KMD - Karls Marketing + Design

Donate to Haiti

2010-01-14T11:20:00.000-08:00

KMD - Karls Marketing + Design's thoughts & prayers are with the people of Haiti. Please consider donating now to help those in need. A $10 donation to the red cross can go a long way. Here is the link to donate today:

Donate to The Red Cross

100 Best Marketing Ideas

2009-11-18T13:25:00.001-08:00

Anyone looking for an edge over their competition? This is the place to find it. A lot of people can run a business, but takes a certain quality to turn a profit. So what is the key difference between you and your competition? The answer is: aggression.

If you were one of he few to be born with this gift, then you're already ahead. If not, here's a list of the top 100 steps you can take to be more aggressive as a leader and more aggressive as a company:100 Best Marketing Ideas.

Economic Recovery

2009-11-18T13:24:00.000-08:00

The economic recovery is well underway. When it comes to the economy and financial markets, good news has far outweighed bad news in 2009. Just about every piece of economic and financial market data is tracing out a V-shaped recovery. One would think that this would lead to a little more optimism from the conventional wisdom crowd, but it doesn't. With unemployment at 9.8% last month and the economy still losing jobs at an elevated pace, people are worried. Many fear a W-shaped economy, otherwise known as a double-dip recession.

By: Brian Webury for The Wall Street Journal. Read more at: www.online.wsj.com

PPC Optimisation: 5 Ways To Track Phone Sales From PPC / AdWords

2009-08-19T09:51:00.001-07:00

How do you measure the true return on PPC ad spend when phone leads or phone sales are not being taken into account?

If we take a typical e-commerce store as an example, up to 35% of sales can be taken over the telephone. Accurately attributing these sales can make a big difference to how you optimise your PPC campaigns, and have an effect on the overall ROI from paid search marketing.

Most web analytics solutions do a great job of tracking where sales come from, be it from organic search traffic, direct type-in traffic or PPC traffic. However, the source of telephone orders is one area that site owners often choose to ignore because it’s difficult to track.

Here’s a few ways to track PPC traffic that generates orders over the phone.

1. Use Unique Promo Codes On PPC Landing Pages

This can be achieved by tagging your urls with a CGI parameter, such as “?land=adwords”. With a bit of code you can get this code printed on the page, as “Promo:adwords” in the footer will work fine. When customers call and place an order make sure everyone is trained to ask them for their “promo” code, which gets stored with an order placed over the phone.

Furthermore, you could be a little more cryptic with your promo codes if you want to hide what you’re doing from your customers. Using custom promotional codes works well if you are running large PPC campaigns with hundreds of keywords and landing pages.

2. Use A Unique Telephone Number On Landing Pages

This is a very simple but effective technique: switch the telephone number based on the referring site. If you wanted to be thorough you could get a telephone number for MSN, Yahoo or AdWords. This method is more suitable for sites offering a limited product range and bid on a small range of keywords.

3. Use A Pay Per Call Service

Set up a new telephone number and then put that number on your landing page. Pay Per Call services come with powerful stats so you can measure just how many calls you have received. Also using a service such as Ingenio means you only pay for phone call leads from new customers calling your business.

4. Track Sales With Specialist Telephone Call Conversion Software

Choose a solution such as that provided by ClickPath to track all conversions generated from your online advertising, including phone calls, and tie them back to the exact keyword or ad source.

5. Use An IVR Phone System

Harnessing the power of an IVR phone system can take the headaches out of getting your staff to record the lead source. You could add an extra menu on your phone system asking people for a promo code that is unique to the referring site.

Posted by: Ian Cowley September 16th, 2008 — Search Engine Marketing

Nashville #11 Housing Market in the US!!

2009-08-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

The Healthiest Housing Markets for 2009

Builder magazine, in conjunction with Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, debuts its metric for determining markets with the best and least potential.

2008 total building permits: 8,142
Nashville, the 20^th largest home building market, operated under the radar of the national housing boom. It didn’t ramp up wildly during the boom years, and it’s not contracting viciously during the bust. Median home prices remain an affordable $159,800, propped up by a growing job base. Seventy percent of the residential construction is single-family. Some of the market’s resilience stems from above-average population growth of about 2.3 percent a year. Back in the day, 2005, Nashville accounted for 16,654 permits; it now runs at about half that level. But that’s a better performance than most major markets.

