Marketing Advice That Matters
Concept testing is a great way for companies to get in touch with customers’ needs and generate innovative ideas when it comes to new product development. Here are some of the reasons why concept testing in new product development will help your company’s success.
What is Concept Testing?
Concept testing is the process of collecting qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate consumer responses to a new product development idea. Researchers rely on an array of methods to solicit customer responses, employing surveys, written statements, images, or graphics to gauge customer responses to a new product concept. The data collected provides companies and product manufacturers with important information that can save them time and money in the long run on development and marketing costs. In other words, concept testing in new product development essentially allows companies to ‘pitch’ new product ideas to potential customer bases, soliciting customer feedback and reactions.
Coming up with a new idea for a product is an arduous process in and of itself. Multiple ideas are pitched and thrown out while only a select few make it to the concept testing stage. Concept testing in new product development is an absolutely essential way for developers and researchers to determine what aspects of a new product need to be altered or eliminated in order to appeal to customers, allowing companies to cut down on unnecessary production, labor, and marketing costs.
When Does Concept Testing Occur?
Concept testing in new product development occurs before a product is introduced to the market. Thus, developers can work out any ‘glitches’ with a product before spending time and money on manufacturing and advertising costs. Concept testing doesn’t only allow for researchers to evaluate customer responses to the product itself, however. Researchers can also evaluate best practices involved in marketing and advertising campaigns. It’s important to recognize that concept testing focuses predominantly on the product concept or idea; it is not necessarily the same as marketing or advertising texting.
Concept testing in new product development also allows researchers and develops to stay attuned to changing market trends. Through the data collected, researchers can evaluate what types of products customers are interested in, or can identify an unfulfilled niche in product development, thus anticipating customer needs. Concept testing helps companies get closer to the customers they serve because customers will provide helpful and genuine feedback regarding the new product or service the company is pitching. As businesses and organizations look to launch a new product or invest in the development of a new product idea, concept testing is a valuable way for companies to identify the unique perceptions, wants, and needs of the intended market.
All Feedback is Good Feedback
Of course, some product concepts will solicit unfavorable responses, in which case businesses and organizations will have to go back to the drawing board, as it were, either tweaking their concept ideas based on the feedback provided, or scrapping the idea altogether. Few new product companies receive overwhelmingly positive reviews by test audiences, so the majority of concept testing projects understand that it’s a process of revision, revision, revision, until the concept is just right.
The feedback that companies and organizations get from concept testing in new product development aids them in creating the best possible products, or in investing in the best possible product idea to appeal to their customers. Sometimes, companies will research various markets, depending on how large a market-base they are looking for. Both small and large companies participate in concept testing because the advantages it provides far outweigh the expenses associated with it.
Competitive Markets
Businesses are perhaps in more competition with one another than they have ever been before. As the world becomes increasingly more globalized and online shopping is quickly becoming the norm, companies find themselves having to come up with new and smarter ways to develop and market new products. Concept testing in new product development helps companies differentiate between a good idea and a great one, helping them to offer customers only the best new products. It’s a consumer’s world out there, after all, and companies need not only to be accountable to their customers, but also to be highly aware of consumer perceptions, needs, and desires. The way that people do business has certainly changed with the onset of the new millennium, and companies must keep up with the trends in order to stay competitive.
Concept testing in new product development is a great way for companies and organizations to assess customer trends and desires when at the preliminary stages of a product’s development.
The landscape of the healthcare industry is changing. Patients play more active role in their care choices and you are required to provide them better information to help them make informed choices. But, how would they know until someone tells them? This makes marketing more important for your medical practice.
Medical marketing is not only about advertising your services. It also involves patient communications, fine tuning processes that will improve patient experience and adding a non-clinical perspective of patient care and services. Here are some tips for medical marketing services providers to develop a strategic marketing plan that will help medical practices.
Important Elements of Strategic Medical Marketing Plan
Your strategic medical marketing plan should have the ability to interact with your patients and potential customers on different platforms. Multi-channel marketing is the best way to communicate with your audience. Here are some important elements of the medical marketing ( http://www.ehow.com/list_7232478_medical-marketing-strategies.html ) plan you should focus on.
Responsive Website Design
A responsive website design means the site should respond to a user’s behavior and the device environment that includes platform, screen size and orientation. Today’s user accesses the internet from various devices that includes laptop, smartphones and iPad. The website should be able to automatically switch to suit the screen resolution, scripting and adjust image sizes accordingly. In other words, the website design should have the ability to adjust to the user’s preferences. The website should be easy to navigate even on the small screen.
