Create A Catalog for Your Website

Here's an idea to make your top-selling inventory available on the web to anyone who wants to buy. You don't need to have an online store and you don't need to pay a web developer thousands of dollars to build a complicated data base.

Instead, just create a catalog with all your merchandise on your own computer and then offer it as a pdf download from your website.

In many ways, a pdf catalog is better than an actual printed catalog. There are no printing or mailing costs, and customers can save it to their computer for future reference.

DO IT YOURSELF
It may take a little time, but a catalog is not that difficult to create. You can do it with Word as long as you are comfortable working with tables and graphics in Word. Find Word tutorials here: Word 2007 Courses

Lay out your complete catalog including a cover page, table of contents, product information, and ordering instructions. Be sure to include an order form that may be faxed or mailed to you. When creating your catalog, include as much color as you can and include as many product pictures as you can.

When you are finished with the creation of your catalog, proof read it carefully. Now you're ready to convert the entire catalog from Word into a pdf document. You may already have the pdf conversion software on your computer, or you may have pdf driver installed in your printing options. If so, try those first and examine the results.

If that's not working, use this free online pdf converter: doc2pdf (donations accepted). I've found it to be very quick and completely accurate.

Once you've created the pdf document of your catalog, save it to your computer. Then send the file to your web developer and add it to the website. Make sure you prominently promote the "New Colorful Catalog" now available online.

EXAMPLES
Here are a couple of examples of some catalogs (all pdf file links):
Huetter Mill & Cabinet Molding and Stair Parts
Classic Cuisine Catering Catalog
Schlueter Dairy Technologies Catalog

When you do finish your catalog, be sure to send me a link to jay-at-themarketingspot-dot-com. If you already have a catalog, please let me know so that I can link to it as an example.


For more information on our company: www.themarketingspot.com
Read our other blog on small business marketing: The Marketing Spot

May Your Christmas Be Blessed

May the Spirit of the season and the joy of our Savior enter your heart this Christmas.

The Idea Spot will be back after Christmas with new case studies and practical marketing ideas.

Merry Christmas!

Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah! 13 Questions to Ask Yourself to Get Unique

Ben Bernie was an orchestra leader in the 1930's, who used to sign off his radio program with "Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah." It was his trademark and he became famous for that saying. Why? Because it was unique.

If you are struggling to build perceived value in your business then it's time to look at your uniqueness. The larger the sale you have to make with your business, the more you need to build up your perceived value. The key is to find that one unique feature on which you can hang all of your marketing materials.

Here's How You Do It
Start asking yourself some questions and start with these:

1. Who are the customers or my audience?


2. What should people feel when they come in contact with my offering?


3. What are my top three business values, other than honesty and quality?


4. What unique resources do I have that my competitors don't?


5. What do I aspire to accomplish for my customers?


6. If the sky were the limit, what might be possible with my business?


7. Do I have a unique model, system or process by which I operate?


8. What's my biggest weakness and how could that be my biggest strength?


9. What could be the potential risks, costs, or consequences to my customers by not doing business with me?


10. What are the top 5 questions asked by my potential customers?


11. What do my customers think must be done in order for them to be totally satisfied?


12. How does my offering give my customers momentum?


13. What is it my customers think I cannot do?

After asking these questions, you will most assuredly have jotted a list of multiple unique features about your business. Now compare that list with what your competitors are saying. Eliminate anything that sounds anything close to what they are saying.

Of the remaining items on the list, which one inspires you and would inspire your customers? There's your uniqueness. Now put that on all your marketing materials and never lead with anything else. This is what you are going to use to build perceived value in your business.

Note:
Thanks to Gerald Haman of Solution People for the inspiration of these questions. Gerald has created a truly unique pocket innovation tool call the KnowBrainer, which I use to help my clients devise unique solutions.

For more help on finding your uniqueness, see Connect the Dots: Building a True Brand, on our other blog: The Marketing Spot.

Related Posts:

1. Word of Mouth for a Realtor
2. Make the First Visit Count

For more information on our company: www.themarketingspot.com

Surprise Your Customers

Rick Spence, at the Financial Post tells us how he got pleasantly surprised by a hotel and the marketing lightbulb came on.






