PSPINC Official Company Blog

How to Create a Brand

8月

3日

A brand and a company, while used interchangeably, are not the same. A company is the name of an organization that engages in business activities, like producing and selling products. A brand, however, is about how people perceive your company through identifying brand attributes like your logo, name, and products. To remember the difference, think of it this way: a business owner, founder, and/or CEO owns a company whereas the people own a brand. While there’s significant influence coming from whoever’s in charge, the people are the ones who derive meaning from what you have to offer.

Starting a company can be as easy as setting up a great e-commerce website and selling products. However, creating a great brand isn’t quite as easy to do. Setting up your company website is a great first step because it forces you to figure out the essentials needed to run a business. If you’re just creating a business, it’s easy to go on from there by designing your website, adding your products, and advertising said products. A brand, however, also requires a vision and mission statement. A mission statement tells people where your company currently stands and what it does. A vision statement is more aspirational and tells people where you want to see the company go in the future.

After creating your mission and vision statements, it’s time to determine your brand’s values. This is what you want your business to stand for. More importantly, this is what you want your business to be known for. Truly successful brands keep all of those in mind in every experience a customer has with them. Look at Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most successful brands. But it isn’t based on the product alone. Coca-Cola’s brand is about refreshing the world in a way that makes a difference. While their drink is known to be refreshing worldwide, Coca-Cola also actively works toward its commitment to making the world a better place. And this can be seen through multiple sustainability efforts by the brand.

Lastly, with so many other small businesses out there, it’s important to consider who your competitors are and what makes your business different. To succeed, your business needs to be different in a way that’s attractive to your target market. And creating customer persona to figure that out will help immensely. After figuring all that out, then come all the recognizable elements of a brand like designing a logo and determining a color palette. While developing a brand can be a lengthy process, it’s not impossible. And great brands tend to change and evolve, so just remember that when trying to create your own.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #brand #brandidentity #branding #brands #business #businesstips #businesstools #cocacola #digitalmarketing #logo #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingonline #marketingstrategy #marketingtips #smallbusiness #success #tech #technology

The Key to a Good Loyalty Program

6月

1日

Brand loyalty is what every company wants. While the main goal is to increase sales, it’s much easier and cheaper to get customers that continually come back. In fact, it’s five to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer when compared to retaining an existing one (according to Harvard Business Review). A loyalty program offers incentives (rewards) to build trust and increase customer retention.

From a business perspective, the goal of a loyalty program is to give loyal customers benefits that seem relatively high but don’t actually cost the company that much. In return, they hope the customer will spend on other products/services associated with the brand. But that’ll only happen if your company can build a successful loyalty program. In the end, it’ll be beneficial on both sides. It’ll promote the brand and encourages frequent and valuable transactions. And customers will be appreciative that the company’s rewarding them with exclusive discounts and offers for their loyalty. Like how our Dreamersi customers get InforMakers and WebdeXpress for free as well as exclusive discounts with their web and email hosting plans.

The Key to a Successful Loyalty Program

happy man holding two brown shopping bags

The most important thing to keep in mind when creating an effective loyalty program is the customer’s experience. The goal is to not only inspire and encourage loyalty but also create long-term customer engagement. While many marketing activities generally focus on the brand awareness and acquisition stages of the customer journey, relationship marketing focuses more on the post-purchase cycle. Namely, the customer’s satisfaction, loyalty, and evangelism levels. To do this, you’ll want to avoid the hard sale. Once customers opt-in for your loyalty program, you’re no longer trying to accomplish short-term goals like increasing customer acquisition and individual sales.

To do this effectively, you want to create positive moments that customers will not only remember but praise. Keep in mind that customers will remember the best and worst moments most. To give them the best experience possible, focus on boosting sensory appeal. And if you can find ways where your brand can go above and beyond customers’ expectations, even better. For the brand, it’ll also be important to identify where you can collect more customer data and discover ways to use it to meet (and possibly exceed) customers’ needs, desires, and goals. Transforming that data into meaningful experiences will also strengthen the relationship between the brand and the customer in the long run. All it takes after that is promoting it, which will be much easier if you’re providing true value to your loyal customers.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #b2b #blog #businesstips #crm #customerexperience #customerservice #digitalmarketing #dreamersi #informakers #loyaltyprogram #marketing #marketingdigital #pspinc #relationshipmarketing #smallbusiness #tech #technology #webdexpress

What is a Customer Journey?

