Montgomery Advertiser, Ala., Brad Zimanek column: NEWS AND VIEWS: Major leagues need to give SEC tournament clock closer look
Source : http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/yb/145686892
By Brad Zimanek, Montgomery Advertiser, Ala.
Jun. 2--Expect Lakers to get nod in latest NBA Finals battle with Boston . . .
News:The SEC Baseball tournament used an experimental clock between innings and half-innings to speed up play.
Unless there were base runners, the pitchers were limited to 20 seconds between receiving the ball and winding up. An infraction would add a ball to the batter's count. The batter was assessed a strike if he was not ready in the box with five seconds left.
After a third out of each half inning, the teams were given 1:48 to take their positions and be set for the first pitch of the next inning. A defensive violation meant an extra ball with the batter's count. An offensive violation resulted in a strike. ReadMore
Aida And Dagmar - Models For An Advertising Agency
An ad agency or advertising agency is a business or service dedicated to planning, handling and creating advertising for clients. These agencies are independent of clients and provide their skills and views to sell client’s services or products.
Advertising agencies can also manage branding strategies, marketing and sales promotions for its clients.
For an advertising agency, it is very important to realize that they can increase sales with their effort. Truly speaking, advertising agencies are minds working on the other side of the internet to increase sales. For a person working as an advertising agent, it is very important to know about the buyer’s psychology.
Those who are working in an advertising agency should know about the various thought processes that go in the mind of a reader or a viewer, a potential buyer. This will definitely help to build your business better.
There are ample of theories to explain the process that goes in the buyer’s mind when he/she goes to purchase anything.
The process is not the same for each buyer and it is sequential.
One of the popular features followed by ad agencies is AIDA.
AIDA is a acronym stands for:
A – Attention
I – Interest
D – Desire
A – Action
The AIDA model states that advertising agency should know how to draw attention of a buyer to get the customer interested by exhibiting its advantages, benefits and features. Interest is followed by desire. It is advertising agency’s duty to create a desire in a buyer to buy a specific product. All three steps of the AIDA policy will help you to stimulate the action towards the purchase of a product. AIDA theory guides and leads you to build a better advertising business. BIG B’s of advertising world have followed AIDA to generate good advertisement campaigns.
Another model called DAGMAR has now increasingly become more popular and comprehensive than AIDA. DAGMAR steps are more defined and easy to apply.
Term DAGMAR is an acronym for Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results. According to DAGMAR, a sale must carry a potential customer through four stages:
I. Awareness
II. Comprehension
III. Conviction
IV. Action
Suppose you are having a service or product and your customer knows nothing about the product.
As your client is unaware of the product, the first step is to make him aware of your product by posting advertisement regarding your product on respective websites.
Comprehension is the second step of DAGMAR. Try to know the answers to these following questions.
a)What is your product about?
b)What are product’s potential features and benefits of product?
c)What will your customer get from your product? And how?
Answers to all these questions will help you to get a potential customer.
Next stage is conviction and this is very important. Convince your customer by telling him the benefits of your product. After convincing, your next step starts i.e. action, which is not controlled by you. You have to depend on the customer. However, your previous actions will have a major role to play.
If you have been able to convince, the customer ad have answered him satisfactorily and then you will definitely be the winner of the day.
Advertise, no matter if you are big or small
What is your attitude as a small town businessman when it comes to advertising or taking help of an advertising design agency to provide creative design solutions? I bet, more often than not it is on the lines of "What ever is left over, we'll use for advertising". Well, you are not alone. Most of the small town businessmen treat advertising as such, as they feel that they know most of their customers who will come back, advertising or not. Fair enough, but what if you have a competitor within the town or even without in the form of E-commerce ensuring doorstep delivery and definitely much larger choice. You getting the point?
Competition or not, you always need to remind your customers that you are there and what value you bring to them. This way you not only ensure that loyal customers remain so, but you net new customers. Remember marketing and advertising is an investment, not an expense. Without enough money put aside for advertising your sales can go down and you suddenly have less and less for promotion. You advertise most when you need business. You advertise more when you don't.
A small-budget advertiser doesn't have the ''deep pockets" to develop big advertising campaigns or go for top shot advertising design agency. In this case you need to break the rules to be noticed. Avis did it by admitting they were "Number 2" in the car rental business and that campaign took them from 6th place to second place.
Now you must be wondering is there any sure shot way of advertising which not only is cost effective but has maximum impact. To be sure, there isn’t any readymade formula for bull’s eye hitting creative design solutions but this article proffers some tips to get this sort of marketing in place. Before we get to the tips let's look at the basic strategies of successful advertising.
* In order to be successful, your advertising must provide a consumer benefit or solve a problem.