From the article:

"People get jaded fast," he says. "People have seen it all, and they expect it all. They expect that product quality, service and the experience will all be right. And the only way to please people who expect it all is to give them something they don't expect."

Are you surprising your customers? For more ideas, read the article here: Rick Spence: Surprise marketing tactics endear.

For more marketing advice and lessons, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot.
Our company website is: http://www.themarketingspot.com/

Branding an Office Space

Case Study: New Haven Legal Centre

Idea Wanted: Re-brand an existing office space business.

Challenge: Take an existing local office space business national, and at the same time, change the vision of the business.

Background: 25 year old President Jonathan Arabolos has a passion to reinvent office space. Jon and his mother operate the New Haven Legal Centre in New Haven, Connecticut, an office building where over 90% of the clients are legal associated practices. But Jon has an enthusiasm to serve new businesses and entrepreneurs and he want to combine that enthusiasm with his passion and into a new office space concept. He also wants to expand his reach and take the concept national.

Advice: Branding is about being different in the mind of the consumer. But it's not just about saying your different, it's also about being different. Jon needs to take his values, his passion, and his vision and turn it into a business that's real. When you have a real business that's different, you can have a brand that stands out from the crowd. We are going to advise Jon to focus on being a different kind of office space for small businesses.

Ideas:

1. The Mission. The first step to branding is to identify your mission, based on your values. Jon's top three business values are flexibility, optimism and passion*. Now those values need to be turned into a mission that will have merit with the target client: small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs. The mission we identified in working with Jon is to "To be a fertilizing ground where businesses grow."

   *For the record: We do not allow clients to give us the value of honesty when going through the branding process. Honesty is assumed as a starting point for doing business long term. This rule also applies to quality. Never use honesty or quality in your marketing materials.

2. The Brand Promise. After a mission statement is developed, the next step is to develop a brand promise based on the vision Jon has for the company. Jon's big hairy vision is to brand office space nationwide. He wants to set up a network of entrepreneurs and be a hub for small businesses through office space. To accomplish this vision potential clients will have to see Jon as a resource. Our recommended Brand Promise for the re-branded company is for Jon to "Be the resource you need to make your office space successful."
   
   
3. Proving the Brand. Branding is not about constructing a make believe image. Real branding that lasts cannot be done with smoke, mirrors and pretty words. Sooner or later you have to prove your promise. Jon wants to be a resource. We believe the best way to do this is to assemble a hub of services that most small businesses need but don't necessarily know how to get.
   
   These essential services can include: Bookkeeping, legal help, office supplies, printing, computer repair. Jon would have approved company providers for each of these services and more. He could check references and negotiate rates up front. Then when a tenant needs some printing work, rather than wasting time calling around and getting bids, they just call the "company printer" and order what they want.
   
   Another value-added service he could offer is a free logo when you sign a lease for a designated term. New businesses rarely have a logo when they start, so they can get a logo and an office in one transaction. There are logo shops that provide logos for as little as $250.
   
   
4. New Name. Obviously New Haven Legal Centre is not going to cut it as a name for the newly re-branded national business. There are a million business naming theories out there, but my favorite is probably Seth Godin's Naming a Business. We did a little creative thinking to come up with a couple of different names:
   
   Maple Office Centers - We got the inspiration from Jon's name, Arabolos, which is close to the Spanish word for trees. A maple tree is a fast-growing strong tree with a good visual presence. It's easy to spell and pronounce and we think it has nice ring.
   Harvest Business Centers - This name has an obvious relationship to Jon's mission of being a 'fertilizing ground' for small businesses. It also has a positive connotation, is easy to spell and pronounce.
   


5. Get a Signature. With a Brand Promise and a new name, we need a signature. Most people call this a tag line or a slogan. But signatures have meaning and they are personal. A slogan is a clever saying, but a signature is personal. Good signatures should tie in nicely with the name of the business and give a clear indication of what a business offers.
   
