Greetings everybody\u2026For this month\u2019s blog I am going to break away from the wonderful world of embroidery and write about something that is very near and dear to my heart, marketing.\u00a0 In these tough economic times what will separate you from your cotemporaries is the manner in which you market your company.\u00a0\u00a0 And let\u2019s be clear about one thing, advertising and marketing are not the same thing.<\/p>\n
I am not going to bore you guys with dictionary definitions of the difference between the two.\u00a0\u00a0 For the sake of this conversation brevity I am going to keep it simple.\u00a0 All of you marketing majors out there will probably have a bone to pick with me\u2026but this is how I see it.\u00a0 Marketing is the \u201cbig picture\u201d and any single advertisement is the \u201clittle picture.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0For those of you who have been our customers for a while you know that Qdigitizing sends out monthly newsletters.\u00a0 We have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, My Space and others.\u00a0 We also send email ad blasts.\u00a0 We market directly to our database of customers both active and inactive. \u00a0\u00a0We participate in several trade shows every year, I write this blog, I am published in Stitches Magazine and Apparel Magazines.\u00a0 I am on the Education board with ASI and Editorial Board of Stitches Magazine.\u00a0 \u00a0I have spoken at numerous industry events and Qdigitizing has won several digitizing awards. \u00a0I don\u2019t tell you these things to impress you.\u00a0 I am outlining part of my marketing plan.\u00a0 Any of those things independently can be considered an advertisement, direct when in the form of something like an ad blast or indirect when a speaking engagement.\u00a0 But the sum of all the components is a marketing plan.<\/p>\n
This is what I want to talk about with you today.\u00a0 I am by no means an expert on this field other than what has worked for me.\u00a0 I am not going to tell you what will work for you because I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 Different things work for different companies and what worked today might not work for you tomorrow.\u00a0 But that does not mean you should just throw a bunch of mud on the wall to see what sticks.\u00a0 That is what \u00a0\u201dspammers\u201d do and Qdigitizing is not that, and neither should you.<\/p>\n
Qdigitizing does not directly \u201cmarket\u201d to companies like funeral homes and car dealerships even though it can be argued that either of those organizations can use our products and services.\u00a0 There is actually a huge niche market of embroidery professionals who service funeral parlors and we all know car dealerships use a lot of embroidered product.\u00a0 Qdigitizing wants to market to the professional who sells business to business on a daily basis.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to post our entire demographic base in a public forum (sorry competitors) but our obvious customers are screen print houses, promotional product distributors and embroidery houses.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Simply put, we know who we are and you need to who you are too.<\/p>\n
This is probably the most fundamental marketing concept I can pass on to you.\u00a0 You must know who you are and you must be able to define yourself in one sentence without qualifiers and additional explanation.\u00a0 If you know who you are you should be able to tell me in less than 30 seconds.\u00a0 If I am interested in learning more I will stick around for what comes next.\u00a0 \u00a0Practice your pitch and never feel you have to justify what it is you do.\u00a0 One of the mistakes many newcomers make in this industry is trying to be everything to everybody.\u00a0 Those of us who have been around the block know it is impossible to be that.\u00a0 So we find what we are good at and we specialize in it, occasionally branching out to keep things interesting and alive.\u00a0 One last thing you should remember, not everyone wants to hear your message.\u00a0 Just like you change the channels when a commercial comes on you don\u2019t care about, so too will many of the people you might come in contact with on a daily basis.\u00a0 What you need to do is figure out what the properties are of the people who don\u2019t change the channel on your message.<\/p>\n
That brings me to the next topic.\u00a0 And it all links in to the marketing plan.\u00a0 You must keep your business alive and dynamic.\u00a0 Stagnation is the stink of death and as soon as you are not growing you are dying.\u00a0 This means as you bring new products on line you must understand their introduction alone is part of the marketing plan and advertising to the new product is again, part of the marketing plan and must support \u201cthe whole.\u201d\u00a0 You need to plan for developing new products and new ideas. \u00a0You need to plan to advertise those new ideas without abandoning what is your primary product or service set.<\/p>\n