The Four-P’s

If you’ve taken an advertising or marketing class, you’ll know what the Four P’s are already: Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion. These are the four keys to selling a product or service, and will help you change how you market them:

Product

The product (or service) should be the first thing you analyze and possibly get some non-bias feedback on. Answer some simple questions by both your expertise and a few external opinions:

• What is the total cost to make/produce/ship the product?
• What is the quality of the product, and what guarantees/maintenance do you offer?
• How well does your product compete against competition?

Price

Math is one of the most important factors in determining long term success of a product. Start by breaking down the data that you have: price – cost = profit. How well does your product compete on a price level? What is the percentage of profit made, and do the long-term profits exceed the costs of marketing, advertising, promotion, etc?

Placement

Location, location, location! We’ve all heard that phrase, and for good reason. Location really matters. You can sell a pile of junk if it’s in the right location. Analyze location/placement in a hierarchy:

• What city are you located in (analyze demographic and potential number of customers in that city)
• Once you have a rough estimate on that number, consider your store location and how many of those customers see it
• How well do you position you product (physically or mentally) when customers enter your doors (or website even)?

Promotion

Once you’ve figured out all that data, you have the tools necessary to start promoting yourself. If it’s a new product/service/business then jump right into the Promotional Mix. Otherwise start by analyzing how information is distributed and advertised currently and give some thought to the strengths and weaknesses of your current tactics before reading the next bit.

A-Three-PS (The Promotional Mix)

The A-Three-PS model is the biggest key to promoting your product or service. Within each of these points there are other branches and such that are important also, but for the most part, every type of promotion falls within the A 3P S: Advertising, Publicity, Packaging, Personal selling, Sales promotion.

Advertising

Advertising comes in many names and shapes, but put simply, advertising is a form of promotion that explicitly details the product and markets it towards a specific demographic. I’ll go deeper into advertising with another post, but here’s a quick look at the most popular methods of advertising:

• Web Media (pay-per-click advertising, social media, viral marketing)
• Outdoor (vehicles with large ads, billboards, building ads, posters)
• Print Media (business cards, brochures, newspaper)
• Broadcast Media (television, radio, live web feeds)

Publicity

This is one of the most impressive ways to promote your product and usually causes a huge spike, but is not necessarily a steady flow or good model to base your business. Publicity can come in many ways, whether it’s word-of-mouth, a promotional event, news story, or some crazy stunt. Usually it comes at little to no cost (because it pays off whatever costs their may have been), and generally has a greater impact for immediate business, but as I mentioned.. is not a steady source of income. This is a great place to start for a new and emerging business, and is also highly effective when combined with other promotional resources (such as Sales Promotion).

Packaging

It’s so amazing how packaging effects a consumer’s decision to purchase. Packaging is huge, whether it’s a physical product, how you package/sell your product online, etc. This is where you can be creative and stand out from your competitors. Rather than going into too much detail about how creative packaging works, check out some of these links for yourself:

• Highly Creative Product Packaging
• More Creative Product Packaging
• Food and Beverage Product Packaging

Personal Selling

Out of all the forms of promotion, most businesses either nail the others and miss this or nail this and miss the others. Personal Selling is a face-to-face interaction that takes the product from beginning of sale to closing of sale. This is crucial in selling a large product like a car, boat, or expensive service. Generally anything that is selling for over $3000 is going to require personal selling. I have seen many businesses flop because they didn’t promote themselves, meet with clients, or sell on a personal level. If you have any product or service that is near or above $3k, put this on the top of your list of skills to master!!

Sales Promotion or Incentives

You’ll see this form of advertising at almost any retail store. Sales cause hype which becomes a free promotion by word-of-mouth. Sales can be really effective on an older, polished product to draw the user to look at a new product that you are promoting.

Take a wireless store for example. You’ll often see sales incentives offering you a deal with a new phone. They will often promote a free bluetooth headset, or a discounted price with a 2 year contract. These are sales promotions that seem like a good deal (and often can be), but for the store have large turnover. Either the bluetooth headset is really cheap for the store to give away, and the smart phone that you’re paying $500 for easily covers the cost.. or a free phone with a 2 year contract.. you just buahg the phone for your monthly payment * 24 months!

Sales can be combined in so many ways, that it would be impossible to give all the different examples. The biggest thing to note when promoting a sale or incentive is what your costs are, how much the price outweighs the cost, and how that is presented to the consumer. If you take those three point into consideration, and combine this form of promotion with some form of advertising, it should be a large success.

Identify your Audience

The absolute first step in the marketing process is to Survey and Explore your target audience to establish your marketing tactics. In this phase you’ll identify your Target Market by asking yourself.. Who specifically am I trying to speak to? and then compare that answer with your geographic, demographic, and psychographic analysis results. Then you will discover your Market Segmentation by defining how you niche the market to speak directly to the consumer you want to target. This is usually figured by looking at the geographic, demographic, and psychographic results, and then simply asking yourself.. What makes you stand out from your competitors in the target’s mind?