HOME BUYERS JUST GOT YOUNGER: Today's 20-Somethings Are Attracted By Rock-Bottom Prices, Huge Tax Incentives

2009-07-20T11:22:00.000-07:00

Forget mooching off mom and dad, eating Ramen noodles in a studio apartment or disappearing for months to backpack through Europe.

Today's 20-somethings are settling down and snatching up homes in growing numbers, attracted by rock-bottom prices and huge tax incentives.

"We're seeing a lot of the buyers coming in that are under 28 -- even 22, 23 -- looking to buy instead of just rent," said JoAnn Tidwell, president of the Victor Valley Association of Realtors.

Kelley Hayes with Agio Real Estate in Victorville said he's worked with half a dozen clients 25 and under in the last three months alone, and an agent with Exit Realty Blaine Associates said as much as 80 percent of her clients right now are younger buyers.

At 25, Kristin Hebertson not only reflects the age trend but also an increase in single women taking the plunge.

Hebertson was living with family, saving her money and building back up credit in the three years since she's been a "starving college student." But about three months ago she started looking at homes -- a couple years before she thought she'd be ready.

"I started looking because the market was so good and the prices were so low," Hebertson said.

She looked at a couple foreclosures before her Realtor found homeowners whose parents had just passed away and were anxious to sell. It was the fourth home she'd looked at and the first one she bid on.

One month ago she moved into her three-bedroom, two-bath home in Apple Valley for $129,000, and she's paying less for her mortgage than some friends pay for rent.

According to the most recent numbers from the California Association of Realtors, the High Desert is the most affordable area in the state, with 83 percent of households making enough to buy an entry-level home.

In spite of what can be an intimidating process, Realtors said younger buyers are quicker to decide on a home and make a bid than established families with more factors to consider.

"When our lease was up we talked about it for a good two weeks," said Levi James, 22 of Apple Valley, of his and his wife's decision to buy. "It was pretty scary for us at first. I didn't think I would ever own a house, actually."

James and his wife were living in a friend's house, getting a good deal on rent and saving up a bit of money.

"We thought, we can rent another house and waste our money or go buy a house and make the investment while the market is good," he said.

The couple didn't have much luck looking under their original target of under $100,000, visiting 160 houses since March. But shortly after going up to $110,000 James said they had bids in on five foreclosed homes. They were outbid on the first four, but snagged a threebedroom, two-bath home on an acre of land.

Though James said it was a bit difficult going for a foreclosure, dealing with the bank and waiting for approval on the bid, he said the home is in excellent condition. In fact, only one person had lived in the new home for about six months before losing it. He said some linoleum and a broken door handle needed replacing, and they were ready to move in.

Young buyers do face some particular challenges, with shorter credit histories making every late payment or closeto-the-limit credit card weigh more heavily on their rating.

Also, as the credit crunch continues, 80/20 split mortgages to finance the entire cost of a home, popular several years ago, are now practically non-existent.

However, both James and Hebertson were able to get in with 3.5 percent down through Federal Housing Administration loans -- loans Tidwell said are readily available. In the current market, she said both sellers and lenders are often willing to work with buyers on making repairs, covering closing costs and more.

Another fear may be dissipating for young buyers, who often move frequently and may be hesitant to commit to holding onto a home until prices stop dropping.

After 35 months of decline, the most recent statistics released from L a r r y T ro m b l ey o f Century 21 Realty show that Victor Valley home prices actually went up by a fraction of a percent from April to May.

James said he hopes to keep his new house for another five years or so, before upgrading to his dream home at the ripe old age of 27.

Brooke Edwards, Daily Press, Victorville, Calif.

The Recession of 2009:Marketing Opportunity of a Lifetime?

2009-06-24T07:24:00.000-07:00

For those with vision, a little courage, a strong understanding of their own brand and the ability to maintain something close to prior media spending levels, the recession of 2009 and beyond may well be the marketing opportunity of a lifetime.

Let me explain why.

In many industries today, the competitive marketplace is actually shrinking. Brand managers are finding their competitors have gone silent—some just folding their tents and going home, or going out of business altogether. This means there is more room to make a little noise for your own brand.

Media costs have retreated to all-time lows, and even then they are highly negotiable. It’s a buyer’s market. Just be selective as to what vehicles you buy, because media digestion habits have changed dramatically.

Additionally, the volume of advertising clutter we experienced in bygone years of brand affluence, when hundreds of other advertisers were all vying for the same target audiences at the same time, has settled down to something just above a dim hum.