   We think the signature here is obvious: 'The Fertilizing Ground for Businesses,' taken from Jon's mission. Now we connect the business name with the signature and we get:
   Maple Office Center - The Fertilizing Ground for Businesses
   


6. Key Visual. To put the finishing touch on this brand we need a key visual. Not talking about a logo here, you can learn more about that chore here: The Importance of a Logo in Branding.
   
   Key visuals provide a consistent theme throughout all your marketing materials. The key visual is the continuity of your communication with the customer. We think the new brand's key visual needs to revolve around a hub. John wants to build a network of entrepreneurs and be a hub for them so the hub visual seems natural.
   
   If name of the business is Maple Office Center, use a maple tree as the center of the hub and extend spokes out to icons that reference the different resources. You can visualize what it might look like by applying your imagination to the this computer network graphic (sorry, we're not going to show you the graphic we would do).

The Lesson: Why go through the whole mission, vision, brand promise exercise? Lasting brands are built on values and passion, they are what we call 'True Brands.' You can see the process we went through for Jonathan Arabolos and his quest for a new brand. When we identified his values, mission, vision and brand promise up front, the rest of the process really became quite easy. That's because we didn't have to make things up. We were building a true brand.

To learn more about this process and branding your small business, we highly recommend Microbranding: Build a Powerful Personal Brand and Beat Your Competition, by Scott Gross.


For more small business marketing lessons and advice, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot
To learn more about our company, see our website: www.themarketingspot.com

Cultivate Your Customers

A great way to create word of mouth is to help your customer grow. A better way to create word of mouth is to help them grow for free.

To cultivate your customer look for some of your most valuable information, and then give it away free. Why would you want to do that?

Because:
People like to feel important
People like to help other people
People like businesses that help them without obligation.

When you give information that makes your potential customer more knowledgeable, more informed, or teaches them something that makes them better, they will take that information and talk about it to other potential customers.

How do you do that?
First, ask yourself the question: What is the most valuable thing I could teach someone to make them better (related to your industry)?

Then, ask yourself: How can I best give this information to potential customers for free?

Let's say you are a health and fitness trainer. You can get your clients to attend the workout, you just can't get them to eat properly. The problem, you find, begins in the grocery store. People just don't know what to buy.

To cultivate your customer, you produce a grocery shopping list and guidelines that people can take with them to the grocery store. Then you have it printed and laminated (with your web address and contact information) to give out, plus you convert it to a pdf document and load it on to your website as a free download.

You have now made your customers better for knowing you. You have cultivated them.

How do you cultivate your customer? Give them free information or tools that will make them better.


For more small business marketing advice and lessons, see our other blog: The Marketing Spot
For more about our company, see our website: http://www.themarketingspot.com/

We Give Thanks

We here at The Marketing Spot will be taking the next two days off to give thanks for the many favors granted to us by God. We are thankful for for all His blessings. May you be blessed this Thanksgiving and have a safe weekend. We'll be back blogging in a couple of days.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Childrens Furniture Advertising

Case Study: Punkin Patch, brick and mortar and online, upscale children's furniture and baby boutique.

Idea Wanted: New ways to advertise a new website with little to no budget.

Challenge: Get a new website noticed with virtually no money.

Background: Toks Aruoture purchased Punkin Patch, a children's furniture and baby decor boutique, in Atlanta 18 months ago. During that time they have hired 2 web designers to create an ecommerce website with the aim of selling baby furniture nationwide. After some disappointments their new website finally went live in the past week. However, during that time they made a significant investment in a year-long magazine advertising contract to promote a new website that was not ready. Add that total to the money they spent on web design and their budget is depleted.

Advice:

Punkin Patch caters to the affluent. This actually works to our advantage in trying to minimize expenditure while maximizing return on dollars spent. For Punkin Patch, we advise that they combine geographic and demographic targeting. While Punkin Patch may sell and ship to anywhere in the continental U.S. affluent consumers with more than $100,000 annual income don't just live anywhere in the continental U.S. They tend to live close to each other in particular neighborhoods.

We also advise that Punkin-Patch develop an advertising strategy that mixes both online and traditional forms of media. So let's get started.

