Category: Sales & Marketing

Business 2.0: Two years ago the Wellington-based winery Stormhoek hired MacLeod to promote its products on his blog Gapingvoid.com, where he publishes advertising and technology commentaries and stream-of-consciousness cartoons.
CEO Jason Korman had seen the blog and thought targeting MacLeod’s readers, many of them tech geeks, would be a natural: They shared the same single-minded passion as wine enthusiasts.
As Stormhoek’s representative, MacLeod offered a free bottle to any blogger who asked — as long as he or she was of legal drinking age and had been blogging at least three months.
Recipients didn’t have to mention the wine, but many of them did; nearly 100 bloggers posted related items or comments in just six months. MacLeod then used his blog to organize more than 100 “geek dinners” in Britain, France, Spain, and the United States — gatherings of tech workers and influential bloggers who were plied with Stormhoek wine.
A recent dinner in San Francisco, for instance, attracted local technorati like former Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) and RSS pioneer Dave Winer (Scripting News).
While the blogosphere’s reviews of Stormhoek have been mostly good (“drinkable” and “pleasant,” with the odd “disappointment”), MacLeod’s results have been amazing. Stormhoek sales have jumped nearly sixfold, from 50,000 cases a year worldwide to almost 300,000. The winery expects to sell a million cases annually within three years.
How a small winery found Internet fame [Business 2.0]

Marketing Idea Blog: Despite some companies’ best efforts, women are still hungry for products and services that address their needs and solve the problems that are important to them. Here are some things to remember – “What women want,” if Mel Gibson will allow me to borrow a phrase. Coincidentally, they all begin with the letter C. So let’s ditch the Four P’s and lay out the Four C’s: the Four C’s of marketing to women.
Community. Women want to belong to something larger than themselves. If you can create a place where we can gather, you’re ahead of the game.
Conversation. What happens when women gather? They talk. In addition to being part of a community, we want to contribute to the conversation going on within that community. We want to share our experiences, report our problems, offer encouragement and support.
Convenience. From stay-at-home moms to high-powered corporate leaders, from students to grandparents, we all want to recapture more of our precious time and spend it on something we love doing rather than on something we have to be doing.
Cost. Hey, we’re not stupid. We know when something’s a good value, and we know that “cost” isn’t just the price. So don’t just paint it pink and mark it up 20 percent – figure out a way to make it unique to women, or find a way to promote it that pushes our buttons – we’re smart, we’ll get it!
Four C’s of marketing to women [Marketing Idea Blog]

Entrepreneur Daily: When you’re designing your company’s next marketing campaign, why not take a look at YouTube first? That’s what McDonald’s did, and the results are paying off. Since McDonald’s has started airing a commercial featured on YouTube created by two Chicago men rapping about chicken nuggets, they’ve already seen increased sales in their nugget meals. “The buzz that has been generated has been substantial,” said Ken Ebo, McDonald’s Corp.’s New York marketing director. “I’ve heard radio station DJs chatting about it. You can’t pay for that.”
Before McDonald’s found it, the video was a YouTube hit with tens of thousands of viewers. The men who filmed the skit, also aspiring comedians, said they put the rap ditty together for the fun of it. Somehow, the YouTube video got forwarded to Ebo, and the rest is history. This commercial is a good example of the advertising world catching on to the advantages of viral marketing. It definitely saves in production costs, and it’s more of a sure thing. Before using the video clip, McDonald’s knew it was already a hit with the very audience they were hoping to target.
McDonald’s Viral Marketing Buzz [Entrepreneur Daily]

CNNMoney.com: Web-enabled game consoles are giving marketers new ways to target those elusive young males with money to burn. Cadillac tried a novel approach last year to get young male car buyers excited about its tricked-out V-Series Collection luxury vehicles. Rather than make its pitch through magazines, TV commercials, or online display ads, the automaker took its campaign to the Xbox 360.
Through an arrangement with Xbox Live, gamers were invited to download and put through their paces three virtual V-Series cars in a popular high-speed driving game called Project Gotham Racing 3. In less than six months, more than 240,000 players snagged the game. All told, they raced the cars more than 1 million times.
At a time when advertisers are struggling to get the attention of the mass audiences they used to reach so dependably through broadcast and print media, successes like Cadillac’s offer a beacon of hope.
Games advertisers love most [CNNMoney.com]

Entrepreneur: Sometimes choosing the best marketing tactics is like going to a restaurant with an unlimited menu. Even entrepreneurs with tight budgets or small niche markets have dozens of options. And it can be hard to separate the best from the rest. A great tactic meets three criteria:
It reaches your most qualified prospects.
It puts your message in the right context.
It gives you enough space/time to tell prospects what to do.
A business that specializes in cabinet refacing, for example, could run local cable TV spots during home-remodeling programs, including kitchen design shows. The spots would reach a qualified target audience in the appropriate context–when they were in the right frame of mind and most likely to be receptive.
Every great marketing tactic allows space or time for a call to action. This can be as simple as a toll-free number on a billboard or as complex as a direct-mail package with multiple offers. But an effective tactic always tells prospects what to do next. Can’t come up with a group of tactics?
Here’s a virtual smorgasbord of ideas to get you started. Outdoor media, Online advertising, Direct marketing, Broadcast advertising, Print advertising. Low-Cost Marketing Tactics would be Local Search, Podcasts, Blogs, Online Advertising, Expanding to Global Markets.
Smart Marketing Tactics to Boost Sales [Entrepreneur]