In the hyper-competitive world of marketing and sales, it isn’t sufficient just to push out an ad or a sales letter and hope and pray for a response.
Consumers and corporate buyers are increasingly spoilt for choice. Selling based on price alone is no longer sustainable in the long haul.
International Museum Day or more affectionately IMD’09 is upon us yet again. This year’s nine-day celebration revolves around the theme of ‘Holiday Fun at Home’ and features 40 activities that promises lots of sensory pleasures for children of all ages. Specially catering to kids and families, it features a wonderful smorgasbord of entertaining yet enriching activities specially designed to pique the sense of wonder and curiosity of your little ones.
Even as I write, a couple of exciting programmes and events are already ongoing. Do check out Yesterday.sg to keep updated on what’s happening at our museums this year. Read all about Singapore’s last leopard, participate in the various children’s programmes at our national museums, or take note of the blow by blow account of what you can do in a week. Some of the cool stuff you can do this year include meeting Phua Chu Kang and his family at the Singapore City Gallery, learn about environmental sustainability at the Marina Barrage and Newater Visitor Centre, or reliving the genius and artistry of the legendary Renaissance artist cum inventor Leonard da Vinci!
Is social media marketing just a myth? (courtesy of Snap Trends)
I love dabbling in social media in its various forms, be it blogging, facebooking, twittering, youtubing (occasionally), plurking and flickring.
Digital conversations are addictive, and I can spend an entire day just reading blogs, following tweets, retweeting, commenting on facebook photographs, chatting on MSN, uploading photographs on Flickr and so on.
Located off the Murray River just an hour away from Adelaide, Dundee Wildlife Park is a charming little old-school zoo focusing primarily on native Australian birds, reptiles and animals. A boutique-sized establishment catering largely to families and kids, it occupies a fairly small area and can be easily covered in an hour and a half (or less). This privately-owned establishment includes a restaurant and hotel too, so one can literally eat and sleep with the animals (ala Doctor Dolittle). As this was the first wildlife park that my family and I visited, Ethan was naturally all excited about it.
The theme for this visit? “Food Glorious Food!” and you will see why as we go on.
Looking fairly nondescript, with a simple and disarming facade, Dundee Wildlife Park was quite a “no-frills” park although prices are not exactly cheap at $10 per adult and $7 per kid.
Courtesy of AZ Quotes
“People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.” – Zig Ziglar
This quote from the legendary sales guru Zig Ziglar aptly describes the world of marketing, where it is vital to reach the heart in order to generate a buying response.
While the rational part of us would sort through the price, features, and logical needs we have for a particular product or service, it is the emotional part – the feelings, benefits, wants and beliefs – which determine the purchase decision.
One of my favourite marketing gurus Seth Godin shares his ideas on how tribes are changing the world, community by community, in a grassroots evangelistic sort of way. In the age of social media with its platforms and tools – blogs, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Twitter, Plurk etc – the barriers to entry in starting any movement is considerably lowered. The democratisation of publishing and content production means that anybody can leverage on these tools to create pockets of influence wherever they are.
While not every one of us can be as convincing or charismatic a speaker as Seth, his speech does give us much food for thought on what we can do as marketers, as communicators, as publicists and as leaders. Perhaps it is time for us to start our own movements today?
PS – I just heard from Jackie Huba (via Twitter) of Church of the Customer that Seth’s looking for stories for his next edition of Purple Cow. Sounds like a great way to get your local stories of extraordinary products and businesses in …. if you can meet Seth’s high standards! I will start to consider some options now…
2) Mainstream media players still wield incredible influence on social media debates and discussions.
Can you deliver what your customers want – before they even ask? (Designed by Freepik)
Remember the last time you visited a store which offered you a cup of warm tea on a cold day?
How did that make you feel? Warm, welcomed, and ready to reward your hosts, I bet.
One of the more prominent destinations in the state of South Australia, Murray River stretches all the way from the border of New South Wales, across the entire state of Victoria, and ends with its mouth at South Australia close to Adelaide. A popular location for water-based activities like boating, canoeing, fishing and going on river cruises, the river’s waters are pretty placid most of the time. While it isn’t quite as wide or broad as the Mississippi or Missouri, it does evoke that sense of riverine adventure with Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer floating along on an old-style river boat.
First, a fond farewell to Kingston SE and Larry the Humungous Lobster.
Its the journey and not the destination (courtesy of dadadreams)
What is the best way to capture your customer’s hearts and minds? How do you make them feel a sense of ownership for your brands, products and services?
The secret lies in getting them involved as much as possible.