Social Media Marketing
Hospitals need to take a deeper look at social media marketing to meet their target patient demographics. Several leading healthcare organizations are already using social media to successfully connect with patients. As per the Journal of Medical Internet Research, around 95% of hospitals are having a Facebook page while 50% hospitals have Twitter account.
The healthcare industry can learn a lot from the hospitality industry about using social media effectively and engage their customer base in conversation. There are several examples of using social media effectively to reach and resolve patient issues.
One such example is of Ohio State University Medical Center, which monitors Twitter and other social media platforms for posts by patients referencing their hospital and/or doctors. In one instance, one of their patients had posted complaint about wait time to see the physician. A staff member of the Ohio State University Medical Center responded directly to the patient on Twitter and contacted appropriate hospital staffer who arranged for a medical representative to meet the patient and diffuse the situation.
Email Marketing
Email lists are powerful tools of marketing for the healthcare industry. You can easily grow your hospital brand by offering content rich email marketing program on a regular basis. Your audience mainly includes patients, referring physicians and donors. The email marketing program can be effectively used to drive prospective patients to your clinic/hospital. It helps to inform and make people aware of the services you offer and stay visible until they need it.
Paid Advertising
Paid advertising aka PPC are good ways to save time and also effective to gain patients. There are several paid advertising tools such as Google AdWords, Facebook Local Awareness Ads, and LinkedIn Ads that bring more recognition, referrals and patients as well.
One of the good thing about PPC is you can always control the costs. Depending on your marketing strategy, costs can be as low as $1 per day with Facebook and $0.30 using AdWords.
Postcard Marketing
Postcards can be effective medical marketing tools. Direct mail marketing still holds importance in this digital age of marketing. The simple reason is today’s consumer is bombarded with too much digital marketing content and postcard come across as a unique marketing tool.
One plus-point of postcard marketing is despite inflation; postage rates are still affordable. Postcards are direct in their message delivery as there is no envelope masking the contents. You can easily gain the attention of the targeted consumer base by designing attention grasping, friendly postcards.
Marketing is important for every business, including healthcare and medical practitioners. And Medical marketing when done in the right way can have a direct influence on patient’s choice and also help in hospital branding.
Though non-profit organizations are not selling anything or don’t need publicity for their public service, they do need some marketing to reach their prospective donors and gather funds. And the best way to market the initiatives of a non-profit organization is to send out simple yet heartwarming postcards and newsletters. Hence, this direct mail solution is the most feasible option for any kind of non-profit event. In this article we are going to discuss how to use mail for fundraising events i.e. direct mail fundraising campaigns.
Why Direct Mail Marketing?
Direct mail marketing is one of the oldest but most effective means of marketing products, services and even non-profit initiatives. Postcards, newsletters, letters, brochures, calendars, flyers; there are a number of ways a non-profit organization can convey its message to its donors. It is preferred by almost all organizations even to this day, and the reason for direct mail’s everlasting success even during the times of emails, smartphones and social media is pretty simple; it is emotional. People have a certain emotional attachment to mail as it brings back the nostalgia of this once loved routine, eagerly checking for mails in mailboxes. In addition to being emotional, mails can also be customized, targeted, personalized and are cheap when compared to other alternatives like newspaper, radio and TV adverts.
Tips to Improvise Direct Mail Fundraising Campaigns
If your organization is hosting a fundraising event and if you are planning to send an invite to all your prospective donors via direct mail, follow the below mentioned tips to make it a successful direct mail fundraising campaign.
1. Preparing your Mailing List- Before you decide on aspects such as content, design, budget and postage, make sure you have a refined list of all the donors you want to reach out to. Based on their previous contributions and promises, prepare a refined mailing list that only includes those donors who are likely to donate this time. This increases your conversion rates, adds value to your fundraising event and also reduces the number of redundant mails and costs incurred.
2. Type of Direct Mail- As mentioned above, there are a number of ways you can convey your message using mail- postcards, newsletters, letters, brochures, flyers etc. In order to have a successful direct mail fundraising campaign, choose the type that will stand out in your donor’s mailbox. Your campaign’s primary objective must be to grab your donor’s attention and not end up as junk mail in trash. Attractive postcards and newsletters without envelopes are normally the ideal choice for fundraisers.
