Lessons From The Best Marketing Books of All Time

Promotional mugs are amazing low cost promotional tools once you get them into your customers’ hands. Every day in the UK we take on average five coffee/tea breaks each and every work day. Get that mug into your target customers’ hands and you could be enjoying free promotions each and every day for months if not years. Here I will show you how mugs are given away by many of my customers. I hope his helps you to take advantage of these truly remarkable promotional gifts.

Not all of these ideas will be possible for you but a few could be just the ideas you need.

Hand Promotional Mugs Out Over The Counter

If you have a shop or business where your customer come regularly, serve them a cup of coffee in your promotional mugs. When they leave, make sure they take a new one away in decorative packaging as a gift. They will love your for it.

Give Them Away as Social Media Gifts

We cannot all afford to send thousands of mugs out to all of our customers. So why not use them to entice your Facebook Like Page followers or Blog subscribers? Many businesses are doing this now and it works wonders.

Use Mugs in the Company Board Room

If you have frequent visitors or customers you are trying to impress, make sure your board room is stacked with different mugs that cater to your visitors’ drink of choice. There are latte mugs, expresso mugs and china tea mugs just waiting for your logo. These branded items will give your company the look you want.

Hand Coffee Mugs Out at Trade Shows

Anyone who has attended a trade show or two will have seen the stacks of attractive mugs donning the stands of exhibitors large and small. Promotional mugs are traffic magnets. You will get people to your stand and that is where the selling begins.

Sell Promotional Mugs

Promotional photo mugs and other mugs are ideal for gift shops and popular restaurants. If you run a popular hang out or shop in a tourist destination, make sure you have some carefully thought out mugs with designs people will want to take home with them!

Charities and Special Causes

Giving promotional branded mugs away to people who support your cause, either through donations or participation in organised events is an excellent way of saying thank you while promoting your cause.

Can you think of any other ways to hand out promotional mugs? There are so many different types from plastic outdoor mugs to the highest quality china. Go ahead… Ask for a few samples and take advantage of these eye-catching and useful promotional gifts!

By Dan Toombs

Drop shipping is a unique business arrangement whereby a retailer or online store acts as an intermediary for a supplier or manufacturer by taking on the job of selling their products. The party responsible for marketing takes orders from end customers and forwards orders on to the supplier who then ships out the product in question to the end consumer. The intermediary takes payment and then forwards a predetermined amount on to the supplier after deducting their profit margin.

Dropshipping is popular in the gift basket business as it is a business that has predominantly gone online. The dropshipping concept works well online as customers are happy to view pictures before making a purchase rather than needing to inspect sample gift baskets physically. Vendors can display a full product range for sale on their websites without having to worry about storing or assembling any of these products.

Lets examine the dropshipping concept more carefully and look at some of the ways that businesses are putting it to good use in the gift basket industry.

Becoming a Gift Basket Dropshipping Supplier

The great thing about dropshipping is that it enables gift basket companies to focus only on certain aspects of the business if they want to. If your strengths are in sourcing supplies and assembling baskets then you could look at becoming a dropshipper and assembling a network of sellers to make sales for you.

Under this scenario you would never have to worry about marketing to the end consumer. Although you will still face competition and have to market yourself to sellers before they will agree to work with you. Competition among gift basket dropshippers is fierce. Your best approach is to start looking for sellers locally by searching online and identifying the websites that are getting the traffic.

To make your service attractive to dropshipping vendors you need to be reliable and trustworthy as well as offer a first class product line. Good communication between dropshipping suppliers and vendors is essential. If a supplier is out of stock or discontinues a product then they owe it to their vendors to let them know. Otherwise they will go ahead and sell these items and subsequently face an embarrassing situation where they have to tell their customer that they are out of stock.

Respect the fact that customers gained via dropshipping don’t really belong to you as the supplier. Even though the dropshipping vendors that you work with will be sending you a name and address to deliver a gift basket to fulfill an order that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can start contacting those customers directly. A dropshipper will usually agree to put the logo of the seller on the gift basket or packaging to give the customer the impression that the product has come from them.

Vendors will also be interested in your prices as they will want to add on a healthy margin and still be able to sell the gift basket at a competitive price. Expect sellers to want to make profit margins of up to 40% or more per sale.

Good drop shipping companies will offer their vendors as many tools as they can to help them with their marketing. Sellers will need professional looking photos and accurate product descriptions to display on their sites. Some dropshippers even go as far as offering vendors a premade website or online store that they can promote.

Becoming a Dropshipping Vendor

If you find that your strengths lie in marketing then you may decide to become a gift basket dropshipper. This allows you to simply focus on setting up a website, driving targeted traffic to it and making sales. All the headaches associated with sourcing supplies, storing them and gift basket creation can effectively be outsourced. You simply have to take orders, collect payments and then forward orders to the supplier.

Drop shipping vendors also benefit from this business model as they are paid cash up front. They essentially pay for the gift basket after receiving funds instead of having to pay for supplies before receiving an order.

Some gift basket businesses become dropshippers in order to diversify their product line. As a small company you may specialize in only a handful of different basket themes and styles. However if you really want to give customers the impression that you are a well established business offering a full variety of baskets or other gifts then you can easily tap into the product catalogue of a large gift basket dropshipper. You simply enter into a dropshipping arrangement with them and feature their products on your website.

