Blog Author Mellissah Smith - Page 76

A day in Milano walking the streets and shopping at some of the world's most famous stores, I came across an advertisement which took me by surprise.

In Europe, there are many historic landmarks. As an Australian, our short history means we don't have the depth of historic value as our European counterparts. Many Australians travel to see these landmarks and learn about their historic value.

In Milan, the most famous landmark is undoubtably the city's gothic cathedral called Duomo which was commissioned by Bishop Antonio da Saluzzo in 1385.

To the side as you can see with this picture is a very big billboard for Mercedes. I was shocked. Not because the billboard said anything particularly alarming, but because it commercializes a major landmark in a way that I feel tourism does not.

What do you think of this billboard for Mercedes? Is this position right?

We've all heard about 'why companies fail to grow' with literally thousands of books, blogs, articles and shows talking about why businesses have failed to grow or have had a sudden death.

When you ask someone who has had a business fail, why, they usually give you one reason. We all know that there is never one singular reason why a business fails, it usually is combination of things; market size, competition and demand all feature highly on external factors while operations, leadership, complacency, technology, marketing and lack of investment feature highly as internal reasons.

But the real story that we all should be following is 'why businesses grow and succeed' because in that, there are lessons and patterns we all can follow.

This story is published in Australia's leading newspaper in Sydney. We thought it may be interesting to our marketing blog readers;

By Christopher Niesche - smh.com.au

EVERY small business should have a prospect list - a database of existing and potential customers where the business can focus its marketing efforts.

But it needs to be more than just a list of names and email addresses. It has to contain people who are in the target market for your products.

Here are tips on how to build up a prospect list.

Recently, I ventured out to a Turkish Hamams as part of an off-site adventure organised by a conference that I attended in Istanbul.

As I readied myself for the excursion, I packed a bathing suit, took off my makeup and put on some comfortable clothing attire. That's what you do, right? Well, almost.

The bathing suit is not required. In fact, if you bring it along, and you go to a traditional hamams you may be confronted with an old Turkish woman telling you to put the bathing suit away "not needed". Then what do you do? You are there for an experience, right?

The king of reinvention then subsequent flops, Myspace, has once again relaunched and its looking very promising. A mixture between an entertainment version of Pinterest with a splash of Twitter and Facebook, has seen the new promotion video linked to The New Myspace go viral.



"Who am I to say I want you back? When you were never mine to give away."

The lyrics that accompanies the promotional video reinforces the company's positioning. Having sold for US$580 million to News Corporation in 2005, the 9 year old business (founded in 2003) has reinvented itself which what can only be described as a "beautiful" looking website. Aesthetically, it has WINNER all over it, but the proof will be in how they not only attract their followers but keep them.

Scoring Justin Timberlake, an early investor into the comeback is of course clever marketing because after all, he is the "comeback king" and is considered one of the coolest and sexiest people on the planet. If brand association is anything to go by, the public should be in for something very special.

What do you think?

If you have ever marketed even one of your products or services, you’d know what they say about Direct Marketing (DM). There are so many different views about DM amongst the marketers today that it’s difficult to understand whether it’s worth all the time and effort at all. It’s confused, abused and misused by several marketers.

That’s right: there are the haters and then there are the DM lovers. Some are the in-betweeners (no reference to the teen TV show). Whatever it is, as a small business you need to know where DM stands in the digital age of 2011.

In his book, The Complete Guide to Direct Marketing, Chet Meisner refers to an Orlando newspaper which ran a hateful story about direct marketers. The headline was “Spammers, Telemarketers Share Secrets in Orlando”. According to the story, direct marketers were “making way too much money to stop the suppertime phone calls and endless emails.”

It's time for celebration, or is it? It's Google's 14th Birthday and while one part of me wants to celebrate how much Google has made my life easier, the other part wants to pull back the curtain and see how I can control this addiction.

And addiction it is. Think about how long you can go without 'Googling' something or saying the world "Google". Try going a week. I have. It's impossible!

It's hard to imagine what life was like without Google?

If you are finding it hard to keep up to the latest in marketing techniques, you are not alone.

Most marketers, let alone small business owners, are struggling to keep abreast of the new developments in technology, buzz words, Google algorithm changes, content trends and more. Why? Innovation has been put on steriods and every technology guru is hoping to become the next Mark Zuckerberg and bank a few billion or at the very least, get their faces on the cover of Forbes.

Social media has hit a new high. It no longer is something that businesses can think about including as part of their marketing strategy. It now is something NO BUSINESS can afford to not include.

During the week, I had a conversation with another provider for one of our clients. They are basically graphic designers who have done the odd website development. From my conversations with them, I am almost certain that the website developer is either a freelancer or a graphic designer who has learned to use Wordpress. There are some things that are really obvious in the work they have just completed.

Today is my birthday. I have finally turned 39, a number that I have been using for quite some time, just to get use to it.

I woke up unexpectantly at 3am and have stayed awake ever since. Instead of going back to sleep, I looked out my window and soaked up the view of the parkland. I don't think I have ever seen it at 3am before. It was beautiful, peaceful and the perfect setting to the start of a new year in my life.