Marketing Matters Blog

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Category Archives: Marketing

Project Spotlight: Leisure Creations Furniture Product Catalog

Last year Leisure Creations Furniture approached Marketing Matters to improve the design of its 48-page product catalog. Leisure Creations felt its previous catalogs didn’t communicate the quality and design capabilities of its high-grade commercial pool and patio furniture.

We worked with Leisure Creations to create great images of its furniture line, develop compelling and concise product descriptions to help its customers generate orders, and provide an award-winning  design.

In the end, we came out with a winner – the catalog won two design awards: the 2010 Apex and 2010 Hermes Platinum Awards.

And, after such fanfare, we got the call again this year. Great news for us, and now we believe we have hit back-to-back homers. What do you think?

We’ll leave you with a quote:
“Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”
- Paulo Coelho, Brazilian Novelist.

On Cheese, Technology & the Amish

Let’s get one thing straight: It’s good to be Amish. Bless their hearts, they lead a good, clean simple life. They’re honest. Hard-working. Faithful. Yet, as a professional in the consumer electronics and technology industry, are the Amish your target audience?

Of course they aren’t.

So then WHY are you continuing to market your high-tech products and services in a way that would only appeal to the simple lifestyle of this good agrarian demographic?

Even the best of us get weary of the onslaught of technology. It seems there is something new to learn every day. Frankly, that can get tiring. Without recognizing it, in seeming self-defense, humans are creatures that can turn their backs on problems. They can ignore new and vital trends. In doing so, some of us can end up becoming extinct, like the Beta tape or the Macarena.

For example, one of the newest and fastest growing societal trends is the phone. Not that one-ton object de arte hanging on Grandma’s kitchen wall with the big rotary dial. More and more, people are using their smartphones and tablets to interact with the world. Ten million apps have been downloaded from iTunes. Millions of people are using these tools to order concert tickets, buy coffee, make restaurant reservations and now, pick out high-tech products from catalogues — 24 hours a day.

Mobile marketing is just one piece of the marketing technology world. QR codes, online chat, video training tips, mobile advertising and social media are some of the technology tools now available. It’s time to reach your customers through the venues that work best for them. And, make it easy for them to do business with you.

We are entering a new era. This explosion of new technology is not a bad thing. It’s an opportunity for businesses — well, smart businesses — to engage with their consumers directly in a medium that is a powerful reality of economics, marketing, sales and analytics. That can be scary. And enticing.

The key is to take a step. You can start small as long as you just start. Why? Because your competition will—or already has.

Not to make your head spin with the mixing the Amish with cheese, but we’d like to remind you of the theme of Dr. Spencer Johnson’s classic business book: “Who Moved My Cheese?” It’s about change. Can you?

Change can be a good thing. Clean. Refreshing. Freeing. The vitality, the excitement, the profits of not only accepting change, but going after your “cheese” with hope and gusto is the very thing that drives business and makes us get out of bed every morning. Well, most mornings, hopefully.

For those who can adapt, learn and change, there is the reward of success. For those who can’t adapt, well, the ending of “Who Moved My Cheese” is not very happy for the little person who would not move.

The first key to turn is to use the tools available now, learn and grow and be ahead of curve. Or, you might want to pack it in and hitchhike out to an Amish farmhouse, knock on the door and ask if they have any chores…

QR Codes: Using Smartphones to Boost Your Sales

QR stands for Quick Response code. You’ve seen them. It looks like a pixilated bar code and it appears on just about everything from magazine ads to posters, to the front of business doors or on the sides of trucks. They are read from the bar code scanner from any smartphone.

We at Marketing Matters? We’re in favor of them. Why?

According to the nice people at Nielson who count things, 31 percent of the U.S. uses smartphones and that number is growing. Of that 31 percent, 69 percent use these applications.

QR codes are simple to use. By just scanning a QR code with your smartphone, your customers are immediately linked to a web page, short video or even your catalogues and sales materials — 24 hours a day. Your customers can also check inventory and place orders — 24 hours a day.

Through that tiny device, the smartphone, you can update prices, offers or information about your products. Even better, you can always be tuned in to collect customer data and measure the effectiveness of print communications and display ads — elusive measurements for marketers in the past.

Here at Marketing Matters, we use QR codes on our business cards and on most of our printed materials. This allows users to quickly navigate to our contact page — or whatever page or video we want them to see. From there, users can read more information about us, or just tap on our number to give us a call. We also use them on cards placed in event pressrooms, like at CEDIA Expo, so editors can quickly go to the client’s press page.

Not everyone will be interested enough in your brand or product to scan your codes. Sorry. That’s life. But for those who do, they’ll be rewarded with relevant content. They can take that step from being attracted to calling you and placing orders. Our challenge as marketers is to ensure the correct content is provided to our intended audiences whether B2B or B2C.

If you are ready to use QR codes, start small. Measure. Adjust your program and/or message based on results. Tell your customers what it is and what it is for (example: Scan this QR code with your smartphone to read/see/enter/purchase, etc…). Before you know it, you’ll have the data and insight to adjust your marketing mix to its optimum.

The smartphone is nothing less than magic.

Will you be using QR codes in 2011? At Marketing Matters, we can help. I would love to hear your plans or thoughts.

Coleen Sterns Leith is president and chief techno-geek at Marketing Matters, a communications and design firm specializing in technology, consumer and custom electronics, audio-video, and related industries. As a 20-plus year consumer electronics industry veteran, she is a recognized expert in public relations, business development, and marketing. Coleen and her firm are headquartered in Hollywood, Florida. She can be reached at coleen@marketingmatters.net.