ETD: 863 Advertising & Marketing; Calling All Independent
Specialty Retailers; The Connected Store
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post at gapent.com
Thu Feb 24 12:19:27 GMT 2005
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0863 February 24, 2005
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem at gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] Advertising & Marketing
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[3] Calling All Independent Specialty Retailers
[4] The Connected Store
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
Today some of our list members share their experiences with what works in
advertising and marketing now-a-days. Very helpful material. How about
sharing your ideas or ask some questions about this important topic?
Gifts & Decorative Accessories asks specialty retailers to take part in our
sixth annual Retailer Comparison Survey. I have been involved both
organizing and analyzing surveys for Gifts & Dec, and can personally attest
to their value. So, join in.
The cost of bandwidth and in-store wireless connectivity is no longer an
issue for retailers to connect. RIS News will conduct a Webinar next
Thursday, which should be interesting for all of us. If you are connected,
you may learn more. If you are not, you may want to tune in to learn what
you need to get connected. On that same topic, does anybody want to share
their experience with wireless connectivity in your business? I'll even
do a special report if you have a lot to say.
Tell us about your business, which will remain for posterity at
our "Members: Who Are You?" site. This is a courtesy to our members who
contribute to our forum, and not merely a way to advertise for
free. Anything to do with the retail world, i.e., supplier, retailer,
consulting, etc. http://etailersdigest.com/resources/members/index.htm And
we have a form there for you to tell us about you. As I said when I first
proposed this idea, we have "known" each other for a long time, yet we
often don't know anything about each other. So, tell us who you are and
what you do.
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, Ltd.
mailto:georgem at gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] Advertising & Marketing
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Interesting discussion, George. From my perspective, here's what works online:
1. Good search engine positioning. I pay an outside contractor to keep an
eye on my rankings, and it pays off. Quite a few of my customers mention
that they heard about my postcard marketing sites through the search engines.
2. Publishing a weekly e-mail newsletter. Like search engine positioning,
I've found that the e-zine does pull sales. I know this because I
double-check the e-mail address of every customer against my subscriber
database.
Offline, I'm a big believer in sending monthly postcards to a list of
people I know, and who know me well. I'm not a big fan of sending postcards
to strangers, as they're not as likely to do business with me.
I also stay in touch with the people on my list by meeting with them in
person, and sending them useful information by snail-mail and e-mail. In
short, if you're on my list, you're going to hear from me.
Next, what is hyped but isn't "there" yet:
1. RSS Feeds. You may be hearing a lot of buzz about RSS (moderator note:
Really Simple Syndication) feeds, but you know what? I recently asked my
e-zine list host about setting one up, and he told me that I was the first
customer to make that request. He also asked me if anyone had asked me for
an RSS feed. I had to tell him the truth: No, I hadn't.
2. Blogs. I have yet to meet someone who says that his or her blog pulls in
paying customers.
And, finally, things I've tried, but they didn't work:
1. Workshops for an admission fee, and workshops for free. They took an
enormous amount of time to prepare and promote, yet they brought in very
little income. Same goes for teleseminars and Webinars. Everybody talks
about them, but nobody goes.
2. Seeking publicity. It may be called "free" publicity, but it takes a lot
of time to get. I decided that my time would be better spent on seeking
paying work.
3. Writing free articles. Again, an enormous time-eater in terms of the
writing and the submissions. Yes, they're touted as a good way to "get your
name out there," "getting traffic," and other Internet shibboleths, but
there are more direct, and less time-consuming ways of bringing in business.
Martha Retallick, "The Passionate Postcarder"
http://www.PostcardMarketingSecrets.com
+++ [Next Post] +++
As some of you may know, BusinessKnowHow.com has been online for a long
time. Over the years, our business model changed from just deriving income
from being a content provider to the commercial online services, to
bringing in revenues by selling advertising and sponsorships on our own
website (in addition to providing content to online services), to selling
our own products, promoting some affiliate products, and selling
advertising and sponsorships on our own site (but not selling content to
online services).
