08 Mar 08 Why do we buy things we buy?

Why do we buy things? Do you realise your own reasons? Scientists and business-analytics have found main reasons why people buy. Here is a list - check it and find your own!

Basic Needs - We buy things to fulfill what Maslow describes as the bottom of his hierarchy; things like food and shelter.

Convenience - You need something now and will take the easiest or fastest path to get it. Think about the last time you were running out of gas, or were thirsty and found the nearest beverage of choice. This could also be choosing the safe vendor (no one ever gets fired for hiring IBM), purchasing something to increase comfort or efficiency.

Replacement - Sometimes you buy because you need to replace old things you have (e.g., clothes that don’t fit or are out-of-date). This could be moving from a VCR to a DVD player.

Scarcity - This could be around collectibles or a perceived need that something may run out or have limited availability in the future. Additionally, there’s a hope to gain a return on investment, such as collectible or antiques; anything that accrues value over time.

Prestige or Aspirational purchase - Something is purchased for an esteem-related reason or for personal enrichment.

Emotional Vacuum - Sometimes you just buy to try to replace things you cannot have and never will.

Lower prices - Something you identified earlier as a want is now a lower price than before. Maybe you were browsing for a particular large screen TV and you saw a great summer special.

Great Value - When the perceived value substantially exceeds the price of a product or service. This is something you don’t particularly need, you just feel it’s too good a deal to pass up. (Like the stuff they place near the end caps or checkout counters of stores.)

Name Recognition - When purchasing a category you’re unfamiliar with, branding plays a big role. Maybe you had to buy diapers for a family member and you reach for Pampers because of you’re familiarity with the brand, even though you don’t have children yourself.

Fad or Innovation - Everybody wants the latest and greatest. (iPhone mania.) This could also be when someone mimics their favorite celebrity.

Compulsory Purchase - Some external force, like school books, uniforms, or something your boss asked you to do, makes it mandatory. This often happens in emergencies, such as when you need a plumber.

Ego Stroking - Sometimes you make a purchase to impress/attract the opposite sex; to have something bigger/better than others, friends, etc. To look like an expert/aficionado; to meet a standard of social status, often exceeding what’s realistically affordable to make it at least seem like you operate at a higher level.

Niche Identity - Something that helps bond you to a cultural, religious or community affiliation. Maybe you’re a Harvard alumni and Yankee fan who keeps kosher. (You can also find anti-niche identity by rebellion, assuming you’re pretty comfortable with irony.)

Peer Pressure - Something is purchased because your friends want you to. You may need to think back to your teen years to think of an example.

The “Girl Scout Cookie Effect” - People feel better about themselves by feeling as though they’re giving to others, almost especially when they’re promised something in return. Purchasing things they don’t need–or wouldn’t normally purchase–because it will help another person or make the world a better place incrementally is essential certain buying decision.

Reciprocity or Guilt - This happens when somebody–usually an acquaintance, or someone rarely gift-worthy–buys you a gift or does something exceptionally nice and/or unnecessary. Now it’s your turn to return the favor at the next opportunity. Examples:

• Event - When the social decorum of an event (e.g., wedding, bar mitzvah, etc.) dictates buying something or another.
• Holiday - ‘Nuff said.

Empathy - Sometimes people buy from other people because they listened and cared about them even if they had the lesser value alternative.

Addiction - This is outside the range of the normal human operating system, but it certainly exists and accounts for more sales than any of us can fathom.

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Popularity: 9%

Tags: list, Marketing, top

07 Mar 08 Top Marketing Tactics 2008!

What online marketing tactics will you select in 2008?

• Blogging (29%)
• Email marketing (16%)
• Search engine optimization (12%)
• Pay per click (8%)
• Social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn) (5%)
• Affiliate marketing (4%)
• Blogger relations (3%)
• Viral marketing (3%)
• Corporate web site (3%)
• Online public relations (3%)
• Free content (white papers) (3%)
• Behavioral targeting (2%)
• Video marketing (2%)
• Webinars/Teleconference (2%)
• User generated content (1%)
• Social News / Bookmarking (1%)
• IM / Microblogging (Twitter) (1%)
• Virtual tradeshows (1%)
• Online contests, giveaways (1%)
• Online communities/forums (1%)
• Paid reviews (1%)
• Blog advertising (1%)
• Online display ads (1%)
• Contextual Advertising (1%)
• Widgets (1%)
• Mobile ads (1%)
• Branded microsites (1%)
• Rich media apps/demos (Flash) (0%)
• Advergames (0%)
• Podcasts (0%)
• eCommerce Feeds/Comparison Shopping (0%)
• Virtual worlds (0%)
• RSS advertising (0%)
• Rich media avatars (0%)
• Sponsorship / Cross Branding (0%)

200 people voted!

