We are looking for a tagline for our all star cheerleading gym. I was thinking of “Building Champions One Cheer At a Time”.
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Jay’s Answer: A tagline needs to appeal to your target audience. So, “Building Champions One Cheer At A Time” may work if you only communicate with cheerleaders who are looking for a boost. Otherwise, the tagline doesn’t work.
Some off-the-cuff suggestions:
I wanted to solicit your opinion on how to promote a site that I recently launched: (www.goosca.com). This site is a social networking platform that allows its users to purchase real gifts for themselves or for other users (without knowing the recipients addresses in the latter case). Our company or affiliated vendors will do the delivery. Users who do not object to receiving gifts from others provide their addresses at the account registration time. These addresses will be kept confidential and will be used only for gifts delivery purpose. In your opinion, what would be the best way to promote the site and its ideas?
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Jay’s Answer: As you know, creating a new social networking platform isn’t hard – attracting people to it is. There are a huge number of sites competing for people (for example)
It appears that the sole purpose of the site is ultimately ecommerce (and the way you generate revenue) – sending/receiving gifts to people whose address you don’t know. Your privacy policy doesn’t adequately describe the safeguards you place for ordering and storage of confidential user information.. Also, sizing / color choices will be hard for people. Ideally, you want to say, send my new friend this thing, and have the friend choose the color/size to make sure the gift will be received in the spirit it was sent.
To build an online community, you first need critical mass – enough people online (of your target demographic) to attract more people of the same demographic via word-of-mouth. The first round can be your friends, people you know in a club, etc. You want a new visitor to visit and see lots of “action” online.
I’d strongly suggest teaming up with an existing networking site that already has active membership, and attempt to integrate your Goosca patent into their environment.
For a new business, it’s much easier to improve an existing offering than trying to create a new one from scratch.
I obtained a degree in Marketing Management many years ago and all my work experience till now is related to marketing of various products and services. But now I am to take up teaching marketing as an academic subject in a local institution. Though I am sure I can take up most of the fundamentals in marketing individually as they come up, my area of concern is how to start the sessions.
I know we have to start with the definitions of term “marketing”, but what could be subsequent flow of topics session after session. The campus is a new one and most of the students in the faculty are freshers, who do not even know the a,b,cs’ of the subject..
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Jay’s Answer: First, your students need to see the bigger picture. Have them pick a company that’s familiar to them, and dissect it: R&D, marketing, advertising, sales, admin, etc. Don’t talk generalities, drill down to specifics. From there, understand how the marketing department interacts with the rest of the company. What are its needs? Why?
When we launched our Ecommerce site our team consisted of 3 people. Now we have 5 people with 3 more scheduled to start by the end of the year. We currently use a basic excel spreadsheet to keep track of homepage updates, site page updates, emails, promotions, random web marketing and creative needs. With our new staff additions and ramping up our project list and updating our site more often we’ve come to a point where our current solution doesn’t allow for scalability. Any suggestions?
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Jay’s Answer: A simple solution would be to use Google Apps to create an intranet (for your internal collaboration). They offer both a free (ad-supported) and business (paid) edition.
Alternatively, create an internal wiki.
Finally, if you simply want to track projects, use a project management software solution such as Basecamp.
I need a business (french or Italian) name for a wedding decorations shop. Needs to be delicate & fun?
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Jay’s Answer: I hope these help your naming process:
Wedding Decorations:
A Loving Wedding:
Wedding Impressions:
Your Special Day:
I am looking for few new ideas that i can use for upcoming mega Ear nose and Throat conference in a local hotel. We have already confirmed a stall in the exhibition. I want some new idea to attract doctors towards the stall in the form of placing any game, computer game, or some thing new.
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Jay’s Answer: Before you create the “gimmick”, make sure that your offer/value of your product/services are top-notch. It’s not to your benefit to get lots of booth traffic only to wind up with no leads or lack of interest in your offering.
Obviously to play any of these games they need to provide contact info for follow-up.
I am just starting to market myself to local chiropractors, as I have seen a need (via ads, etc) for what I can offer them. Have gotten a couple responses already to only a dozen I have emailed with my attached letter- one wants ONLY for me to get him into local companies as a one-time speaker (obviously he doesn’t GET that marketing takes more than 1 talk!!), in & out, another might contract with me to do various marketing projects, including company events/health fairs, etc- he is offering $15-20/hr + undetermined “bonus structure”- I am just seeking advice from marketers who have worked with chiropractors in the past, about pricing strategy. Any advice you can give would be helpful- not sure if I should do an hourly rate or flat fee, and if a flat fee, what is reasonable- per company I get him in, etc?
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Jay’s Answer: Your confusion is because you’re unclear about the value of the service you’re providing.
As for what’s best – it’s a combination of your skills, their needs, and their budget. From their perspective, getting the engagement has value, but your time doesn’t. Therefore, a % of perceived value/flat fee makes sense. What’s fair? If you’re unsure, ask local PR people for their fee structure. That’ll help. Realize that the chiropractor doesn’t sound like they want a long-term relationship with you: they simply think more speeches = more clients = more $. So, create a short-term fee structure that’s fair for your time and their response.
In addition to my greeting card marketing and video business card businesses, I am developing a consulting practice for service based businesses. I help businesses increase their profitability by teaching them strategies to improve client loyalty, increase repeat business and generate referrals.
I will just be using my name as the name of the practice so I need a tag line that tells people what I do and why they need it (what their results will be). I have developed a proprietary system that I am in the process of trademarking however the key items I want to get
across about my service and the system are:
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Jay’s Answer: Here are some ideas to get you thinking:
We are developing a marketing/pr campaign to target absentee landowners (landowners who do not live on their land) into implementing conservation practices and/or seeking assistance for their conservation questions. We were tossing around “Have you walked your land lately”. This was to encourage them to visit their land (with assistance from their area conservationist) to make sure they know it’s current state. We need to get across the message that they need to be concerned about their land and that free assistance is available for them to help assess their land. We are also providing them with information about what conservation programs are available to help them protect and preserve it. There are two campaigns that don’t necessarily need the same message. One is for land that is primarily forest, the other for land that is crop or recreation land.
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Jay’s Answer: “Have You Walked Your Land Lately?” doesn’t reinforce your offering: free assessment and conservation. Some ideas:
I am planning for an open house with my Chamber of Commerce to promote my private mental health counseling business. Do you have any ideas or resources to order materials for such. Since my areas will be with children, parenting, and substance addictions, I’m thinking about having informational handouts, business cards, and promotional items such as pens, but don’t have it all together.
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Jay’s Answer: While you’re at it, invite your local parents’ groups to your open house.
I’d have separate handouts for each of the areas you specialize in. Each of these handouts would talk about what problems that this group has that you can help with. Testimonials would be a plus.
Your goal at the open house is to network – to talk to people and find out how satisfied they are with their parenting and family, and offer your skills to help improve it. You want to build trust in your skills and personality. I’m sure you already know how to ask great questions and listen to their answers. You just need to do this in a business setting first.