Content about Google

SAN FRANCISCO — Often, your biggest asset can also be your biggest obstacle. Your positive experience that led to past success can blind you to the current opportunities that exist with new approaches.

Some examples might be:

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.”

SAN FRANCISCO — The more you know about your customers, the more you can engage them with your services. The more you know about your best and most profitable customers, the more you can attract prospects that will become best customers.

So how do you go about it? You may have worked on compiling demographic information such as age, location and income levels. But is that enough?

DEMOGRAPHIC AND PSYCHOGRAPHIC PROFILING

Let’s use a hypothetical example: you have determined that you want to target consumers who earn more than $150,000, live in a specific ZIP code, are 35-45 years old, own a home worth more than the median price in your market, and have a college degree.

I’m going to describe two prospects:

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.

Over the last few years, America, sadly, has become a nation of hangers-on — a country full of people whose main goal is to “just hang on.” “If I can only hang on until quitting time,” some people say. “If I can just hang on another month, I can keep my house,” or “If I can hang on long enough, I’ll be able to keep my doors open.”