Popularity: 6%

Tags: Marketing, top, tricks

07 Mar 08 10+4 Marketing horror-words

Statistics is the greatest human invention and the most powerful marketing tool. During my researches I’ve found top 14 most horrible words for all customers. So if you’re professional businessman - you should check it for yourself and learn them! Let’s start, my friend!

1. Price

This may be one of those “unavoidable terms” and in fact is one that seems to be expected in ecommerce sites, however, it might be worth testing different terms, or leaving it out completely (instead of saying “Price: $xxx” consider just listing the price as “$xxx”). Again, this depends on the site.

2. Cost

Again, possibly another unavoidable term on an ecommerce site, but one that is worth testing.

3. Sign

Do you ask your customers to “Sign In”? If so, you could be scaring them away before they ever complete a sale. If you must speak in terms like that, consider phrases such as “Log in”, “For your convenience, enter your details below”, “For faster checkout, enter your information below”.

(”Sign in”)

4. Buy

Do you have buttons on your site that say “Buy Now”? Consider altering those to something more friendly such as “Add to Cart”, “Add to Bag”, “Put in My Cart”. I’ve even heard conversion tests show that a phrase such as “Proceed to checkout” works (but have not tested it personally).

5. Expensive

Just a bad word, everywhere, not only in marketing

6. Deal

Instead of saying “weekly deals” “monthly deals” etc… consider rephrasing to use the word “Sales” or “Specials” instead. The word “deals” could imply the products on the site might be considered “cheap”. On the contrary, listing some products as deals could cause other consumers to think the rest of the products must be “overpriced” ordinarily. The ultimate perception is in the eye of the consumer.

7. Sold

Do you list products as “Sold Out”? If so, consider rewording to say “Out of Stock”, “Not Available”, or removing the product from your catalog totally until it becomes available again.

8. Charge

Do you say things like “Charge Information”, “Charge Card”, “Charge Your Account”, etc…? If so, consider rewording to something more user friendly such as “Billing Information”, “Credit Card”, etc…

9. Try

When cross selling products, do you say things like “Try these other products you may like”? If so, consider rewording to something like “Other items of similar interest”, “Other products you may also like” etc…

10. Bad

Examples of usage you want to avoid are “Bad Login” and “Bad Credit Card Number”. Reword to read “Incorrect Login” or “Invalid Credit Card Number”.

11. Lose

Under the right circumstances, saying “You cannot lose” or “You have nothing to Lose” might mean you have already lost. Rephrase to state a bullet list of customer benefits from the product instead.

12. Complicated

Instead of describing a product as “not complicated” say it’s “easy to use”

13. Risk

Risk is just another bad word, like an Expensive one. Only racers and superheroes love risk

14. Obligation

Watch out for the double whammy “Risk Free No Obligation” statements.

Popularity: 10%

Tags: Marketing, top, tricks

06 Mar 08 e-Marketing method’s costs per order

Online Method	Cost Per Order
Email Affiliate Programs	>$7.00 $17.47
Paid Search Banner Ads	$26.75 $71.89

Popularity: 5%

Tags: Marketing, top

06 Mar 08 Most popular days to send e-mails!

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
1,4%	15,1%	25,4%	23,3%	18,3%	15,6%	0,9%

Popularity: 19%

Tags: email, mail

06 Mar 08 Top 10 Marketing Fails

Check these 10 most funny and silly marketing fails in history! :))))))))

10. Chevrolet Nova didn’t do well in Spanish speaking countries … Nova means ‘No Go’ …

9. Bacardi concocted a fruity drink with the name ‘Pavian’ to suggest French chic … but ‘Pavian’ means ‘baboon’ in German.

8. A peanut-packed chocolate bar targeted at Japanese teenagers needing energy while cramming for exams ran headlong into a belief that eating peanuts and chocolate causes nosebleeds.

7. Parker Pens translated the slogan for its ink, "Avoid Embarrassment - Use Quink" into Spanish as "Evite Embarazos - Use Quink" … which also means "Avoid Pregnancy - Use Quink."

6. When Gerber first started selling baby food in Africa, they used the same packaging as in the USA - the cute baby on the label. Later, when investigating lower than expected sales figures, they found out that it is common practice in Africa to put pictures of the contents on food package labels.

