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Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

I love this Country. We don’t manufacture as many products as we used to, but we’ll always be the masters of the marketing universe. No other country can take something as mundane as a 1,500 watt space heater and repackage it as the Second Coming. A perfect example of this marketing ingenuity is the Amish Heat Surge Electric Fireplace.

It Rolls! It Glows! The Heat Surge miracle heater is a work of genius from the China coast! Real Amish Craftsmanship goes into each mantle! And, to quote the Heat Surge website, “It’s not just a fireplace; it’s a fine piece of furniture.”

But you have to ask yourself: Do I want to spend $587 for a mini electric fireplace on wheels that produces no more heat than any other 1,500 watt space heater costing $500 dollars less?

Just to be fair, this is a valid question for all electric fireplaces, not just the Heat Surge. Believe it or not, you could easily spend more than $2,000 for a combination electric fireplace/entertainment center heated with the same 1,500 watt unit.

No matter how much you pay for an electric fireplace, the cost attributable to the electric heating insert is about $250 (retail). So every dollar you spend over $250 is for the mantel piece. In the case of the Amish Cherry Fireplace, $250 subtracted from the $587 retail price leaves $337 for the cost of the mantel.

Since the Amish heater is a mini electric fireplace, it’s difficult to find a similar sized electric fireplace for the sake of comparison. The best I could come up with is the ProCom 24″ cherry finish electric fireplace.

Although this fireplace is the smallest ProCom makes, and uses a similar 24″ wide heating insert, it’s overall dimensions are still 2 1/2 times larger than the Heat Surge.

The last time I checked, the ProCom 24″ cherry finish fireplace was available online for $400. After subtracting $250 for the heating insert, the mantel piece for the ProCom costs $150.

So why would you be willing to pay more than twice as much for an Amish mantel less than half the size of a comparable fireplace costing 30% less?

It’s the magic of marketing Baby!

If you buy an Amish electric fireplace, it won’t be for the boring 1,500 watts of heat offered by every other space heater out there. What’s going to get you excited enough to whip out your credit card is an unexplainable attraction to the Amish, the promise of superior Amish craftsmanship and pride of ownership.

I can’t explain an unexplainable attraction, but I’ll accept the claim of superior Amish craftsmanship. However, “craftsmanship” comes at a price. Over a three year period, the premium you pay for an Amish mantel piece will add an additional $5 a month, or $180 to your actual heating costs when compared to the purchase price of a Pro Com 24″ fireplace.

This leads me to the second problem I have with the marketing of this product.

If you go to the Heat Surge website you won’t find one picture of the Amish fireplace with the wheels attached. The reason for this, in my opinion, is the wheels make it look “dinky” compared to the “substantial” look it has when pictured without the wheels.

So how much pride can you take in a product the manufacturer is embarrassed to show in its entirety?

This is a shame. The wheels are actually a selling point because they provide the means for zone heating – simply wheel the fireplace from room to room as needed. Zone heating, or heating only the room you occupy, allows you to dial back your home’s master thermostat for substantial fuel savings.

On the other hand, attempting to “zone heat” your home for multiple occupants spread out in multiple rooms with just one Amish fireplace is impossible.

I have a few other issues with their marketing claims that I could delve into, such as “It uses about as much energy to run as a coffee maker” and regional energy costs, but they have little bearing on cost effectiveness when you pay $587 for a 1,500 watt space heater.

Looking for the perfect space heater? You’ll find it at Sam’s Guide to Small Space Heaters. Newly updated for 2010!

I don’t mean that literally, but figuratively. Why would I make such a bold statement? It’s simple. Social Media is changing everything related to Sales and Marketing. The tactics we traditionally used to market things in the past have become obsolete and impotent in today’s crowd influenced reputation-based marketplace. If you think the only change you need to make is to hire a social media expert and put them on your staff, you’ve missed the point. Social Media is driving such fundamental changes in the ways customers purchase that traditional marketing departments just do not have the structure, mindset and skills to be successful. The brand leaders of tomorrow have already made sweeping changes and they are well on their way of stealing your customers and market share. Are you willing to make the changes needed to catch-up?

Shift in Control: Major shifts in the purchase decision making process have occurred in the marketplace enabled by Web 2.0 technology and the rapidly growing popularity of Social Media. This change is so profound that it is redefining the role of marketing and how traditional forms of advertising, public relations, promotions and corporate communications are being used. To succeed, companies will need to modify their marketing mix and take a fresh look at their go-to-market strategies. Social Media has changed the rules of the game. Here are five reasons why you may want to re-think how your current marketing department is structured and staffed.

