Q: When is an offer not an offer? (excluding the tiniest of small print of course)…
A: When Sky make it!
I have what I would consider to be a decent spend with Sky (about £80 a month on average) but for that i don’t get any of the premium Movies/Sports channels. I was particulalry interested in a flyer which came through my door with an offer suposedly rewarding exsiting customers (a rareity in itself) with Free Sky Movies (as a trial) for two months…. Perfect for the kids at Christmas i thought – and rushed off to phone the automated response unit which Sky calls customer sercvice.
Apparently the offer was only available to existing customers who upgrade their broadband and phone service and as I already have both at the highest level – i was not eligible… What a suprise. A loyal and valuable customer not offered any kind of deal where new and lesser paying customers get their just reward. It stinks Sky – A rant this is – but it helps me and it’s my blog – so I don’t care. (I am very mardy). Now to see what Virgin has to offer (though if i remember rightly i went to Sky as they seemed the lesser of two evils!)
The amount of direct mail send by seemingly all industry seems to have been in decline now for years – and it’s no small coincidence that this has co-incided with a huge increase in the amount of e-mail campaigns which appear in our inbox every single day.
I’m currently working on direct mail campaigns with a client whom i feel could take advantage of the decrease in competition. The way i see it, utilising web based promotions or websites to collect data via e-mail used to have obvious advantages – the main one being that the destination for the recipient was only a click away.
Well now with the increase in the use of QR codes and the like- websites can still be accessed easily via a simple scan on a Smartphone. With less material competing for your attention is it now time to give direct mail a chance? The Marketer reports that 33% of all adults now possess and use a Smartphone so the potential recipients who can utilise such marketing messages is significant.
I think its worth a go – i know that marketing e-mails for me personally tend to get overlooked as i receive so many a day. I do find it hard to resist a quick zap of a printed QR code though – especially if theres something interesting there!
Market research – who needs it? Well you do if you’re planning any significant spend on developing your business. Whether you are making a new product or service available to your existing clients or attempting to recruit new clients by selling a product or service, you need to establish whether or not people will actually buy it!
Of course the buying decision is a very complex process and can be influenced by a number of factors – Ultimately the 4p’s play a key role. Product, Place, Promotion and Price… Start considering these and then compare them to your competitors to find out where you stand – what your unique selling points are – and you are on the right track.
A quick reminder of the 4p’s…
Product – Whats the product or service? What does it do? How does it benefit the customer and why do they need it?
Place – (often termed distribution by marketeers) – How will you get the product to the customer? Email, via a shop, mail order?
Promotion – How are you going to tell people about the product or service? Are you going to advertise it – if so how? Who will sell it for you? Are you going to use an offer to entice buyers?
Price – What will the retail price be and will you allow any discounts for existing customers / new customers or distributors.
To get these right and obtain the optimum marketing mix then market research should be carried out. You need to ask your clients and if possible others about what they want or perceive they need from what you are bringing to market. Once this information is analysed then you can establish firstly if there is an actual need for the product or service (when in reality without doing the research you will be acting on a gut feeling – a potentially very expesinve mistake). Secondly (and if you establish there is a need for your offering) – you can obtain some valuable information as to the best way to market the produuct using the 4p’s mentioned above.
Please contact me if you need any help conducting you market research for a product or service you are thinking of launching. I can guide you in how to obtain the data you need and perhaps more importantly interpret the data you collect to give your new offering its best possible chance of success!
In a week where Marketing Week has reported that McDonalds are set to introduce a new range of Wraps to their Deli offering, I see that recently has the firm has come out fighting to defend its brand ambassador Ronald McDonald. This comes after pressure from lobby groups and health professionals to change its marketing.
‘McDonald’s chief executive Jim Skinner is reported as telling shareholders “Ronald McDonald is going nowhere…. {He} is an ambassador of McDonald’s and he is an ambassador for good.”
McDonald’s has been criticised by pressure group Corporate Accountability International, which has accused it of “refusing to address the dangerous toll that fast food and predatory marketing is taking on kids” and contributing to the rise of obesity and health conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.’
I hope they keep him but what happened to Ham-Burglar?!
Whenever i even think about buying something, visiting somewhere or using a service for the first time, the first thing i do is ‘Google it’ and look for a review.
Trusted review sites always come up and you can pretty much find a review for everything. How often though do you use the review and trust what it says? It’s difficult because the number of ‘bogus’ reviews are on the increase but in the main the answer for me certainly is that reviews nealry always sway my decision to buy or not to buy.
Last year, Channel Advisor found that 92% of consumers said they read online product reviews and that, of those readers, a whopping 83% were influenced by them. However, not all responses were positive with around half influenced to purchase based upon reviews, and just over 40% deterred from purchasing. Just 3% said their decision was unaffected by reviews they read. This would appear to back up and justify my behaviour! This research also shows that a bad review can have as much negative impact as a good review has positive impact. There really is no hiding place these days! Just note though – not all reviews can be trusted… See here!
The BBC has reported that The Welsh star of a TV advert voted the UK’s “most irritating” has signed a long-running recording deal.
Wynne Evans, 38, from Carmarthen, who plays the moustachioed opera singer in the Go Compare adverts, has signed a six-album deal with Warner Records.
“I had offers from all the major labels but… they offered me the opportunity to record the album that I really wanted to,” he says on his website.
I can honestly say that the song from these incredibly irratating adverts has made me avoid GoCompare! You know the saying so bad that its good? Well these ads (for me) have gone way past that to; so bad – it’s unbearable. Typing this I am shuddering!
Good luck to him though! He must have a posite affect on some people!
I’ve just realised how much we really do rely on our phones. Today i used my phone to order my grocery shopping, reserve an item in a popular UK store (Argos) and put an item up for sale on Ebay…. Amazing really – or is it? I then stumbled upon this article on The Marketing Blog which cites research claiming that two thirds of all shoppers in the UK will soon be using their mobile phone for retail purposes.
Oh… I even used my phone to make a call today – wonders will never cease!
The Daily Mail reports that BMW has come up with an innovative way of making sure viewers remember its latest ad: they are imprinting the firm’s logo on people’s retina.
The campaign uses the phenomenon that occurs when you look at the sun and then close your eyes, leaving an ‘after-image’ that can still be seen for several moments afterwards.
Its been a tough 2010 but hopefully you just about saw it through. I am full expecting 2011 to be just as challenging in a business sense but i think we need to embrace the challenge and really focus on continuing to grow our businesss in areas that we are strong.
That’s the ‘Royal We’ by the way – my point being that we need to work out (if we haven’t already) what we are best at and really knuckle down and push this forward. We should play to our strnegths and not try and be all things to all men. Thats my motto this year – and could form the basis of my new years resolution (watch this space)!
Happy New Year everyone and heres to a fantastic 2011!
Of course the buying decision is a very complex process and can be influenced by a number of factors – Ultimately the 4p’s play a key role. Product, Place, Promotion and Price… Start considering these and then compare them to your competitors to find out where you stand – what your unique selling points are – and you are on the right track.