Tony Soprano’s Marketing Secrets!

by Brad Petersen

Dear John,

Last Sunday, my Marketing Manager, Wes, and his
wife headed out with some friends to an LA comedy
club called The Groundlings.

The Groundlings is a “sketch comedy” club located
smack-dab in the middle of Melrose Avenue.

Just an FYI…

Melrose Avenue is LA’s “heartbeat” of freaks…
geeks… weirdos… and…

Hollywood Stars!

It’s not uncommon… strolling down Melrose… to
bump into a few big time A-list celebrities.

Which on one hand is kind of stupid.

And on the other, is pretty cool.

Which gets to my point:

You’ll never guess who sat next to Wes at this
comedy show?

None other than James Gandolfini… aka Tony
Soprano.

No kidding!

And Wes, being a huge Sopranos fan, nearly peed
his pants in excitement

However, since he didn’t want to bumble up to Mr.
Gandolfini… like a goofy teenager at a Britney
Spears concert…

…he just sat in silence.

Listening to Gandolfini’s boisterous laugh.

He never introduced himself… never shook his
hand… failed to get his picture taken.

Oh well, it’s Wes’s loss — but it’s your gain
because the encounter got Wes and I to thinking…

How would Tony Soprano market a business?
Here’s a few ideas:

——————————————————
#1 Tony Soprano Would Make Sure His Messages
Got Read!
——————————————————

A big part of marketing is simply getting your
message read.

And you’d better believe Tony knows the importance
of being heard — and of being believed.

After all, what good is a threat on somebody’s life if
nobody reads it or believes it?

The same goes for your marketing messages. That’s
why it’s critical that they be so loaded with content of
importance and value to your list that no one would
dare fail to open them.

And, by the way, doing that ensures that your purely
sales messages will get opened, as well.

——————————————————
#2 Tony Soprano Would Include A Killer Offer
——————————————————

Tony didn’t mess around with business unless there
was something “big” in it for him.

Plus, he was a killer!

So, don’t you think Tony’s marketing would contain
a killer offer that the prospect “couldn’t refuse”?

Most marketers vastly underestimate the importance
of the offer, and how improving it can bring about an
almost unbelievable spike in sales.

——————————————————
#3 Tony Soprano Would Go After His Current Customers
——————————————————

How likely is it that Tony would forget to collect
protection money from his current clients, while
continually pursuing new clients?

Not likely — yet most business owners do just that,
letting their current customers twist in the wind while
they pursue new opportunities.

Please don’t make that mistake. It could kill your
business as readily as Tony Soprano offed his
competitors.

——————————————————
#4 Tony Soprano Never Quits!
——————————————————

Tony always finds a way to win. Even if it means
cheating and breaking the law.

I’m NOT suggesting you do either of those.

But, I do know that your marketing will include
promos that fail… products that bomb… and ideas
that don’t work out.

To be successful, you have to ignore all that and keep
plugging away with all you’ve got and everything
you know to make your business as successful as
possible.

Here’s to your success… the Tony Soprano way,

–Brad Petersen

******************************

Need help with your next direct mail piece, online
sales campaign or product launch? I’m available on a
limited basis. Just send an e-mail to
brad.petersen@verizon.net with some details about
your project and I’ll be in touch.

Lastly, don’t forget to to send your friends and
colleagues to the Weekly Breakthrough website
so they can get their own subscription to
Weekly Breakthrough, as well as a copy of my
Special Report: http://www.weeklybreakthrough.com

Thank you.

Petersen Direct
1840 S. Elena Avenue
Redondo Beach CA, 90277

© 2010 All rights reserved.
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Promotional Marketing cheap, clothing, cups, magnets, marketing, notebooks, pens, promotion, sales

As part of the toold one can use to keep up on the changing items in the promotional products industry, is to subscribe to a monthly newsletter.

In my newsletter that my clients subscribe to, they not only find:
New items from which to choose, they also find pricing that they probably will find nowhere else.

This is because we are among the largest promotional products companies in the country.

In times like these, is it not comforting to find great ideasand great prices?

The current newsletter can be found at:
www.kbwindjammer.com

To receive this every month, please email:
jhnkng1@yahoo.com

Promotional Marketing newsletter, pads, pens, promote, promotions, waterbottle

Tired of the same old coffee cup?

I am now introducing the
double walled porcelain and silicone… the terra cup!

I know you will find this one of the most useful gifts your clients will ever receive.

Promotional Marketing

The actual answer is well over 100,000 items that do not include custom items such as
The custom Elvis Presley Eight Ball
The Qunicy Jones USB bracelet

Just the other day we did a search for a cleint for school bus items and came up with over 479 items, which is many different items to market with.

How many different items will your idea gnerate?

