Effective Direct Marketing – The Krispy Kreme Model

Remember a few years ago when Krispy KremeĀ® ruled the universe? New stores were popping up everywhere and they all had lines snaking out their doors and around the block.

Krispy Kreme donuts were synonymous with guilty pleasure. There was nothing quite like a still-hot Krispy Kreme original glazed donut. We thought they were heavenly. We couldn’t get enough of them.

But do you also remember those rare occasions when a stray donut survived the feeding frenzy until the next day? Remember the experience of biting into a day old donut and the accompanying feeling of disappointment?

Direct Marketing messaging can be like that-especially with marketing taking on more and more social networking characteristics. Whether we’re engaging customers through a website or a blog, content is king. If your content is stale-like a day-old donut-it won’t take long for your customers to walk away.

This doesn’t mean reinventing who you are every week. It does mean constantly thinking about how you can help your customers. And it means thinking of fresh ways to communicate with them about solving their problems.

How often should you update your content? That depends. Some industries change daily. Most don’t. I’d rather receive one really good piece of information every week or every month than wade through a bunch of mediocre stuff to find one gem. A business colleague of ours who builds high-end websites recently shared that 95 percent of his clients haven’t changed the content on their sites in the last 12 months. That’s too long.

When’s the last time you updated your blog or the content on your website? Are you giving customers a reason to check in with you-or is your content like a day-old Krispy Kreme donut?

Why Are Small Business Owners And Churches Using SMS Marketing And Text Marketing Alerts?

You may have read recently that Google, the Internet behemoth, just purchased a large mobile marketing company for a big payout of $750,000,000. This should clearly tell business owners both online and offline that mobile SMS marketing should no longer be ignored and that its future is potentially unlimited.

Google feels this is the quick and cost-effective tool for the distribution of your mobile ads, key financial text alerts or church communication to smartphones, cell phones, connected mobile devices, desktops, laptops, netbooks, and iPads.

The interesting thing about mobile ads via SMS marketing is that although it may not be the most flashy medium you have seen lately, it does provide what most patrons and members want and that is one-on-one, uninterrupted dialogue with the business or church of their choice when they want or need assistance.

What is really exciting about text SMS messages and mobile text marketing is that it goes hand in hand so perfectly with practically any Internet, print and video marketing a business may be currently doing. Not to mention the unequaled response rates Internet marketers and small business owners are experiencing.

One reason for this possible higher response rate is that consumers have to opt-in to receive whatever SMS marketing campaign or church communication that they are seeking. This is true permission based marketing which avoids spam and creates a newly formed direct communication channel.

And for churches, these text alerts can be sent in a dignified manner. This is crucial and important when it comes to communicating with members about future sermons, prayer requests, birth, baptismal and death announcements, funding raising events and any emergencies that may affect their members and the local community.

Now getting back to the cell phone advertising perspective, the profitability factor is probably one of the most attractive factors for the small business owner. Many have seen a boost in sales ranging from 8 to 42 percent depending on the industry and how regularly they utilize their new mobile number.

These marketing statistics are based on numbers national and local business owners are currently doing and when you think about it this only makes sense when you consider that close to 90 percent of all text SMS messages are read by the consumer usually within minutes of receiving the alert. Overall, close to 99 percent of these messages will be read usually within a couple of hours.

The old mentality of selling is slowly going away according to Google and advertising executives. Running expensive print ads and television ads is not returning the profits they did 20 to 30 years ago. Small business owners do well to grasp this newer way of selling and staying in touch with their current and future customers as this is how they want to be communicated with.

But keeping all things in perspective, you are probably not a Fortune 500 company yet. But the good news is that you no longer have to have their type of budget to use mobile SMS marketing effectively. It is now quite affordable for every small business owner in the United States to try it out and use.

Your cost for this incredible technology can be less than 27 cents to 3 dollars per day depending on what company you go with and the features you are looking for. And with 52,083 text messages being sent every second of the day, the plain truth is mobile ads are not going away.

