Posts Tagged ‘effective marketing’

How to Use Facebook for Marketing and Advertising in Las Vegas

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Facebook currently has more than 400 million active users all over the world, making this social network platform an extremely useful instrument for effective marketing and advertising for your Las Vegas business. Facebook allows you to create an advertisement that will be placed on the margin of a page.

You will be able to create or increase consumer demand for your product through Facebook advertisements; you can also attach social actions to your ads and make it more relevant to the Facebook users, and you can target Las Vegas Facebook users. Facebook allows you to choose your target group, including their location and age, thus maximizing the opportunity of bringing in new customers and revenues. You can create your Facebook ads easily by creating or uploading pictures and put on text-based information that will intrigue your potential customers. You can also advertise your website by creating a Page on Facebook to draw in fans. Finally, Facebook enables you to track the progress of your marketing with real-time reporting. The simple bar charts will help you compare what gender and what age group of Facebook users pay the most attention to your ads. After you understand who are clicking on your ads, you can then modify them to maximize the efficiency in drawing in new customers.

Here are some to enhance the effectiveness of your ads on Facebook:

  1. Use an enticing and relevant photo that will attract Facebook users to click on your ad. Most Internet users are numb towards advertisements so it is extremely important for you to use the visual element to attract their attention.
  2. Write a clear and concise message. Again, most Facebook users will not spend more than 30 seconds reading an ad. Make your tag line direct and relevant to accommodate to their short attention span.
  3. Utilize other Facebook features such as Page, Application, Group, and Event. This will allow you to increase the visibility of your website and they do not cost you extra money.
  4. Narrow down your target audience. As you are relying on Facebook to connect with potential customers directly, you have to make sure that your ads pertain to their interests and offer them service or products that they may need.

Creating a Facebook advertisement is very easy. You simply have to go on to Facebook and click on the “Try Facebook Ads” on the right margin. You will then enter into a step-by-step guide that will provide you assistance along the way until you create your very first ad.

Top Effective Marketing Strategies for Las Vegas Business

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Marketing your Las Vegas company is the current economy is now more important than ever. Without effective marketing strategies in place, you will not be able to reach new potential customers, and as we always say, if you aren’t marketing, your competitors surely are.

With this in mind, I’ve compiled a list of links that discuss and outline top effective marketing strategies for businesses:

If you need assistance with constructing a Las Vegas Marketing Strategy, please contact Perkolate at 702.341.0085.

Why it is Important for Las Vegas to Market During a Recession

Friday, August 14th, 2009

In tough economic times, especially here in Las Vegas, it is easy to eye marketing and market research as potential victims for the chopping block. However completely axing marketing can have devastating results for a Las Vegasbusiness.

Consider an analogy: A runner’s muscles need air. Even though the muscles may not have burned all the oxygen in the blood, the lungs continue pumping new air, new oxygen into the blood stream. Without the lungs continuing to pump air and oxygen, the muscles would use up whatever oxygen was in the blood and then tire quickly before failing completely Does this seem like a far fetched analogy? I assure you that it is not. Cash flow and continued patronage are the oxygen of any business. And marketing is to business what lungs are to a runner: Marketing continually pumps in new business, new patronage and new cash flow.

But if a business has worked hard to develop a loyal customer base, why can’t it rely on this base until things loosen up a bit? The answer is simple. There is no such thing as a loyal customer base. It’s not that customers are fickle and whimsical. It is that the customer also exists in a fluid environment where they constantly have to make choices in order to provide for and protect their families. In a free market system, competition is fierce. In a free market system during a recession competition is brutally fierce. Your customers need reduced prices while still getting quality products or services. If your business doesn’t provide this, it is 100% guaranteed that someone else will. Would you really expect your customer to turn down a better deal out of loyalty? Would you remain with a vendor if the vendor no longer offered your business the best deal available?

So we’ve established that there is no way to just hold your breath through a recession and hope your customers stay with you. But your business is in the red, you are dangerously short of liquid cash and marketing is as much art as it is science. How are you supposed to know how to apply your money when you need to be sure of a return? Of course, there are no guarantees but there are a few things to remember. A recession shakes things up. Some of your competitors will freeze up. They are not your worry. Your worry is the horde of competitors who are hungry, a little desperate and ready to try anything to take a bite out or your market share. Some of them are going to make mistakes, be hasty and blow their budget on ineffective marketing. Some of them will be do something different, effective, will tap into the customer’s need for comfort during a recession. You need to be one of these companies. Easier said than done?

