| |
| |
|
Online Advertising |
Guaranteed Targeted Website Visitors from just $0.45 per 1000. 24 Hour Unique Visitors, Online Stats, 30 Day Guaranteed. We offer Country Targeted or Mainstream Traffic at wholesale cost.: CLICK HERE |  |
|
|
The Apprentice: 5 Lessons in Marketing
Donald Trump's hit reality show, The Apprentice is a godsend for marketers around the world. Why? Because all of the tasks that the prospective apprentice's go through each week and each season involves some sort of marketing skills. So, the Apprentice is a great media channel to show how important marketing is in everyday business and especially if you want to be successful in business. So, here are some fundamental lessons that we can all learn from the Apprentice: Lesson 1: Give the client what they want. In the first season of the show, the Girls team came up with a risque and provocative ad campaign compared to the Men's team which came up with something safe and conservative. The Girls team's advertising campaign won because they followed a fundamental rule of marketing: ask the client what they want and deliver it to them. The best way to get your client(s) to buy what you have to offer is to give them what they want. The men's team lost simply because they "guessed" what the client was looking for instead of spending the time to meet and ask questions of the client and deliver what the client wanted. Lesson 2: Sell and market what you know; and sell a product and service that you can truly stand behind In another task, the two teams had to choose an artist and help sell that artist's artwork. The winning team kept it simple and chose an artist who's work they liked. The losing team chose an artist who's work was rather controversial and which they didn't understand themselves. Ultimately, because the losing team didn't have any clue what the artwork was about and because they didn't even like the work themselves, they couldn't effectively sell it. If you have no confidence in your product or if you don't understand your product, you will have a tough time selling it to other people if you can't even sell yourself on the product. Customers can sense that you don't have any confidence in your product, once they sense that you may as well pack it in. Lesson 3: Find different ways to create new revenue streams from your existing business In the "Rickshaw task", the winning team knew that they could not solely rely on revenue streams simply from offering rides in a rickshaw. They diversified and made optimum use of their assets to create multiple revenue streams by also selling advertising space on the rickshaw. The revenue generated from selling the advertising space was what sealed the win. This way you mitigate your risks if one revenue stream is suddenly negatively affected you don't go broke. Lesson 4: Price it right In the 2nd season, the guys team won the QVC task because of price. The women lost simply because they overpriced. In another example, the men lost in the fashion design task again, because their pricing was simply out of whack with what the buyers were looking for. Price too low and you lose. Price too high and you lose. No one can give you a simple formula for getting the right price for your product or service so it's up to you test and choose the optimal price for your product or service. Lesson 5: 80/20 Pareto Principle Going back to the rickshaw task, how did the winning team manage to sell advertising in such a short period of time? They went straight to the businesses they already had relationships with. You have a higher chance of generating sales if you concentrate on selling and marketing and generating more revenue out of the clients and prospects you already have existing relationships with. The 80/20 Pareto principle. So, no matter what you think of Donald Trump and reality shows, there are lots of lessons to be learned from reality tv. Copyright © 2004. Ethan Hathaway. Wayne Po, is the Founder and Marketing Consultant of Ethan Hathaway (http://www.ethanhathaway.com): A virtual consultancy that helps small to medium sized B2B businesses increase their revenues through effective marketing communications.