3. Outline and Design- With a bunch of other mail, your postcard or newsletter has to stand out and grab the reader’s attention in a few seconds. Outline of the entire mail piece, content distribution, its design, choice of colors, fonts- every little detail plays a major role in influencing your prospective donors. So in order to make your direct mail fundraising (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_mail_fundraising) successful, attention to detail and design is a must. Also ensure the paper quality is good enough to make the invite presentable and dignified.
4. Content- Though looks play a major role in grabbing attention, it is the content inside that makes all the difference once your mail gets picked up. Donors expect a lot of information such as the cause supported by the fundraiser, annual reports of the organization etc. Make sure to furnish every little information that’s worth mentioning and use bold fonts for headlines and other outliners.
5. Acknowledgement- Once the donors seem interested in the fundraiser and officially confirm their participation, it is a courteous gesture to send them a thank you card and acknowledge their contribution. Keep them well informed about the event and also mention how this contribution will further strengthen the relationship between the donor and the organization.
6. Contact Information- Lastly, to keep your direct mail fundraising campaign effective and successful, furnish the mail piece with all the relevant details, contact number & address and links to social media pages. Hand addressed mails are very popular in the non-profit organizations as they add value to the mail piece and make it look more personal.
In this era of digitization, internet marketing is the way to go forward to make your business reach sky heights. And when it comes to selecting the right digital marketing tool, SEO has always topped the popularity chart because of the unique benefits it comes with.
But, many businesses are still not sure if they need SEO or how it can help them. If you’re one of them and think alike, then read on as we have mentioned the top five questions you need to ask yourself to evaluate if you really need it.
Are you wondering what they are? Let’s take a look at them now.
1. Do I Need High Return on Investment?
It is obvious that your answer will be “Yes”.
Every small business owner wants their website to attract prospects and convert them into customers. Sugar Land SEO is a savior here as it improves the visibility way more than other marketing and that also in a cost-effective pricing.
Also, SEO helps you to attract customers from all over the world without any international marketing expenses.
According to a report, 93% of purchase decisions start with search engines. However, as per SEO statistics, 75% of Internet users never goes beyond the first page of SERP. This means you are losing the majority of potential customers to your competitors.
Only a good SEO strategy can get your website to the first page and increase online visibility that will bring in new customers.
2. Do I want to Stay ahead of My Competitor?
The answer is undoubtedly “Yes”.
If your competitor is attracting the majority of the online traffic, it means their SEO is done in the right way.
An SEO agency like SEO India company can help you analyze what your competitor is doing online and how they are getting more visibility and sales which is done through keyword research. If you want your potential customers to find your business first, then it is important you use low competitive right keywords.
But, if you sit back and don’t take SEO seriously, you’ll always stay behind.
3. Do I Need a Long-term Marketing Tool?
If you want to make your business successful, you need a long-term marketing tool that can continuously help you achieve greater ROI in the coming years.
SEO will stay for long and it will continue to affect your rankings. However, it is a continuous process which evolves over the time and you need to adopt the changes to stay ahead in competition.
Over the years, some businesses adopted wrongs ways of SEO and were penalized. So, you should keep yourself abreast with the latest updates.
The concept of SEO will never change, but the techniques to maintain your rankings will change. It won’t wrong to say that SEO will remain effective as long as the Internet exists.
4. Do I Need to Increase visibility of My Website?
SEO is the best way to increase your website visibility. The main purpose of SEO is to bring your website on the first page of search engine results. This helps people find your business when they need it.
A good SEO strategy spans across all verticals and covers traffic from desktop computers as well as mobile devices. SEO techniques such as guest blogging, and customer reviews on third-party sites can help you establish credibility and thought-leadership in your industry.
Needless to say, the more credible and knowledgeable your prospects will find you, the more they will visit your website.
5. Do I Need Qualified Leads?
SEO is the best way to bring quality leads to your site and increase conversion. It helps your business reach out to only those who are looking for services or products that you are offering. This means you get relevant and qualified leads and not any generic lead like it happens with other marketing tools.
Hopefully, the aforementioned information helps you understand why you need to invest in SEO for your business.
Venturing a business online and to grow it exponentially demands high web traffic. But, how can you gain higher traffic and revenues? The answer is SEO.
With several numbers of online marketing tactics coming up every day, SEO seems to remain unchallenged. But, will SEO turn your business productive? Will you be able to gain a huge customer base?
Well, we have valuable survey reports to echo SEO as a possible way to bring a high volume of traffic and gain higher ROI. So, let’s take a look how it can help your business grow.
