With all of us experiencing the harsh new economic realities, how do you plan to market your brand in the coming year? One thing is for sure, if you want to be successful, the same old strategies will not work as well as they once did.
Marketing Web has compiled a list of 10 marketing and branding trends that you’ll want to keep in mind for 2010. For more detail on each trend, click here to view the full article.
1) Value is the new black
2) Brands increasingly a surrogate for "value"
3) Brand differentiation is Brand Value
4) "Because I Said So" is so over
5) Consumer expectations are growing
6) Old tricks don't work/won't work anymore
7) They won't need to know you to love you
8) It's not just buzz
9) They're talking to each other before talking to the brand
10) Engagement is not a fad; It's the way today's consumers do business
For more information on Skoda Minotti Marketing Services, visit our web site or call us at 440-449-6800.
Some of these opportunities may apply regardless of whether your business is conducted as a sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company, S corporation, or regular corporation. Other opportunities may apply only to a particular type of business organization. This Tax Letter is organized into sections discussing year-end, and year-round, tax-saving opportunities for:
1. All businesses
2. Partnerships, limited liability companies, and S corporations
3. Regular (C) corporations
Tax planning for businesses also requires consideration of the tax consequences to the individual owners. Accordingly, we suggest you also review Tax Planning Considerations for Individuals Including Year-End Ideas.
Chances are, your business can’t afford to have a celebrity like LeBron James or Peyton Manning extolling the virtues of your product on national television, but have you considered a celebrity endorsement via the social networking site Twitter? It may be more realistic than you might think.
There are now many companies specializing in “sponsored tweeting.” These companies pair advertisers with relevant Twitterers, for a fee, of course.
Looking to reach an audience interested in home improvement? Bob Vila is available. Are you trying to reach music lovers? The rock band Sister Hazel can tweet your message for a fee. Maybe you’re trying to reach reality-TV junkies. Kim Kardashian may be the answer.
A variety of “Web-Celebs” are also available to help spread your message. This may be very useful if your product or service fits into the niche that helped to make their reputation.
Sponsored tweets are generally available through an auction system similar to online advertising vehicles such as Google Adwords. Similarly, the ads are available on a “pay-per-click” basis.
Want to learn more about sponsoring tweets? Below are some sites to get you started:
For more information on Skoda Minotti Marketing Services, visit our web site or call us at 440-449-6800.
Just in case some companies missed the memo that paying bloggers for reviews of their products usually comes back to bite you – exhibit A and exhibit B – the FTC has stepped in to put an end to this practice.
According to the New York Times article, “The F.T.C. said that beginning on Dec. 1, bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers.”
So what does this mean for social media marketing? Basically, it will help to keep social media a (relatively) honest forum for communication between consumers and businesses. An honest and open communication strategy has always served companies best when it comes to social media and these new rules will mostly likely save companies from becoming their own worst enemy.
What do you think of the new social media rules? Let us know in the comment section below.
Looking for help developing a strategic social media campaign for your business? Contact Skoda Minotti Marketing Services at 440-449-6800 or visit our web site for more information.
Security technology company, McAfee, Inc released its list of most dangerous celebrity search terms. Topping the list this year was Jessica Biel. According to McAfee, searches for Biel have a one in five chance of landing on a malicious web site.
Coming in second place for most dangerous search term this year was Beyonce, followed by Jennifer Aniston, Tom Brady and Jessica Simpson. Brad Pitt topped last year’s list.
Looking for a way to protect your network from dangerous searches? filterIT is our software solution that provides you with precise control over the infinite variety of Internet content that enters your network. filterIT protects you from dangerous searches:
- URL Keyword Search: New or dynamically changing URLs pass through a rapid keyword search for on-the-fly analysis
- Search Engine SafeSearch Enforcement: Enforces safesearch on all major search engines
For more information on filterIT, please contact Tim Heikkila at 440-449-6800.
Topics: Cleveland Information Technology
Has your organization been slow to implement social media tactics? Here’s yet another article, posted on the Employers Resource Council Blog, that gives you plenty of good reasons to get involved.
If the article itself isn’t enough incentive to get started, it also links to some prominent Northeast Ohio organizations that are involved in social media to give you an idea of how local companies are getting involved.
Need assistance launching your social media campaign? Contact Skoda Minotti Marketing Services at 440-449-6800 to set your organization on the path to social media success.
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 camps this summer.
The NFL now allows teams to sell sponsored space on their practice jerseys and many teams are taking advantage. Could game day jerseys be the next item up for bid?
While the idea of our major professional sports teams wearing sponsored jerseys may seem strange to American sports fans, European sports have been embracing this concept for quite some time and for great financial gain. Last season, jersey sponsorships across Europe’s top six soccer leagues accounted for 393.2 million euros ($561 million).
