• #196
    Nov 17, 2012

    Rethinking the Company Brochure

    Image purchased from iStockPhoto.com
    Effective Promotion vs. Impressive Pieces

    Business owners often understand the golden rule when it comes to customer service. It’s interesting to me, though, how often we overlook that guiding principle in marketing and don’t design advertising that we’d want to read, if the roles were reversed. Give advertising unto others that you’d want given unto you; and see what happens to your company brochure—and your bottom line.

  • #192
    Aug 23, 2012

    4 Things Every Business Proposal Should Say

    Image Used With Permission Through Purchase From iStockPhoto.com
    A Shift in Auction Proposal Strategy

    Empathy is huge for trust. That means letting people know that we realize that this is their treasured collection, lifetime achievement, or financial security that’s at stake. Each situation will determine what is professionally appropriate to say; and this doesn’t have to be a verbose section of a proposal, but intentionally moving into this perspective for even one sentence can be enough to separate ourselves from the competition.

  • #191
    Aug 2, 2012

    Working With a Changing Newspaper Landscape

    Image purchased from iStockPhoto.com, cropped, and blurred
    Get the Most from a Fluid Media

    All media is adapting to technological advancements and changing audience habits, but the newspaper industry seems to have the toughest road to relevance. An observant eye will help us as advertisers take advantage of the deals and restrictions that stem from this newspaper landscape to best serve our customers.

  • #190
    Jul 12, 2012

    Natural Disaster Advertising?

    Image purchased from iStockPhoto.com
    Finding My Work in a Derecho

    I don’t know if it’s appropriate to compare what my clients and I do for a living to a deadly, expensive natural disaster. That said, if the advertising we generate could engulf our buying community like Derecho 2012 has my physical community, we’d all have the job security of an American Electric Power lineman.

  • #189
    Jun 28, 2012

    5 Advertising Lessons From the Interstate

    Image Purchased from iStockPhoto.com
    Advertising as a First Impression

    Good advertising is more often a result of subtraction than addition. Consider an advertisement as a collection of shares of impression. The fewer the shares, the more each share is worth—and the more likely they’ll be remembered.

  • #188
    Jun 14, 2012

    Competing For (And Against?) Potential Clients

    Image purchase from iStockPhoto.com
    Lessons From the Proxibid Debate

    I’ll let other people debate whether Proxibid’s move was harmful or advantageous to the auction industry and whether or not their expansion happened in good faith. That’s not my fight.

    What is my fight is making auction advertising so attractive and effective that people keep hiring auctioneers to sell their assets.

  • #186
    Apr 19, 2012

    The USPS Program That Could Save You Thousands

    Mail Sorting (Image purchased from iStockPhoto.com)
    Every Door Direct Mail®

    For auctioneers, who often have limited budgets and even more limited time, Every Door Direct Mail may prove itself a long-overdue solution. And if your proposed budget can gain dollars on the postage line, you can spend those saved dollars on more marketing in places your competition can’t.

  • #185
    Mar 29, 2012

    The Pinterest Effect

    Advertising Lesson from Pinterest.com's Success

    There’s a lesson there for every marketer. What makes content quickly absorbable is compelling imagery, imagery which Pinterest users tend to pull from predominantly-commercial websites. Words—even headlines—are secondary. As a culture, we don’t’ care about explanations and slogans, if we aren’t drawn to them through the picture(s) they accompany. As a marketer who helps other marketers, I can tell you that if the design of our marketing media centers around large, singular imagery—and those images are professionally staged and captured—our advertising will be far more effective than the current average of small business advertising media.

  • #184
    Feb 28, 2012

    Who Should Manage Your Social Media Content?

    Unknown Professional (iStockPhoto Purchase)
    In-house vs. Outsourced Conversations

    The problem is that social media sites are relational environments—places to do online what we do offline, admittedly with both upgrades and drawbacks over in-person conversations. In most situations you wouldn’t pay another company to go have conversations with people for you at social gatherings. So, why would you pay a company to have your conversations with your prospects and peers online?

  • #183
    Feb 14, 2012

    Learning From Public Perception

    Screen Capture of jcpenney's New
    Confronting Public Perception

    The fight to save and grow the auction industry is in the hands of us who market in it every day. Our success will require us to step out of our perspective, our conveniences, our assumptions. Our jobs will most likely continue to require more steps and a wider skill set. I’m in this, too. To maintain value for my clients, my responsibilities, packages, and services have changed over the past years. Have you found that to be true? If not, how long do you think your status quo will serve you well?

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