Turns Your Website Visitors into Customers
Houston SEO firm helps you to create a better, fast and friendly website for the users. It doesn’t just focus on the search engines, but also on the customers.
If the search engines feel happy with your website, so will your visitors. And because the visitors become happy, they will most likely make a purchase on your site and get converted into customers.
Good on-page SEO techniques create a number of short and long-term benefits as well.
If you have the ambition to take your business to greater heights, then SEO is the only tool to aid your goal. It is not something expensive, but with a decent investment, can generate remarkable results.
As per a report by Conductor called “Inside Enterprise SEO: SEO Survey Benchmarks for Large Companies”, around 72% participants found a positive role of SEO to achieve coveted business goals.
Makes Your Business Visible at the Top of Search Results
There are more than 250 million websites on the web, so it is hard to stand out in this huge crowd.
But, SEO can make it possible.
Even if you have a highly competitive product, such as clothing or food products, SEO can still help your brand stand out from the rest and boost your sales.
As predicted, 60% of all organic clicks reach the top three organic top search results (Business2Community); this means 40% of the clicks goes for the second through millions of results on Google. And SEO is the only tool to gain that top spot on Google.
Increase Revenue
According to ComScore report, more than 12 billion searches per month on desktops alone happen in the US.
Huge search volumes open up possibilities for higher conversion rates. SEO may put your company in a position to expand to a large web server and accommodate more traffic and sales.
Also, the Bright Local report that included 1,759 SEO professionals, revealed 62% of the respondents earned over $75,000 by leveraging SEO solutions to their customers. The fact shows that SEO is an indispensable choice to promote business online.
Explore New Markets and Expand Globally
A business with website grows twice faster compared to a business with no website. SEO India company helps your website to gain better rankings in search engine result pages or SERPs and target potential customers.
The best part is you can penetrate new markets without hiring any foreign resources or additional investment.
The report from Bright Local says that 17% of the respondents believe SEO is the most effective mode to engage new customers. It lies in close proximity to word-of-mouth of publicity that caters 28% engagement.
With 61 percent (Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance report) Internet users located globally who prefer to research products online, it is high time to get your business in front of them.
So, when do you plan to use SEO for your small business? Do you want to target local market or international or both? Have any questions for us or would like to add any point here? Please feel free to leave your comments below and thanks for reading!
One of the main objectives of all sales and marketing plans will be to capture the attention of the prevailing and prospective customers. Presenting worthwhile mementos to them is a pragmatic way to accomplish this goal in a pleasing manner. Everybody loves gifts, and even when the gift is small, the receiver will feel greatly pleased. This in turn will create an ongoing positive bond between the individuals concerned and the company that gives out the souvenir.
Travel Coffee mug Will Serve as an Appreciable Memento
A travel mug is an attractive and appropriate gift item and will perfectly fill the bill for carrying out winning advertising campaigns. Such promotional items will make the recipients really contented, because of the handy nature. Besides, companies can customize these China travel mug in tune with their own actual advertorial requirement, by using specific logos, themes, or trade names. This is indeed a smart way to popularize their products and the related brand names, which will certainly generate advantageous results.
Good Aspects of Travel Coffee Mugs
Traveling has become a routine task in this day and age; a sizable section of the present-day populace will be always on the move from one place to another for varied reasons. The number of daily commuters is increasing day by day. In most of these cases, people travel just to cover short distances; for instance, from one’s own residence to the workstation and back.
• Carrying a travel coffee mug
is a good option during such occasions, as it provides the traveler the option to drink home prepared coffee, even while on the go.
• One can use travel coffee mug not only to carry just coffee, but also other types of drinks. This versatility makes the product all the rage.
• Another notable point is that one can use this mug to store hot liquids, as well as cold juices. In essence, one will be able to enjoy hot coffee/tea or other drinks during the cold season and cool drinks, when the atmospheric temperature soars high.
• There are various sizes available and one can choose in accordance with his or her specific need. Let whatever be the size of the product, the quality of the contained liquid will remain intact and indeed, practically that matters a lot.
Travel Coffee Mug – Customize with Your Company Logo
Presenting customized travel coffee mugs as company mementoes has turned out to be a pragmatic way to make the connected marketing campaign successful. Travel coffee mugs (http://www.ehow.com/how_7012706_remove-coffee-stains-travel-mugs.html) are of much value to almost all daily travelers, as it gives them the chance to carry self-prepared coffee with them. However, companies take care to customize the item by imprinting the promoter logo before presenting them to the customers.