Geographic

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “Location, Location, Location!”, so identify that first. Often times defining your Geographic location of the consumer will affect your marketing the most, especially if your business is mostly offline or without a web presence (check out my web development business and our services if this is the case).

Demographic

Demographics are simply the basics that make your consumer such as age, sex, martial status, education, income, race, religion, etc. There are many websites that will easily allow you to research by city, zip and radius to help you identify the ideal demographic in each location.

Psychographic

After you’ve established Geographic and Demographic, you should then analyze psychographics, which are the he underlying things that make your customer who they are (sexual preference, specific religious beliefs, Lifestyle, how they view/carry themselves, etc).

Self Discovery

I think the most important aspect to starting a business is knowing yourself. This phase should have the most time spent on it, and should never be considered “complete.” Self discovery is an ever changing process and is needed in nearly every situation when it comes to business. Here are some keys to consider when doing some self discovery that are specific enough to business:

Passion

It’s such a short and simple word, yet can mean everything. Passion is the heartbeat of a business, and if it’s not beating strong, the business has little to work with. When you’re considering starting a business, ask yourself why. If you’re answer doesn’t fall along the lines of, “it’s what I love to do,” than reconsider. Passion can come in many shapes and forms, and people don’t often get to choose what they’re passionate about. Look at me for example.. I simply stumbled onto web development by chance while in college for graphic design, and my passion overtook me and drove me to succeed and grow in unmeasurable ways. Once you have passion, you have the main ingredient and should move on to goals and motivation… because passion can fade without them.

Self Discipline

Passion by itself is a strong tool, and provides ambition, but without direction and discipline its hard to focus and accomplish what you NEED to do. At times passion doesn’t cover every nook and cranny of a dream, and it takes self-motivation through discipline to accomplish those petty tasks. For example, with Chosen, I had the dream of starting my own Web Development company. My passion for web design and development are enough to motivate me in both, but starting a business is more than just design and development. I’ve had to learn more about taxes, been the consultant, salesman, project manager, etc. I’m not passionate about all of these tasks, so I must discipline myself to accomplish the tasks that need to be done just as much as that tasks that I want to do.

Goals

Many studies have shown that roughly 97% of the people in the world do NOT have goals, and that the other 3% that do almost always succeed in meeting them… this statistic is so true and I can testify to it. People often ask me how it is that I was able to start a family (wife and kid at the age of 20) and still purchase a new home, renovate it, buy new computers/toys/frig/etc all in the same year, while only having been a year out of college. No, I didn’t have any help from any family. I did this on my own by setting goals. I started Chosen by setting goals. They’re very real and they work wonders. I could go on and on about goals, but I think it would be best for you to simply read my post about goal setting.

Consider this
Gas has been cheaper in the last 3 months than it has been in over 2 years!
Produce sales haven’t escalated beyond normal scale
Inflation hasn’t risen dramatically

So what really is the source of this recession?! It’s all negative media. Like I said, recession has become a buzzword.

Let’s face it, people tend to be negative. What do you search for on youtube when you’re bored? I bet it’s not world causes or positive messages and uplifting words. No, you’re probably looking up worst car crashes, fights, celebrities at their worst, etc. This is what people want.. drama, and the media has fed us exactly what we’ve been craving for years.

But we’ve had too much…

People are getting sick of hearing the word recession. Business and families are being dramatically influenced and people are hurting. The only way to get rid of the recession is to reverse our thinking. Our thinking towards spending, and what we soak in from the media on a daily basis.

I’m making an effort to stand for something greater than myself.. will you join me?

[podcast format="video"]http://thinkclay.com/wp-content/uploads/podcasts/against-recession-hype.m4v[/podcast]

Can anyone say, “Misleading title” ?? While this title may be misleading, there’s a good explanation for it… it’s called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is a process of structuring code and content in a way that Search Engines and other tracking software can easily recognize, categorize, and parse. It’s an important tool in marketing a website and getting your rankings higher on google.

SEO in Lansing Web Design

As a freelancer and web developer, I have to market myself well. Part of my marketing strategy is to target specific areas and locations so that I can use keywords that may not be as common in that specific area, but that are important and strong keywords related to what I do in the web industry.

My Goal

Plain and simply put, I want this page to boost my SEO and target specific keywords AND teach those that are interested something too. Rather than go into detail about WHY I structure, write and target the way I do, just look at my source, read through this post, and follow up with some other blogs to see what SEO is all about. I think learning by example is the easiest, and hopefully people will be able to reference this page and see how and what I’m targeting.

Web Design and Development

I’ve been freelancing as a Web Designer and Web Developer in Lansing, MI for some time now, and it’s about time that i put myself on the radar for SEO. I held off for a while because I didn’t want to compete with other Web Design Agencies in Lansing or Michigan, because many of them were my source of work. However, now that I’m growing as a freelance web developer, and my Creative Advertising business is taking off, I figured it would be best to market myself as such.

Web Design

If it’s not obvious already, I work as a freelancer and manager of a Lansing Web Design Company, Chosen. Chosen is a Creative Advertising Agency specializing in marketing and advertising using tactics that are out of the box and extremely creative. At Chosen we aim to be trend-setters and on the cutting edge of both design and technology, so come to us and make “what if” a reality.

