Dear Reader,

This is the 1st of many issues to come, of our newsletter named “Marketing views”. While the flood of information is available on the internet, our intention is to keep you abreast of the latest in marketing trends, gadgets and general news. Looking forward to your early comments and suggestions…

Raj Sekhawat ~ MV Managing editor

Here’s an interesting vehicle for advertising your new service!

You’ve probably heard of sheepvertising, well now there’s cowvertising. Advertisers continue to utilize farm animals to display ads in their fields. This time it’s for a Dutch Environmental campaign to protect Groene Hart.  It’s an area in the west of the Netherlands between Amsterdam and Utredht. The campaign is to protect the land from industry, roads and housing. The cows are wearing coats that read: I sign for the Green Hart. Do you sign too? Residents can also be photographed for billboards to show their support. Have barnyard animals become a new medium for companies to get their message across?

Latest Trends

According to Double click (internet marketing firm)… In the fourth quarter of 2005,

Campaigns are getting larger: In the fourth quarter of 2005, the total number of clicks for campaigns in the Performics 50 increased by 107% over the fourth quarter of 2004, while the average number of active keywords marketers kept under management increased by 58%.

Cost per Keyword (CPK) and Cost per Click (CPC) rose dramatically during the holiday season: Average CPK rose from $25.50 in September to $54.62 in December of 2005. Traditional seasonal effects were a big part of this trend, combined with lower-priced keywords making up a smaller and smaller percentage of campaigns.

December accounted for nearly half of all conversions: It is no surprise that the holiday season is big for online marketers-particularly retailers-and 2005 was no exception. In total, 40% of all clicks and 48% of all conversion among the Performics 50 in Q4, happened in December.

Holiday shoppers go further down the page: Relative to November, December saw a greater percentage of conversions from paid search ads ranked lower than second. However, this effect was not nearly as pronounced as last year

Luxury Laptops - The VoodooPC ENVY U909 SLI Notebook w/ 19" Screen

High end custom PCs are hot, and Calgary’s Voodoo PC is the envy of the gaming world.  In fact, Dell is even rumored to be looking at buying Voodoo.  The high-end laptops and PCs are the fastest in the industry, although you’ll pay for the speed.  The new u909 features the following:
- 19” wide screen
- 7800 GTX graphics
- AMD Turion 64 processor
- 4-in-1 memory card reader
- 8x dual-layer DVD burner
- 8-channel audio system with subwoofer
The catch: It’s 16 pounds.

From Interruption to Engagement…

Cell phones, IPods, interactive games are the new forms interruptions. The attention span of adults worldwide is on the decline, yet the product offerings are on the rise. To illustrate my point consider the fact that in 1965, 80 per cent of adults in the US could be reached with three 60 second TV spots. In 2002, it required 117 prime time commercials to produce the same result. Currently a typical day-after recall score for a 30 second spot is about 18- 20 per cent. Incidentally, virtually no one is able to provide any form of playback without some form of recall stimuli.

Is it any wonder the portals such as myspace.com and flicker.com are gaining prominence?

How to Make Your Sales Funnel Flow Faster

Excerpts from an article by Michael J. Webb
When your company is well synchronized with market needs, prospects buy and money flows. Unfortunately, few companies can maintain a constant flow. Salespeople churn out demonstrations, samples and proposals. Marketing departments churn out newsletters, ad copy and brochures. But not enough prospects close.

What makes the sales funnel flow faster? The key is coordinating your sales and marketing efforts—aligning everyone in your organization according to the questions you ask your prospects at different stages in your relationships with them. These questions form the logical connection between the work of sales and the work of marketing.

The following are three question strategies that you can use to make your sales funnel flow faster, and some examples of how to sales and marketing can work together to move customers through the funnel.

Strategy #1: Problem/Solution
You can't sell the solution, unless you've sold the problem first. If the customer has exactly the problem you can solve, but isn't consciously ready to buy, problem/solution questions can help you show that the fit is right.

Strategy #2: Objectives, Strategies and Issues
The second type of question gets at your prospects' business and departmental objectives. What strategies will they use to achieve those objectives? What issues and challenges do they face? Stepping back to get a broader view, you can scope out people's perspectives (including decision makers'), as well as departmental politics and priorities. You can build relationships, steer clear of time-wasters and start generating a consensus, even before you start "selling."

Strategy #3: Synchronization
Synchronization questions are key to effectiveness. Marketing and selling never work when you ask your prospects to take actions they are not ready for. Synchronization questions make you focus on learning the decision maker's priorities. That person's business life, like yours, is rife with problems. Which ones require attention now, and which can wait? What are the alternatives, the pros and cons? Who else should be involved, and why? How trustworthy is the available information?