What do you think of this for a marketing idea

[Andrewf]

I have to say if someone posted a spoon through my door I'd think great just what I need and use. My wife on the other hand said what a good idea and would probably think about contacting the company if we needed a new kitchen.
She has had plenty of experience working in a business that relied heavily on advertising and word of mouth from present customers. So anything that makes you stand out from the crowd is woth a try.

 

[bugbear]

I like the slight "echo" of advertising on a wooden, kitchen related item. Neat idea.

"The medium is the message" or very nearly.

BugBear

 

[GPB]

As someone who recycles leaflets that come through the letterbox without even looking at them, I think yours is a really good idea.

One of the largest groups of people considering having new kitchens fitted must be those who have just moved house. Therefore, is it possible to identify houses that have recently sold (within a week?) in your area, above a certain value, and target them?

Maybe a website such as Rightmove would identify recently completed sales?

Graham

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Like I said.....marketing effectively is a highly skilled business. You need to seek out and select your target audience and find creative ways to access and engage with them. Your message delivery must stand out or it simply wont be read. Your target audience should have both money and need....that last post about zeroing in on recent house movers above a threshold value for example is a great idea. Then you need to design the collateral and execute the plan....test, test, test....measure the results.....put more budget behind what works. My company has spent millions on marketing over the years and that formula of test, measure, repeat the good ones is the only thing that works over the long haul. To make marketing work, you have to put considerable time and effort into the programs and come up with new and inventive approaches. That last post was a classic example of a great idea that you should combine with your great idea of the wooden collateral and test.

Also know that statistically a response rate of above 1% is doing well...marketing is hard...people are burn victims and they don't yield easily....don't be disappointed easily. If the assumption is that you get a 0.5% response rate for the sake of argument then make the campaign either better targeted or bigger volume to get the response quantity you need.

 

[powertools]

Having been working all day in this heat I am worn out and my reply may not be what you want to hear.
This is the only forum I belong to and I feel that I am not good at getting my point across but I will try.
For most of my 40 year working life I have run what I consider to be a sales, packaging and marketing company
By delivering 300 plus spoons in to randum large houses I see that as advertising and not marketing it would be interesting to know if you have had any response.
There are far better ways to attract a potential customer and that is when your marketing skills will be important.

 

[Graham Orm]

Having been working all day in this heat I am worn out and my reply may not be what you want to hear.
This is the only forum I belong to and I feel that I am not good at getting my point across but I will try.
For most of my 40 year working life I have run what I consider to be a sales, packaging and marketing company
By delivering 300 plus spoons in to randum large houses I see that as advertising and not marketing it would be interesting to know if you have had any response.
There are far better ways to attract a potential customer and that is when your marketing skills will be important.

How is advertising not marketing?

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Hi Power

I think you got your point across just fine. I personally would widen your definition of marketing. I know what you mean by "its advertising" but marketing is a very broad church. This is wiki's definition:

Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling the product or service. It is a critical business function for attracting customers

By that definition, the spoons are in....no question.

I've been the managing director of multi million pound companies for very many years and I stand by the "test it" theory. Marketing these days is fickle to say the least. What worked last year, even last month might suddenly stop working and the truth is you just cant pronounce "it wont work" because you don't know until you test it. You may be absolutely spot on, equally you may have missed a golden opportunity. You simply cant arm-chair think this stuff through. You have to implement the idea and let the punters vote with their feet....its the only way to the "truth" about the value of an idea. So you may be right...based on your experience. But as you say, I'd be interested to review the results once it's done. I would also test market the laser printing, do a batch on the spoon, a batch on the handle etc. Mix it up and test each idea...let the punters tell you if it works...don't second guess it from an arm chair.

 

[doctor Bob]

I am a wood worker who runs a small business.
I'm not an entrepreneur, to be honest I often feel like an impostor, not really quite sure how I ended up where I am.
I'm not bright enough to even work out the difference between marketing and advertising.

What I do know is people know better than me, so all ideas are welcome, all opinions are welcome and where possible they will be acted on.
Thank you all.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

One of the most shrewd summarisations of business I ever heard came from Lee Iacocca, the former Chairman of Chrysler and also a president of Ford. Of business he said:

"Business IS innovation and marketing....everything else is a cost. If you think about that he's absolutely on the money. The very essence of business is you make something that solves a problem (ie it has value) - innovation and then you need to tell as many people about it as possible - marketing.

All the bean counting and HR are about keeping legal and filing Government required documents. The juice of a business is and always was in its R&D plus its sales and marketing.

You need to decide what's different, distinctive, better about your approach to kitchens...then tell as many people about it as you can, using many different techniques until you find ones which consistently work.

 

[powertools]

Having been working all day in this heat I am worn out and my reply may not be what you want to hear.
This is the only forum I belong to and I feel that I am not good at getting my point across but I will try.
For most of my 40 year working life I have run what I consider to be a sales, packaging and marketing company
By delivering 300 plus spoons in to randum large houses I see that as advertising and not marketing it would be interesting to know if you have had any response.
There are far better ways to attract a potential customer and that is when your marketing skills will be important.