These types of revenue figures could sound more and more appealing to our major sports leagues in the near future. What are your thoughts on jersey sponsorship? Let us know with a comment below.
Looking for “out-of-the-box” thinking from your marketing efforts? Contact Skoda Minotti Marketing Services at 440-449-6800 for more information.
Topics: Akron Marketing Services, Cleveland Marketing Services
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-Mart, however, wants to change that. The retail giant announced earlier this month that it will require “all of its product suppliers to calculate the environmental costs of their products.” Wal-Mart will then calculate a “green rating” for the product and display it near the price tag. Suppliers that fail to comply will be banned from Wal-Mart shelves. The process is expected to take four years.
This is a major sign that companies will not longer be able to market their products as “green” without actually backing up the claim. In other words, it won’t be so easy being green.
Looking for a Cleveland Marketing Consultant? Contact Skoda Minotti at 440-449-6800.
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. In addition to splitting the costs with your partner company, you’ll also increase the size of your invite list and bring more fresh faces into the room for networking purposes.
Breakfast…It’s the most important meal of the day: Planning on feeding your attendees? You can reduce your food budget by a significant amount by holding your event at breakfast instead of lunch or dinner. Additionally, you should improve your attendance rate due to the fact that attendees are likely heading to your event first thing in the morning before they get caught up in other tasks at the office.
When in doubt…Webinar: Webinars are great for several reasons. First, they keep your costs to a minimum by eliminating the venue costs and the catering fees. Second, they are reusable. You can easily post a webinar to your company’s web site and visitors can download the audio or video file at any time. Finally, since attendees can watch your webinar from anywhere, this event can literally spread your message to laptops across the country.
As always, to maximize the value of any event, don’t forget to follow up after the event while it’s still fresh in people’s minds.
Looking for a Cleveland Marketing consultant? Contact Skoda Minotti Marketing Services at 440-449-6800.
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 strategy may be starting to rub consumers the wrong way, however. One example cited in the article is that owners of BMW’s 3-Series feel that they are looked at as a lower class than owners of the 5- or 7-Series.
This is a lesson to keep in mind when you are expanding or adding a new product line. A name says a lot about your product and can influence how consumers view your company and your brand.
The best way to be sure your name will positively enhance your brand is to do your research. Internal and external testing as well as focus groups and surveys can help to ensure that you are on the right track with your name.
Looking for help improving your brand image? Contact Skoda Minotti Marketing Services at 440-449-6800.
Topics: Akron Marketing Services, Cleveland Marketing Consultant, Cleveland Marketing Services.
The Magis Advisory Group of John Carroll University is offering a seminar providing continuing legal education credits for attorneys, continuing education credits for certified financial planners, and continuing professional education credits for certified public accountants in estate planning, advanced planning for the family owned business and business and asset valuation.
Our own Robert A Ranallo, CPA/ABV, JD, CVA, CFF, will be presenting the "Business and Asset Valuation" session on Friday, June 19th, 2009.
Click here for more seminar imformation or to signup for the seminar.
Looking for business valuation assistance in Cleveland or Akron? Contact our Business Valuation Group at 440-449-6800 for more information.
Topics: Cleveland Business Valuation, Akron Business Valuation
Has social media made its way into your marketing budget? If the answer is “not yet,” that may be changing very soon. According to a forecast from Forrester Reasearch released at the Forrester Research Marketing Forum, social media spending in the U.S. will increase from $716 million to more than $3.1 billion in 2014 – a 34% compound annual growth rate. According to the report, other interactive channels will grow at 17% rate.
With the number of social media users growing each and every day, marketers won’t be able to ignore it as a part of their marketing mix for much longer. Looking to get caught up on the fastest growing social media platform (growing at an astounding 2,565 percent)? Check out our blog post – Twitter for Dummies.
Need help improving your social media marketing efforts? Contact Skoda Minotti Marketing Services at 440-449-6800.
Selling a business can be one of the most challenging tasks that business owners face. Click here to read “Avoiding Seller’s Remorse,” featuring our own Robert A. Ranallo, CPA/ABV, JD, CVA, CFF.
Need assistance valuing your business? You can contact our team of Certified Valuation Analysts at 440-449-6800.
Skoda Minotti is a CPA, business and financial advisory firm with offices in Cleveland and Akron.
You’ve probably heard the phrase that Facebook “isn’t just for kids anymore.” That’s true. In fact, according to this cnn.com article, the most popular social networking site in the world is more about tracking grandkids. That’s right, the world’s most popular social networking site is currently growing most quickly among women older than 55.