There are other facets of this marketing platform that will help you build your business. Take for example the automatic advertising some companies do for you via mobile websites and apps. Plus many SMS advertising services will actually build you a database of excited buyers organization members. This makes it convenient to send permission-based bulk notices instead of doing each one by hand.

By taking a closer look at whether text marketing would benefit your business or church, just look at the company you would be in. These are just some of the other successful companies using this SMS marketing media venue starting with national soft drink companies, restaurants, grocery chains, retail stores, banks, charitable and church organizations and churches themselves. Most people have gone mobile and maybe it is time you do as well.

Article Marketing Online and Offline

There is only one constant in the world of business and that constant is the fact that the business world is always changing. This is an indisputable fact, and it creates a situation that needs to be remedied immediately. This situation of course is the marketing side of business, and without decent marketing your business will go under. There are no exceptions to this rule, and for this reason it is important that you embrace article marketing.

Article marketing is perhaps one of the most important strategies in today’s business world. This trend started several years ago when businesses realized they would need a top spot on the most popular search engines if they were to achieve the rankings they wanted in the first place. Due to the overwhelming number of business related websites on the internet, it is no surprise that it can be difficult to obtain a top spot in Google search results.

With article marketing you will stand more of a chance than normal simply because you will have the ability to create unique content that contains keywords relevant to the product you are offering. Something you need to understand however is that when you are creating your content, you should avoid utilizing keywords that are not relevant to the topic. When you are directing traffic to your website you will want to ensure that said traffic is interested in your product and ready to purchase at a moment’s notice.

As you are creating your article marketing materials you will need to consider just what is popular at the moment and apply it to your current article marketing strategy. One product may be popular with customers this month, but if you predict that another product will take precedence next month, then it may be a good time for you to create a few articles intended for that next product. Article marketing is about far more than decent grammar skills, it is about staying on top of the game and ensuring that you are ready for the next big shift.

You will more than likely find it difficult to keep up at first, and you may even need to acquire the services of an article marketing company. It may be a bit expensive to have others write your articles for you, but to be perfectly honest there is no expense that can overshadow the benefits of article marketing. You will be able to direct specialized traffic, spread the word about your business, and have a huge impact on the business world whether you are impacting customers directly, or having an effect on competing companies. Gaining that competitive edge will keep you in business, and it will keep your name out in the open.

5 Good Reasons to Promote Your Business With Article Marketing

In order to be successful in any business, your customers need to know about you. The most effective way you can spread the word about your services is to be backed by an effective marketing campaign. A good campaign will get people talking about your business for all the right reasons and help to bring in those all-important sales. And, at the end of the working day, that is what running a business is all about.

When it comes to internet businesses, the key to success is to increase traffic to your website. The more traffic that is directed towards your site, the bigger the chance you have of making sales. People cannot buy something that they know nothing about; therefore it is essential to get the word out about your business.

Making the consumer aware of a business and how it can directly benefit them may sound like a simple task, but the competitive nature of online business can make it tough to stand out in the crowd. With many businesses jumping on the internet marketing bandwagon in recent years, article marketing has shown itself to be one of the most effective means of online marketing. But how exactly can article marketing advertise your business and bring in those elusive sales?

Article marketing can benefit your company in a number of ways. Here is an example of a few:

* An increase of traffic to your site through the use of back links which can be included within your articles.

* Your site will benefit from link popularity through search engine websites such as Google through the use of back links on other sites, thus increasing your traffic further.

* An increase in your search engine rankings through the use of resource boxes which will also contain a link back to your own website when these links relate directly to the nature of your content and own site.

* A chance to really sell your business to potential customers with an outline of what your business is all about and the products/services you can provide.

* The opportunity to obtain returning customers to your site if they like what they read and the service you provide.

Article marketing is not only a fast and easy way of marketing your business to the whole of the internet, but it has also proved itself extremely effective. By extending your marketing campaign to the wide world of the internet, you are potentially expanding your customer base to millions of existing internet users.