What all this means is that for the first time in nearly two decades brands and businesses that do their homework, know their audience, and offer products and messages that are culturally relevant will not only be heard loud and clear, they may actually experience sales and awareness traction in their markets like never before, and do it for far less money.

For example, look at the case of a little fast food Italian restaurant chain called Fazoli’s. For the last five years, sales and traffic have been in steady decline, there have been no new real product innovations in their food offerings or their menu, and the brand itself was in dire need of a personality facelift. Enter a new CEO who understood these dark dynamics and had the courage to institute some bold changes in the midst of the worst economic downturn in nearly 50 years.

While the chain worked to fix its food, Fazoli’s developed a highly relevant online couponing mini-site called freespaghetti.com. The site was announced via free-standing inserts in local papers, and laced with messaging about an “Italian Revolution” that spoke with its readers about their right to have quality Italian food without having to pay the high price that chains like Olive Garden, Carrabba’s and others typically charge. There were even opportunities to “send a tomato splat” to friends and family, awakening them to news of a low-priced, high-quality alternative to pricier casual dining Italian fare, and offering a new round of offers and coupons every week—always including some form of “free spaghetti.” A viral video on the site gave details of the “Revolution” rights of all spaghetti lovers, in propagandist newsreel form. PR releases touted Fazoli’s giveaway of over 2 million pounds of spaghetti during the promotion—enough spaghetti that, if laid end to end, would stretch over 100,000 miles. Picket signs merchandising the site URL with a message of “Join the Italian Revolution” dotted the lawns of Fazoli’s restaurants around the country. Links and details were placed in a host of bargain-hunter locales, included listings on local Craigslist sites under the “free” heading. Email blasts went out at a sporadic bi-monthly pulse to keep customers returning to the site for more.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, the timing of the site’s January launch—in the midst of the economy’s perfect storm—couldn’t have been better.

Fazoli’s “free spaghetti” offer was picked up by hundreds of bargain-hound sites, soccer mom and consumer advocate blogs, and even several television stations—all eager to help their viewers and friends find a refuge from the avalanche of news about bank failures, stimulus spending, and stock market declines. Thanks to the requirement of an email address to get your coupon, Fazoli’s database grew by nearly 50%. Coupon redemptions increased by over 700%. The site had over 500,000 page views. Even Fazoli’s corporate site saw increased traffic of 200%. The viral video on the mini-site had over 20,000 views and never dropped below a 4-star rating. And Fazoli’s mini-site has kept up a base of steady return traffic ever since.

Total cost, including time of staff? A mere $65,000! Enter phase two of the campaign. Once a new menu with innovative entrees was ready for introduction to the masses in April/May, minimal television was added to the media mix in 22 markets, highlighting the new dishes and a chance to win “free spaghetti for life” at freespaghetti.com. The spots maintained the same light, humorous tone that characterized the mini-site. One spot featured a man dining at a more expensive casual dining Italian restaurant with his stomach (yes, his stomach sitting at the table with him!) and his beleaguered wallet—both of whom convince him to go to to Fazoli’s. A second spot showed fast food from restaurants all over a city literally blowing off of tables, out of the hands of diners—even a burrito splatting a businessman in the face as he stands on a street corner. All to say, “Fazoli’s new menu blows away fast food!”

The results? Fazoli’s reversed a 10-year decline with the best string of consecutive positive daily sales and traffic numbers in years, record profits, even more press and blog mentions of Fazoli’s new menu and special offers. Many in the restaurant industry are now touting this campaign as nothing short of a miracle for the little Italian chain.

So. Welcome to the recession of 2009. It’s certainly not for the faint of heart. But if you have vision, courage, and the marketing and brand science to jump in with both feet, it just might be the biggest opportunity of your whole career.

Kerry Graham

President

Bohan Advertising|Marketing

Article from: The Scarlett Leadership Institute at Belmont University. Check out more info here.

New Home Indicators Continue Improved Signs

2009-06-23T14:47:00.000-07:00

Irvine, Calif. — Following the noteworthy improvements reported in April, the John Burns Real Estate Consulting May survey results suggest new home sales and traffic have maintained improved levels, while builders’ expectations for the near term retreated slightly.

In May 2009, 234 public and private builder executives from over 159 companies around the country provided market ratings that represent conditions at 1,774 new home communities in 79 unique metros.

