Marketing

Many agencies will tell you there's really no difference, and when it comes to the task of putting together ads, they may be right. But is that all your agency should be doing?

If you want to generate OEM business, you’ll almost always have to take it away from competitors.

If a prospect prefers to have printed literature — and many still do — your company should be willing to provide it.

On a recent new business call, a VP of Sales and Marketing posed the following question to us: “Why should I spend a lot of money running ads when I can get more bang for my buck from PR?” A perfectly legitimate question in this day and age of shrinking promotional budgets and increased focus on results.

When we posed this question to a group of company managers and presidents, it seemed to stump many of them. One said, “They just sort of wash up on the beach.” Others gave us some interesting answers such as “Our salespeople dig them out”, “Referrals from other customers”, “Inquiries from advertising, directories, trade shows, the web, and our dealers”, and even “Over the transom”.

Companies often spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, developing new products only to discontinue them a year or two later due to poor sales.

We occasionally get caught up in purchasing decisions on office electronics such as computers, scanners laser printers, and phone systems. For the most part, we find the process time-consuming and frustrating, primarily because we get so little help from salespeople or sales literature.