QVIews

If your products are distributed through partners or retailers, then your success is influenced by the quality of their web site. Of course, manufacturers have always had to police their distributors to some extent, but the internet has certainly complicated the process. In any circumstances, if you have affiliates or influencers who link to your…

Collecting all the data in the world will not make the target your friend. Facebook, ePinions, and StyleHive make it possible for people who have nothing else in common to band together and compare data about their suppliers. Have you been treating your targets like human beings? Do they have warm, fuzzy stories to share…

E-Commerce systems now allow most companies to test and find optimal prices that will maximize either volume or margins, but even more important is developing a pricing system that feels predicatable and fair to your customers. When The National Academies Press, the book-publishing arm of the National Academy of Sciences, began making PDF editions of…

1-800-Flowers.com has developed a wonderful promotional platform which should serve them for years. They are collecting and promoting stories about how people have reconnected with friends and family. The web site with the contest is okay, but the best part are the community promotions they run. They will go to a school or community center…

Unless you recruited avid networkers, getting employees to socialize in the business community can be a daunting challenge. Making them do it one particular way, such as joining professional associations, or entertaining clients, or using Facebook (see below), will probably lead to gaming and faking. Every business is part of a larger social system that…

In the world of sales, an aging new business lead stinks faster than a dead fish. No one wants to handle them, but that attitude can cost you business, as Philip Baltazar of mortgage lender American Funding explains. MarketingSherpa: How to Convert Old Leads Into 11.07% New Sales. 2007-Nov-14 (subscription required) The new system of…

Most companies which would like to have a newsletter promptly bite off more than they can chew. They have a preconception that a newsletter should be original, substantial and exclusive to customers. Then the newsletter ends up being infrequent, long and painful to produce. Roger Parker has the right idea. Squidoo: Using newsletters to market…

Loyalty programs that only reward you when you keep increasing your spending feel pushy. For decades, the grocery industry sent us coupons based on what they wanted to push. But now with the help of dunnhumby, Kroger sends me and others coupons for the stuff we need to run our lives. They are more loyal…

This holiday season, it seems what people really need is a deal. A few years ago, Best Buy famously fired its most aggressive deal-seeking customers, some of whom were loading up on loss leaders and selling them on eBay. So now the winning retailers are making a better effort to understand and support deal-seeking behavior…