Marketing Archives

Tesla Charging Stations: Real-World Example of Barriers to Entry

Tesla, the electronic vehicle (EV) company headed by high-profile billionaire Elon Musk, is a fascinating organization in many ways. The media has recently been excited about the company’s back-to-back quarterly profits. Despite the company operating in the red for so long, observers love to root for the revolutionary company. It’s also interesting to look at Tesla from a business strategy standpoint. For example, Tesla is widely recognized for the way it generates intense customer loyalty. Continue reading “Tesla Charging Stations: Real-World Example of Barriers to Entry”

Key Takeaways From Amazon’s NYC Exodus

by Justin Grensing, Esq., MBA

On February 14 – Valentine’s Day – Amazon announced a break up with New York City. The company faced intense backlash from community members after it was announced that the much-anticipated HQ2 would be split between New York and Arlington Virginia.

Here are some takeaways from a marketing perspective on the tech giant’s big decision. Continue reading “Key Takeaways From Amazon’s NYC Exodus”

Using Push Marketing Techniques to Grow Your Business

Most of us in the marketing business are familiar with the concept of – if not necessarily the term – pull marketing. Pull marketing refers to using your business development strategies to attract customers actively seeking out a product or service to your particular offering. For example, a pizza company might work on increasing its page ranking through search engine optimization (SEO) so that it shows up prominently when a hungry potential customer searches for “pizza near me” in their search engine.

But there’s another type of marketing that takes a more aggressive approach. “On the other side of the coin is a push campaign,” writes Rocco Baldassarre – Founder & CEO of Zebra Advertisement 1DollarAd.com – In an article for Entrepreneur. “A push campaign presents products and services to an audience without serving an initial demand.”

Baldassarre writes about push marketing in the context of online marketing and offers four tips for maximizing the outcome of your efforts. Continue reading “Using Push Marketing Techniques to Grow Your Business”

Thought Leadership Through Content Marketing for Business Professionals

Hiring marketing or content marketing talent? Most small business owners are heavily focused on their core skillset. They are bakers, event planners, lawyers – insert job – first, and accountants and marketers second. As Pamela Slim writes for Entrepreneur, “Most small business owners aren’t marketers by trade, but almost all (95 percent) do some form of marketing for themselves, and many need to master what can feel like a very steep learning curve quickly. Most entrepreneurs and small business owners (64 percent) are self-taught and less than half (46 percent) consider themselves ‘marketing savvy.’” Continue reading “Thought Leadership Through Content Marketing for Business Professionals”

Advertising Isn’t About Entertaining Unless it Also Drives Sales!

“Dilly, dilly!” It was the marketing catchphrase of the year, according to the Wall Street Journal. And it’s definitely catchy. I love the commercials and the catchphrase and smile every time I hear it. I’m not alone.

Unfortunately, despite the popularity of the company’s new ad campaign, sales are slumping. Continue reading “Advertising Isn’t About Entertaining Unless it Also Drives Sales!”

All It Takes is a Little Nudge

Hiring marketing or content marketing talent? People may sometimes think about marketing as the process of convincing someone to buy something they may not be initially inclined to purchase. Maybe it’s luring a customer away from a competitor or convincing someone to buy something they don’t really need.

From a more marketing-friendly perspective, though, the process could be seen as Continue reading “All It Takes is a Little Nudge”

Avoiding the Top 3 Networking Blunders

Hiring marketing or content marketing talent? Networking is an important activity in any industry. The term has many definitions depending on who you talk to, but in a broad sense you can think of it as just getting to know people in your industry. It’s surprising how many employment, mentorship, sales and partnership opportunities come about just by tapping into who you know and who you’ve met through networking activities.

Unfortunately, we don’t always leverage those relationships to best advantage. Continue reading “Avoiding the Top 3 Networking Blunders”

Captivating Consumers With Top-Notch Product Images

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How important are product images in your online marketing activities? If you effectively describe the product specifications, give some detailed reviews and have an in-depth description, is that enough? It seems like it isn’t. In fact, Lumina Datamatics cites a survey by the National Retail Federation showing that 67 percent of customers consider images more important than product-specific information, long descriptions and product reviews.

Think about that for a second. Continue reading “Captivating Consumers With Top-Notch Product Images”

Guiding Consumers to the Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)

Customer reviews, client reviews, best PR firm, public relations, content marketing The word “sales” often conjures up some very specific images. A man in a suit holding a briefcase going door-to-door selling encyclopedias or vacuums, for example. Or a guy hustling in a car lot. But as we know, sales is, in reality, a process. A process that ends with a pitch. The direct pitch to the customer or the final sales touchpoint is the last step in the sales process and is often referred to as “the bottom of the funnel” (BOFU). It follows TOFU (top of the funnel) and MOFU (middle of the funnel) activities that are designed to move the consumer down a pathway to a purchase. Continue reading “Guiding Consumers to the Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)”

Focusing on Value Over Features in B2B Sales

To a large extent, the sales and marketing world can be divided along two broad lines: business-to-business (B2B) versus business-to-consumer (B2C) and products versus services. Sales strategies for B2C services will differ from B2B services, which differ from B2B products, etc. There are best practices and pitfalls for each quadrant of possible scenarios created by this way of looking at sales and marketing. Continue reading “Focusing on Value Over Features in B2B Sales”