Acquiring another corporation usually means that the acquiring company’s name will be the name of the newly merged entity. There is one factor that can change that — one that is stronger than anything else. What is it? It is you, the consumer.

There is nothing that stirs fear in corporate boards of directors more than negative consumer feedback. The way a company is perceived — through marketing of its product line to community involvement — will determine whether the company ultimately succeeds or fails. Thus, it is the buying public — consumers — who truly determine the direction a company moves. Lost sales = a sinking business.

In acquiring another company, usually the larger company does one of two things:

1. It takes the smaller company and absorbs the company within the body of the parent organization. The acquired company retains its name and, for all practical purposes, appears to be a separate company. Consumer confidence in the brand remains static in this case. What is an example of this? Check out the companies/products owned by Beatrice Foods.

2. The acquired company is absorbed in totality; the name, assets, product line are all folded into the acquiring company. Little or nothing of the old company’s name remains. An example of this is Cingular Wireless’ takeover of AT&T Wireless.

In the second example, consumer confidence can be shaken especially if the Board of Directors missteps and fails to anticipate the public’s reaction to the acquisition. A time honored brand, loved by consumers, disappears and consumers react negatively.

What are some good alternatives for Boards to consider? Basically there are two options:

1. Rebrand the name to reflect the joining together of two perceived equals. A case in point is the oil industry where you have ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco to name two. Obviously, the first name is the premier name, but consumers still see the "loved" second name and are reassured.

2. Rebrand the name to reflect the more popular name even if the acquired company is smaller in size. KMart and Sears got "hitched" and the company was renamed Sears Holding. KMart was the acquiring company but the Sears name has less baggage than the bankrupt KMart name. The combined entity has gone one step further by maintaining separate stores with separate names, at least for now. Consumers who like the venerable Sears name can still be confident that it is "business as usual" for the retailer.

There are variations of the two options that Boards may need to consider. Witness BP’s acquistion of Amoco: the name says BP, but the pumps say Amoco. Guess whose gasoline is perceived to be the better of the two?

In summation, the consumer ultimately decides whether your rebranded product will succeed or fail. Not bringing consumer sentiment into the mix early on in the acquisition process is potentially dangerous and can be expensive to remedy later on.

Matt Keegan’s writing site can be viewed at http://thearticlewriter.com

Yellow Pages Ads - Buying Secrets

OK- let’s agree that many businesses can benefit greatly from Yellow Pages advertising. Let’s also agree that few businesses enjoy paying for this “necessary evil”. So how do you decide if it is right for you, what books to use, how much to spend and how to build a successful program? It’s really easy if you understand some basic concepts.

Do you need yellow pages ads?

How important is the telephone as a “door to your business”? Does a large percentage of your customer base call you before they buy? Is your business one that gets customers that are area newcomers (I don’t know anyone), emergency buyers (I need someone now!), dissatisfied customers (I want a new supplier), infrequent buyers (I don’t know now who can do this) or comparison shoppers (I want to check with everyone)? If so, then yellow pages are probably a good idea for your business. Do not ignore Internet yellow pages that may serve you better than, or support, a print ad. Both reach customers when they are ready to buy.

White Pages Listings

White Pages Listings are valuable for companies due to their convenience for people that know your company name and have decided to call only you. Finding you by name keeps your customers out of the yellow pages where they may be tempted by the ads of your competitors. Most directories offer white pages bold listings and sometimes even small in-column ads. If you’re in business then you need white page listings - period.

Which book is best?

Determine the key criteria Possession, Preference and Usage. Every rep will have great statistics to show. However the local phone company is usually regulated by a State agency and is held to strict accuracy on claims. Additionally the YPA (Yellow Pages Association) is the industry association that provides validation on much of the industry facts and figures. Local market facts ad relevance so be certain to consider this over “industry figures”. The local phone company book is almost always the best Value Purchase. Secondary books can be of benefit but your cost per customer may be much higher than the primary book. Consider the following: Book “A” ad costs $100 and Book “B” ad costs $50. Book “A” has 80% Possession, Preference and Usage AND Book “B” has 20% Possession, Preference and Usage. Book “A” could deliver 8 of 10 shoppers and Book “B” could deliver 2 of 10. So Book “A” customers cost you $12.50 each while Book “B” customers cost you $25.00 each. Thus the value is in the “more expensive” ad space. It’s really about return on investment. Buy smart. And again, the Internet yellow pages are a distinct advantage that the phone companies have to offer.