Ideas:

1. Free press releases. Yes, we've made this recommendation before, because works. First use this press release generation tool to help you structure the press release. To give the press release more bite, other than "we sell baby furniture" we suggest that Punkin Patch offer a premium with the first order. We like the idea of a personalized burp big, but it can be just about anything baby related.
   
   After you've written your press release check this list of free press release distribution sites and begin the submission process. But hold on, don't submit to every one of them. Three is enough for right now. Then in another month choose another three...and so forth. We also suggest that Punkin Patch consider some higher level paid press release services to get a little broader coverage.
   
2. Use Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing to get ads placed in searches. Here's how it works. You choose keywords for your ads. When those keywords show up in searches, your ad appears in the sponsored links section. The best part of keyword search marketing is that you get to choose your budget. You pay on a per-click basis and when all your budget is used up, then you stop getting clicks. It allows you to test the waters before going whole hog.
   
   First, you choose your keywords using this keyword tool from Google. The key is to cross-reference keywords that have as minimal competition (keywords are priced on supply and demand) with as high a search volume as possible. We have already done this analysis for Punkin-Patch and recommended five search terms.
   
3. Send post cards offering free burp cloth with purchase. How in the world can we recommend direct mail with a national website? Two ways. First, as I mentioned earlier, affluent Americans don't live just any old place. You can target zip codes, even neighborhoods where the people make a lot of money. Second, whenever Punkin Patch gets an order, they now have all of that customer's data. If that customer is typical of the ideal buyer profile, mail postcards to their neighborhood declaring that their friend down the street has discovered Punkin-Patch.com, why don't you? We'll even give you a personalized burp bib with your first purchase.
   
   We are fond of postcards, especially for websites, because they are relatively inexpensive to print and mail. There's no opening of envelopes and if the postcard is properly designed, the consumer can't help but see your message. Even if the consumer intends to throw it in the trash.
   
4. Team up with Amazon. Toks has already been approached by Amazon to add Punkin Patch to their website. Because she has had some difficulties getting her own website running the way she wants, we advise her to proceed once she has read the agreement thoroughly. She also should call a couple of references who already have an Amazon storefront. There is no direct advertising expenditure here, however Toks will have to pay a percentage of the sale to Amazon. In return, Amazon provides the exposure to its expansive customer base and it absorbs all the credit card fees.
   
5. Email marketing. This method is often maligned because of the spam implications. However, we have talked to businesses who have used email with some success. The key is to deal with a list broker that has an opt-in or permission list. People have actually given permission (whether they knew it or not) to be on this email list. Be aware, however, that these lists can still have a high degree of inaccuracy. Take the total numbers with a degree of scepticism. To buy a list, you will pay $X per thousand addresses. You also have to put together your own ad using some html. We recommend that you create the message, but have a professional put the ad together.
   
6. Women's issues blogs. here you are going to have to use some good old-fashioned internet shoe leather. Surf all the women's blogs you can find. Search Technorati and Ice Rocket to find them. Look for ones that fit the affluent female profile. Participate in the conversation by commenting on the blogs. Contact the blog author and ask for a review of your website. There may be some that you might actually want to sponsor with a banner ad. Check the blog's popularity with Technorati, and ask for the blog author's feed stats (actual subscribers). A blogger who's on top of her game will be able to tell you how many subscribers she has and is probably using a service like Feedburner.

The Lesson:
The first lesson that Toks learned, the hard way, is don't start advertising until you are absolutely ready for business. Especially when you are depending on a website for your sales. I have not yet ever seen a website go up on schedule...ever. Did I mention that I've never seen a website go up on schedule? Ever?

If you do find yourself with little to no money to advertise and you know you need to advertise, all hope is not lost. Fortunately for you, the internet still has some anarchy and you can conquer little parts of it. Work hard to find the spots where you can leverage you message for free or practically free.

Finally, before advertising, go to our other blog, The Marketing Spot and read some of our lessons on branding and advertising. You can maximize the return on any advertising investment you make by maximizing the message you communicate.

If you have any additional ideas for Toks Aruoture and Punkin Patch, please add your thoughts by clicking the comments link below.

For more information on our company, see our website: www.themarketingspot.com