Power of the Crowd: The sales-driven one-to-many marketing mentality of the past (disruption marketing) will not work with Social Media. We’ve reached the tipping point where pull strategies (attraction marketing) have surpassed the value of hunter led push strategies. Reputation-based decision making using the crowd (friends, colleagues and third-party discussions) puts the power of information in the hands of the consumer. Buyers are no longer as reliant as they have been in the past on gaining information directly from the company. They are going to those they trust first.
Inverted Decision Making: Thanks to search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing and Social Media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp we live in a highly connected world. Access to trusted friends, colleagues and unbiased third-parties in order to gain advice, reviews and opinions has become pervasive. This collective feedback commonly known as the “Voice of the Customer” has influenced and changed the way decisions are made. Bad product reviews and poor customer service complaints can quickly become very visible to the general population. As a result, long before they even contact you, chances are your customers have already made up their mind on which product to buy, regardless of the number of times they have seen your brand message. The traditional purchase decision making process has become inverted which is shifting budgets and focus away from push strategies and putting greater emphasis on pull strategies.
Eyeballs Do Not Matter: Traditional marketing has always relied very heavily on defining success by the number of impressions created with your target audience. The thinking has been that the more prospects you touched multiple times the greater percentage of buyers you could persuade to buy your product. While still a factor, in Social Media the sheer volume of eyeballs you reach is not really that important. Success in Social Media is based on engagement, shared value and building trusted relationships. An unflattering twitter string or blog discussion will quickly erase any positive impressions you have made through push advertising regardless of the reach and frequency you have achieved. With Social Media, the quality of engagement is far more important than the quantity of touch-points you make.
Real-Time Agility: In the past, it was not uncommon to take a couple of days to contact an unsatisfied buyer, respond to a question or even address a poorly written article by a reporter. However, today it is different. With the viral aspects of the Web, a delay in responding by just a few hours can make or break your reputation. Dissatisfied consumers that do not hear from you can send out a tweet, post a blog or comment on get satisfaction.com and their complaint can be retweeted and shared with thousands in a matter of minutes. Social Media is an always-on 24/7 channel that requires you to be ready to respond to at any time, even over the weekend. Given the need for speed and vigilance, marketing needs to put greater focus on monitoring, evaluating and managing their online reputation. There are many free tools available today that can help facilitate this very important activity.
New Currency of Free: “Give to get” has become a standard practice in Social Media. It is the action of giving value to the crowd first in order to make a connection, start a dialog and ultimately become accepted by the community. Value can be provided in the form of free advice through a blog, tips in an eBook, complimentary research and other types of offerings like free tools and special widgets. It is the new currency of the Web. Building your online reputation and providing an on-going stream of valuable content requires a different set of processes. To be effective, marketing departments will need to perform more like a publishing company than the more functionally-based marketing departments of the past. Attraction marketing is a different type of animal and to optimize your effectiveness it will require a change in your people, processes and the technology you use.

In order to make my point, I will admit I probably have overstated the need to dismantle the marketing department, but the fact is there are very significant and fundamental changes taking place in the marketplace. The use of Social Media is growing exponentially, consumers have changed how they purchase and we live in a world that is highly connected and transparent. These changes require us to change the way we market and sell. The need for transformation is upon us and the companies that adapt the quickest will be the ones best positioned for success in the future.

Jim Arnold is a results-oriented marketing executive who has held leadership roles with IBM, HP/EDS, Sabre/Travelocity and other notable companies. He recently co-founded MetricsBoard, a new online performance benchmarking company that is crowd-generated and crowd-verified. Visit: http://www.metricsboard.com

Metricsboard.com provides free automated benchmarks that take less than 10 minutes online to complete. In return, you receive a metrics results report with free best practice comparison data, a maturity rating against your competition (peer group) and strategic recommendations. Your privacy is protected and you will not receive any sales calls.

Find out how you compare against your competition? Learn the latest marketing best practices and performance tips @ http://www.metricsboard.com/web20.html

In the past I have stated and written about the importance when hiring a Web Marketing Company to promote your company’s blog that you make sure they implement your blog into all of their Web Marketing Services and manually submit them to the major blog directories. Submitting your blog to these directories will have a drastic impact, and at the same time will improve your Google page rank and increase your site’s overall ranking in Google’s search engine results. Also, many of these directories have a high page rank themselves and they carry a lot of weight when it comes to acquiring new “back-links” to your website’s domain.

As I stated earlier it is very important that you concentrate in submitting your blog to the directories that have a higher page rank, so make sure the WEB Marketing Firm that you hire to promote your company’s blog focuses in getting your site added and listed on the major ones.

Submitting your site to the lesser known directories might not be as beneficial as targeting the ones with a higher page rank, although some SEO Experts will argue that a link is a link.

A couple of days ago I read an article that stated: Technorati, a search engine that monitors blogs, owned and operated by search behemoth “Google,” has indexed and spiders more than a 150 million blogs. With that in mind, here’s a quick list of 30 blog directories that every blog owner should be targeting with their Web Marketing Efforts!

1. 5StarBlogs.com

2. BlogAZoo.com

3. BlogBib.com

4. BlogBunch.com

5. BlogCatalog.com

6. BlogDir.com

7. BloggerFind.com

8. BlogHop.com

9. BloggerNity.com

10. Bloggeries.com

11. BlogHub.com

12. Blogion.com

13. Blogmighty.com

14. BlogOriffic.com

15. Blogmighty.com

16. BlogPulse.com

17. BlogRankings.com

18. BlogsbyWomen.org

19. Blogscholar.com

20. Blog-Search.com

21. BlogSearchEngine.com

22. BlogsForSmallBusiness.com

23. BlogSoldiers.com

24. BlogStreet.com

25. BlogSweet.com

26. BlogTagStic.com

27. BlogTree.com

28. BlogUniverse.com

29. BlogWise.com

30. Bloogz.com

Pedro Marquez is the CEO/Founder of http://www.SEOwebCure.com an Online & Internet Marketing Firm which specializes in Local Search Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services & Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing. http://twitter.com/marquezpedro48