Online Marketing 101: Create a Strong Call to Action
November 16, 2008 by OneIMS · Leave a Comment
What Is A Call to Action?
A call to action is simply a strategic communication in your marketing materials telling your customer what to do next. So many marketers create persuasive and alluring marketing materials, but forget to give interested parties a concrete method to move forward and make a purchase. Your call to action is the most important part of any marketing communication because it gives your customers the information they need to take advantage of your services.
Imagine The Questions and Provide Answers.
The best way to write a simple and effective call to action is to put yourself in the shoes of your customers. What questions will they have after hearing about your products and services? Here are some general questions that should be answered in any call to action:
- How do I contact this business? Can I contact them by telephone, email, fax, or through their website?
- Why should I choose this company? Will they save me money? Will they do the job better than the competition?
- Is there a deadline for me to contact this company so that I won’t miss out on any promotions or discounts?
With a strong call to action, your customers will not have to wonder how best to proceed if they want to take advantage of your services. A call to action translates directly into sales and satisfied business partnerships as potential customers effortlessly receive the information they need to contact you.
How To Maximize Profits With Pricing Strategy In An Economic Downtime
November 14, 2008 by OneIMS · Leave a Comment
During an economic slowdown, business owners face distinct challenges in pricing their products and services. Today’s marketers strive to extend affordable prices to consumers who are making purchases with more apprehension and consideration, but lowering prices to attract careful customers also lowers the profit margin. Large corporations can afford to slash prices to move higher quantities, but this technique is less effective for small to mid-size businesses.
How can small business owners maximize their profits without reducing their prices? The answer lies in a “teamwork” model of pricing strategy designed to move high priced merchandise.
The primary objective for small business owners is to sell the products and services that bring in the biggest profits. Begin by emphasizing the high value of an affordable product. Entice customers with a free offer or low-priced product that will lead them to you. Sometimes a bundle of products sold together at a special price works to attract customers to visit your store. After new customers find you, introduce them to the high quality of your superior products.
We see this marketing technique employed regularly in popular grocery chains, such as Jewel and Dominicks, who advertise milk for $1.99 in hope that customers will purchase more products when they visit the store. Many software companies offer free trials of their programs, hoping satisfied users will buy the high-priced version after a 30 day trial. Often free offers or low priced deals double as powerful viral marketing campaigns because people are often excited to tell others about the good deals they find.
Many marketers make the mistake of focusing on the profit margin for each product individually. Instead, think of your collected set of merchandise as a “team” working toward the shared goal of maximizing profits for your business. The low-priced items play a support role in attracting customers and growing your client list. High-priced products yield dramatic results, but these profits are undergirded by a strong foundation of smaller sales.
As you learn to think of your inventory as a “team,” offer a range of prices from low to high to draw a variety of new buyers. Especially in these trying economic times, many customers need to build trust before purchasing your higher-priced items. Get them in the door with a well-executed marketing plan for a low-priced item or even a free giveaway. Transform these new buyers into loyal customers with superior customer service and a quality range of products from low to high-end. With the “teamwork” mindset, a few simple changes in pricing strategy can be the key to maximizing profits for your small to mid-size business.
E-mail Marketing: Still Going Strong
November 13, 2008 by OneIMS · Leave a Comment
Have you spent a considerable amount of time working on an e-mail campaign only to realize that it might never reach the intended recipient’s Inbox? What if it ends up in their Junk mail folder, never to be seen again? Or worse, what if they choose to unsubscribe from your mailing list and click on the dreaded “mark as spam” button?
As change is taking place in our world, most recently evidenced by the financial crisis on Wall Street, it’s imperative to remember that marketing strategies must keep up with the times. In other words, change is not always a bad thing, but in terms of e-mail marketing, the techniques used today should be savvier than those used in previous years. As all these concerns are valid, instead of throwing in the towel regarding e-mail marketing, let’s take a look at why this marketing tool is still thriving and how you can utilize strategies to avoid being lost in the sea of other businesses.
One of the greatest advantages of this tool is being able to track its deliverability. As with any project you put time into, you want to know if it was successful and if you should employ the same strategy again next time. E-mail marketing offers these statistics to you so you are not left wondering, and also allows you to be wise about how you spend your time and money. Although postal campaigns have their own benefits, one of the drawbacks is that you don’t know how many people actually received the mailer and read it. On the other hand, an e-mail marketing system allows you to track the number of e-mails that were not only sent, but also how many were read, deleted, and what links they clicked on within the e-mail.
In today’s industry, the rise of smartphones (i.e. Blackberry, Palm Treo, etc.) have also added quicker access to the Internet, which translates to faster receipt of your e-mail. Especially as many of the people in the commerce industry spend time traveling, working with a business that utilizes e-mail marketing is a sigh of relief.
So how can you be confident that people are not only receiving your e-mails but they will choose to keep it coming? To save the day, enter opt-in lists. This means that the individual chooses to give you their name and e-mail to send future e-mails their way. A few ways to go about this include putting opt-in forms wherever you have a web presence. Include the forms on your site, your blogs, and any other place where people can link to your business. Another method is to utilize auto responder to respond to a request from an individual. The message should be brief letting them know what they’ve subscribed to, and remind them they can always opt-out if they choose to do so. This way, it’s putting the choice back into the hands of the customer.
Please, contact OneIMS today at 1-888-ONE-IMS1, or send an e-mail to info@oneims.com and let us help you with your next E-mail marketing campaign.
