We have a new main website for Glow Marketing. Please check it out and let us know what you think. You will still be able to read articles and ideas on marketing to Moms right here on our blog. We’re in the process of switching over to it, but to access it now, click here.
July 30th, 2009
MomsRising creating a microsite and customizable video to send friends a Mothers Day video.With days to go, the microsite was well planned in terms of it’s release date and the video itself is hilarious. Obviously Moms where involved in the making of the video and it’s message.
The site was created to raise awareness for Moms Rising and the customizable video is a perfect viral marketing tactic to leverage Mothers Day as means to market their organization. “Moms Rising is working to bring together millions of people who share a common concern about the need to build a more family-friendly America”. Click here to view the site and video. want to learn more about viral marketing? Read Glow Marketing’s article on Viral Marketing in the MOMpreneur Magazine.
May 6th, 2009
Special events may just be your ticket to cost-effective marketing.
Classes, workshops, seminars, special events are all great ways to reach out to new and existing customers. If you market your products or services to Moms, there are a ton of topics Moms are interested in. If you own a retail space, you can use your space during non-peak times to provide valuable information to your customers.
In this economy, Moms want value. Valueable information is one way to build loyalty and increase brand awareness. The best part about offering a seminar or class is that it attracts new customers and opens up the opportunities for free advertising through events listings. Many local media will promote community events for free.
In deciding on what type of seminar you will offer, think about what your customers are interested in. The topic does not have to directly tie to one of your products or services as long as it is relevant. The speaker may even donate their time to do the session in exchange for exposure for their company.
If your company is online and does not have a retail location, consider partnering with a complimentary retail partner and co-produce the event together. For online companies, this can be a very effective way to build presence within key markets and create a personality for the company beyond just another dot com.
Moms like to have fun too, so you could also hold a class or workshop that features a fun activity for them and their children. As Mother’s Day approaches, this may be something to consider offering just prior to Mother’s Day as an opportunity for Moms to bond with their kids. Again, think of partners that might want to join in the fun to help offset the work and costs involved with hosting a special event.
Add comment February 9th, 2009
The number one question I receive is “how much should I spend on marketing?”. I’m sorry to break it to you but there is no magic formula or clear consensus out there. The good news is, we can use a range to properly plan the right level of marketing that is required in order to meet or exceed your goals and adjust it throughout the year based on the response levels. A rough rule of thumb for business to consumer companies is to budget between 5% - 20% of your gross projected revenue for 2009. If you are an established company with clients and awareness, you could get away with 5%. If you are brand new and no one has heard of you, it’s best to plan for 15 - 20%. Business to business companies can plan for a lower % between 5% - 10% because of the direct nature of marketing in this category.
If you plan to do a lot of your own marketing, including building e-newsletters or writing a blog, make sure you include your time to do these activities as part of the budget. If you have a set hourly rate for yourself, use this rate. If you do not normally charge for your time, make sure you use an hourly rate that is comparable to hiring out this activity. For example, if you have a designer that could set-up your e-newsletter for $50/hour, make sure you budget for your time at $50/hr. The fact is, your time is precious and cannot be viewed as “free” so include it in your budget. Once you see how much time you are spending on marketing you may want to consider farming out certain aspects. Tasks such as data-entry, web updates, public relations, online marketing and social network marketing are perfect examples of tasks that can be delegated.
As you progress through the year and evaluate what is working and what isn’t, remember that marketing is a process and immediate results are rare. When determining your return on investment, try to look at the long term value of new customers and not just short-term sales.
Add comment January 2nd, 2009
Top 5 Shoe String Marketing Ideas for 2009
2009 is going to be a challenging year for many companies. Where do you turn when margins are tight and all signs say “proceed with caution”?
Here are Glow Marketing’s Top 5 Shoe String Marketing Ideas to help you market to Mom in a cost effective way to stay afloat in 2009:
1. Make the Customer #1
Forget new customers for a moment and focus on the ones you have. Treat them well and ask them what they want to see your company provide them in order to meet their needs better. A customer survey will reveal where you need to improve and possibly shine a light on new products or services that you could be offering. Customer retention and developing “greater share of customer” are more cost effective than acquiring a new customer. A happy customer will bring you more business in word of mouth referrals and has the potential to spend more if you offer more of what they need.
2. Strut Your Stuff with PR
Don’t be shy, use PR to get noticed and put your company in the spotlight. As scary as it sounds, the media are looking for innovative new products to share with their readers, interesting business people to feature and even articles to publish from industry experts. Dollar for dollar, PR can generate the awareness that a company needs at a fraction of the cost of advertising.
3. Pound the Virtual Pavement
Social Network Marketing is the use of online groups and discussion forums to get the word out about your company or product. Sites like Facebook and Twitter Moms offer great opportunities to talk about your company via starting a group, joining other groups or discussions.
4. Partnership Power
Partnering with complimentary companies can create a new source of customers for very little cost. Find other companies that have similar clientele and see how you can work together to build a larger customer base. Perhaps you exchange ad banners on your website, or trade prizes for draws. Their customers could become your future customers.
5. Plan Ahead
Lack of marketing planning leads to reactionary tactics that lead to ineffective or short-term results. Reactionary decisions are based on emotion, not reason. Planning ahead gives you the confidence and ammunition to say NO when “opportunities” present themselves that are off strategy. A one-year marketing calendar will allow you to prioritize when, where and how you will market. A template is available to download on the right hand side of our screen. Without a plan, you may spend all of your marketing dollars before you need it most and you may also miss opportunities and deadlines. It’s not too late to create your plan now. Consider adding the above activities to your plan as part of an overall marketing strategy.
If these ideas are foreign to you, please contact Glow Marketing to see how we can help your business shine in 2009.
