Good Marketing Ideas Blog

Postcard Comarison

2008-10-08T22:15:00.000-07:00

We just added a new marketing idea price comparison feature.

Postcards really are such an ideal means of marketing. It's half the cost of a brochure and half as intimidating to read. Twice as effective, half the cost.

There is a large spread of prices that I found as I put together this comparison. Actually, compared to what I normally buy, I'll now be able to get over twice as many postcards for a little bit less than I've been paying. You'll see that some of the companies have a very steep discount rate as you increase the number of cards, some falling below $.02 / postcard.

Well check it out for yourself: Good Marketing Idea's Postcard Comparison.

Comparing Email Marketing Providers :: Our Results

2008-06-25T03:03:00.000-07:00

As we searched for a company to run the multiple newsletters on Good Marketing Ideas we came across so many different pricing structures and ways of charging for sending emails that it made our heads spin. Time for a comparison chart! We wanted something that would allow us to send emails only when something new and exciting was actually happening, we're just not the once-a-month email newsletter types. We also wanted to be able to send small email blasts to just those who had signed up for a specific information category.

Well, here you can see the email marketing comparison chart that we came up with. It lets us see what the best deal is for us is depending on how many emails we send and how often we send them. It answered a lot of our questions and we came to the conclusion that we will save a whole lot of money by going with Vertical Response, for our emailing purposes.

So far, that's been the case. Hope you find it useful as well, let us know if there is another company we can add to the list, or go to the page to submit a review if you are currently using an email marketing provider.

Marketing with Business Cards

2008-06-13T14:05:00.000-07:00

Business cards are the most cost effective way to market your business when it comes to printed material. Yes, a standard black and white paper flyer may be cheaper per page, but they are also more quickly thrown away. Business cards are kept, looked at, and instead of becoming a person's trash can filler become a business resource.

To maximize the effectiveness of your business card try putting a coupon or discount on the back. Also, think of your card as a flyer and create different business cards with different artwork and different sales messages.

Finding the best place to get your business cards printed can be a little bit tricky, but with Good Marketing Ideas' business card price comparison you can see what the cost will be. It a comparison chart of printing companies where, after selecting how many business cards you will be printing and if they will be printed on one side or two, you can see how much it will cost for the print job as well as the features (business card thickness and quality) of that printing company.

Marketing Ideas to a Marketing Plan

2008-06-09T13:40:00.000-07:00

Great marketing ideas become great when they are put into a great marketing plan. A great marketing idea can deliver new customers or help to retain old ones, but we need to grasp onto something even bigger than that.

Putting a great marketing idea into your marketing plan helps define how much you will invest into the idea and how you will define it's effectiveness. It gives you a strategy of how to proceed if the idea does well and what to do if it does poorly.

How many new marketing ideas will you try in the next three months? How much will you spend? How will you measure their effectiveness? If an idea does well will you keep it the same, modify it to try and make it do better or move to a new marketing idea?

Creative Cross Promotion

2008-06-05T14:15:00.000-07:00

Find companies that target the same market that you do. Look at their product lines. How can you both benefit from cross promoting one another's products?

How about an optician partnering with a book store? Put large print flyers in books that say, "Having trouble reading the text? Come see us." and small print notes in new eye glass cases that reads, "Put your new glasses to good use..."

What does your product or service solve? What other products or services are related to that same problem? (Not related to solving that same problem... that would be your competition.)

From the new updates to the Offline Marketing Ideas section.

Marketing Forum Sneak Peek

2008-05-29T14:37:00.000-07:00

We've been working hard to make Good Marketing Ideas a site that is more than just us. We know that you have fantastic marketing ideas and we want to make your ideas as well as you a part of our site.

In moving towards this we have put up a forum at http://www.goodmarketingideas.com/forum/ that will be launched in the next week!

We're giving you access to it first here so you can setup your account and start telling us how we can do a better job.

The marketing forum features online, offline and business marketing idea forums that will be used as a repository of marketing ideas. The focus here will be on generating and rating new marketing ideas.

We also have a marketing questions and answers sections where business owners will be able to ask questions on how to market their unique business and marketers will be able to show off their marketing knowledge!

We hope you enjoy the forum and please do let us know how we can make our site a better service to you, so that you can grow your business more efficiently!

Make Your Message Memorable

2008-05-20T23:25:00.000-07:00

You can make a marketing message memorable by six simple devices.

Keep it simple
Make it unexpected
Show that it is concrete
Make it credible
Add emotion
Tell A story

Source: http://www.churchsolutionsmag.com/articles/church-book-marketing-ideas-heath-made-stick.html

What is the benefit?

2008-05-14T23:37:00.000-07:00

If you are selling a product or service there needs to be a benefit to that product for the consumer. If it's just a product with a lot of neat features it's not going to go anywhere.

In your marketing plan make sure that you know what the benefits of your products are and focus on these more than the features.

Marketing Benefits of a Multipartner Alliance

2008-05-11T22:52:00.000-07:00

A Multipartner alliance can decrease marketing costs through joint marketing campaigns. These campaigns can be delivered to a larger market, increasing brand recognition. In addition to this, with increased access to marketing data these campaigns can be delivered more successfully.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Free Product With Service

2008-05-10T14:30:00.000-07:00

For businesses offering both products and services, such as salons, dietitians and natural health practitioners, free offers can be a great way to stimulate business. The benefit of being a business offering both services and products is that a free product can be offered with a service. The free product having a perceived value of the retail price can many times be acquired for a fraction of the price.

Bathroom Marketing Ideas

2008-05-09T17:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a pretty unique idea that involves bathrooms... It's from a marketing post targeted at spa marketing, but it's applicable to most any retail business with shared restrooms...