MORE RESOURCES:
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Do You Know Where Your Email Address is Today? Having people go to your website is not always easy: remind them with a special business card.Whether you understand it nor not, the web is likely here to stay; those businesses that do not yet have a web presence, or at least email addresses, are likely to get left in the dust. Make Your Mailing a Home Run, Not a Strike Out! You can use great design and copy to get a better response.When you send a mailing to your customers or prospective customers you are counting on making considerably more money in new business than you spend on the mailing, right? It is obvious that if you were not going to profit from the mailing, you wouldn't send it out. Great Marketing is Like Making a Great Movie KNOW YOUR AUDIENCEThe Oscars will be handed out soon, and it's a perfect time to keep this in mind: If you're a business owner or manager, it's wise to think of yourself as a great film director who's telling a story. Having directed films, stage, television, and stage productions we noticed that the principles of great directing or filmmaking apply exactly to great marketing. A Seven Letter Word That Helped a 3 Month Marketing Newbie to Online Success Who would have thought that a three month newbie and marketing dummy with no list, no product, no contacts, can actually make money online? Me neither.I had no idea what to do, how to do or why. The Use of Bar Code SMS in Mobile Marketing, Advertising, CRM Anybody that frequents shopping malls are familiar with the bar coding systems used by retailers to ease the line at the pay points. No more long lines at the till as the operator just pulls the product past the scanner and voila - the buyer pays and are on their way. Determining Marketing Effectiveness Even If You Didnt Track What if you've done a variety of marketing activities over the past year, but you did not establish any way to track the response? Now you don't know what worked and what didn't.Is there anything you can do now before you continue with your marketing efforts and potentially continue spending money on not-so-effective marketing activities?First of all, don't beat yourself up. When Designing Postcards, Aim for Refrigerator Door Mindshare If you want to design effective marketing postcards, then aim for "Refrigerator Door Mindshare." By this, I mean that you should create a card that someone would be proud to display on his or her refrigerator door. 7 Tips to Grab New Clients As a business professional, you probably realize the value of writing articles for print publications to telegraph your expertise. Have you considered that writing articles for online publications can build even more buzz for your business?Some professionals dismiss online articles because they lack the prestige of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Top Ten Blunders Exhibitors Make in Expos/Tradeshows Triple your response from expos by avoiding the top ten blunders at expos. Turn disappointment into sales success!If you are like most exhibitors, you were disappointed from the results at your last expo. 3 Quick Robotic Online and Offline Marketing Strategies to Help You Work Less and Make More Money What is Marketing? There are many text book answers to this but I like these two definitions the most.To be successful, you have to understand what marketing is, and how to advertise. Helping Your Prospects Overcome "Buying Fears" By Using Testimonials You DO use direct marketing for your small business? right? If so, you're taking advantage of the most cost-effective means of advertising available. (Yes? I'm biased? I admit it!)Let's talk for a minute about how you can make your sales copy and direct marketing more effective. Do I Need an RSS Feed? RSS has been around for more than 10 years but has only recently become popular. RSS provides headlines and summaries of information in a concise and standardized way. Leverage The Power Of Using Flyers To Advertise Your Online Product or Service Offline One commonly overlooked method of advertising offline is flyers. Flyers are extremely easy to create. Ten Effective Ways to Capture Market 1.Evaluation of Existing Products / Therapies2. Turning The Casual Scanner Into A Buyer The world is full of scanners. Most people simply scan the page to see if anything piques their interest, rather than reading the ads, sales letters, or web copy. The Exiler THE EXILER (your search for true brand attributes ends here!)With the advent of new marketing strategies and techniques, many theories have sprouted up telling you many ways to impress your target customers and make them buy your product. But when it comes to practical implementation of the theories, most of them fail, or give partial results because they are based either on buying behavior of customers or extensive surveysWhen the customers choose to buy a product they look only into very few features of product / service which are vital for their selection. Make More Sells With Colors How Colors Effect Our Emotions?One of the most interesting things to me is how colors effect the way we think and feel. They effect us whether we are aware of it or not. Knock, knock. Whos There? Your Target Market, Are You Listening? Have you ever had a conversation with a person who wasn't listening to anything you said? This one-way communication experience is a big turn-off and many times frustrating to cope with at the time. Is this occurring in your marketing? Oops, no one wants to think of their business as turning a deaf ear to their market. How To Get To The Top of The Marketing Food Chain Are you tired of living off handouts from big-name marketers, earning meager affiliate commissions?If you truly want to live and breathe the rarefied air of the super-marketers, what you need is not a change in method, but a change in attitude and mindset.You need to start thinking like a top gun and create your own identity instead of feeding off the efforts of others. Marketing is More Than Advertising Marketing is a business process about which much is written, however is often not completely understood. Many think that "marketing" and "advertising" are interchange-able words.
|
| home | site map | bad credit loans |
| SUBJECTS: • Advertising • Book Marketing • Domain Names • Email Marketing • Ezine Marketing • Ezine Publishing • Internet Marketing
|