How much do I spend?

In short, no more than you have to. Don’t get caught up in being under every heading or buying a bigger ad every year. Look at your chosen directory, your headings and decide what it takes to be competitive enough to generate the amount of business that you need. If everyone has an in-column space listing then a small display ad is quite dominant. If you are a small business and a full page delivers more than you can handle then it is a waste of money. Inversely, if you buy an ad size that is too small then your call counts could be horrible. I refer to people with these ads as making a donation to the publisher. In every heading the people with the most prominent ads “love yellow pages” and those with tiny ads or only listings always complain, “I don’t get any calls from the yellow pages”. Have your rep explain in detail how their company prices ads. The large publishers typically have a set rate for each item and a formal marketing plan with discounts. Many of the independent books place you in the position of needing to be a master negotiator in order to get the same deal as the customer on their last sales call. If a rep can’t clearly explain their pricing plan then be very cautious – they are probably misleading you and undoubtedly you will catch them bobbing and weaving as they try to explain how they arrived at their numbers. Hopefully you will have the same rep in subsequent years and trust will be established. Annual increases to your ad program may happen – publishing and distribution costs do increase. Although increases may be valid you may be able to minimize cost increases by understanding the pricing plan. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and make absolutely positive that you understand what ad items that you are buying. Review your program items before you sign.

How do I build a successful program?

First, know that your rep is in front of you to sell advertising and may not be the best person at ad design. Reps receive minimal training on professional advertising design and they usually make a sales call shorter by quickly steering you into an ad designed as a box with your “name, rank and serial number”. An ad should be eye catching and provide a compelling reason to call – offering a solution to the buyer. Yellow page users are ready to buy and are deciding on whom to call. Have an ad that presents you as The Credible Solution. Yellow page advertising is expensive only if you have an under performing ad design. When you consider the impact on your bottom line (the revenue and the expense) it may be worth it to get an outside service to design a high impact ad that you can use year after year. Always check with your ad agency to verify that you own the ad and will not have to pay annual royalty or licensing fees to use the ad in subsequent years or in multiple books. Agency costs for ad design vary greatly so shop around. Expensive ad designs may not reflect a higher quality nearly as much as they reflect higher profits for the egocentric design firms. A good ad of most any size can be done for $300-$500. In any event, remember that companies would not advertise in yellow pages if it did not work – try it out!

Get Real Services of Marietta, Georgia, specializes in small business consulting, marketing services, advertising, logo and website design. The Company provides products and services for small to mid-sized businesses in the United States. For more information on working with yellow pages or yellow pages ad design please contact the company at 770.654.3223, send an e-mail to GetRealServices@bellsouth.net or visit http://www.GetRealServices.com

What’s in a brand name? Everything! Think of these brands: Coke, Barbie, Hershey, McDonalds, Madonna, Pepsi, Bono, Microsoft, Kleenex, Xerox, Steven Spielberg, Dell and GM. Did you notice that brands can be things, replicas of people and actual people? Brands are the public perception of a thing or person. Companies work very hard to establish their brand, sometimes failing when they attempt to tie a secondary product into the popular brand name. Does anyone even remember A1 chicken sauce?

The people and companies behind the above brand names are well known. They are established. They have earned the right to be positioned where they are in the public’s eye. Are you or your product clearly associated with the solution you seek to provide? What about your product? What about your name? How are you positioned in the marketplace? As an entrepreneur, a small businessperson, you have to be ever so keenly aware of every minute detail and opportunity to brand yourself. You need to be the expert. Your product must solve the problem, and the world needs to know about it. Branding therefore, may be the most important marketing challenge you face as your business plan unfolds.

It’s all about public perception. Is Coke the real thing? Does Hershey make the finest chocolate? Does McDonald’s offer the best tasting, most nutritious hamburger? Does GM make the finest cars? We have been trained by skilled marketers to make the above associations. We have been conditioned over time to accept the advertising as real, whether we actually believe it or not. Very clever indeed, these markers have been. You cannot afford to be any less convincing in your efforts.

