PROforma Pow-Wow

Hot New Products for 2010!

 

Innovative Marketing Tools - Part 1

Let’s talk about ways you can build traffic

You have a retail business and business traffic has slowed.  You decide you need something to drive traffic to your business, but what.

Consider TrafficTickets™.  It is an Innovative Marketing Tool to drive consumers into the new your retail establishment. The benefits will be:

• Increase sales

• Improve brand awareness at point-of-sale

• Acquire, retain and cross-sell customers

• Sell product/brand, launch new products/services, seasonal promotions, branch openings, trade shows

• Effective anywhere you need to drive customer traffic

New Page on Proforma Pow-Wow

Today we've launched a new page on our site -- Case Studies -- that gives examples of how different marketing needs and issues have been addressed by individual companies.  We hope that you'll be able to use this information to learn more about the latest trends in the marketing industry.  We also think that these case studies might spark an idea or two for your next marketing campaign!

Visit the new page by clicking here.

Trade Show Planning: Get the Best ROI

With marketing budgets constantly being scrutinized, the importance of maximizing the return on your trade show investment is more important than ever. According to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) and the Promotional Products Association International (PPAI):

• Eighty percent of trade show attendees pre-plan a “top ten list” of exhibitors they will visit, but only 20 percent of exhibitors do pre-show promotions (CEIR)
• Exhibitions are more effective in generating leads and orders, introducing new products, promoting brands, increasing company awareness, and entering new markets than advertising, direct mail or public relations (CEIR)
• Trade show attendees are 52 percent more likely to stop by an exhibit and 20 percent more likely to remember the booth if a giveaway is staged at that booth (PPAI)

As we all know, coming up with great ideas that set your exhibit apart and attract trade show attendees are sometimes hard to find.  Planners also need to keep in mind that even best ideas fall flat if messaging is inconsistent with other marketing strategies employed by their company on a regular basis.

Interactive Marketing: Tapping into the Potential

If you’re not integrating interactive tactics into your marketing mix, you could be missing a big opportunity. More and more frequently, marketing dollars are shifting away from traditional media to the interactive arena, and with good reason. When faced with budget reductions and the need for immediate sales in recessionary times, interactive tools offer lower cost, higher measurability, and better results for direct response.

If you’re looking to reach a younger demographic, interactive marketing is especially important. It is one of the best ways to connect with hard-to-reach buyers age 35 and under.

A $55 billion business

• Interactive marketing expenditures will reach
  $55 billion within the next five years.

• This means that these expenditures will represent
  21 percent of all marketing spending.

Source: U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast (Forrester Research)

Appointment Setting Success!

Most salespeople prospect with just a business card and a brochure –- and that’s just not enough in today’s fast-paced business market.  Many lack effective tools for getting “in the door” to pursue new accounts. We can help overcome that challenge by taking the “cold” out of cold-calling and changing the attitude of even the busiest buyers on your prospect list.

Looking at it from a buyer’s perspective

Buyers are solicited by an average 50 salespeople per year. Each week, these buyers are exposed to:

• Approximately 300 e-mail messages
• 1,000 ads (sometimes many more)
• Approximately three pounds of regular mail

Following Tradeshow, Follow Up Can Cement Customers

For every company participating in a tradeshow, follow up is especially an important part of its marketing strategy. Companies spend a lot of time and money preparing for a tradeshow and the materials they hand out. They also put in considerable effort getting visitors to stop into their booth to learn about their product or service and when they fail to contact the people that sought more information, all the time and expense are wasted.

Many companies offer a prize for which to be drawn at the end of a show and if they do not make as big a deal out of the winner of the prize as they did in its offering, they are missing some huge opportunities. Not only should they contact the winner immediately, they should also notify other entrants of the winner’s name. It is important that after a tradeshow, follow up takes place in a timely manner. Not only do other entrants receive the name of the winner, they are also reminded of the company’s name that sponsored the contest.

Tradeshow Marketing

Tradeshow Marketing Can Make or Break Presentation

When it comes to marketing your business, participating in a tradeshow is one way to get your name in front of a lot of potential customers. However, tradeshows typically are not cheap and in addition to paying for the space, you have to have quality marketing materials to hand out to attendees as well as pay for the employees working at the show. With all of this expense for a tradeshow, marketing has to be on top of the game to drive visitors into your booth.

It will make no difference what you’re selling, product or service or how good your program is. If you can’t draw visitors into your booth you will have wasted a lot of money on time and materials. The only way to get a return on your investment (ROI) is by having visitors stop and learn more about your business. However, at a trade show that has possibly hundreds of vendors, many offering the same or similar services, getting some of the thousands of visitors to stop requires tradeshow, marketing of something that set you apart from everyone else.

Why should I use Promotional Products?

David Blaise an industry consultant always talks about the MVP's of marketing.

1. Create a compelling message
2. Determine which marketing vehicle you will use to get your message out
3. Create a list of people you would like to get your message.

A lot of times using a promotional product along with your message can be one of the best vehicles you use. The Promotional Products Association (PPA) has done a study indicating that 76.1% of respondents recalled the advertisers name on a promotional product that they had received in the past 12 months. Additionally, 75.4% of respondents said they kept their promotional product because it was useful.

How powerful is that?The $1.99 you spent on a promotional item to be mail out to 500 people stays with 75% of the people you just sent it out to for 1 year. Consider the return on your investment?