In our time, many business establishments are coming forward to incorporate such novel ideas as an integral part of their marketing strategy. However, it is imperative that if you plan to give a memento to your clientele, then, it must be a useful one; the product must bear qualitative significance.
Hence, your primary objective should be to find top-quality travel mugs or thermos for coffee that are worthy of presenting as a souvenir. Here, you must bear in mind that only professionally managed manufacturing units produce superior quality travel coffee mugs that will give trouble-free and long-lasting service to the users. Therefore, you will have to search and locate such a company first. In this day and age, where computers and internet have become par for the course of social life, this task is quite easy. You will just have to google a related phrase or a keyword to gain access to the websites of top ranking coffee mug manufacturers.
You can visit different websites and gather the key data such as the experience of the manufacturing company, their technical expertise, the certifications the company hold, the materials the company use in the production, the quality of the marketed product, etc. You can compare the details and take a practically possible decision. In any case, the product should have both aesthetic appearance and high usability nature.
Dealers should take special attention to build up quality stocks comprising of varied colors, sizes, as well as designs. Customers will always have different tastes and requirements, and so dealers must be able to satisfy their exact needs. There is a general demand for travel coffee mugs having colors such as ‘silver’, ‘green’, ‘purple’, ‘blue’, ‘black’, and ‘yellow’. As far as the size is concerned, you can choose a range that lies in-between 0.36L to 0.45L, because these are the commonly preferred sizes.
Copy for great fundraising letters is challenging than most other copy writing tasks for marketing objectives. But often such crucial copywriting tasks are executed by next desk executives rather than expert copywriters. That is the constraint for small businesses as they cannot spend huge on copywriting. But effective copywriting is not all. You have to segment your mailing list prior to preparing copy. Actually, you need to address different segment in a different way. Such an approach will definitely enjoy the higher attention and chances of meeting the goal. Here are some key tips for effective direct mail fundraising.
1. Make use of distinction and segmentation in preparing separate mails
Writing and sending one fundraising letter (http://nonprofit.about.com/od/fundraising/tp/fundletters.htm)
to all without any distinction of the recipient is very unlikely to bring any result. There are too many distinctions to make and at a more granular level you can make such distinction more you have your chances to achieve your fundraising goal from different segment of people. The first distinction that nobody can overlook is between individual and business and foundations. Secondly, you can make a big distinction between people having donation track record and people being addressed for the first time. Now you can go segmenting at the granular level, such as monthly donor, yearly donor, active donor, frequent donor, major donors, minor donors, etc. You have to prepare separate mail with a separate copy for each segment of recipient or potential donors.
2. Focus on the donor’s benefits rather than your needs
Set the tone of the address that touches the recipient personally, but all the time makes sure your copy gives him most focus. You have to explain the benefits of making such donation in explicit terms rather than limiting yourself with your needs.
3. Ask for money in clear and explicit terms
Never ask in vague terms such as ‘support’ which is a relative term and does not mean fund in all cases. So when asking for fund, clearly mention the amount in numeric number.
4. Write simple, straightforward and meaningful copy
Finally, it is your convincing copy that would do all the jobs. Write in simple and straightforward English without giving vent to unclear literary terms using custom postcard. Donors are less likely to read a letter down to the last line if it goes on beating around the bush.
5. Make sure the letter content is optimized for readability
Optimize your copy with small paragraphs, heads and sub headings, bullet points and underlines in places. The reader can easily make out the main points with a look over the main points and often that inspires them to read the rest of the letter.
6. Make sure the letter is accompanied by a package
A single lone letter without any accompanying literature, envelope and replying envelope often is viewed with contempt and they find their place among the trash. Moreover, a letter accompanied by a reply envelope pushes the recipient to engage and undertake the action of replying.
7. The length should directly correspond to your purpose
Few recipients would have time to go through a long letter that unnecessarily takes too many words. Most donors just have a quick look through rather than reading the whole letter. So, make the letter as long as it takes to make the point.
8. Avoid telling too much about your organization
Instead of spending too many words on your organization inside the letter it is recommended to offer a detailed document with the letter corresponding to the vision, values and credentials of your organization. Most donors do not bother to remember organization details and so avoid offering them such details inside the letter. A short, crisp and to the point mention of the organization and fundraising objective is enough. For details, refer the accompanying document.