As CEO of your own organization, you will most likely not have the extensive resources that a major company or big name star has. You probably are the marketing department, the advertising department, the sales team, the accountant and so on. As such, you must remain acutely aware of your image, the perception of each and every customer, and to a great extent, the marketplace as a whole. Your position in the marketplace, often dictated by the perceived quality of your products, your celebrity, your reputation for service, your leadership in your field and your consistency will certainly have a great deal to do with the effectiveness of your brand. You are the brand.

As the brand, you must take the position that you will always be under scrutiny, under the microscope. Assume leadership. You may not be the biggest guy in your field, but through leadership you can establish a market presence that will help you to become positioned along with the major players in your market. Take the lead on local issues or take a stand on a national issue that relates to your product, service and market. Through association, you will be perceived as a market leader, regardless of your size. Attempt to resolve a small problem and associate it with a greater one and you will achieve a level of notoriety, one that you can leverage to increase your brand awareness.

Your company must be credible. That is to say that your products and services must do what you say they will. You must also be credible personally. If you cannot be rightfully associated with your product or service offering, it will be difficult for the public to be receptive to such a contradiction. Honesty and integrity will be assets of great value to you as your marketplace gets to know you.

You must be consistent. You must find your niche, take your stance, establish some position and build from it. If you change every week or every time a new wind blows, people will not take you seriously. They will begin to doubt your leadership and find it difficult to perceive you as a credible source for your goods and services. You will lose whatever market position you have gained and whatever leadership position that you have achieved by wobbling among various directions. The public sees consistency as strength and strength as character. When you are a small company, struggling to grow, the perception of you in the marketplace is a critical factor.

Your marketing plan should certainly include these concerns as well as the incredible importance of the awareness of your market image. Since you are the brand, few components within your business plan should receive more of your attention than the development of the public’s perception of you, your evolving position in the marketplace and the development of your brand image.

Daniel Sitter is the author of the breakthrough e-book, Learning For Profit, the revolutionary how-to book providing simple, step-by-step instructions to teach people exactly how to learn new skills faster than ever before. It’s currently available from c|net’s download.com, the author’s web site http://www.learningforprofit.com/ and a variety of online book merchants. Mr. Sitter is a contributing writer for several online and traditional publications. His expertise include sales, marketing, effective learning techniques, self-improvement and general business interests.

Advertising is a powerful and somewhat frustrating marketing tool. It enables us to launch new products and services, increase sales, and increase awareness. However, it is an activity that often leaves us with unsettling questions. Am I wasting my money? Is there a better method, message, or media?

Unfortunately, when it comes to advertising, there are no standard answers. Advertising involves making the right decisions, and what may be right for one company is usually not appropriate for the next. If you want to answer the many questions you have, ensure that your dollars are generating a return, and take control of your advertising efforts, make sure that you have the following.

1. The Right Reason. Advertising can be a powerful ally, but only if done in a fashion to ensure you get the most out of every dollar you spend. First and foremost, start with the end in mind. What do you want to accomplish? What market do you want to reach? What reaction or action do you want from this market once reached? How is your advertising campaign going to prompt this reaction or action? Spending the time upfront to clarify these objectives will make you money in the end.

It is also important to remember that nobody knows your business like you do. Rely on ad representatives for their expertise in the industry, but realize that you have to make decisions that fit for your company. Don’t be forced to make quick decisions due to impending deadlines.

2. The Right Plan. Look at advertising as one part of your marketing plan. Having the right plan means coordinating your efforts to get the most bang out of your buck. How will your advertising efforts fit in to all current marketing and promotional activity?

There are many ways to partner your advertising efforts with other marketing activities. For example, if you are engaging in direct mail or phone sales, ads should be timed to support these efforts! Also, take advantage of ad space to enhance your public relations efforts. Place your company in a positive light by advertising your community charity involvement. Communicate your intended message, but also add a line thanking employees who help local charities. Consider using ads as methods of showing customer appreciation and to communicate your awards, honors, and achievements. Don’t clutter ads, but do make sure to view advertising as a multi-faceted opportunity.

3. The Right Medium. With clear objectives, your next challenge is to determine which media is going to be the most effective for you. We all have our preferences…some prefer print; others swear by radio or television. Put these biases away. Start with an idea of the target market you want to reach and answer the following questions: Are you trying to reach a general consumer or business? If businesses, what types? If consumers, what age range, financial bracket, and sex are they most likely to be? What activities, interests, and concerns tend to be shared among this population? Are you trying to appeal to this group on a local, national, regional, or international level?