However, there is one fundamental that is often ignored when people get scared. Keep it simple! It’s a recession. People aren’t in the mood for anything cute. They aren’t in the mood to see a company blow millions on a slick ad campaign. People want security, longevity, reliability, honesty. Those qualities are best communicated by customer service. It takes a human face. Don’t bug your customers with surveys, followup phone calls, etc. Teach your employees to always ask what the customer needs and mean it! It’s shocking to see how often companies try to pitch their customers. In good times, customers put up with it because it’s often entertaining. In hard times, customers just go somewhere else. Don’t anticipate their needs, ask them what they need. Improved customer service requires thought, energy and leadership but isn’t inherently expensive. It’s not an ad campaign but it is far more effective if implemented sincerely. And while you’re at it, if you want your employees to be sincere and attentive to your customers, why don’t you ask them what the company can do to alleviate some of their stress? What do they need to do their job well? If you tell them to be attentive, very few will comply. If you model it, most of them will be happy to imitate the behavior. Sincerity is infectious.

Dropping marketing during a recession isn’t an option. To complete the analogy: Just as it is even more crucial for a runner to breath deeply through the most demanding exercise, businesses must market, pursue customers, communicate with customers during a recession. The analogy holds true. If you stop marketing, you may as well try to run a race without breathing.

Marketing Communications Strategy for Your Las Vegas Business

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

When you start your Las Vegas business or company (or are thinking about your marketing in general) you should consider writing out a basic marketing communications strategy to help guide you along. It will help you stand out from your competition.

There are really 10 basic things to consider (questions to ask of yourself and write down answers to) when creating a simple marketing communication strategy:

  1. Understand your target market - know who they are, what they are like, what issues and problems they’re encountering and how they think and feel.
  2. Write effective marketing copy - make it personal to your potential customers and tell them how your products and services will help them solve their business problems. Create your elevator pitch carefully.
  3. Define your business needs and abilities - make sure you can deliver on the products and services your business is offering and know the resources, internal and external, required to deliver to your clients.
  4. Choose tactics to implement - you should always include the basics, business cards, brochures, a website, etc.
  5. Create a timeline of execution - create a reasonable schedule and leave ample time to execute your strategies and tactics and judge the results.
  6. Create strategic alliances - find companies or related businesses with whom you could exchange business.
  7. Define a budget - you cannot execute all of your strategies and tactics without a budget plan in place. Marketing yourself takes money.
  8. Decide how to communicate with your target - print materials, ads, online, a website, television or radio.
  9. Track your results - marketing communications can be refined and reworked by tracking and analyzing your results and adjusting future marketing communications plans accordingly.
  10. Separate your company from your competition - research your competitors and discover their weaknesses and capitalize your marketing in part around their weaknesses.

Top 10 Effective Marketing Strategies and Tactics for Your Business

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

In this tough economy, you have to make the most of your marketing budget and time. We’ve developed some of the more effective marketing and strategies that have worked for us and can work for you as well, so we thought we’d share them with you in an effort to help you grow your business.

Top 10 Marketing Strategies and Tactics:

  1. Stand out from your competition. Create a unique corporate identity, define how you stand out from others and write effective calls-to-action in your copy. 
  2. Create relationships with your customers. People like personalized service, after all, we are doing business with PEOPLE and not companies when all is said and done.
  3. Have a simple, effective and easy to use website and have it optimized for search engines.  It makes you look successful and will get you traffic that can convert to leads and new business.
  4. Collect email addresses. Both on your website and offline by collecting business cards, get those emails into a spreadsheet and when you’re ready, you can start using them in email marketing efforts.
  5. Join local business networking or social groups.  Getting yourself out into the Las Vegas community and meeting people creates relationships and when people know you and what you do for work, they will recommend you and your company.
  6. Speak about what you do. Getting speaking gigs and talking to people about what you do illustrates your expertise and gets you and your company out into the public eye.
  7. Write and publish press releases. Get any news about your business happenings out to the public, can be done both online and offline.
  8. Have professional marketing materials. Includes logo, business cards, website, flyers, brochures, case studies and testimonials.
  9. Online Advertising. Includes SEO, Social Networking, Paid Inclusion programs and more.
  10. Blog it! Create a blog for your website and write about what you do, become a recognized expert.