Category Archives: Small and Medium Industry

Understand needs early and avoid being let down

Understanding requirements early is the secret if you want to avoid feeling let down. It’s the secret to good school grades and happy customers in almost every field.

You got paid, but the customer does not use is bad news: You might feel good that you got paid and there are few customer support calls. But this could be a very costly strategy if many buyers are non-users. It turns the B2B buying center on its head. If many customers don’t experience the value of your offering, customer satisfaction, referrals, and market share can only go down.

Privacy: Direct Customer relationship data is more important than ever

Mailing list providers were the original third party cookies. They gathered contact details of different demographics and you could buy lists to mail (junk mail) to them.

Doctors with Fake reviews? Why big data can solve the problem

This post explains why businesses and customers look for 5-star reviews, how “fake it till you make it” works for companies and individuals, Why in the digital big data world, fake reviews will be found, and finally some tips to protect yourself; in the meanwhile, from fake reviews.

Why Authentic Value Proposition ?

The lingering pandemic, the Ukraine war, supply chain problems and inflation has all types of organizations reviewing their “value” proposition. The idea of an explicit contract in B2B and an implicit contract in B2C used to involve fewer parties. If there was a serious dispute there was arbitration, courts or government regulators who would step in and try to sort things out. No longer true in the world of instant social media. Think of Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase situation.

For everyday business it’s simply keeping your promises to your customers. To be fair, our experience is that Elon Musk is pretty good with Tesla in keeping customer promises. No matter how the Twitter acquisition plays out.

Since marketing is about customer value, it’s important to clarify the idea of value proposition in these challenging times:

Free tracking of digital clicks to your store

With COVID vaccines all US businesses are hopeful that the pandemic will soon be behind us. Empty stores will be full of customers again!

It turns out the the smallest business with a physical storefront can now track ads from click to in-store purchase. Yes there is some work involved but all the data and analytics is free- for the Google ecosystem. For our variety of dear readers we discuss 5 different scenarios that would apply to your situation as a store owner.

AIDA sales funnel and the buyer’s journey to purchase

Businesses tend to wonder about the effectiveness of their advertising spend in terms of what they actually sold that could be attributed to advertising.To understand how advertising works its useful to look at the hierarchy of effects AIDA sales funnel credited to Advertising Hall of Fame member Elias St. Elmo Louis in 1898. No that was not a typo and check out the history of this kind of thinking called Hierarchy of Effects in the article by Barry (1987).

This post was originally published on April 22, 2014. We have many readers asking about the connection between the AIDA sales model and the Digital Customer Journey or Digital Buyer’s’ Journey. We are delighted to update the original post on March 5, 2021. We hope that this will help all businesses come back after COVID as customers go through their AIDA process online.

How much should I spend on Google AdWords ?

How much should I spend on Google AdWords? is a question that we get asked very often. Earlier this blog provided a strategy answer.

[ Note: This post was originally published on October 28 , 2014. Due to the great interest of our dear readers and many changes in the digital landscape the post is updated on March 2, 2021]

Since we are happily at the vaccination stage of COVID-19 we can expect that life will return to normal in the not too distant future. However, we all realize that buyer behavior for both consumers(B2C) and businesses (B2B) has changed forever. With the huge adoption of online research and buying with COVID lockdowns and stores closed the public has become far comfortable with online commerce.

What Advertising Media should you use? Media by ELM Appeal

If you are an advertiser, then you need to consider how your customer is likely to process the advertising message that you want to give them. The Media by Appeal graphic with this post is a simple way of looking at what media is best for your message

Direct Mail through USPS -why now?

The heart gladdens to see the USPS van although there might be a few direct mail pieces and some billsPeople are at home. And now that there is agreement that incoming mail and packages don’t bring in the Coronavirus, it’s time to look at dear old direct mail again. And the time is now for all US businesses.

Why Reopening America in the Summer of 2020?

Today all US states have reopened partially after two months of lockdown. This has left many of our readers worldwide wondering why America is reopening when Coronavirus infections and deaths keep increasing ? Here are some thoughts on this question:

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