With these answers, you can then begin a fact-finding mission. Get in touch with your local media representatives and let them know your objectives, exactly who you are trying to reach, and an idea of your advertising budget as a whole. Have them provide you with information on how the use of their media will reach your objectives and your market. You now can make an educated choice.

Along with considering traditional media (newspaper, radio, and television), realize that your goals may be best accomplished by engaging in non-traditional advertising venues. Inserts, Internet opportunities, door-hangers, billboards, and direct mailers are among the thousands of methods that may be the answer for you. Think outside of the box and seek professional assistance if you need someone to do the legwork for you. Those new to advertising often make the mistake of spreading funds too thin across several media, resulting in ineffective results. The world is ready to take your money; spend it wisely.

4. The Right Message. Unless you have millions of dollars in your advertising budget, don’t try to mimic those who do. Make sure your ads have substance and by following the tried-and-true rules below:

Gain Attention! Your ad needs to stand up, stand out, and grab the attention of your market. Whether it is through the use of a simple, bold headline or a stunning sound or graphic…if you don’t gain attention, you’ve wasted your money. Avoid the urge to squeeze everything in and strive for clarity. Capture your market and don’t distract them.

Create Interest & Desire. Once they’ve seen or heard your ad, you have to make it clear why they should care! What makes your product, service, or company different, and why should the customer select you over others? What’s in if for them? This is the meat of your message and where many organizations miss the boat. It’s not about you; it’s about your market.

Prompt Action. Once your market is interested, take it full circle. Prompt action. Offer an incentive for doing so whenever possible. Have them visit your Web site for additional information and special online coupons. Let them know they need to visit your store today while supplies last. Encourage them to call, as the first 50 responses will receive free information. Unless action is taken, you will be forgotten.

5. The Right Follow-Up. Advertising is an investment that requires a tracking system to ensure effectiveness. The action requested in your ad (which should always be present) needs to be monitored. For instance, if you are directing people to your Web site, you need to make sure you are able to track the number of daily visitors to your site. Did your hits increase due to your ads? If you are prompting people to call, those inquiring should be asked how they heard of you. Calls need to be logged, tracked, and reviewed. If you are prompting action in your ads, the right follow-up is all about information gathering. Make sure you have the systems and resources in place to meet anticipated response levels! Doing this will arm you with the information you need to make wise advertising decisions.

This article was published by Business Builders, a marketing outsourcing company that believes very strongly that the best way to gain loyal clients is to offer them valuable information. Their Web site, http://www.easyaspiemarketing.com, features many additional free marketing resources as well as their e-book, EasyAsPie Marketing available for purchase. For additional information, visit them at http://www.easyaspiemarketing.com

If you own a web-based business, you’re probably aware of the need for things like link exchanges, lead-purchasing, SEO copy, banner ads and all of the "traditional" ways to get exposure on the World Wide Web.

But did you know that article marketing is by far the best way to build your brand while at the same time increasing your exposure?

Web articles. They’re hot. Why? Because people have realized that when you submit an article for distribution on the web, you’re dangling your URL in front of an endless stream of prospects, all of whom are already interested in what you have to offer. Why is this? It’s due to the categorical nature of web article marketing itself.

Article distribution sites are arranged by category. So, if you write an article about sea rays, your article is going to get picked up and placed on other websites that are related to aquatic life. It’s highly likely that the people who visit that site will be interested in your subjectmatter and want to read what you have to say. So the potential interest is there even before your article hits the page.

When you write web articles, you soft-sell your brand to your potential customer by giving away something they need before they even know your name. How so? Within the body of your article, you’re including a chunk of valuable information for your reader to absorb, learn from and remember you by!

Let’s say you’re a "marketing mom" who wants to sell mail-order hand-painted gifts on the web. How will you go about branding your name? First, isolate your key customer. That would be MOM. Where does she live and reign on the web? In bazillions of online mommy groups and forums! So start writing articles about gifts that speak to your number one prospect, Mom. If you’re a mom too, you’ll likely have lots in common, so get those articles going and start talking Mom to Mom. In your articles, offer your prospect a few ideas she can use in her business and her life, then gently introduce her to your hand-painted gifts. Roll out article after article, and submit to every place you can find on the web that might be a hot spot for the work-at-home web mommy.

