Business

Viral Marketing In Action

December 3, 2010 By Nancy Nally 6 Comments

Viral marketing doesn’t hit the scrapbook industry very often. Provo Craft has accomplished it a few times with Cricut launches, specifically with their Gypsy product launch. But it’s truly a rare accomplishment for a scrapbook marketing campaign. In truth, few companies even attempt to create a truly viral promotion.

But if you’d like to see a perfect example of viral marketing done right, you need to see the holiday music video just put out by Scrapbook.com called “It’s Always Sunny In Here”. The only way to describe it is to say think about a combination of Glee and Mad Men in theme…It’s been the toast of Twitter the past few days – the true stamp of a campaign gone viral.

What makes the video the perfect viral marketing piece? First, it is downright fun! You can’t help but smile watching it. You want to watch it over and over, and tell your friends to watch it because you know they will smile too. You absolutely do not feel like you are watching an ad – which then leaves you with a positive feel about the company. This video is not only great marketing for Scrapbook.com – they’ve added in some subtle specific product mentions, so they’ve provided some marketing for their vendor partners too.

This sort of marketing is drastically under-utilized in the scrapbook industry (both the video and the viral aspect of it). More businesses should consider trying projects like this…the return on investment can be very high.

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Filed Under: Business Tagged With: Marketing, Scrapbook.com

Retailers – Need Promotional Idea For The Holidays?

October 25, 2010 By Nancy Nally Leave a Comment

Any retailer who has ever asked me for advice about marketing their business or about what they should do at the CHA shows, has likely heard me rave about the genius of retail consultants and speakers Kizer & Bender. In their writing, seminars & consulting, Rich Kizer and Georganne Bender deliver advice to retailers that is very doable and makes sense for businesses of all sizes. And as a bonus, they never fail to do it in an entertaining way!

The critical holiday sales season is right on top of us, and retailers must take advantage of it to be successful. As usual, Kizer & Bender are here to help, with their new e-book “Jingle Bells Christmas Sells: Events, Promotions & Tips for the Holiday Season“, available on their website for $24.95. Co-authored with their Australian counterpart, Debra Templar, the book is designed to give retailers all the tools and information that they need to maximize their holiday sales and have a successful holiday retail season.

Why is a successful holiday season so important to retail businesses? According to Kizer & Bender, the holiday season quarter accounts for 36% of a retail business’s sales, and represents the highest level of profitability for those businesses. Get the holidays wrong and your whole year is wrong. Do you know the origin of the term “black friday”? It’s called that because the sales on the Friday after Thanksgiving were usually when most retailers finally became profitable for the year.

The holiday season is a critical time for retailers. Don’t turn down the chance to get wonderful marketing advice from seasoned experts like Kizer & Bender and Debra Templar when you can most use it.

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Filed Under: Business Tagged With: Debra Templar, Kizer & Bender, Marketing, retail

Big Picture Classes Launches “Pro Press Releases”

October 21, 2010 By Nancy Nally 16 Comments

Today, Scrapbook Update and Big Picture Classes are teaming together to announce something that we believe will change the crafts industry for the better.

Improving the quality of press relations in our industry has been a passion of mine for quite awhile. As an editor in the industry, I deal with too many companies who aren’t taking full advantage of the opportunities that might be available to them to promote their companies through media relations. This is unfortunate, since effective press relations is the most cost-effective marketing a company can use.

I know that many of our industry’s small companies are run by entrepreneurs who are wearing many hats at their company, hats that they may not have formal training to wear. I am in that same position myself, actually, with many of my own responsibilities as a small business owner.

To help these entrepreneurs, I’ve been looking for ways to provide education to the industry about how to best spread marketing message to editors like myself. At CHA Summer 2010 in Chicago, I was honored to be able to head a panel on Press Relations for Manufacturers.

Now, with the help of Big Picture Classes, I’m happy to be able to offer even more education to the industry’s businesses. Today we’re launching my class Pro Press Releases, which is available now on the Big Picture Classes website.

Pro Press Releases is a self-paced BPC class, which means students can take the class on their own schedule and at their own pace. You’ll learn all about how to create professional and effective press releases, through audio and video messages and downloadable class handouts. The class is priced at $20, a small price for knowledge that is a large investment in your business.

Check out Pro Press Releases at Big Picture Classes today! Learn how to make the most of your press releases!

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Filed Under: Business, News Tagged With: Big Picture, media relations, press relations

Merchants To Have Fewer Credit Card Restrictions

October 5, 2010 By Nancy Nally 5 Comments

The U.S. Department of Justice announced yesterday that it has filed suit against credit card companies Visa, Mastercard and American Express over what it calls “anti-competitive practices” relating to the credit card companies’ restrictions on merchants’ ability to offer discounts to users of cards they prefer to accept.

Proposed settlements have already been reached by the DOJ with Visa and Mastercard that will have those two companies agreeing to allow merchants to offer customers discounts or rebates for using the cards that they prefer to accept (such as debit cards, which usually have lower merchant fees). American Express has vowed to fight the suit.

The ability to incentivize their customers to use preferred cards will be an important win for small businesses when the settlements with Visa and Mastercard are finalized. Credit card acceptance fees can be a major expense for both retail and wholesale businesses, and until now businesses have had little leverage in the fight to minimize those costs.

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Filed Under: Business Tagged With: American Express, Mastercard, Visa

What Can We Learn from a Haul Video?

August 26, 2010 By Nancy Nally 7 Comments

“Haul” videos are all the rage on video sites like YouTube. Shoppers record video evidence of their latest shopping “haul” and describe the bargains or treasures that they scored on their shopping mission. But if you take a closer look at these videos as marketers, can you learn something about shoppers and their habits, needs and wants from them?

To find out, let’s take a closer look at this recent scrapbooking haul video posted to YouTube by user detdaty0129:

So, what can we learn about shopper behavior from that 47 seconds? A surprising amount, actually.

Our haul shopper is pretty savvy. Not too many shoppers realize that some stores will take the competitor’s coupons (something I am personally always forgetting about when I get my Joann’s flyers in the mail).
This shopper chose to use her coupon on an item [Scotch ATG adhesive applicator, $29.99 at Scrapbook.com] that I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about, and was very excited about it. Adhesive isn’t usually a “sexy” product, but this particular adhesive gun seems to have really excited consumers.
The 70% off coupon was used to get a very practical item for a nominal price rather than seeing the discount as an opportunity to get a less usable luxury item at a massive savings. I’ll admit – I have a few expensive “ghost tools” that sit around my scrap room collecting dust that I was swayed into buying by a massive discount.
This coupon promotion by Jo-Ann Stores converted well into a sale – unfortunately it was a sale for their competitor! But it does show that coupons will bring out shoppers.
Coupon promotions like this are designed to get shoppers into the store in the hopes that they will buy more than just the coupon item. Although it isn’t mentioned in the video, a glance at the shopper’s receipt shows that it contains multiple line items, which means the promotion was probably successful in that respect.

This concept of using big sales to buy basic essentials at affordable prices was one that we saw retailers reporting as a trend last holiday season, when it seemed shoppers were gravitating more than usual towards holiday sales on basic clothing items. Since it appears that sentiment has stuck with consumers, it will be interesting to see how it affects the upcoming holiday season for retailers.

Remember the tease on the Behind The Scenes blog to get your video cameras ready? Well, here’s your first chance to use them on Scrapbook Update! Would you like your haul to be the featured in the next Scrapbook Update “haul” analysis? You can submit your own “haul” video to Scrapbook Update via our video submissions page after uploading it to YouTube or a similar service. We can’t wait to see what our readers come up with!

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