The Five and Dime

Recently I gave a presentation to the Fond du Lac Area Association of Commerce about writing your own marketing plan. During the presentation a question came up about pricing. Although pricing of products and services typically is part of the business plan, it can also be an important marketing strategy. Sometimes by raising your prices you can actually increase your business. As any marketer knows, it is all about perceptions and your higher pricing often helps convince of higher quality.

I then mentioned a strategy of “marking it up to mark it down.” The thought process in this strategy is that if you have a higher list price it allows you to mark it down (sales, coupons, etc.) and still get your margins. (Obviously this is more for a retail/consumer product environment than for a service or B2B account.) I then spoke briefly about the psychology of “getting a deal” and how consumers feel good about that process. Even if they could have purchased a competitor’s product of a better quality for less money, the idea of getting a deal trumps the comparison shopping.

Later, I received an email from Carol Smith at Just Fare Market (www.justfare.org). She asked an interesting question on whether the strategy “to mark it up to mark it down” was ethical. I asked her to elaborate:

(more…)

Today the Federal Trade Commission is adopting revised Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

The new guidelines talk about celebrity endorsements, blogging endorsements, use of testimonials in general (including non-celebrities), and sponsored testing.

On the FTC website is a pdf document that you can read about it (81 pages), see the link at the bottom of this article. I’ve pulled out and summarized some components here that I think are of interest to advertisers and ad creators.

(more…)

Direct Mail Piece for Charter Business

We believe in testimonials. (If you download our brochure from our website, you can see we have incorporated some testimonials from some important people.) Recently, we’ve been using testimonials for a couple of our clients.

The first is Charter Business, this direct mail program incorporates real Charter Business customers telling how they’ve saved money using Charter’s bundled packages and how they appreciate the quality of the service. We recently learned from our contact at Charter that the first direct mail piece we did for them received their best response of any direct mail they’ve done since he’s been on board.

(more…)