Your full-out article marketing campaign will take careful strategizing, time and effort, but the end result, brand recognizability, is worth the extra energy you put in. Right now, there’s no better way to build your brand on the web and do it quickly. Saturate your market with articles that position you as an expert in your field, and the leads will follow. Soon you’ll be pulling in orders for your hand-painted collectibles faster than the little Korean ladies you hired can paint them!

Branding is establishing trust and faith in your company name. Branding cements relationships. Branding keeps your customers coming back year after year! What better way to let your future clients get a better idea of who you are and what you can do for them, than talking to them in well-written articles that help to brand your good name?

If you haven’t already, start thinking about an article marketing campaign. Target your key customer, and then lay the foundation for your brand… one article at a time.

Copyright 2005. Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.

Dina Giolitto is the author of ARTICLE POWER: Create Dynamite Web Articles and Watch Your Sales Explode… a 49-page manual covering every aspect of article marketing on the web. Learn about article marketing, copywriting and more at http://www.wordfeeder.com

I just read some advertising suggestions on an Internet marketing site that are beyond annoying. They are flat-out bad advice. They illustrate a complete lack of understanding of the whole persuasion process.

First, small business owners are told that advertising often has a cumulative effect, so ad-driven sales may not be immediate. Then, they’re told how to measure and track the immediate response of their advertising.

Reading past that little dichotomy, some of the suggestions included:

· Use magazine response cards. Remember to code the cards if you use multiple publications.

· Use a coupon in your newspaper ads. Code the coupons so that you can tell which publication generates the most sales.

· Put a line in your radio scripts to "Mention this ad and get a 10% discount."

· Ask all new customers how they heard about your business.

Make no mistake. These are all bad suggestions. Very bad. In addition to being very poor persuasion, each of these strategies assumes that your prospective customers are paying very close attention to your ads.

Trust me, customers don’t.

Good advertising is seduction. Pretend with me for a minute that all advertising is an attempt to get a "date" with your prospect.

How do these recommendations hold up under that scenario?

Would you, for instance, send a response card to anyone you could possibly be interested in dating, which says "If you’d like to learn more about me, fill out your name, address, and your specific areas of interest in me, and apply your own postage to return it to me?"

No, I didn’t think you would.

The advice contained in these recommendations also suffers from major misunderstandings in the motivations of customers.

Coupons assume that you have nothing to offer but a better price. Think about the implications of that for a moment. It implies that after you’ve spent the money to advertise your discounted (and minimally profitable) price, that the customer has no reason to ever come back to do business with you again. Or at least, until you drop your price again.

Mention this ad? In three decades of mass media experience, I’ve never heard of a single person saying "I heard your ad. Give me the discount." Smart radio stations will never allow this on their air. Does that mean people don’t respond to advertising? No, it doesn’t mean that at all. It means that they won’t embarrass themselves by parroting your line. Not surprising, is it? Most people won’t admit that advertising affects them in any way.

Ask new customers where they heard about you?

They don’t know.

Oh, they’ll try to give you an answer. Really though, your advertising isn’t important enough for them to remember exactly what they learned about you, let alone the source of that information. But because they’ll want to be helpful, they will guess. They’ll usually guess wrong.

There are two major problems with any of these "track your response" strategies.

· They provide bad information. Bad information is worse than none at all. It gives you a distorted view of reality. Which leads to the second problem:

· You’ll be tempted to make decisions based on this bad information. You will frequently make the wrong decisions.

Consider this, instead. Send the object of your affection an "I love you" message.

Does it matter whether your "I love you" comes in a telegram, an e-mail, a card, or over the phone? Or is the expression of love the most important consideration?

Does it matter whether your ad message is delivered in the newspaper, over the radio, on cable TV, or by direct mail? Or is the message the critical part?

Your advertising will improve by orders of magnitude when you spend less time attempting to find the most effective medium, and more time searching for the most effective message.

Chuck McKay is a marketing practitioner specializing in small retail and service businesses.
He is the author of Fishing For Customers And Reeling Them In.
Chuck’s columns appear regularly at http://www.fishingforcustomers.com

Mr. McKay is available as a guest speaker or seminar presenter.
Call Wizard of Ads®
Headquarters:(800) 425-4769.

