Street Sweeping Contractors Cheat Business Customers at Night
Many street sweeping companies, which have big large contracts with retail outlets and shopping malls often cheat the company on their services. In fact, as I travel around the country I am appalled at this particular industry. It seems that so many of the contractors who have street sweeping businesses cheat the customer. I asked myself why this is? It appears to me that the lowest bid will get the contract and many of the companies bids are so low that they cannot afford to do the work or by adequate equipment to do the job right.I have watched Street

Word Of Mouth The Most Powerful Marketing Tool
How many people are talking about you, your business, your products or your services?Word of mouth is one of the fastest means of promotion.Today I will show you how you can get your customers talking to their colleagues, friends and family about you and your business.I can remember, many moons ago, I sold a computer to Alice who lived in Walthamstow, East London. At that time my office was based in South West of London, approximately twenty-five miles or so away. Alice had no means of transport and a limited budget to work with. What was I to

Top Career Advice ... More Choices and A Better Way of Life
Why Career Advice Is So ImportantChoosing a career presents a nerve-racking decision, as it can have a life-long impact on you. Do not fret, as you can gain a clearer outlook into your future by thorough career planning.Having a clear vision of the future can guide you by helping you set career goals and helping you on your way towards attaining them. Whether you are starting out on a new career or looking to change your current career, you will benefit enormously from taking sound advice.Don't Spend Most of Your Life Doing ...d companies and increased the volume of solicitations to consumers. The result is a growing flow of junk in our mailboxes that wastes our time and natural resources.

Like most people, I hated the barrage of evening phone calls from roofing companies, finance firms, charities, window cleaners, and publishers. (I often wondered if the advertisers who used this technique gave any thought to the damage this technique did to their brand names.) As annoying as the telephone calls were, the growing avalanche of direct mail is starting to worry me even more. As responsible citizens on planet Earth, do we really want to use our resources in this way? And as marketers, do we have a responsibility to carefully marshal our resources and to judiciously use each channel of communication to its best advantage? Shouldn’t we leave as little waste as possible?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not against the use of direct mail. Used appropriately, it can be a powerful tool. It is just plain awful marketing that bugs me, and this leads to incredible waste of our most precious natural resources.

As I write this article, I am preparing for a meeting with a small national manufacturing company that is looking for new advertising counsel. They just completed a very large national direct mail program to support sales leads for their dealership network with disastrous results. The program cost $250,000 and netted 250 leads and 30 new customers. This means that inquiries cost $1,000 each, and customers cost $8,333 each. The company makes about $600 in profit per customer and needs to be finding them for less than $300. Oops. Even taking out one-time creative development costs from the equation, each new customer cost over $4000. Clearly, this was a flop.

What is sad about this is that any professional in our business would have looked at the initial strategy and predicted failure. This was a case where direct mail was not appropriate for accomplishing the goals. There was no mailing list available that was targeted enough to warrant the very high per-contact cost of direct mail.

The advertiser was a victim of his own misconception of the power of direct mail. Before the tactic of direct mail was chosen, this advertiser should have evaluated all possible channels of communication available to him. This was a case where a combination of targeted national cable combined with a really strong dealer referral program on the Web site most likely would have yielded the results needed for the same test budget. And the advertiser wouldn’t have sacrificed a single tree in the process.

Direct mail has been oversold as a marketing tool, and it is time to start thinking about being far more judicious when we choose this medium. With the emerging Internet and the newly found television interactivity, direct marketers have better, more socially responsible ways to meet their goals.

ources and to judiciously use each channel of communication to its best advantage? Shouldn’t we leave as little waste as possible?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not against the use of direct mail. Used appropriately, it can be a powerful tool. It is just plain awful marketing that bugs me, and this leads to incredible waste of our most precious natural resources.

As I write this article, I am preparing for a meeting with a small national manufacturing company that is looking for new advertising counsel. They just completed a very large national direct mail program to support sales leads for their dealership network with disastrous results. The program cost $250,000 and netted 250 leads and 30 new customers. This means that inquiries cost $1,000 each, and customers cost $8,333 each. The company makes about $600 in profit per customer and needs to be finding them for less than $300. Oops. Even taking out one-time creative development costs from the equation, each new customer cost over $4000. Clearly, this was a flop.

What is sad about this is that any professional in our business would have looked at the initial strategy and predicted failure. This was a case where direct mail was not appropriate for accomplishing the goals. There was no mailing list available that was targeted enough to warrant the very high per-contact cost of direct mail.

The advertiser was a victim of his own misconception of the power of direct mail. Before the tactic of direct mail was chosen, this advertiser should have evaluated all possible channels of communication available to him. This was a case where a combination of targeted national cable combined with a really strong dealer referral program on the Web site most likely would have yielded the results needed for the same test budget. And the advertiser wouldn’t have sacrificed a single tree in the process.

Direct mail has been oversold as a marketing tool, and it is time to start thinking about being far more judicious when we choose this medium. With the emerging Internet and the newly found television interactivity, direct marketers have better, more socially responsible ways to meet their goals.

eans that inquiries cost $1,000 each, and customers cost $8,333 each. The company makes about $600 in profit per customer and needs to be finding them for less than $300. Oops. Even taking out one-time creative development costs from the equation, each new customer cost over $4000. Clearly, this was a flop.

What is sad about this is that any professional in our business would have looked at the initial strategy and predicted failure. This was a case where direct mail was not appropriate for accomplishing the goals. There was no mailing list available that was targeted enough to warrant the very high per-contact cost of direct mail.

The advertiser was a victim of his own misconception of the power of direct mail. Before the tactic of direct mail was chosen, this advertiser should have evaluated all possible channels of communication available to him. This was a case where a combination of targeted national cable combined with a really strong dealer referral program on the Web site most likely would have yielded the results needed for the same test budget. And the advertiser wouldn’t have sacrificed a single tree in the process.

Direct mail has been oversold as a marketing tool, and it is time to start thinking about being far more judicious when we choose this medium. With the emerging Internet and the newly found television interactivity, direct marketers have better, more socially responsible ways to meet their goals.

l. Before the tactic of direct mail was chosen, this advertiser should have evaluated all possible channels of communication available to him. This was a case where a combination of targeted national cable combined with a really strong dealer referral program on the Web site most likely would have yielded the results needed for the same test budget. And the advertiser wouldn’t have sacrificed a single tree in the process.

Direct mail has been oversold as a marketing tool, and it is time to start thinking about being far more judicious when we choose this medium. With the emerging Internet and the newly found television interactivity, direct marketers have better, more socially responsible ways to meet their goals. Those of us who make choices every day in the use of media channels should be more thoughtful about the impact our choices will make on future generations.

With all this, I am not too worried about the current glut of junk mail continuing. There is sort of advertising eco-system in place that will slow the process in a few years. The more people sign up for the do-not-call list, the more calls that will go to those who haven’t yet signed up. This will increase their unhappiness. This will increase the rate of sign-up for the do-not-call list. This will increase the amount spent on direct mail which will further fill our mailboxes. The more filled our mailboxes become, the more diluted the response rates and the harder it will be to make mail pencil out. So ultimately mail volume will drop.

Let’s help it along by only choosing this medium after a careful evaluation of all alternatives.