* That benefit or solution must be wanted by the consumer.
* The product or service you are offering must be tied directly to that benefit or solution.
* The benefit or solution must be distinctly communicated through medial advertising. In other words, be clear, forget the advertising glitz and make sure the message isn't lost in the ad.
Average cost of advertising is usually 1 to 5% of gross sales, which can vary according to location, local advertising rates, and industry. Budget conscious advertisers must achieve top results for their advertising dollar. Expand your dollars by adopting some creative techniques.
Some Tips
* Place your ads in off hours or in unusual locations on discounted rates. This will help you in containing the cost. Many times you can still reach your target market with these spots.
* Instead of a one-time big splash ad, be consistent with frequent small ads that work to keep reminding your customers of your presence.
* Consider advertising in regional issues of national magazines. The costs are lower and you can reach your target market. TV Guide is also a good choice. It stays around for at least a week.
* Sponsor a community event if you can like a fun-run, golf tournament, or other event that will be well publicized in the community. Your name may not be prominently displayed but sometimes the positive exposure in the community will bring in new customers.
* Exploit the media you choose to the fullest. If your message is verbal, you don't need TV. Use radio, billboards and newspapers to the fullest.
* Consider direct mail. A letter and brochure before customer contact can increase business.
*Hire an advertising design agency which might not be top of the heap, but can get creative and specializes in interactive campaigns to provide you with creative design solutions.
I hope these tips will help your business grow. Not all may be relevant to your particular situation. Hopefully, they will illustrate the importance to plan and control your advertising budget.
A Right Media Mix Can Make the Difference
Branding is no longer simply about visual appeal (or the cherry in the apple pie example, as given in my earlier article). Unfortunately, many graphic design firms who position themselves as advertising agencies believe that branding your corporate identity is all about developing great looking visual solutions.However, there is much more to branding than just looking good. Particularly in this web 2.0 eras, where a powerful web presence has become a vital ingredient of your branding strategy, developing the right media mix holds the key to building powerful brand equity.
In other words, a right media mix would mean:
• Creative design solutions (the design, color, and content of your ads, marketing collateral and website enhance your brand equity, attract customers, and generate sales)
• Web development (every product/service worth its name has a web presence these days, some have truly interactive, animated sites encouraging customer involvement),
• Viral marketing (vitally important in today’s age of social networking, tagging, pod casting, blogs, forums, wikis and what have you)
• Television commercial production, print media advertising (traditional media cannot be overlooked)
• Strategic films (have become necessary elements of road shows, exhibitions and other promotional campaigns)
• Corporate video production (a very important tool for branding your corporate identity)
• Direct marketing (marketing collaterals need to be just as effective and resonant with the overall branding scheme as the communicate directly with the customer)
• Outdoor advertising (hoardings, road shows, participations in business fairs, exhibitions, etc)
There are some interactive advertising agencies that have recognized the need of the hour - developing creative design solutions that employ user-centric investigation and involve critical and systematic thinking. User-centric means understanding of needs and priorities of end user; the clients' customers, their channel partners, users, and brand communities.
So if you want to register your brand as one that is synonymous with customer loyalty, you must develop a complete package, keeping the customer as the prime objective and organizing product stories around the way they prefer to learn about, compare, select and confirm purchases, connecting brands and their experiences.
How To Build Strong Brand For Your Company's ?
Branding is more than a logo and image or even a recognized name. It’s a person’s collective experience with a company’s product or service. A brand is a person’s overall perception of a company or product built over time.
Here are four things you should keep in mind as you build your company’s brand:
1) Own the “Significant Thing”: Dole tried to be all things to all people spend your time focusing on a single clear message. Mercedes-Benz owns “ Engineering “ in the car industry because it’s focused on that singular message for decades.
2) Consistency is key: consistent presentation will ensure that your customers recognize you. Be consistent in the use of logos, tag lines, visual elements, tone, and ad copy. Coca-Cola it is one of the most recognized brands in the world because they haven’t changed in decades. Make sure your brochures, website, Direct mail, and all the other advertising have the same feel and message.
3) Make your message relevant: know your audience, know what they care about and how to speak to them. Make sure what you sell is what they need. Remember the conversation should always be about your audience, not you.
4) Use a strong offer to motivate: you want your audience to remember you and you want its members to buy from you. You need to move them to action. A strong offer should give them a reason to buy. Make the offer clear and appropriate for your brand.
Every time a customer comes in contact with your brand, they will have either a positive or a negative experience. Those experiences will add to their perception of your brand. Those experiences are recalled later when it’s time to make a purchasing decision. How do you want your brand to be remembered when the time comes for a prospect to buy? You need to start building that positive perception today and do whatever is necessary to maintain it. Good luck.