How is advertising not marketing?

Advertising is getting a potential customer to interested in your products. Marketing is getting that potential customer to purchase from you and not your competition.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

what utter poppycock....get your definitions straight old son. That might be what your team has chosen to label those activities ie it's your nomenclature but it's a different language to that spoken in regular business. You're just confusing the poor bloke.

Read the wiki definition, I've already posted a snippet.....its really not rocket science.

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Here's the wiki on advertising:

Advertising or advertizing[1][2][3] is a form of communication for marketing and used to encourage, persuade, or manipulate an audience (viewers, readers or listeners; sometimes a specific group) to continue or take some new action. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Let me set the record straight rather than keep quoting wiki's.

Simply put:

Marketing is the whole thing. Marketing is an umbrella term that "owns" everything to do with messaging customers. It includes advertising, selling etc etc. It's the Daddy of all customer communications and its goal is simple...to create customers, to retain customers and to get more revenue from customers into the future.

Advertising is some form of message/copy/whatever the format designed to illicit a response from a prospective customer. Usually a call to action....call this number/go to this website/review this youtube. It may also be directly asking the prospect to buy if the goods are direct enough and commodity enough.

But it's a strategy of communicating with possible customers which is part of the marketing mix. Marketing remains the umbrella term for all the customer facing activity.

There...sermon over

 

[bugbear]

Let me set the record straight rather than keep quoting wiki's.

Simply put:

Marketing is the whole thing. Marketing is an umbrella term that "owns" everything to do with messaging customers. It includes advertising, selling etc etc. It's the Daddy of all customer communications and its goal is simple...to create customers, to retain customers and to get more revenue from customers into the future.

Advertising is some form of message/copy/whatever the format designed to illicit a response from a prospective customer. Usually a call to action....call this number/go to this website/review this youtube. It may also be directly asking the prospect to buy if the goods are direct enough and commodity enough.

But it's a strategy of communicating with possible customers which is part of the marketing mix. Marketing remains the umbrella term for all the customer facing activity.

There...sermon over

From the POV of a one-man-band I don't see how the distinction matters - posting spoons is posting spoons.

BugBear

 

[doctor Bob]

From the POV of a one-man-band I don't see how the distinction matters - posting spoons is posting spoons.

BugBear

True but you have to be able to work out to post them length wise, they don't fit width ways...... once me and my business partner had sussed that out there was no stopping us..... :lol:

 

[RogerS]

Having been working all day in this heat I am worn out and my reply may not be what you want to hear.
This is the only forum I belong to and I feel that I am not good at getting my point across but I will try.
For most of my 40 year working life I have run what I consider to be a sales, packaging and marketing company
By delivering 300 plus spoons in to randum large houses I see that as advertising and not marketing it would be interesting to know if you have had any response.
There are far better ways to attract a potential customer and that is when your marketing skills will be important.

How is advertising not marketing?

Advertising is getting a potential customer to interested in your products. Marketing is getting that potential customer to purchase from you and not your competition.

Not strictly true. Advertising is but one small section of Marketing. Marketing is much broader than your description. Marketing covers PR, market research, advertising, sponsorship, product pricing, media planning etc.

 

[maltrout512]

From the POV of a one-man-band I don't see how the distinction matters - posting spoons is posting spoons.

BugBear

True but you have to be able to work out to post them length wise, they don't fit width ways...... once me and my business partner had sussed that out there was no stopping us..... :lol:

Oh please tell.... :roll:

 

[Random Orbital Bob]

Let me set the record straight rather than keep quoting wiki's.

Simply put:

Marketing is the whole thing. Marketing is an umbrella term that "owns" everything to do with messaging customers. It includes advertising, selling etc etc. It's the Daddy of all customer communications and its goal is simple...to create customers, to retain customers and to get more revenue from customers into the future.

Advertising is some form of message/copy/whatever the format designed to illicit a response from a prospective customer. Usually a call to action....call this number/go to this website/review this youtube. It may also be directly asking the prospect to buy if the goods are direct enough and commodity enough.

But it's a strategy of communicating with possible customers which is part of the marketing mix. Marketing remains the umbrella term for all the customer facing activity.

There...sermon over

From the POV of a one-man-band I don't see how the distinction matters - posting spoons is posting spoons.

BugBear

The distinction doesn't matter but I'm guessing you didn't read the threads that it was responding to so understand why it's confused you. Another poster was arguing the toss about what it is and isn't. All I was doing was attempting to clarify...which I'm beginning to deeply regret!!

 

[bugbear]

From the POV of a one-man-band I don't see how the distinction matters - posting spoons is posting spoons.

BugBear

The distinction doesn't matter but I'm guessing you didn't read the threads that it was responding to so understand why it's confused you. Another poster was arguing the toss about what it is and isn't. All I was doing was attempting to clarify...which I'm beginning to deeply regret!!

Actually - I did. But I was forlornly trying to coax the thread back to the OP's question (and context).

BugBear

 

[Reggie]

So, essentially, marketing is what we're doing here (discussing various advertising methods for the best strategy) and lasering a spoon is advertising?