…my senses. I know, you were thinking ‘Texas’. Well, if they do live in Texas, then it’s a good thing that I live in Virginia (dodged that bullet - swish!). In fact, most of my experiences, good and bad, nestle deep in the base of my subconscious until ‘something’ wakes them up. It could be the ocean air, a certain perfume, the sound of fireworks or a song, the touch, the feel of cotton, or even the taste of burnt pizza. Yup, all of these sensory experiences can bring any memory rushing back to the front of your mind.

So, what does this have to do with branding?

Have you ever smelled french fries and said, “Oh, I could go for McDonald’s”.

Nokia, the leader in cell phone manufacturing design their phones to touch at least 4 of the 5 senses, and touch some more than others. The design of the phone is perfectly shaped to the contour of the users hand (touch). The interface is designed to be exactly the same in any language, to the point that a Japanese user change his settings to English and know exactly where everything is (sight and touch). Their ringtone is unique and a branded Nokia sound (also used on their web site), so that it is easily recognized worldwide (sound). Their packaging has a branded scent that is emitted into the users brain the moment it is opened (smell). And, I wouldn’t put it past them to find something taste-worthy to tie into their brand.

Again, what does this have to do with branding? EVERYTHING!

Branding for the senses takes your brand to another level of memorability. Did you know that the Disney Parks purposely spray the scent of cotton candy in areas where there isn’t any? This drives traffic to other areas of the Parks where there is cotton candy! Did you know that the ‘new car smell’ is a manufactured scent? It’s deliberately added because people love it. It is the finishing touch, the icing on the cake, that makes the decision to buy final.

Some stores have a branded scent, or a branded sound when you walk in the door. You don’t realize it, but when you hear that sound or smell that smell you will automatically think of that store. Certain hotels hand you warm chocolate chip cookie when you check-in - this is to wake the memories of home, which is how they want to remembered!

So, what does your brand smell like?

tandembranding is a nation-wide branding firm, and we work with marketing directors to make their company famous. We specialize in industries that cater to the customer experience.

For more articles on how branding can make you famous, please visit tandembranding.com

Mark Campanale, Brand Expert
tandembranding
tandembranding.com

If you are reading this article, chances are you could use a little extra money. With the advent of the internet and the migration of advertising dollars from print to electronic (and this time, it’s the real thing, I swear! Not one of those 1999 tech busts!…Seriously!) If you own a small business today, you look at many advertising mediums. The majority of these mediums lump themselves into 2 categories, creative or direct.

Creative has always been the crapshoot for the small business owner. A sales rep walks into your business, espousing the greater good of television or radio advertising, quickly moves past the ratings, viewers etc and into the sexiness of hearing your name at 6:57am Monday, Thursday and Saturday if you are watching station X or listening to station Y. If this product didn’t work, a Super Bowl commercial price tag wouldn’t make headlines every December (for how much Geico paid) or late February (to hear which is most memorable). The key with creative is frequency. If you have realistic budget for frequency, you can make the phone ring with a creative campaign. If you have that budget you probably aren’t reading this article. Realistically speaking, you don’t have a ton of money to risk on creative advertising effectiveness, haven’t backed it up with a call to action, and you need, pound for pound, the least amount of advertising money possible, with the most phone calls…

Enter direct advertising. Classified sections in newspapers, they make your phone ring, if you’re selling something people want. (For the record, advertising in the sports section of your local paper is creative advertising (people don’t go to page 5 of the sports to regularly check out the latest prices on used cars.) Classified advertising is in the process of going from the newspaper industry’s cash cow to taking it on the chin from EBay (ever heard of it?) and even more attractive small town slugger, Craigslist (you go Craig!). If you’re business pumps out used cars by the pound, chances are you, or your salesmen are using these two websites to start realizing savings from Rupert Murdoch and his yacht-owning cronies. Even the best of EBay or Craigslist, however, doesn’t put much of a dent in your P&L statement if you are service based like a contractor, or general retail, like a bookstore.