On a positive note, the percentage of home builders rating current sales as Poor continues to decline, now at 53% compared to 56% last month and 87% in January.

“We think the season’s modest uptick is fueled by Spring euphoria,” said John Burns, CEO of Irvine, Calif.-based John Burns Real Estate Consulting. “It’s been supplemented by improved affordability, low mortgage rates on conforming loans, and federal and state new home tax credits.”

Further improvement is tempered by the ongoing competition from foreclosures, limited credit for both buyers and builders, and rising unemployment. Concerns over escalating REOs and further price erosion still weigh heavily. “The changes to appraisal law that went into effect May 1 will likely be another leg down for new home sales,” said Burns. “Appraisers are now more likely to compare new homes to foreclosures, which can be ‘apples and oranges’ in many cases.”

Article from: HousingZone, read more here.

The Future of Advertising?

2009-06-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

It's becoming increasingly possible to target "smart ads" specifically to people who want them. And best of all, you can do this for a fraction of the price of mass-market.

By: David H. Freedman

Andrew Fano is showing off the living room. It's a plush, teaky, well-appointed affair, but what really catch the eye are several thin-screen video displays, including a few smaller ones that are embedded in furniture and picture frames. The displays are slowly cycling through what appear to be family digital photographs -- an appealing idea, considering many of us let our thousands of digital photos sit unwatched on a computer hard drive. "But would you want to see an ad stuck in there?" asks Fano, indicating one of the digital slide shows, apparently of a family vacation to a theme park. "No? Because you just saw one." One of the theme-park photos was a professional image designed to "enhance your memories" of the park, explains Fano, a senior researcher at consulting giant Accenture who is exploring new ways for advertisers to get their messages across. The tony living room is actually part of Accenture's technology laboratory, and the displays are an experimental prototype of a service that would arrange your photos into slide shows in exchange for the right to slip relevant sponsored pictures into the mix.

The world is awash in advertising clutter. For decades marketers have been spending more and more to try to get their message out -- only to find their pitches drowned out in a sea of noise generated by countless other marketers trying to do the same thing. In effect, companies have been paying big bucks to be ignored. Now, inspired by the Internet's ability to do a better job of targeting prospects and measuring results, advertisers are dreaming up new ways to break through the clutter and connect with potential customers at a lower cost.

The big advances in advertising technology once favored traditional giants like Procter & Gamble, which could afford to mass-market its message. The new techniques are affordable to smaller companies, too.

Though the advertising revolution got started online, some of the new techniques are already finding their way onto streets and walls and even into clothing pockets around the world. Perhaps just five years from now, companies will be able to routinely and inexpensively embark on ad campaigns that hit exactly the right prospects -- and hardly anyone else -- with entertaining, hard-to-ignore messages that can follow people via new high-tech media into their cars, offices, living rooms, and bedrooms. For companies that master the new techniques, the payoff is potentially enormous: a big jump in customer mindshare while holding the line on marketing costs. And whereas the big advances in advertising technology once favored traditional giants like Procter & Gamble, which could afford to mass-market its message, the new techniques are affordable to smaller companies, too. "Over time," says Karen Breen Vogel, CEO of ClearGauge, one of hundreds of interactive ad agencies that have sprung up to focus on online advertising, "we can cut the cost of the advertising in half while maintaining customer response."

Fixed in an archipelago of art galleries and airy cafes at the periphery of Chicago's North Loop, the offices of ClearGauge have the hip, slightly subversive look you'd expect of a boutique advertising agency. Except that where the halls of other agencies regale visitors with blowups of their all-important creative, ClearGauge has proudly plopped a wicked-looking bank of servers front and center against the exposed concrete walls. It's a tip-off to the agency's sensibilities -- and to a sea change in the advertising industry.

Advertising has long been a sort of black art with a murky ROI, and for a simple reason: Clients rarely know for sure who sees their ads, let alone whether the ads influence anyone. Even though companies spend a third of a trillion dollars a year on advertising, those ads often end up being irrelevant to the people who see them. On average, Americans are subject to some 3,000 essentially random pitches per day. Two-thirds of people surveyed in a Yankelovich Partners study said they feel "constantly bombarded" by ads, and 59% said the ads they see have little or no relevance to them. No wonder so many people dislike and ignore advertising, and so many business owners feel gun-shy about investing in serious campaigns.

