One of my friends is working as marketing trainee in a company manufacturing water filters. As a trainee, she is working on devising new promotion strategies to promote the brand and giving training to the sales and distributors team. How she should start her work in the field of marketing for a water filter brand (used in households) and what could be other ways to keep distributors happy about the product? Of course, the ultimate aim is to get more sales and give quality to consumer.

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Start with the product itself. Is it a top product compared to its competition? What makes the product unique in the marketplace – size? availability? pore size? independent water tasting results? installation ease?

Next, who are you targeting? Home owners? College students? Day care? Gyms? [you mentioned households, but that's not specific enough]

Once you’ve positioned the product with the proper marketing message, then share it with the teams. Help them to focus on the message clearly, sharing the benefits, clearly highlighting a comparison between other choices the consumer has. Focus on the key points: taste and safety.

You want the consumer to feel that buying your friend’s product is the obvious choice for their family. The distributors could focus on school PTAs (perhaps having the children sell them as a fund-raiser), health fairs, health clubs, and gyms.

I have a fun website that is free for everyone to communicate within the community. I am in need of help on how can I get advertisers and sponsors to be on my website. This is my first time and I need to know what do I do first.

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The key to getting advertisers/sponsors is answering the question, “Why should they pay money to be on your site?”. When you approach a potential advertiser, you’ll want to have such information as the following on hand:

• How many people are registered?
• How many are active?
• How many unique visitors do you get
• Do you have their email addresses? (i.e., can you contact them?)
• How much profile information have you compiled (age, sex, location, income, etc.)

The advertiser is going to think, “How much is it worth to have my product/service in front of this group?”. You need to help them to figure out their ROI. They’ll also care about ad placement/size, click-through, viewing stats, competition, etc.

Before you accept an advertiser, you’ll also want to answer, “How much will it help/hurt my site to have this product/service advertised?”. The wrong ad will turn off your hard-won traffic.

I’m helping a real estate company with their newspaper advertising. They are a small fish in a pond dominated by a large, national real estate company. My client is doing the same old real estate home display ad home listings that the big company is doing, but with mediocre results. I’m considering a campaign that would pull out the home listings and brand them as the smaller, local real estate company that really knows the community (bold headlines supported with 5-10 lines of copy), and then ask the readers to go to their website to see the home listings (i.e. “we have too many listings to fit in this newspaper ad”). I’m new to working with a real estate company on their advertising, and they’re a relatively new company — opinions on if this is too risky to pull their product out of the ads and try something non-traditional to stand out?

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Instead of pulling all-out, change the ads. Instead of a full page, how about a number of 2×2 ads throughout the paper (1 per listing)? Highlight the “small” aspect of the company (we’re small – we give better service – we have to).

I wouldn’t make someone read a printed ad and then go to the website to find a listing. That should happen naturally (if they have the technology and interest). What you really want to happen is for a prospect to call you. Show a home for sale. State what makes the company unique (besides smaller) – Better service? Better connection to the community? Donations to local charities? Lower margins?

The ad has a secondary value – you want to place the name in the mind of someone who’s thinking of listing their home.

Definitely don’t play “me too” in the ads – you’re getting mediocre results right now. Make sure that you’re paying attention to which ads are generating leads. Keep tweaking your ads until you’ve gotten a desirable return on investment.

My firm, a small but proven aerial photography & mapping company, exhibits at trade shows regularly to market to and capture leads in government & professional fields. My company flies cameras to capture the ground images, processes this data, and uses scientific methods to create accurate maps. I’ve been trying to think of creative – but industry related trade show “freebies,” prizes, and/or booth games that would apply to our technical/scientific industry. I want to do this while keeping up a professional image and having a little fun. Remember, I need industry related ideas (keywords: aviation, mapping, tech, etc.).

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As for a premium prize: An aerial photo of their residence (or other building) (within a certain radius from your business).

Giveaways: Cool origami (animals, insects, etc.) from folded maps.