Enter the yellow pages…Pound for pound, no other medium makes the phone ring at your business like the good old fashioned yellow pages. Throw down your money, and answer the phone. You already know that. So do all the TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers in the country. The best protected advertising budget in any small business is the yellow page budget. Yellow pages are the scourge of the other guys. How many radio sales reps will walk into your store after you started your advertising campaign and say, “Tom, your $1,000 invested with my station this week got you 48 phone calls?” (If you find a station like that please send me the phone number, and I retract everything I said earlier) When someone wants a plumber, a pool boy, a new pool, or a divorce attorney for getting the new pool without his wife’s approval, they pick up the weathered old yellow pages, leaf through a few adverts, and call someone that sells what they need.

So, am I telling you to advertise in the yellow pages?,,, Not so fast Skippy…First, let’s look at the cost of the yellow pages,…You want the phone to ring in Miami, and you’re a plumber? Better be ready to pony up some serious cash…say $3-4k per month. In Miami, the average cost of a service call could be around $65. If you don’t have a crew, that ad needs to generate 61 calls to break even, not including the employee cost, travel costs etc. Not so bad? How many calls did you need to generate those 61 service calls? Did you go see everyone that called you? I would guess, for a contractor, you might get lucky and have a 50% close rate…122 calls…to break even. Don’t forget to pay yourself…200 calls. Depressed? Better be glad you don’t sell shoes. The same ad would generate a much lower close rate, and you need to sell an dump truck of shoes every month!

What’s my point? Enter the ELECTRONIC yellow pages…No print bill, real time changes, and guess where all those print yellow pages are putting their money these days? BellSouth and SBC just paid $100M (you know, $100,000,000) for a new domain name, and combined their “competing” forces to make a better entry in the fray, thinking that you might remember yellowpages.com better than smartpages.com or realpages.com. (Makes you wonder where Google fits into the old branding and name recognition game.) Verizon seemed to get the concept a little better with superpages.com by aligning with Mr. Gates over at MSN right around the time Al Gore was inventing the internet. Getting back to the point, the internet yellow pages are going to do to print yellow pages what EBay and Craigslist have done to the newspaper companies. No paper, no ink, usage climbing (for electronic yellow pages, usage is climbing to as high as 70% of online searching, and buying) and real-time, do-it-yourself advertising. Advents such as community ranking, mini-sites, toolbars, pay per click, pay per call, and just about every way possible to pay for performance, track performance, and see what other buyers of your goods or services thought of your business. Due to the ever changing, “who’s in first place” of the internet, there has yet to be determined if there is a Lance Armstrong in this race. Our own company USdirectory.com, via its partnerships, and investment into technology, is looking to become a late entry, blue-ribbon bearer. At this point, it’s too early to clearly point out which one, or all, or none, of these companies will do to yellow pages what Google did to global search. That being said, even Google doesn’t reflect enough tenure to ensure its own top position.

Who wins?? You do, the business owner. Technology is about to reduce your advertising budget the way Southwest and JetBlue changed the airline industry. Your customer base, as they migrate to the internet as vehicle of choice, will reach you at lower price points, and in greater volume, then ever before. Your mission, should you choose to accept, in investing in the right mix, at the right point, and try to cater not only to your existing radius of business, but around the planet with new and specialized niches…but that’s another story.

Skip Middleton
Boca Raton, FL USA
USdirectory.com
Search. Find. Buy.

I love Pepsi. It’s that slightly sweeter taste and the all-American logo combined with the non-conformist statement that, well, it’s not Coke.

Yet Pepsi has been consistently #2, and there’s nothing wrong with being #2 if that’s your goal. But Pepsi’s goal is to be the #1 preferred brand (notice I didn’t say ‘taste’ – we all took the Pepsi taste test and they’re still #2) with members of the eponymously titled Pepsi Generation – an age group that they seemingly stretch from year to year.

As of late, Pepsi has employed Pop-Culture icons to represent their brand : Britney, Big n’ Rich, AROD and Jeff Gordon to name a few. Yet none of them seem to capture Coke’s ageless, timeless wave of emotion brought on by a 6 year-old boy and Mean Joe Green. That commercial touched all of our senses; the agony of defeat, a fan’s elation with their idol, a friendship being forged between generations and a refreshing beverage that made everything ok. Coke continues to focus on the experience, while Pepsi focuses on taste.

Which is why I cringe every time I go to a restaurant that only carries Pepsi products; Sure, I’m happy, but what of those who prefer Coke? The waiter/waitress always asks if you would like a beverage before ordering, and an overwhelming majority of people reply, “I’ll have a Coke.” The wait staff them replies with the brand kiss of death:

“Is Pepsi ok?”