Promotional Marketing custom, different, Elivs Presley, ideas, Magic Answer ball, Magic Eight ball, marketing, promotional, promotional items, promotions, Qunicy Jones, usb, USB bracelet

Pen.

As simple ( and as cheap) as these are, they can be among the best advertising tools you have.

Why??
Because tthe next time you go out take some with you.
Or give some to your girlfriend or wife.

When you are out and paying a bill, SWITCH the pens.

This way you will get to a larger audiece than you ever thougth possible for a very small investment.

Promotional Marketing ballpoint, barell, bic, black, cap, click stic, clip, fountain pen, german ink, green, grip, hard grip, ink, pen, pens, red, rollerball, sale, soft grip

When you are dealing with placing a logo on a promotional item, the color may not be the color.

WHAT???

Most people send in art, and say that it is yellow red and blue ( for example).

What they fail to understand is that many times there is a PMS color the artist ( who created the logo) used.

PMS?? Is that not…

NO

It is:
Pantone Matching System, PMS Color allows you to choose the EXACT color of your logo based on a 3-4 digit color system.

Goggle PMS color chart and you will see just how many shades of a color there can be.

Also, many times a factory will have an extra PMS color match charge, as the have to MIX the colors to get that PMS color.

Small price to pay to get what the artist had in ind in the first place to bring out your logo in true living color.

Promotional Marketing

Just recently there was a piece by Steve McKee in BusinessWeek about why your business advertising might not be working so well. The article was prompted by the results of an AdweekMedia poll on social network site LinkedIn where respondents were asked, “Of the ads you see in a typical day, how many engage your attention?”

Wanna guess what the answers were?

Two thirds of the respondents (I count myself as among their number) or 66%, answered “a small minority of them”; while another 25% answered “none of them”. Think about this for a second… 91% of the audience have managed to ignore the best efforts of advertising geniuses all across the web. Gripe about the limitations of Internet surveys all you want, even so these results cannot be ignored. Want even more proof of how good we all are at filtering ads? Consider your own experience… how many ads do you find truly memorable? Probably not that many.

In the poll, men were more apt not to be engaged by the ads they saw in a typical day. Another 29% from the all-important 18-24 year old demographic lived up to the reputation that young adults are an audience that gives advertisers trouble. Yet another problem area, a bit surprisingly perhaps, is business owners themselves, these busy souls are more likely to ignore ads they see each day.

The BusinessWeek piece goes on to give 7 reasons why your own advertising efforts might not be doing your business justice. As an advertising professional with more years in the business than I care to admit, all of these reasons, though seemingly obvious, have merit and can help you create advertising that stands out from the clutter.

Short and sweet, here are McKee’s suggestions:

1.Ads must offer information, entertainment or engagement — without at least tow, your ad is in trouble.
2.Ads are extensions of your brand (product or service) and should focus on giving not getting.
3.Be different, do things that have never been done before, and be prepared that initially at least, people might not like it.
4.Ads need to focus on one single, compelling idea or point, with flair.
5.Give it time, it will take more than one exposure to get your message to sink in.
6.Your ads are for your target market, not for you. You don’t have to “like” your ads in terms of color or style, but your audience does.
7.Ads can’t take the place of faulty product design, outdated procedures, customer service letdowns and such.
If you’re struggling with your business advertising, a trusted (and objective) colleague is a great source of feedback. You also might consider hiring professionals, either freelance or on staff, to help you get your advertising on track. Investing in advertising is hard, but well worth it in terms of crafting the right message and delivering it effectively.

When it comes to breaking through the advertising clutter, and getting remembered, the Advertising Specialties Impressions Study found that 84% of people remember the advertiser on a promotional product they receive. Sure beats the 1 in 100 respondents who said “most of them” in the LinkedIn poll. What’s more, this level of retention has also been shown to cost less per impression than magazine and newspaper ads, cable TV ads or radio spots — ideal for today’s tight budgets.

And in case you’re trying to decide what promotional product to choose… some of the most popular are everyday useful, quality items — pens are great and always appreciated. You might also consider other lasting, valued products like shirts, caps or bags. Seasonal essentials like lip balm or hand sanitizer — both sure to be appreciated as the cold and flu season bear down on us all — are also affordable, effective ways to get your business noticed, and remembered.

If nothing else, these items sure rise above the clutter of all those ads…

Promotional Marketing caps, cups, magnets, pens

I am using this blog to introduce someone who i think we can all learn a great deal from.

client asked me to teach them everything I know about Search Engine Optimization, so I wrote the following summary and thought you might enjoy it. Keep in mind there are thousands of theories regarding the “best” way to optimize your website for search engines, and the following is just my theory.

