of payroll checks. This new technology allows employers to directly load an employee?s salary to the card, making cash transfers more convenient on the part of the employer.With new technologies and various developments in the business world, payroll check cashing is no longer as inconvenient as it was years ago. And with more technologies being developed in the area of payroll check cashing, payr
To the hotel executive’s amazement, I told his group that customer service was not the answer. In the hospitality industry, this is sacrilege! Customer service is simply a conduit to deliver perceived value. I continued to tell the group that their answer was to increase their customer’s perceived value of staying at their property. It’s the amplified customer perceived value that would build brand equity and give their guests a reason to pay more.
Regardless of your industry, every interaction with a customer is an opportunity for you to bolster or diminish their perceived value of you, your service or product, and your brand. The important issue upon which you should focus is the fact that one’s reality equals the conversation they have with themselves about you. What are your customers saying to themselves about you, your location and your brand? What is their reality?
Making the Point
This idea applies to any business that desires to move beyond traditional transactional business toward building long-lasting business relationships. As a professional speaker, I frequently have the opportunity to visit New Orleans. Because of the conferences, I generally stay in or around the French Quarter—frequently at the Sheraton.
A year ago, in New Orleans, I attended a convention of a group for which I’m a member. This trip, I stayed across the street at the convention headquarter, a
When Ned Lamont first sought to challenge 3-term U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in today's Democratic primary, almost no one thought this political neophyte had any chance.Sitting on my back porch here in Connecticut, it's an hour before the polls close in this political duel between the well estabished, well-known brand (Lieberman) and the new, unknown brand (Lamont).The unknown (Lamont) has succeeded in making his alternative into a viable choice on a $4 million budget, compared to Lieberman's $6 million. Just running for office is a big business. Many of my clients would be happy with that kind of gross revenue!And so, with an incredible voter turnout of just over 40% (in August!!) both sides are saying it looks good for them. We'll know soon enough.Both have used TV and radio and direct phone calls. We even got an oversize postcard from Lieberman here at home.Lamont has attracted attention in his TV commercials being surrounded by mostly younger people who want change. Lieberman tends to show more mid-age supporters and continues his well publicized visits to roadside diners to keep in touch.It's like the 60's again --- an increasingly unpopular war and dissidents. But this time, the dissident is in the form of a telecom multi-millionaire from one of America's richest towns --Greenwich, Connecticut -- who came out of political nowhere to challenge a political big guy. Did he think, "I'm rich and I think I'll run for the U.S. Senate"?This could be compared to the feelings the hometown hardware store might have felt when Home Depot or Walmart came to town. Big money comes in and disrupts a long relationship.It's not all about money. Sure, Lamont has the personal money to get his message across.But look at how he has expressed his emotional anti-war message. One really has to respect his campaign committee and ad agency for keeping his message consistent across all the media he is using.Some questions to ask yourself as a small business:1. Is your "high quality" brand getting stale with your customers?2. How can you tell them you are still as "fresh" as you were whe
Regardless of your industry, every interaction with a customer is an opportunity for you to bolster or diminish their perceived value of you, your service or product, and your brand. The important issue upon which you should focus is the fact that one’s reality equals the conversation they have with themselves about you. What are your customers saying to themselves about you, your location and your brand? What is their reality?
Making the Point
This idea applies to any business that desires to move beyond traditional transactional business toward building long-lasting business relationships. As a professional speaker, I frequently have the opportunity to visit New Orleans. Because of the conferences, I generally stay in or around the French Quarter—frequently at the Sheraton.
A year ago, in New Orleans, I attended a convention of a group for which I’m a member. This trip, I stayed across the street at the convention headquarter, a
The term "data" refers to primary details or numerical facts relating to an event or transaction. Data is stored and maintained on a computer or network. Computer Software like HiTech Financial Accounting process this electronic data. Data is also maintained as hardcopy or paper print. Since accounting limits itself only to those transactions and events which are financial in character, therefore, accounting data will consist of facts, financial in nature, relating to transactions and events of a business entity for the accounting period. Moreover, accounting data must be supported by documentary evidence. Thus, documents known as vouchers, support the data. Usually data is disorganized and disjointed in its raw form. It is not capable of being understood. So, accounting processes raw data into finished form of "information" to make it useful and meaningful, capable of being used in decision taking process by the various users of accounting information.Thus accounting data processed by the accounting cycle produces accounting information. Data is collected, recorded, classified, grouped, valued, tabulated, arranged, summarized in order to present the same in the form of information for its use by the users to enable them to take decisions.Accounting data Consists of financial transactions and events relating to an entity for the accounting period supported by documentary evidence (vouchers). For example receipts and payments are documented by payee's receipt purchases by invoice, sales by outwards invoice, returns inwards by credit note; returns outwards by debit note; expenses by bills or payment rolls etc.Thus the first and the most important function of accounting is to collect the data supported by the vouchers to ensure the authenticity of the same. Accounting processes consist of recording in the books of original entry (journal or sub- journals); classifying (posting into ledger) grouping (putting transactions of similar nature at one place in one account) valuing (finding the value at year end by balancing or valuing) tabulating (preparing list of balances and checking arithmetical accuracy) and preparing financial
Making the Point
This idea applies to any business that desires to move beyond traditional transactional business toward building long-lasting business relationships. As a professional speaker, I frequently have the opportunity to visit New Orleans. Because of the conferences, I generally stay in or around the French Quarter—frequently at the Sheraton.
A year ago, in New Orleans, I attended a convention of a group for which I’m a member. This trip, I stayed across the street at the convention headquarter, a national brand property which I had not yet visited. Since I was there for five nights, I had sufficient interaction with the hotel staff to use this stay as example of value perception opportunities—sought or lost.
For simplicity, I’ve created a scoring system from my visit where I award a positive or negative to each of the hotel’s notable perception value opportunity areas. While my example is a hotel stay, you can easily apply this kind of scoring system to your business, no matter the industry. Apply this system idea to your business silos where your customers have contact with the people and systems of your organization.
Room Rate
The room rate the association negotiated with the hotel ended up being no less than 75% higher than rates at comparable hotels in the Quarter for that same period. While this is not the fault of the hotel, the hotel management should have been aware that many of the attendees knew they were paying much more to stay at the headquarter hotel and support the association. Many knew that they could have stayed at the Ritz Carlton no more than two blocks away, and have stayed for substantially less.
As such, management could have, and should have, made an effort to balance the value perception problem with an inexpensive gift basket in the room, drink vouchers or some other added value idea. These ideas are not expensive and would only have cost the hotel the wholesale and not the retail. Thereby offering high perceived value to guests at a low exposure to cost. If you charge more than your competition for a similar product or service, what do you do to increase your customers’ perception of your total value package? What do you do to justify in the minds of your customers the increased cost over your competition? Unfortunately, this hotel did absolutely nothing. For the first customer perceived value opportunity, I award the hotel a negative.
Guest Arrival
Upon my midday arrival at the hotel, there was not a bell person in sight to help me with my baggage so I just carried it from the taxi myself. In this value perception opportunity
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