5. Coors slogan, "Turn it Loose," translated into Spanish as "Suffer From Diarrhea."

4. Puffs tissues had a bad name in Germany since "Puff" is a colloquial term for whorehouse.

3. Jolly Green Giant translated into Arabic means "Intimidating Green Ogre."

2. When Coca-Cola first came to China, it was given a similar sounding name … but the characters used for the name meant "Bite the Wax tadpole."

1. Chicken magnate Frank Perdue wants us to know that "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken," but the Spanish translation came out as "It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate."

Popularity: 4%

05 Mar 08 Real Software to make Real Money

Hello, my name is Zakk. I’ve written this article as a product real user, not advertiser, so it’s without fear of favour. I’m keen on internet marketing and online business, also doing articles and reviews. Today I’d like to explain main e-marketing method to increase real customer quantity and get subscribers. It’s about EMAIL MARKETING.

As we all know, electronic mail is the best internet marketing resource, so if you:

1.) Are seeking ways to promote your online business

2.) Want to increase your profits

3.) Need new customers

4.) Or just get useful bulk email software to send the ads and email newsletters ->

Then the very best way out is to get your own Email Marketing Software. Plus it’s one of the cheapest and easiest ways to do all mentioned operations.

All the businessmen know how important is to informate old customers and get new ones, that’s why all my friends and I have chosen MassMailSoftware as the main marketing tool. Now I’m going to describe most useful and popular software packs and tools. Let’s start!

1.) Bulk Mailer - a powerful bulk emailing software with tracking facilities.

Atomic Bulk Mail Sender (AMS) is a program with built-in tracking facilities to design, send and monitor bulk personalized messages. AMS is not just a secure direct mailer, with AMS you can also control and compare the effectiveness of your email campaigns by monitoring who, from what country and when opens your email, clicks links or loads images. So, being integrated with Atomic Email Tracker (web-based newsletter monitoring system), the program can be set to create an invisible code and insert it into sent messages. Once you are registered with the Mail Tracker service and the campaign name is created in AMS, our system starts monitoring the status of every email sent out under that email campaign name. Atomic Mail Sender accepts mailing lists generated in Excel, Access, DBF, Word, made in ASCII text files (.txt, .lst) as well. The number of email addresses is unlimited. If you wish you can reach a million people by sending them individual emails at once and without that embarrassing exposure of email addresses to other recipients of your message. Atomic Mail Sender is a stand-alone bulk mailer program. All you need to start use it is a connection to the Internet. The program has its own internal SMTP server and delivers mail messages directly to email recipients without your ISP mailbox.

http://www.massmailsoftware.com/buy/?ams – Use this to try or buy software

2.) Atomic Email Verifier - a program that verifies the validity of e-mail addresses in mailing lists.

Atomic Mail Verifier (AMV) is a unique program that checks email addresses for the validity. Unlike other email verification programs, our verifier uses three levels of verification to ensure you will not lose any valid address. After loading your mailing list or pasting some email addresses for validation, AMV begins to verify each e-mail address. All addresses are checked in multithreaded mode that speeds up the entire process.

http://www.massmailsoftware.com/buy/?amv – Use this to try or buy this tool

3.) Atomic Email Autoresponder

By my mind, the must-have tool for everyone who’s in marketing.Atomic Email Autoresponder (AEA) is a really must-have software for effective communication with your customers. It can take upon itself the most part of interaction with your prospects and clients. When a new person sends you an email containing certain fields or information, AEA discerns that information and starts “talking” this person in accordance with the rules you set.

Atomic Email Autoresponder will be your personal assistant that is never tired, does everything exactly in time and never goes on a vacation. Believe us - it is sure to succeed!

Atomic Email Autoresponder sends sequential unlimited automatic responses. A sequential email autoreply software is a responder that does not send some standard message in reply to a message from a user, but it can send a sequence of messages to this user, one by one, at the specified interval. For instance, it sends one message today, the second message the day after tomorrow and the third message in a month.

According to e-commerce analysts’ estimates, using three or more email messages makes the possibility of a response from a prospect considerably much higher. It is a happy medium that neither allows customers to forget about you nor bothers them too much. So do your marketing with pleasure and with real income.

http://www.massmailsoftware.com/buy/?aea – Use this to try or buy this tool.

All tools ar compatible with Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2000, so enjoy them!

Popularity: 21%

Tags: mail marketing, Marketing