Shere Marketing Blog

There are now over 11 million Smartphone users in the UK and according to Google, 74% of these make a purchase as a result of using their phone to review marketing information.   And research by Deloitte reveals that 88% of those who look for local information on their Smartphone take action within a day.

The key thing about Smartphones as a marketing tool is the ability for marketers to get intimate with the consumer.  We can engage with the individual, and by using softer messages we can seduce, simply because the Smartphone user is already in the palm of our hand – literally!

The Smartphone is usually the primary source of information and entertainment for the user.  They are absorbed by it for hours every day reviewing trends and topics of interest.  Therefore search, context advertising and product association are the best ways to reach them.  Straight display type ads are too brusque.  Be more subtle and generous for greater success.   The research shows that the most popular ways to encourage Smartphone users to respond is through ads offering bargains, free apps or games.

The Smartphone is very different to other media because rather than being a casual observer, flicking through a magazine, opening a mail piece, half hearing a radio advert or glancing at a sales brochure, the Smartphone user actually craves the content their Smartphone delivers.  So when the advertiser’s message is blended with this content, it goes straight into the consciousness, deeper and more persuasively than ever before.

For many their Smartphone has become their drug of choice.  They cannot go more than a few minutes without a fix.  And the shards of information delivered are tiny moments of satisfaction embedded in the brain, creating interest, desire, perceived need.

And we all know what this is: The Sales Process.

Technological advances have had a big impact on how stories are issued to the press, but people often fail to take advantage of the latest developments when it comes to creating their release and exploiting alternative methods to get it noticed. 

Here are 5 tips for sprucing up your press releases and leveraging some of what modern technology has to offer...

BRANDING MISTAKE!

It’s now a couple of weeks since the events that folks at Gap HQ will probably remember forever as ‘The Logo Incident’.  In case you missed it, here’s a brief synopsis.

Gap, the clothing retail giant, decided to shake up their stagnant sales by shaking off their reputation as a purveyor of bland wardrobe staples for supersized, middle-income Americans.  Their solution was to launch a new logo that would spearhead the metamorphosis of their brand into something ‘more contemporary and current’, which is retail-speak for saying that they were going after a younger market.  Unfortunately the key issues of branding were simply not followed.  

Gap’s online followers were less than impressed with the new logo and made their opinions known by flooding the company’s Facebook profile with negative feedback.  After a week of squirm-inducing commentary from Gap’s North American President (in which she pretended to be delighted that the logo was receiving so much attention whilst conveniently ignoring the fact that it was uniformly negative) the announcement came: the old logo was coming back.  Victory to the loud minority!

The cynic in me wonders...

WHAT IS A BRAND?

Ask what a brand is and you will get as many different answers as the number of people you ask.

The original definition of course is:
A mark made by burning with a hot iron (branding iron) to designate ownership (e.g. of cattle).
Over time, brands became associated with the quality of the cattle and the value of the cattle reflected this.

Life has moved on.

The Dictionary of Business and Management defines a brand as:
"A name, sign or symbol used to identify items or services of the seller(s) and to differentiate them from goods of competitors."
But this is incomplete. It does not explain how a strong brand can become more valuable than an otherwise equivalent product or service.

Walter Landor, a leading light in the marketing world says...

BUSINESS PRESENTATIONS NEED NOT BE BORING!

No matter how great your marketing and direct selling, if you are not involving your audience then your level of success will be less than it could be.

People are naturally less able to absorb (and therefore be influenced by) information when they are not required to participate in the learning process

Can you remember anything much from those boring lectures at school?

Research has shown that people retain, on average, 18% of what they hear, 32% of what they see, over 50% of what they see and hear, but over 75% of what they also interact with!

So to improve the effectiveness of your handouts at exhibitions and your presentations you need to...