There are actually about 50 factors that Google uses to rank your page in its index, including:

1. Age of your Domain Name (Give your domain name about 1 year before Google will start to trust your website.)

2. Amount of Traffic to the site (a huge factor, and not easily obtained.)

3. How many links IN to your site from other (high ranking) sites (links IN from Facebook, Amazon, Ebay, Twitter, etc.)

4. and other factors such as “How much competition your target keywords have in the marketplace.” (keyword saturation)

For best impact, it’s crucial that the TITLE TAG, META DESCRIPTION and BODY COPY, including H1, H2 “Headlines” are in sync, and working in unison.

Example (Bolded keywords below):

Watch your Kids Soar with DVD Learning Toys

The Proctor & Gamble Learning Toys for Kids on DVD provide essential skills for preschool kids…

In the above example, the link “Learning toys for kids” would ideally take the visitor to another page within your site dedicated to that subject, and would include a TITLE, META DESCRIPTION and H1 headline with the words “Learning Toys for Kids” (or very similar) in them. That locks the whole set together. You know what I mean?

Every page of a website has its own unique TITLE and DESCRIPTION and H1 tags. As you are writing new “copy” for any site, keep that in mind. You should provide your webmaster with a TITLE, a DESCRIPTION and an H1 tag for each page, not just the body copy. That way you are assured that all three will be in sync and work as a team to maximize your SEO efforts.

It’s also beneficial to incorporate “Keyworded LINKS” into the body copy, that link to “other pages” within your site. Those resulting pages should have the same (or similar) title/description and h1 tags as the text in the clickable LINK. You have to plan this ahead of time, because they are often hard to change later, as they get spread throughout the internet.

Google will look for (and you can manually submit) a Sitemap.xml file which is an index of all the pages on your site that you want indexed, in XML format. Have your webmaster create, and submit this to Google for you.

So, SEO is both creative and a science, thus not a simple process.

Step 1: Research the keywords that are highly searched, with low competition, that relate to your product.

Step 2: Write Titles, Descriptions, Body Copy and Clickable Links that “work together as a team” and make your site the authority on the subject.

Step 3: Implement your plan and wait a few weeks to see how Google reacts. Then tweak it again, and again until you are satisfied with the results.

Now you got them to your site. We didn’t even talk about the theories on getting them to BUY your product. You may need to research the “best” way to accomplish that, so you can incorporate that into your copy/design as well.

In conclusion, your Webmaster will generally provide you with the proper SEO tags formatted correctly on your website. What goes in these tags (keywords & phrases) is up to your marketing department or SEO specialist (based on research, or a hunch) and can be tweaked based on your current marketing campaign or SEO results.

Note to my clients: The above is just a series of suggestions (my theory) that will help improve your ranking in Google. Even if you don’t provide me with these “keywords”, I generally tweak your Meta Tags on a regular basis to help your SEO efforts because I want you to be successful.

Good luck!

P.S. Please no jokes about me “tweaking your meta tags”.

Bob Bell
(310) 738-9449
bob@fullblown.com

Promotional Marketing

When companies rework or redesign their logo, they are seem to think that when they send the new logo to be placed on a promotional product, there will just be a set up charge.

NORMALLY that is the case if the logo is one color.

In many cases the logo will include:
more than one color
PMS colors ( an exact shade of whatever color they want)
Shading

In the case of the colors, you will encounter:
a set up charge for EACH color

in the case of colors that have a PMS color match, you will enounter the following charges:
a PMS color match charge that is not included in the per color setup.

NORMALLY some of the best promotional products to imprint when it comes to an art design of more than one color are:
Post it notes and notepads.

The factories for these
items normally will produce the item with none of the above metioned charges.

The second promotional product item is:
magnets

Not only can you use more than one color, but you can also submit photos that they normally charge no extra to produce.

In fact my business cards not only are full color, but have photos of various promotional product items.

As they say…a picture is worth a thousand words ( or maybe in this
case, saving of thousands! )

Promotional Marketing

It would seem with the depth of the current recession, more and more people these days are cutting back on the ad budget.

It makes sense ( they think) to hoard the money until times get better.

The budget ( mentioned above) can also include keeping in contact with current clients.

If there are more and more business retreating or retrenching, then it makes sense to be the company that is RAMPING UP YOUR AD BUDGET.

That is because day by day and hour by hour more and more propects become avaible because of the above mentioned retrenchment.

It can be clients the above companies are not targeting or the current clients they have who are not getting the same amount of attention.

Once or twice a month, I email my current date base an idea of how to successfully use a promotional product or get more out of a trade show or great well priced items that you can send to your clients on a regular basis.

As there are so many ways to market and grow your business with promotional products and also keep in front of your existing client base ( that you have spent so much money to acquire).

A current idea can be to send the above mentioned clients a calendar ( that are priced through the end of the year at $0.99) and it will give you 12 months of advertising.

If you want more ideas or wish to place yourself on my list, please contact me at:
www.promokng.com

Promotional Marketing