Sharole Lawrence Glow Marketing Marketing to Moms in a meaningful way. Sign-up now for our free Glow E-Report with ideas and inspiration on marketing to Moms.Add comment December 30th, 2008
To help you map out your marketing activities for 2009, download our free planning calendar template. Note the file is in Excel and has the entire year on one page (legal size) to view the year at-a-glance.
2 comments December 26th, 2008
Our Christmas e-card is going out next week to all of our newsletter subscribers.
Special thanks to Chelsey Freyta for the main illustration. Visit www.ChelseyFreyta.com to view more of her work or email her at info@chelseyfreyta.com to find out about her ultra funky prints for kids rooms.
In lieu of printed cards Glow Marketing has made a donation to the Little Warriors, a non-profit organization dedicated to help prevent, recognize, and react responsibly to child sexual abuse.
We wish you all a wonderful holiday and a prosperous 2009.
1 comment December 12th, 2008
Mompreneur Magazine Sept/Oct Issue
Check out the latest article by Glow Marketing in Mompreneur Magazine on Word of Mouth Marketing you can use.
Word of mouth marketing is a powerful tool that gets your existing customers working for you. It’s cost effective, targeted and trusted. Word of mouth marketing is the backbone of any marketing program. It supports any claims that you make in your advertising and helps to convince potential buyers that your company or product can be trusted. Anytime you can get your customers to talk about your company, you are using word of mouth marketing.
Many customers rely on word of mouth when seeking new products and services. If you sell your products to Moms, no other consumer group shares buying advice more than Moms. If Moms are your customer, make sure you give them positive reasons to talk about your company.
Word of mouth is another form of referral, but without monetary compensation to the existing client. It’s probably the most powerful form of marketing because it’s unsolicited, genuine and brings customers to you. The best way to encourage word of mouth is to go beyond the expected. Great service is a start and will get them back but rarely a topic of conversation. Do something out of the ordinary that makes your customer want to talk about it in a conversation! It could be anything, going out of your way to help someone, sending an unusual gift, hosting a special event, the possibilities are endless. The only things you need to ask yourself are:
• Is this different enough to get people talking?
• Is this still in line with my company image or product benefits?
• Is this appropriate for the client?
Here’s a small example, my husband ordered shoes from Zappos. They are based in the United States, so when they saw that our order was being shipped to Canada, they hand-drew a Canadian flag with a personal thank you note. Nice touch, and my husband told his friends when they commented on his new shoes.
A bad example (true story) would be a magazine publisher (not this one) that crossed the line by sending out chocolate body paint for Valentines Day to all the media buyers. Yes, it was talked about, but I questioned how it related to the magazine (which was not racy and had nothing to do with sex). It was not appropriate for all their clients, many of whom they had never even met or spoken to before.
Everyone knows that happy customers are great for referrals. In a perfect world, all of your new clients would come to you without any marketing but in reality, your customers are busy, so unless you ask them for a referral, chances are they will not talk about your company. You could provide an incentive for your customers to refer you. This can be achieved in a variety ways, depending on whether you are business-to-business or business-to-consumer. It could be a personalized coupon sent through e-mail that clients can forward to a friend or crediting a client’s account for each new client they bring to you.
To encourage referrals and word of mouth, you need to make it easy for them to do so. Online mechanisms like e-mail, “Tell a friend” or “post to Facebook” features on your website make it more likely that customers will act on your request. If they need to fill out a long form or make their friend go through hoops, I doubt people will take the time.
People value referrals from friends but also listen to feedback from complete strangers. Make sure you collect client testimonials and positive feedback and use it to its full extent. Post them on your website and include them as part of your sales materials. Some e-commerce websites are even featuring customer reviews right beside the product. Canadian Tire is doing this on their site and the customer reviews convinced me that yes, a Dyson is worth the extra money and I didn’t even have to go to another site to find the reviews.
Don’t be afraid to ask your customers for testimonials and their help spreading the word about your company. If you offer an incentive to them and the new customer you are rewarding them for their help and letting them know that you, as a smaller company, rely on word of mouth to keep your marketing costs down which ultimately benefits them through lower costs.
Sharole Lawrence
President, Glow Marketing
Sign up for free marketing tips from Glow Marketing with the Glow E-Report.
2 comments September 11th, 2008
Are you a fabulous Canadian Mom Entrepreneur? SavvyMom.ca is holding their contest again now until September 14th. Nominate yourself or someone you know and then also vote on your favourites! Great exposure for you and your company, even if you don’t win. So sign-up today! What have you got to lose?
Add comment June 25th, 2008
I’m sharing this email I received today from Bo Bebe:
IF you could take 30 seconds to read an email and click twice knowing it could potentially help a single mom in need, would you do it? If you answered yes, then read on!
We are helping a dear woman who has been blind-sided by her husband leaving her 5 yr. marriage and 2 year old toddler. Having been a stay-at-home mother the majority of the past 2 years, she is struggling emtionally and trying her best financially to get herself organized and start over.
All she needs is for you to click on the link below and vote for her story (through The Bay department store’s contest) in order to try and win $5,000 in home furnishings. The winner is chosen by number of pure votes alone.
They do NOT ask for any personal information, just click on her story vote button (to the right of her story)
Please vote for Pippa and her mom as they could do with a helping hand, We have already donated new bedroom furniture for 2 yr. old Pippa as a fresh, starting point, let’s see if we can help them just a bit more….
Thanks for paying it forward, place your vote and pass on this email link to all the kind-hearted, compassionate people in your life…
Sincerely, bo bébé Team Calgary
CLICK HERE TO VOTE - ONCE YOU VOTE — Please also hit the “share on Facebook” botton on the Bay site.
Add comment June 20th, 2008