The Internet has begun to change all that. The ability to measure the impact of an ad simply by counting how many people click on it, and to link advertisements to search-engine results, in large part drove Internet advertising to $9.6 billion in 2004, a 33% jump from 2003, according to Interactive Advertising Bureau reports. (For a cautionary tale about counting clicks, see "So Many Clicks, So Few Sales," on page 29.) But the real advantage is going to companies that figure out how to use these tools to hunt down specific types of prospects and nail them with the right pitch. "We look for subsegments of Internet users who care about certain things," explains Breen Vogel. "We find them when they're online, we intercept their activities, and we start a relationship with them."

KMD Marketing Tips - Direct Mail

2009-06-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

Remember 'AIDA' - Attention Interest Desire Action.

The Attention part is the banner or headline that makes an impressive benefit promise. Interest builds information in an interesting way, usually meaning that this must relate closely to the way that the reader thinks about the issues concerned. If you seek a response you must move then to create Desire, which relates benefits to the reader so that they will want them. Finally you must prompt an Action, which may be to call a telephone number or to complete and send of a reply coupon. Advertising that does not prompt action is a wasted opportunity.

Your main message must be the most prominent.

Do not be tempted to devote 50% of the space to a striking picture or a quote from Shakespeare. The biggest part of the advert must be your main benefit statement. This is the part that entices the reader to read on.

Offer a single impressive benefit, quickly and simply.

Research proves that where responses are required, the best adverts are those which offer an impressive, relevant benefit to the reader. This 'promise' should ideally contain the business brand name, take no longer to read than is normal for the media (direct mail is about 4 - 8 seconds, or about fifteen words) and be clearly the most striking part of the advert. This point cannot be stressed enough; you must keep it quick, simple and to the point. And the trend is for ever quicker points: David Lewis, an eminent consumer psychologist, says, "Copy is getting shorter, and a major factor behind this is that people these days suffer from acute shortages of both time and attention. Younger generations are extremely visually literate. They have been brought up on computer games, so they couldn't deal with a lot of polished copy, even if they wanted to." Think about the vocabulary and language you use; know your target audience: a simple test is to avoid any words or grammar that would not be found in the newspaper that the target group would read.

Your message must be quick and easy to absorb.

-information from: www.businessballs.com

Beware of Stop and Shop Digital aka Stop & Shop Digital, stopandshopdigital

2009-06-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

Never buy anything from Stop & Shop Digital. No matter what you do, under any circumstances, DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THIS COMPANY:

Stop and Shop Digital

6605 20th Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11204

http://www.stopandshopdigital.com

They actively participate in false advertising, false delivery time quotes and poor selling practices in general.

False Advertising: Stop & Shop Digital is a bait and switch operation. You will not, in any event, ever be able to purchase an item, for the advertised price, unless you agree to purchase over-priced accessories that negate any “deal” you may have thought you were getting.

In my personal experience, I purchased a digital camera from their website, which you can see advertised here. After the purchase, the phone salesman informed me that the camera did not come with a battery or battery charger and said “you will not be able to use your camera without it. You can buy the charger package now for $79 plus shipping.” As you can see under the tab "Included Features", the first item listed is a BATTERY.

False Delivery Time: They advertise 2-3 business day delivery times, but it could be 4-6 weeks or even a few years before you get you item.

Personal Example: When the camera I purchased did not arrive on the 3^rd business day after my transaction, I called and asked if they could track the item for me and let me know the arrival time. The salesman said “Your item is on backorder, it will be 4-6 weeks before it is shipped”, when pressed further to guarantee that my order would be shipped within 6 weeks, he said “Mam, I cannot guarantee that. It may be an additional 4-6 weeks after that”. I responded “so it could be 4-6 months?” and he said “yes”. So I said “You’re saying it could even be a few years before I receive my order” and he said “it may be”.

Poor Selling Practices: Aside from false advertising and misrepresentation of delivery, the company also has an answering service that gives the illusion there is a call center consisting of a whole sales team if you press 1 or a customer service team if you press two, etc. Really there is only 1 person who answers all lines no matter what you press and he is the “manager” of the sales team (or the manager of himself).

They have had 22 complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau in the past 12 months (as of 6/15/09). You can check out these complaints here: http://www.bbb.org/new-york-city/business-reviews/photographic-equipment-and-supplies-retail/stop-and-shop-digital-in-brooklyn-ny-106392/