It’s exciting to be a part of such a successful business in Lansing, and though we have offices in Saint Johns, MI and Los Angeles, CA already, I would like to eventually branch down to the Southern Kentucky or Northern Tennessee area. Those areas are ready for a professional web design company to come in and grow the community.

Lansing Web Design

As you’ve read, Chosen is run primarily out of Lansing, MI but I personally live and work in Saint Johns, MI which is where our main office is. Having a Web Design company in a smaller town like Saint Johns might seem like a bad area to market web services, however I’ve found that the internet is not bias and allows me to be anywhere at any time globally. So Chosen and myself are best represented as being located globally with our office on the web. That’s the way we play the game, so check us out, and stop in to say hi!

Search Engines: The law of the wild west

Many businesses may have heard the terms SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or Organic SEO, but not many fully understand what those terms mean. Search engines (such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN) are in the position to guide and control where a user goes when browsing because, aside from directly going to a web page, most users search the web for a specific purpose or topic. These search engines are really the authority when it comes to what web standards are followed and best practices for writing content, linking to content or structuring pages based on content. We rely on these engines to help us standardize the web and make searching and browsing easier, and at the same time these engines rely on us to code semantically and efficiently according to their standards, as well as format our content the same. This is what SEO is all about.. learning how search engines rank and find web pages and then optimizing a site for engine readability.

A Deeper look into SEO

Let’s start with a scenario of a company that hired some college student to develop their website — this student knows a little about design/html/css and maybe even how to put in a shopping cart or some other sales ability on the site. If this student has no experience with SEO and the company doesn’t get SEO work done on their site.. the fact that they saved money by getting a college student to develop the site rather than a professional company screws them. “You get what you pay for,” it’s a saying that’s all too true when it comes to the web. Sure anyone can get a site developed by Joe Shmoe for $200 but that doesn’t mean it’s going anywhere.. unless you have some REALLY strong advertising that happens outside of the web, you’re not going to get hardly any traffic to your site.. If a search engine doesn’t see content matching with META information, external links, internal links and higher ranking sites linking to yours, then it’s going nowhere and you’re not going to get indexed or ranked well. Search engines have total control when it comes to SEO so you have to play by their rules.

So how do you play by their rules? How do you improve your site’s search engine optimization or rankings? There are two routes you can go.. if you’re a stubborn do-it-yourself kind of person, then you should start out by looking into some SEO tools. I’ve got a few tools listed in another post which integrate right within Firefox that you can check out. Focus on researching and learning SEO for a while until you understand where your site is weak as far as META information, content relevancy and hierarchy.

Once you feel that you understand SEO a little better, then setup a Google Analytics account to track site traffic and source (organic search, direct, external site, etc). Google Analytics is a free service that can dramatically help you to monitor where your viewers are coming from and what they are doing once on your site.

Another service from google that will help you understand SEO is Google Webmasters Tools. The Webmasters Tools are great because they allow you to submit your sitemap and validate it, as well as see how often google is crawling your site (a term that basically means checking across content and links) and what information the robot sees when it crawls.

Next, I recommend signing up for social sharing services such as Digg, Twitter, Delicious, etc. These services are all free and they will help boost your sites rankings and network. This requires a lot of viral marketing and organic optimization. In order to get “tagged” by other users that use these services, you need to network, socialize, and interact with other sites that relate to your own. If you’re in web development especially on the freelancing side, then you probably already know about the huge network of freelancers and developers that continually comment on each other’s posts, link to each other, and help each other to grow and achieve more. This is the best SEO technique out there, but the hardest to execute as well. Quality is better than quantity when it comes to organic optimization, don’t just make pointless comments on numerous sites. You need to interact, genuinely care about, and get to know other sites and bloggers. It’s all about who you know in the web community!

Semantic Web: The new Sheriff in town

If you’re don’t know HTML/CSS and you’re looking to increase rankings for your business on your own.. this is where you stop reading. Semantic Markup isn’t something you can learn overnight, but it’s rather a process that continually growing and developing as new standards are defined.

..What it means for developers..

There are lot’s of areas to cover when it comes to semantic web, accessibility, validation and best practices, but for now, I’m just going to talk about the basics. Semantic web essentially means using HTML tags properly to define content. For example headers should use <h1> through <h6> tags following a specific hierarchy based upon parent/sibling/child relations. Another example is as simple as using <p> tags for paragraphs, <ol> tags for ordered lists, <ul> tags for unordered lists, and so forth. These standards and structures aren’t NEW by any means, but their value and importance have dramatically increased recently and will continue to rise.

This also requires the community to improve search engines and the companies that run them. As web developers we need to recognize which of these engines is the most accurate and fair in it’s algorithm and how it reads a web page. Most would agree that google is by far the greatest and most powerful search engine because it is so organic. Given that fact, we need to match their standards and continue to push browsers, search engines, and markup to match newer and better standards in a more uniform way. Let’s unite and continue to move towards a better more structured future and say no more anarchy on the internet or in web development!

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…