So what does this mean to a business looking at online marketing tactics? It means that no matter which demographic you target, you can find them on Facebook. And, via Facebook’s advertising tool, you can find them much easier than you think.
When placing an ad on Facebook, you can target by gender, age, location, education level, and a host of other valuable demographics. Let’s say you only want to target single males, between the ages of 25-35 (about 5,000 in case you’re interested) in Cleveland, Ohio. You can easily create a custom ad that will appear only to your selected demographic and you will only be charged when a member of your demographic clicks on your ad (about $.60 per click for this demographic). It’s an easy, yet powerful way to know exactly where and to whom your marketing message is being delivered.
With over 200 million users worldwide, your demographic is out there somewhere on Facebook, you just need to find it.
Need help developing an effective online marketing strategy? Contact Skoda Minotti at 440-449-6800 for more information on how we can help.
Skoda Minotti is a CPA, business and financial advisory firm with offices located in Cleveland and Akron.
Looking for a Cleveland public relations consultant? Contact Skoda Minotti Marketing Services at 440-449-6800.
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 blog postings complaining that the redesign was “ugly” and resembled a “generic bargain brand.”
Total cost of this branding debacle: $35 million. Not to mention, alienated customers across the country who were upset with the packaging change.
Tropicana eventually did the right thing (and avoided a complete public relations disaster) by listening to its audience and making the change back to the old packaging. Unfortunately for Tropicana, this situation was avoidable.
The lesson here is not to take your customers for granted. This entire problem could have been avoided if Tropicana had done a little more market research into its own customers. Had they done so, they would have most likely come to same conclusion that cost them millions of dollars: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
This case study underlines why a branding campaign cannot be conducted in a vacuum. Market research, testing and knowing your audience, both internal and external, are critical components of any rebranding process. Not taking these elements into account can quickly result in disaster.
What does it take to keep employees happy and motivated? Surprisingly, not as much as you might think. Outlined below are several low-cost or no-cost ways to motivate and retain employees. Whether you’re managing staff yourself or advising your company’s Managers on how to keep employees engaged and satisfied, these effortless techniques can really make a difference.
- Make the time to tell employees how much you appreciate them: A simple thank you, public recognition of an employees efforts or a notice in the employee newsletter. Employees will be the first to tell you that, when it comes to acknowledgement, it’s the little things that count.
- Provide ongoing feedback: It should be ongoing, not just a once a year annual review requirement. Make sure employees know what’s expected of them and that they have frequent feedback to let them know how their performance compares with expectations.
- Give employees the opportunity to participate in decisions that affect the company and particularly their jobs: Being asked for their opinions on issues large and small can be very motivating.
- Remind employees of the value that your company offers: Perhaps your organization is one for which employees feel proud to work. Perhaps your benefit package is particularly generous. If that value already exists, take the time or thought about reminding employees that it’s there. Think about it. What unique extras does your company offer to employees?
- When you make a decision, implement a new policy or change an existing one, tell employees why: Many companies complain that employees don’t like dealing with change. That’s not necessarily true. What employees don’t like is change they don’t understand. Communicating the “why” behind the decisions you make is a simple way to keep employees engaged.
- Have fun at work: That’s okay. In fact, it’s better than okay. When employees enjoy their jobs they enjoy coming to work. Consider ways that your company can create a dynamic environment that keeps employees coming back and doing their best day after day and year after year.
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 homeowners and investors suggested that 84 percent of consumers are more likely to trust a company that communicates in language that isn’t laced with jargon.
What does this mean when you are marketing your business? It means that for next public relations campaign announcing your latest gadget, you should probably cut back on the technical details about the flux capacitor and give people a clearer idea of the benefits of the product. Especially if it’s capable of time travel.
Looking for a Cleveland Public Relations consultant? Contact Skoda Minotti Marketing Services at 440-449-6800.
We are very pleased to announce that on December 1st, we will be opening the doors to our new Akron office. The office will be located at 3875 Embassy Parkway, Suite 200, in Fairlawn.
With an increasing portion of our clients and employees based in the Akron area, we realize the significant potential for growth that the area holds. An Akron office will allow us to serve our Akron client base more efficiently and effectively. Additionally, this office will further our goal of continuing to attract the best and most talented staff in order to continue delivering on the promise of outstanding client service.
Our new Akron office will be fully integrated with our current Mayfield Village office and our professionals will be able to fully serve clients from either location. If you are in the Akron area this December, we invite you to stop by and check out our new office space. Click here for directions.
Looking for a Cleveland or Akron accountant? Contact us at 440-449-6800 (Cleveland) or 330-668-1100 (Akron).
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