Seth Goldman: We have a whole sampling partnership. We work with Ford Motor Company for the Escape Hybrid, the first Hybrid SUV, and we have cobranding relationships where we have these great vehicles called “Great Tea Escape” that we drive around the country. We do have a mailing that we sent out. We also do an email newsletter, but we’ll send it out usually in a monthly basis. We wish we can mail out bottles to everybody, we can’t. But we mail out postcards, product announcements.
Because we do so much sampling we get lots of feedbacks from our customers, so our market research is a dynamic on going thing. And we certainly got ideas of how we could change and how we can improve what we were doing. What we were doing is building a brand. Yes we’re selling tea and that’s the way were doing it. But it’s really about building a brand and a brand is to a consumer a promise that what we stand for, what we represent or especially where you see so much competition on price we’ve got to be able to say here’s why were charging more. And it’s because there is a brand behind this, there’s a promise that this is more than just a liquid in a bottle. That’s why we’ve always made a point of making sure our brand is visible, well define, we try to make clear what we stand for and we try to associate with honesty or authenticity, healthy, organic and hopefully with an honest approach to doing business.
Ann-Marie Harrington: It really is about communications. It is necessarily about technology. It really is about knowing who your audience is, what to say, how to say it, having a writer who can write about it succinctly, being able to recognize that if we don’t have that as an internal resource that you may have to outsource and find help with another consultant that you can bring in to help you with your marketing or you communication or your public relations.
Lon McGowan: Everything from your brochure, to your business card, to your website, to advertisements, to public relations those all involves marketing and branding and we place a ton of emphasis on branding and marketing because we know how important it is in this vast sea of competitors because now we are in a competitive landscape. And I think just about everybody is where they’re starting their business that people can go out and Google and find your competitor like that by just typing that in.
Ann-Marie Harrington: At the very least we recommend to our clients and I would recommend to any small business is to have a web presence. To have something online where the who, what and why brochure type website, most businesses have that already. If they’re looking at expanding that I would highly recommend that they have an email newsletter campaign. To be able to have a website and an email strategy is key, and particularly now there is this new phenomenon of social media where folks can build online communities and network with each other very quickly. They are able to promote a product or announce something very quickly. It gets out through the viral online community they are able to spread the word in a way that is nontraditional.
Lon McGowan: So why do they go with you? It’s because of the marketing, it’s because of the branding and that translates down to because of your customer’s service and we look at all of those things as marketing. In fact, we actually look at our employees as walking marketing tools. Not everything has to be on paper. Not everything has to be online. It can be your people walking and talking with somebody at a cocktail party and saying what they do and saying, “Oh I work at iClick.” And they’ll say, “Well what is iClick?” “Well we make personal electronics.” That’s marketing. And that’s a very inexpensive way of marketing. So when you hire the right people they're talking right about your company that in and of itself is some of the best gorilla marketing tactics you can have.
Chris MacAskill: All our employees get unlimited SmugMug schwag to give out to their friends and family and of course wear themselves. And we keep trying to keep it fresh by getting new stuff periodically every six months, twelve months or something trying to find new things. We have marathon jerseys and triathlon athlete gear, we have SmugMug sweatshirts with embroidery like their job titles embroidered on them and hats and camera straps. You name it we got all kind of stuffs.
Dr. David A. Junge: I view Cambridge as a partner in my capabilities of marketing the business, the procedures that we are able to offer and reach out to people that we’re not able to reach on our own either by talking to people in the community, or word of mouth or even if you place an ad in the newspaper it wouldn’t reach the widespread audience that Cambridge online is able to reach or Cambridge in a book somewhere. But primarily I think, online will now reach the vast majority of people and if we make them aware of that then they can get the treatment and not just sit and suffer.
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