As for games:

• An airplane simulator (running on a PC, etc.)
• A dart throw at a map (with certain locations targeted)
• A matchup game (show aerial photos and 1 photo from ground level – match the aerial photo to the ground photo)

I am opening a shoe store and really need a name! I am targeting 30-55 year olds, and the price point will be $100 and up. This will be a chic, elegant, classy type boutique.

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(Put Your) Best Foot Forward
Shoe Chic
Not Your Mother’s Shoe Shop
Shoe Salvation
Foot Dress-Up
Classy Feet

My company will be at a major trade show for the heavy equipment industry early next year so of course we are starting to plan for it now. We’re good to go with booth set up/layout, SWAG, and literature. We are also doing demonstrations of our equipment and qualified visitors will be allowed to ‘test’ them.

The concern is, how to keep people interested enough to ’stick around’ the booth since more than likely key staff members will be conducting equipment demonstrations.

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The goal for your booth is to get people interested in your products. You should capture the contact information of booth visitors and pre-qualify them. Don’t try to hog them at the show – they’re looking to see as much as possible. Do make it easy for them to find out about you and to schedule a one-on-one 15-minute meeting during/before/after the show to further answer any questions.

I am working on a paper for school and need to find the proper brand /entity for 50 slogans. Evidently I do not watch enough television and can only come up with about 25 of them.

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Here are some sites for you:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_advertising_slogans
http://www.adslogans.co.uk/hof/
http://advertising.utexas.edu/research/slogans/index.asp
http://www.textart.ru/database/slogan/list-advertising-slogans.html

I read this on a marketing website “If you want people to read what you have to say on your website, you must start each webpage with a compelling headline and use sub headlines to keep your visitors reading your text”

I am developing a web site and need to headlines for the front page. We are a call center for outsourcing telemarketing inbound and outbound services. We are nationwide and have the top technology in the industry. Our service is superb and we have a state of the art facility.

Any suggestions for headlines to the front page introduction to us headline, then a secondary headline with what content would be most important? If you were going to outsource to a call center what would you be looking for?

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Is Your Business Overwhelmed With Phone Calls?
Tired Of Answering The Phone?
Tired Of Cold-Calling?
Rather Be Working Than Calling?
Wasting Too Much Time On The Phone?
We Love To Find You New Customers
Because Calling Isn’t Everyone’s Cup of Tea
Leave Phone Calling To the Pros
Do What You Do. We’ll Answer The Phone.
Stop Phone Interruptions.

We are having a job fair in 2 weeks and I need to find a way to advertise it on a very limited budget.

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If you have a million dollars, how would you advertise it? Would you get a front page ad in your local newspaper? Student newspaper? A sign at every bus stop? A billboard on every bus?

Who do you want to read the advertisement? Why would they want to come? What makes your job fair of value to them? These are key marketing strategy questions.

Once you have your answers, scale down the million-dollar budget. Where are your likely attendees likely to see your ad (or hear it)? What do THEY have in common – a form of transportation? A common market they shop at? A radio station? A governmental agency? Place the ads in places they are with the reason that this is a good use of time.

2 weeks isn’t a lot of time, but it is do-able. Work smart.

I have recently joined in marketing department of a company which is into manufacture of cement. The brand is good but is a bit more costly as compared to the brands of other competitors. It is justified by the good quality our cement have. But what is the best way to send this message to the consumers through our communications? And what promotions could be run to support the brand?

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What specifically does an improved quality of the cement mean? Durable? Less likely to crack? More/Less flyash?

You need to highlight the key benefit(s) to the consumers. For example, if the cement is more durable, that would translate into stronger, more lasting foundations (that won’t need to be replaced as often). Perhaps it’s able to withstand acid rain, etc.

If it’s less likely to crack, then it’s great for both interiors (where a large surface area is hard to create) as well as for earthquake prone areas.

The flyash content would make it more eco-friendly.

The key is to identify what the consumer cares about for cement in general, and therefore highlight the benefit (especially when you have to get over the price concern).