Is it ok? It’s like saying ‘no we don’t have Coke, but will you settle for this sub-par beverage?” And because they ask this way, the customer always reluctantly answers ‘yeah, I guess.’

For every restaurant, there should be an in-house Pepsi Brand Champion - someone who will train all restaurant employees on Pepsi’s passion, core values, culture and more importantly, how to make it preferred! Instead of making it the red-headed step child on the menu, they should wear buttons that read, ‘We Proudly Serve Pepsi Products’. There should be a branded way to respond to the unavoidable Coke question. There should be Pepsi soda glasses and other branded materials so that it’s no surprise to the customers. People do not choose restaurants because of the soda they carry, so Pepsi needs to step up and educate it’s captured audience on why they should be the choice of every generation.

tandembranding is a nation-wide branding firm, and we work with marketing directors to make their company famous. We specialize in industries that cater to the customer experience.

For more articles on how branding can make you famous, please visit tandembranding.com

Mark Campanale, Brand Expert
tandembranding
tandembranding.com

As a business owner, you have the option of taking several different approaches to handling your Marketing and Advertising. You may choose to handle the responsibility yourself, with the idea that no one understands your business quite the way you do.. You may also consider hiring a full time marketing manager or even assigning the tasks, as they arise, to someone already working within your organization. Consider this… When your business needs plumbing work do you do it yourself? Hire a plumber to be on staff full time? Or ask your accountant to handle it?

Call in the Experts.

Though some advertising and marketing ventures seems simple enough to be handled ‘’in house’’, nothing is as costly as a marketing misfire. Not only may you be sending out the wrong messages, to the wrong markets, but also by the time you catch it, your budget may be in no shape to recover and redirect. The truth is, no one can do the job as effectively and efficiently as someone who lives and breathes the industry everyday. Plus, the added perk of consistent media contacts that will prove to be financially beneficial to your business.

Seeing the forest and the trees.

When you hire a consultant you hire an objective opinion, as well as a fresh point of view. Sometimes a business may lose perspective on itself by being too heavily immersed in the day-to-day operations, and lose itself in the big picture, missing the small details… or vice-versa. Sadly, sometimes a business’s marketing will clearly reflect this. The president of a private jet company’s focus is on the bells and whistles of his fleet. It’s what he sees as important in his view of his business. Inevitably, his marketing may also focus on this portion of his business, ignoring what he is really selling to his potential clients: The feeling and the status of private jets.

If you add another ball, technically it is juggling.

If you, as a business owner, or an employee take on the added tasks of the marketing of the business, attention is being taken from other projects and responsibilities. Inescapably, focus and demands are bound to pull from one and take away from others until something falls to the floor. Consultants are dedicated to one, and only one, portion of your business. Their focus is committed, and they allow you to keep yours where it should be.

The Gumby Factor.

Consultants are very flexible. Immediately ready and available to take on assignments at a moment’s notice. Accessibility to getting a new project off the ground is just a phone call away. On the other hand, trying to hire a new employee specifically to handle your marketing needs takes valuable time to places ads; conduct interviews and then sort through applicants, hoping to find the right person for the job.

The M –Word Money.

When you total up the actual cost of bringing on a new employee, you will most likely find that hiring a consultant is much more cost effective. The hourly rates may seem to favor a full time employee, but when you factor in employee benefits, training time, vacation/sick time, 401(k), the added overhead involved in situating a new employee, and the sheer fact that you may be paying full time wages for something that may not need full time attention, the cost effectiveness will fall in favor of a consultant. Which bring us to….

The C- Word Commitment.

Hiring a full time employee is a commitment. And bringing on an employee to handle a special marketing project, or set up an initial marketing plan, may in the long run leave you scrambling to find a new project or position for that employee. Or worse yet, you find yourself paying a full time marketing director to do basic maintenance. Hiring a consultant requires no long-term commitment. When a consultant completes a project, they have the flexibility to move into whatever position you need them, from quarterly analysis, to basic maintenance, to completely out of the picture, but on the sidelines when you’re ready to take a new step forward.

"There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still." -Franklin D. Roosevelt

Mary Ellen Martelli
MareMax Consulting
http://www.maremaxconsulting.com
Mount Laurel NJ 08054
609-413-0248
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