Traditional products’ marketing & a practical advice on how to become more effective in your business (whatever field you are in).

In the weekend I and my girlfriend were on vacation on a small town (very popular as a tourist attraction). One day in a traditional tavern they gave as after lunch a shot of a traditional drink. It was a sweet liqueur which helps one to digest food. Later on that day as we wandered through the main road of the town which is full of little shops that sell traditional products and souvenirs, we found that drink (which is called Tentoura) and we both instantly bought one bottle for our relatives. It was a very impulsive purchase. The same kind of purchases has occurred to us many times in the past and surely has happened to most of the people. The point here is that one “clever” shop owner of traditional products may exploit those impulsive purchases. He/she may make a deal with tavern owners to supply them for free with Tentoura on the condition that they give each client a shot of that drink after lunch or dinner. It’s a win-win situation; both the tavern owner and the shop owner earns from that kind of strategic alliance. I firmly believe that the shop owner will boost up his/her sales. Thing here is that (I believe) it’s hard to imagine such a marketing technique if you weren’t told about (at least it didn’t occur to me).

I mention the above story because it led me to the following (and now very obvious to me) conclusions:
We often say that one should think from the customer’s perspective and get on his/her shoes to figure out more ways to service one and market to him/her. Personally I totally agree with the above statement; however how was it likely to me to think of the above (marketing) technique? I mean, ok, I am going to think from the customer’s point of view…hm …em …let’s put some ads in the town’s stations and populated places…hm… let’s post an article on traditional products in the local newspaper/magazine or website…etc. To think out of the box – off the beaten track is easy to say but sometimes hard to actually do. Just thinking from the customer’s perspective many times is not enough; one should simulate customer’s experiences: he must go on vacation (although he is in his origin), he must live and act as a customer and try the same experiences and actions. Thinking is not enough; one may need to acquire some input (feelings, thoughts, senses, impressions, etc.). How can one implement the above conclusion? Try to find out a solution/opportunity/challenge not only with thorough thoughts but by interacting with people, places, objects; get a lot of input from anything you get in contact with.

Advertising – Human Ads

Human Ads:
- Word of mouth
- Celebrity marketing
- Body advertisements (e.g. Tattoos of brands)
- Surname ads = name of brands (to change one’s surname to a brand’s name)

The first three are obvious and well-discussed. As concerns the forth, I have never seen that kind of advertising anywhere or heared of something similar. One day I thought that someone could just change his/her surname into a brand’s name for advertising purposes.

Offers for body advertisements can one find very often on Ebay.

Post’s deletion

Should one delete old posts of his/hers blog? What if one has changed writing style or topics in one’s blog? What if one has improved his/her style dramatically? Blogging of course will improve one’s writing skills as time goes by, should that guy erase the old “unacceptable” and bad posts of his? Or is he/she obliged to keep them since he/she used to think like that and these old posts are truths of one’s world? What if I changed my mind on something I believed or wrote on a previous post? Shall I hide my previous way of thinking? Shall I delete that post?

A Branding Dilemma

Suppose you have created your own super widget and you want it to spread it and to be branded and put on thousands of other blogs, websites, etc. Widget is consisted of one squared area with the widget’s main function in the center of that square. You then add a link (usually) on the bottom of this square which refers to your website (the widget’s webpage) and to the sign-up / register / download – get yours page. Now a real marketing dilemma is raised: Suppose your widget is called PerWid (i.e. Perfect Widget ;-)). Do you put PerWid’s logo and name on that bottom link or you just add a plain link that writes “get yours instantly”? There are 2 approaches in that problem: The branding approach which enforces us to use logo and widget’s name as much as possible for several advantages (brand awareness, brand recognition, brand repetition & recall) and the simplicity approach, the approach corporations like google use. The later approach is based on the fact that if one sees the widget and likes it, he/she will click the link to get one for himself/herself too. You don’t need to confuse him/her with logos, brands and marketing tricks. I like it, I download it, I use it! (I cite that this is the google’s approach because google use to have a very simple and plain interface; no extra graphics, impressive effects, sounds, colors, etc. It only has the name of the search engine and the search bar; real simple and real clever! Sometimes success comes out of unexpected, of surprisingly different and controversial. We used to think that if we add more buttons and more graphics and more stuff we give customers more options and more features and thus more satisfaction but is this so? Don’t we just confuse visitors?

Does simplicity approach has any meaning in this particular example (the widget application)? Or the “normal” marketing – branding approach is better? I really don’t have any answer to that question. Should one use the common approach or try to differentiate? Of course both approaches are right but one might be better. Which one do you think?

Hibernation

Days in Army: 183
Days left: 183
[Finally this blog woke up from deep hibernation for just a few moments. In a week I’ll be back in the camp again (away from the comfort ness of my home, lacking civilization and my normal life).]

To write and publish anything non fictional you need to read. In fact you need to read a lot. This blog is referred to the internet and marketing and in order to contribute my thoughts I definitely need to have a lot of input. The past 6 months that I’ve been in the army I’ve pushed myself to start posting again (in a process of firstly writing down on a notepad and then typing and posting on an internet café on the first available opportunity) but I found that I’ve lost contact with blogging and since I wasn’t informed and updated with current trends and the blogosphere in general I couldn’t be productive. During the past 6 months the last 3 ones I had computer access but no Internet connection (and no spare time at all!). These days, fortunately I am home relaxing and getting used to civilized life again. Life in army really sucks and I don’t want to remind myself that I have another full 6 months left.

While trying to fill my flash disk with RSS feeds so that I can read while in camp I found out many great marketing blogs which I will now start to read (whenever this is possible!). Now I am constantly trying to read all these feeds and compensate for all that lost time. Maybe at the end of these free days I write another post too…

Till next time I’ll get online take care and… keep blogging ;) !