Home
Share |

Content about Advertising

April 11, 2013
No Passive Path to Increasing Profitable Sales (Part 2)

SAN FRANCISCO — With no magic bullet in sight, profitable sales require multi-pronged, sustained effort

SAN FRANCISCO — In our consulting practice, we field many questions, but the most common question has long been “How do I increase sales?”

When this question arises, we always encourage the person who is asking to modify it to “How do I increase profitable sales?”

How many of you have tried Groupon, delighted initially at the large number of respondents, but then evaluated the retention rate on those deeply discounted sales and vowed never to use it again? These promotional efforts can be used as a marketing introduction for a new service or new location, but resulting sustained sales are rare. They have the added disadvantage of training your customers to think that your service is not worth your normal price.

So what is the answer?

First, there is no silver bullet. Profitable sales require a multi-pronged, sustained effort. There is no passive path to increased profitable sales.

December 12, 2012
Rebranding Campaign Garners National Advertising Award for New Orleans Cleaner

NEW ORLEANS — Young’s Dry Cleaning’s rebranding campaign after Katrina earns ADDY award

NEW ORLEANS — After Hurricane Katrina destroyed everything their family had worked to build since 1940, the owners of Young’s Dry Cleaning teamed with local advertising agency CPR + Partners to completely redevelop their brand.

The resulting Young’s campaign went on to be recognized in local and regional ad competitions organized by the American Advertising Federation. Next, the campaign stood toe to toe against the best advertising in the country, earning the Lakeview cleaners a 2012 national silver ADDY® award in the category of Mixed Media, Local Consumer.

The ADDY® Awards represent the true spirit of creative excellence by recognizing all forms of advertising across media of all types, creative by all sizes and entrants of all levels from anywhere in the world.

Since launching their new brand and advertising campaign less than two years ago, Young’s free pick-up and delivery business has continued to steadily increase, according to the company.

September 11, 2012
10 Secrets to Promoting Your Cleaner...Now! (Part 1 of 2)

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Make sure your message is where the people are

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Brian Wallace, president/CEO of the Coin Laundry Association, was given a daunting task: to capture the audience’s attention during the final hour of a regional dry cleaning and laundry trade show in sunny Southern California.

But his task was no more challenging than one faced by every dry cleaner: to successfully market his or her store(s) in an environment where potential customers have access to information almost instantaneously and from a variety of sources.

On top of all the other “hats” that a dry cleaner “wears”—customer service, maintenance, production, human resources, accounting—he or she can add one more hat to that mix: director of marketing, Wallace told attendees of Fabricare 2012.

“You work incredibly hard for your business, but the fact of the matter is things have changed. … We’re all trying to reinvent ourselves on the fly, trying to deal with the new marketplace. I think that trying to come to grips with some of the new marketing techniques is really an important part of that overall process.”

May 3, 2012
Advertising in the Yellow Pages

PEMBROKE, Mass. — Tips to create attention-grabbing line and box ads

PEMBROKE, Mass. — The Yellow Pages are dying, but they aren’t dead yet.  Many consumers over 40 still use them as their first shopping resort. Every household still has them.

Most dry cleaners put line ads in several area books, and one or two competitors have standard bullet box ads that aren’t terribly effective. What that means for you is that you can more easily stand out and that you can bargain for a better price.

New residents use this resource to find whom to go to for dry cleaning. Transients use Yellow Pages to bring a load of clothing. Others use the book to find a special service, such as drapery cleaning. Angry patrons might use Yellow Pages to discover another source.

If your market is stable, without many comings and goings, you probably only need a line ad. But if you have a mobile market, with quite a bit of movement, then you might at least try a box ad.

August 8, 2011
American Drycleaner Enhances Online Ad Experience

CHICAGO — On Aug. 1, American Drycleaner began delivering its online advertisements through Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) ad server. This move comes with a built-in, trusted third-party auditor of our ad impressions, and represents our next step in improving our service to our audience and advertising clients.

Our ad reporting complies with industry standards as set forth by the Interactive Audience Measurement and Advertising Campaign Reporting and Audit Guidelines. This document establishes a detailed definition for ad impressions—a critical component of Internet measurement—and provides certain guidelines for Internet advertising sellers and ad serving organizations for establishing consistent and accurate measurements.

The American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA) and other members of the ad buying community asked for consistent counting methods and definitions and better counting accuracy, and this project was the result.

March 4, 2009
Advertising in Tough Times

Your first reaction to a sales slowdown in tough economic times is to cut spending on advertising, isn’t it? But doing so is probably one of the most expensive things you can do.

Most of the people trying to fix the economy now don’t advocate saving more money or cutting down on debt; they’re calling for increases in spending. And while spending yourself out of a bad economy seems to make as much sense as a drunk drinking himself sober, the experts are correct — spending will be part of the solution.

October 14, 2008
MySpace Lets Small Businesses Market to Specific Segments of its User Base

NEW YORK — Drycleaners and other small-business owners may not have the resources for a national online ad campaign, but MySpace now offers a self-service graphical “display” advertising platform that lets small businesses and individuals target their marketing to its vast audience by characteristics such as gender, geography and more.

The News Corp.-owned company’s MyAds advertising platform was released in “beta” test phase in late September after a three-month closed test.

April 18, 2007
Measuring Your Marketing Efforts

As you know, marketing is not a pure science. It involves the interplay of the psychology of your consumer at the moment combined with factors outside of your control, blended with timing, presentation, distribution and budget. It is a combination of creativity, tenacity, fortitude and trust.

February 21, 2007
Ask Permission, Get Customer Loyalty

There’s a new trend in marketing that’s gaining favor and uses name and address files or customer databases as its source. The difference between this new strategy and those of the past is that it asks customers’ permission to be marketed to, making them feel like insiders and increasing loyalty.

Companies once had easy answers when it came to promotion, attracting new customers and keeping existing customers. The tools they used were good value and mass-market advertising.