Cleveland Marketing Consultant

Sports Sponsorships – Inside the Lines

With the economic downturn hitting the sports world just as hard as any other business – just ask the hometown Cleveland Indians – teams are looking to squeeze out any extra bit of possible revenue.

Walk into any professional sports stadium today and you’ll immediately be bombarded by advertising in a variety of different formats. In fact, it might seem that you see ads everywhere except for on the field. That is, unless you attend certain NFL training...

Shortly after being drafted, Lebron James signed a seven-year, $90 million endorsement deal with Nike. In 2006, Tiger Woods earned $20 million from Nike for promoting their golf division and that deal was just one small portion of their $1.7 billion advertising budget – that year, they spent $476 million on endorsements.  And, in 2009, Catherine Zeta-Jones will earn $20 million for encouraging us to undergo a mobile makeover with T-Mobile. 

Considering society’s fascination with celebrities, this...

Next time you’re out shopping, take notice of the amount of products claiming to be “environmentally friendly.” Do you believe these claims?

TerraChoice, an eco-consulting firm, took a closer look at the claims of almost 4,000 products claiming to be “natural and environmentally friendly.” The results were surprising – almost all of the claims were found to be “false or misleading.” Greenwashing, as it is known, means that consumers may find it harder than ever to know what claims to trust.

Wal-M...

"Pay-Per-Click," or PPC,” is a method of online advertising that's measurable, flexible and very fast. PPC ads are paid listings that appear above and to the right of the free listings on Google, Yahoo, and other search engines. To be listed in a search engine’s PPC’s results you pay/bid in an auction like manner. With PPC you only pay for the ads that are clicked on, so in addition to being able to quickly, measure the effectiveness of your ad, you can also track and justify your results...

Despite a difficult economy, you may want to think twice about cutting events from your marketing budget. Events are great way to not only attract prospective customers to your product or service, but they also present a chance for you to stay top of mind and potentially drum up business from your existing customers. 

Here are a few tips to lower your event budget:

Partner up to bring costs down: Rather than hosting an event solo, consider adding a partner to the event to help cover costs....

Ever wondered why car manufacturers abandoned the descriptive car names of the good ole’ days such as Rabbit, Monte Carlo or Imperial in favor of the seemingly random assortment of letters and numbers such as the DTS, CLK or the G6-GXP?

According to this article, the trend originally began with luxury car manufacturers in the 1970s that found it easier and less expensive to advertise and build the name of one brand with various model numbers rather than multiple model names.

This naming...

If you’re like just about every other business professional these days, sales are down, new business efforts are up and it’s time for you to get out…and start networking.  I know what you’re thinking.  I hate networking.  I’m painfully uncomfortable talking to a bunch of people I don’t know.  I don’t know what events to attend …etc.  I get it.  For most of us networking is as unnatural as a palm tree on the shores of Lake Erie, but the reality of the times is this:  You have to start doing...

The dummy here is me.  Or was me up until just a couple weeks ago.  While Twitter has approximately 4-5 million users, about 70% of whom are estimated to be active users, the concept was still somewhat strange to me.  Twitter allows users to answer the question, “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less and, even though I can’t imagine why people would care that I am “Now contemplating marathon #3…” or was “In the middle of a nice little weekend =)” last Saturday, the site still grew 974%...

If you’re familiar with Facebook, you’ve no doubt heard at least one of your Facebook friends complain about the popular social networking site’s new look. (If you’re not familiar with Facebook, stop reading this article and join the 175 million users around the world – after you’ve done so, come back, finish the article and learn how the new Facebook can be beneficial to your business).
 

What may have been lost in the shuffle amongst the discussion over the look of the personal profiles is the...

According to Nielsen, social networking has overtaken e-mail as the most popular Internet activity.  Nearly two-thirds of the world’s Internet users visited a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace in 2008 and almost 10% of all time spent on the Internet was spent on social media sites, with Facebook being the most popular of these.

This time isn’t just being spent posting pictures and SuperPoking people.  Businesses are creating fan pages and using them to communicate with current...

According to Nielsen, social networking has overtaken e-mail as the most popular Internet activity.  Nearly two-thirds of the world’s Internet users visited a social networking site like Facebook or MySpace in 2008 and almost 10% of all time spent on the Internet was spent on social media sites, with Facebook being the most popular of these.

This time isn’t just being spent posting pictures and SuperPoking people.  Businesses are creating fan pages and using them to market to and communicate...

Sometimes we need a reminder to do our homework – especially when launching a national rebranding campaign of a popular product. Tropicana recently provided us with a text-book case study of why it pays to know your audience before you go to market.

Only months after introducing a new look for its Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice, the company is scrapping the new packaging to return to its classic look. The change came after Tropicana was flooded with letters, emails and blogpostings...

A logo is a vital identifier that customers/prospects use to associate an organization with its products or services. The professionalism and attractiveness of a logo will immediately create a perception for the customers/prospects regarding a company’s level of integrity, product quality, player status and overall brand identity. These perceptions, right or wrong, are the factors that many customers use to measure a product or service before making a choice. A “hokey” logo can cheapen the...

How many news stories have started with, “in these economic times” over the past several months?  Too many to count, in all likelihood – here’s another one: In these economic times, companies need to be more creative with how they communicate their marketing message to their target audience. 

One inexpensive way to ensure positive things are being said about your company is by keeping your employees happy. While they may not spend their Saturdays sharing the virtues of your company like...

Have you ever finished reading a new product press re but by the end of the article still had no idea what the item did or why it was important? The most likely culprit? Jargon. We become so familiar with our jargon at work that, often times, we forget that not everyone uses TPS reports.

Dropping jargon into casual conversation with those outside your company might not cause too many problems, but jargon can be dangerous to a public relations campaign. A recently released survey of 1,214 American...

For someone who doesn’t like football, the best part of the Super Bowl is often the commercials.  For a Browns fan watching this year’s Super Bowl, they were the best part, but I digress… 

The cost of commercials in 2009 was $3 million for a 30-second spot – up 10% from $2.7 million in 2008 and up 17% from $2.5 million in 2007.  Companies like Pedigree, Castrol, Denny’s and 25 other advertisers spent this huge sum because they know that it serves them well to continue marketing in a down economy....

Before I get to our first marketing blog entry, I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. I’m Jonathan Ebenstein and I’ll be your author for the next ten or so paragraphs. I invite you to sit back, relax and open your mind.

If you’ve sifted at all through our Firm’s web site, you’d know that we are a CPA, Business and Financial Advisory firm.  We help our clients, mostly companies, grow their business through a myriad of professional services (i.e., Tax, Accounting & Auditing, IT, Financial ...