The dropshipping industry is rife with scams so you must do your due diligence before deciding on a supplier to work with. You need to make sure that the supplier that you work with is reliable and has good quality products. After all, if the product is faulty or doesn’t turn up then the customer will be looking to you for compensation. It is typical for the vendors address to be attached to the basket rather than the suppliers. If your supplier suddenly disappears then you can be left facing a lot of problems.

Many dropshippers charge a membership fee before they allow you to promote their products. Do some research online and you will also find that there are some dropshipping programs that are free to join.

It is also likely that a dropshipper will require their vendors to sign an agreement setting out the terms of their relationship. Always look into such an agreement carefully before you sign to ensure that you are not being ripped off or taken advantage of in any way.

By Sienna Taylor

A great technique to promote your business is to hold presentations given by famous or well credentialed individuals. You can easily hold them at your place of business. This technique can be used for authors, local politicians, celebrities, athletes, etc. Anyone who wants a platform to interact and will get customers to visit your store is a possible candidate.

I originally discussed this technique for holding presentations at your local business in my book “Finding Your Place: How to Increase Your Local Bookstores Ranking in Google”. It was written for bookstore owners but it applies to any business that has a physical location. Here is part of that section.

I am sure that at one time or another you have had an author do a signing at your store. The author gives a short talk on their book, answers the audience questions, and signs his or her book that the customer has purchased at your store. It’s a great way to promote a book and a well established practice.

An author signing is great, but it can cost money. The author only has so much time available to travel and attend a book signing at bookstores. And the more famous the author, the less likely you are to book him or her for a book signing. It just isn’t worth their time.

The solution? How about a video presentation using Skype.com? Skype was originally developed with the consumers use in mind, mainly for international calling of friends and family, but many businesses and schools are using it now as a video conferencing tool. Skype is free, online, and uses video, audio, and chat to connect its members. All you need to connect with an author and hold a half to one hour presentation for your customers is a laptop, and a big screen TV or digital projector. The author will need a computer and a webcam. Simply contact the publicist or author directly, and schedule a time for the Skype call. The author never has to leave his home, office, or hotel room. Be sure to schedule far enough in advance so that you can promote it and ensure a big turnout.

Cost to Implement

You probably already have a pc or laptop. In addition, you will need to;

-Install Skype on your computer.

-Have an external microphone ($30) so the audience can ask questions

-Have a digital projector ($300 used, $600 new) and a screen or blank wall to project on to. Or you can use a big screen TV. I recommend at least a 52 inch LCD TV ($850). This is big enough for a large group to be able to view it and light enough to lift up onto a table or stand if you do not have it wall mounted.

-Cables to connect the TV or projector to your computer ($60)

Record the Event

If you want to record the presentation, there is a free program called Vodburner. Download and install.

Equipment Setup

Most of the questions I receive when I talk about this technique are about how to set up the equipment to conduct the presentation.

First, make sure the individual being interviewed has downloaded Skype and knows how to use it. The will need;

* A computer (desktop or laptop)

* A webcam

* A microphone (USB with sound card works best)

* Skype installed

You can conduct a trial run with them if it is their first call with Skype by simply calling them. If you can see their video and hear them in your Skype window, then they are set to go.

On your end you will need to do a little bit more.

If you are using a TV, be sure that the computer you are using has the correct outlets to connect to it, like RCA jacks, USB ports, S-video, VGA, etc. Make sure that you have the right cables to connect the TV to the computer. The same applies if you are using a digital projector.

Set up your computer for an external monitor.

* Right click on the desktop screen

* Select Properties

* Click on Settings

* Click on Display #2

* Check the box “Extend my desktop onto this monitor”

* Click Apply

* Click OK

You should now see the background image of your desktop on the TV or projector, and your mouse pointer should be able to be seen as you move it over to the external monitor/screen.

Next, enable Skype. With your mouse, left click on the upper border of the Skype window and drag it over to the external monitor/screen.

Now, you are ready. Test your setup by video calling someone, either the person being interviewed or another contact.

When you have that person on the line, click on the maximize screen button on the Skype video window and the video of the person you have called should fill the whole screen.

And there you go! You are all set do to a remote interview/presentation.

Be sure you have selected the external microphone in Skype. You can then use it to have the audience ask questions at the end of the presentation. That is lot more effective than trying to use the computers installed mic or the webcam mic if it has one.

By Jack Heape

We’ve all seen personalized pencils with their embossed lettering. Until now, I never realized what a great marketing tool they can be for small businesses. These pencils can do a whole lot more than just state your name of your company. If you are creative, these fun little give-aways can really add to the bottom line. I will tell you about three effective marketing strategies using personalized pencils for your business.

Coupon coding the pencils is a great strategy. Simply put a statement on the pencil such as “show this to redeem _.” Along with this statement, put little tracking codes on the pencils to determine conversion rates and your return on investment. With this coding you will be able to determine what venues are best to give away the pencils as well as what promotions are the “stickiest.”

Mix it up. Be sure to vary the color and messages of your pencils. You will find that people come back to see what the new design looks like. I saw a local business have a new design every month, each created by a customer. This is a great way to be interactive with your audience.

Know your customer. If your customer is young families, why not supply a local school or club with pencils? If your customers are wood workers, how about designing raw wood pencils? As you can see, you can personalize these little marketing vehicles specifically for your customer. A common mistake is to design them based on your taste, be sure to avoid this by putting yourself in your customers shoes.

All three strategies above using personalized pencils are easy to execute and are a relatively small investment which could ultimately increase your bottom line.

By Randy D. Spence