In going through those changes, we've found various things that work for
marketing and advertising our own site and products as well as what seems
to work for others who advertise on our site.
Since we sell products and sell advertising, we are continually challenged
both to attract large numbers of broadly targeted users to our sites and to
attract more targeted customers to buy products on the sites.
What we've learned along the way:
The type of advertising that works best varies according to what we want to
achieve with the ads. To get people to our site in general so they see
advertiser ads (as well as our articles), and to get them to sign up for
our free newsletter, we've found that publicity in print as well as on the
web works. I'm always looking for ways we can respond to reporter's
inquiries for stories about small business.
We also do some paid advertising. We usually use pay per click ads, but
just recently we've tried advertising in a few newsletters with pretty
large subscriber lists.
All of the general advertising generally points the home page for whatever
site we are advertising.
For products, we use the Pay Per Click ads and also advertise in our own
newsletter. What we do that's different, is to write ads for each specific
product and point the readers to the specific product page, rather than to
our home page.
We've never had an advertising sales staff. Ads we sell on our websites are
usually sold because companies or their ad agencies find us and want to
advertise. Advertisers who do best on our sites are those who want to
advertise for branding, who can afford to advertise on a repeat basis, and
who either sell something that gets repeat orders from our type of
readership, or have a whole line of products that would interest our readers.
--Janet Attard
Business Know-How Small Business Resource Center
http://www.businessknowhow.com
Free newsletter: www.businessknowhow.com/subscribe.htm
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[3] Calling All Independent Specialty Retailers
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Gifts & Decorative Accessories asks specialty retailers to take part in our
sixth annual Retailer Comparison Survey. The results of this extensive
survey will be published in the June issue of the magazine. All responses
are aggregated, and no individual respondent will be identified. If you
haven't answered the printed survey sent to many of you by mail, please
help us gauge the pulse of the industry by completing the online version by
clicking the link below. Thank you for your time.
http://www.giftsanddec.com/retailsvy05
Quinn Halford, Editor In Chief
Matthew Kalash, Managing Editor
Gifts & Dec Direct
www.giftanddec.com.
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[4] The Connected Store
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RIS News has organized a Web seminar which is designed to help retailers
differentiate themselves. "The Connected Store: Real-time Networks Driving
the Enterprise," produced by RIS News, will be broadcast Thursday, March
3, 2005 at 2 PM EST and will last for 60 minutes.
Price Is No Longer a Barrier to Store Connectivity. Prices are falling for
wide area and in-store wireless networks, reliability is rising, bandwidth
is increasing and opportunity abounds according to analysis by Paula
Rosenblum of Aberdeen Research. According to an Aberdeen Group study in
2004, the cost of store-home office connectivity is the lowest of six
factors among the top barriers and challenges to implementing in-store
initiatives.
Rosenblum will be joined by industry expert, Mike Van Orden, CTO,
Sportsman's Warehouse, who will outline proven networking strategies at the
company in an upcoming Web seminar entitled "The Connected Store." Van
Orden will provide an insider's perspective on how retailers can increase
bandwidth to the store, without sacrificing scalability or efficiency.
With more and more retailers running sophisticated applications like
wireless POS, real-time inventory systems and high speed credit
authorization, having an always on network that is secure and affordable.
This session will provide case studies from leading retailers on how they
have increased bandwidth to their stores, without sacrificing scalability
or efficiency.
The Connected Store. Thursday, March 03, 2005. From 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM
EST. Joe Skorupa, group editor-in-chief, RIS News, will
moderate. Speakers include Paula Rosenblum, Retail Research Director,
Aberdeen Group, Mike Van Orden, CTO, Sportman's Warehouse, Jeffrey Nelson,
Director of Technology, Jenny Craig. Register here:
<https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=9978&sessionid=1&key=B582C0BC86006EBCE62A1D44DF3648D4&referrer=&sourcepage=register>
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