If you are in a business complex that offers shared restrooms for customers then try posting coupons or "bathroom specials" for those that do visit the restroom. An interesting and free way to let more people know you exist.

Source: Vertical Response Blog

Online Communities

2008-05-08T13:29:00.000-07:00

Not to say that you should join every online community out there, as they spring up faster than a garden of weeds, but a few... or even more so, one, targeted, researched, choice can open up some new doors.

Choose a forum with the people that you want to partner with or market to and start making friends.

Free Sales Team

2008-05-07T21:25:00.000-07:00

You have friends and family that want to see you succeed, so why not make them a part of your marketing team?

Give them a few business cards, a few promotional trinkets and let them know how thankful you are that they are helping you to promote your business.

Offline Marketing Forum

2008-05-06T23:15:00.000-07:00

Hold a business marketing forum in your community. Invite some of the local small business owners to come and talk about marketing ideas and strategies. Not only is this a great place to pick up new marketing ideas, but also to form new business relationships.

Working in Vertical Markets

2008-05-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

Spend time with business owners that target the same market that you do. Not only can you learn from one another's experiences, but you can also open up the opportunity to share a marketing budget in joint campaigns. You can increase your marketing sphere and offer more to your own customers at the same time.

Build an Employee Community

2008-05-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

Best Buy is building a sense of community through Blue Shirt Nation, a community website that enables Best Buy employees to share ideas and form relationships. What started as an experiment and has grown to become a model for other organizations that desire to increase employee loyalty and generate new marketing ideas from their employees.

There is a lot to be gained from the employees that work face to face with your customers. They are many times the first to see areas that can be improved.

Build a community where your employees feel that they can make a difference and that their ideas matter.

Asking For Help

2008-05-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

Not something I'm good at, but there is the simple, painfully obvious, fact that I don't know everything.

The next few posts will focus on a variety of community, team building and "asking for help" related topics as this blog and the Marketing Ideas websites move towards becoming a place where marketing ideas are contributed, shared and grown.

Asking those you know: your friends, family and business associates for help marketing your business can unlock some ideas you may never thought of and help you grow the ideas that you already have.

Write an article for a local magazine or paper.

2008-05-02T07:55:00.000-07:00

Use the hunger for content to your advantage. A well written and informative article can easily make it's way into the pages of a local newspaper, magazine or newsletter. This isn't an opportunity to push a sales letter, but an opportunity to set yourself and your business as an expert in your field.

Hold a Seminar

2008-05-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

There is always something others can learn about your industry. Put together a presentation that would interest your customer group and get the word out.

A vitamin shop could have a free seminar on how to beat off the cold season sniffles and then ask local gyms, shops and libraries if they could leave a few flyers at the front counter or hang a flyer on the window.

You don't even need to try and sell anything at the seminar, just offer your information free of charge and establish yourself and your business as a reputable expert in the field.

Marketing by Giving

2008-04-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

If you are going to spend money advertising, why not give some of that money to a good cause?

You can sponsor a local charitable event by offer you product as a prize in a blind auction or open up your place of business to hold an event.

Online you can become a sponsor click-to-donate sponsor as mentioned by Marketing Power.

Either way you are attaching your company to a positive image, introducing your company to new faces and helping out a good cause while you are at it!

Target a Niche Market

2008-04-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

If your advertising budget is a bit short then it may be time to go to target a smaller market. You'll eliminate some of your competitors as well as make a statement on one of your strengths.

If you are marketing ice cream don't just be another ice cream shop, but be the mint chocolate chip ice cream specialists that is the refreshment of every hot summer day.

Join an Online Community

2008-04-28T05:17:00.000-07:00

There is a world of communities online. Use them to your advantage. You can join a community of your prospective clients and offer them helpful advice... answer questions... be a great resource to them. You also can join a group of like businesses and glean from the knowledge and experience of others. I just joined up with a new marketing community, goodmarketingideas.gooruze.com so that I can glean from and ask questions to the many who know more than I do about marketing.

Online Marketing Idea: Join an Online Community

Talk About Your Business

2008-04-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

Offering web and marketing services, it never fails that the moment I mention that I work with the Internet someone pipes up and says, "I have this friend who is trying to put together this site...". Sure, being a web professional is an easy one to connect with people on, since it's something that virtually affects every form of of business and many aspects of personal life.

Look for the problem that your service or product solves, it may be easier to relate to people that way. After all people do seem to talk more about problems than ventures. The hope being, that as you talk about what problem your business solves someone might say "Hey, I know this guy who has that problem".

Offline Marketing Idea - Talk About Your Business

Write Great Content

2008-04-26T05:29:00.000-07:00

Google lays it out quite clearly that if you want your page to rank higher it needs to have high quality links coming into it. Of course you could buy links, but Google frowns on that, as they should. So then how are you supposed to get incoming links?

Write great content that makes people say WOW, that's great content!

Then you will find that people just naturally start linking to your site, bookmarking your site, all that great stuff! That's the whole point of posting on the Internet, to offer other high quality concise information.

Internet Marketing Idea: Write Great Content

Blogging

2008-04-25T06:52:00.000-07:00

At GoodMarketingIdeas.com it would be a little tough if we talk the talk about a blog being a good marketing idea and yet don't have a blog on our own site. So we're starting this up with our new website design launch. Hope you all fall in love with the fabulous Good Idea... Bad Idea concept and graphics at www.GoodMarketingIdeas.com!

Why Blogging is a Good Marketing Idea...

It's often updated information that not only can bring search engine traffic, but also is a great place to establish feeds so that those that are interested in what you have to say can be notified whenever you post something new.

Our concept for this blog... A marketing idea a day... call it a daily dose of marketing inspiration.

Enjoy!