5月

4日

If you’ve ever worked in sales or marketing, you've probably used or at least heard of a customer journey. While it sounds self-explanatory, fully building a customer journey out will help to create a stronger strategy moving forward. And from a business perspective, continually improving the customer’s experience will lead to not only an increase in sales but also in loyal customers. A customer journey outlines the steps a customer takes when encountering a company, including where they could potentially drop off.

A customer journey typically has five stages: awareness, consideration, acquisition, purchase, and loyalty. The awareness stage consists of how a customer hears about you. This can be through non-digital mediums like word-of-mouth or newspapers. But nowadays they probably found your company somewhere online like through a Google search or on social media. Then, there’s the consideration stage, where customers decide if they want to learn more about your company, your product, and/or your service. If they’re interested, they’ll move forward to the acquisition stage, where they’ll actively explore your company’s content and see how your competition compares.

The Acquisition Stage

a man sitting at a small cafe table with a laptop, notebooks, and phone on the table while the man's holding a to-go coffee cup in one hand and the other hand on his hand

The acquisition stage is arguably the most important step of the journey. At this point, your customer knows who you are, what you’re selling, and how you stack up against your competitors. But whether they purchase or not depends on multiple factors. From the company’s perspective, you want to make sure your brand and what you’re selling is as presentable as possible, the customer’s experience is smooth and simple, and your prices are at the same level as your competitors.

If your products and/or services are too expensive, the customer will just buy them elsewhere. If you’re not the cheapest option, you need to at least tell your customers why. For example, if your product is better because of the material or usability, make sure your customers know that. Because while price is an important factor, many will be willing to pay extra if they think it’s worth it.

Getting Customers to the Purchasing Stage

a woman holding multiple shopping bags while wearing sunglasses and looking at her phone

Once they decide they want to purchase, they enter the purchase stage, hence the name. This could be physically paying for it in a physical store or going through the payment portal on your site. After that is the post-purchase stage. In a brick-and-mortar store, this includes everything the customer encounters after paying. For example, they could see poster ads hung around the store. For digital consumers, this could be a “Your order is placed” page with their order number and details or a follow-up email encouraging customers to follow them on socials and shop from them again.

If your customer is frustrated or overwhelmed at any point in the process, they’ll probably end the journey there. As a business, that’s the last thing you want. You want your customer to go through the entire journey. Actually, what you really want is for customers to come back repeatedly. Beyond that, you want loyal customers to start recommending your products to convert even more people into customers. Or more loyal customers, preferably.

How Loyal Customers Play a Role

a woman holding a bag with a small flower bouquet inside as she leaves a store

For people who are actively loyal to your company to the point of recommending your products, they are what’s called brand evangelists. Regarding the customer journey, repeat customers no longer start from the beginning. Instead, they skip forward to the acquisition stage or straight to purchasing your product.

From a business perspective, it’s important to know how customers interact with your brand. The best way to figure that out is by creating a customer journey. With it, you can identify the steps potential customers make both before and after they purchase from you. Or more importantly, where you need to improve to prevent people from leaving before they get to the purchase stage. After all, you can’t fix a problem if you don’t where to start.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#acquisition #advertising #awareness #branding #business #businesstips #consideration #customerjourney #customers #customerservice #digitalmarketing #google #loyalty #marketing #marketingdigital #purchase #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #web

Is Traditional Advertising Still Relevant?

4月

6日

With most of today’s marketing focused on digital efforts, it begs the question, is traditional advertising still relevant? The short answer is yes. Social media and Google Ads have become standard in marketing practices nowadays. And every year, marketers continue learning and adapting to all the intricacies and trends each digital platform has to offer. But there’s still something to be said about traditional avenues, which generally refers to mediums like print ads, TV commercials, billboards, and radio spots.

While many businesses largely write off the prospect of print ads, billboards, and radio spots, it’s a beneficial effort for smaller businesses. For local businesses, marketers focus more on getting customers inside their store, signing up for their service, and buying their products. To do that, they need a more direct approach by emphasizing the store location that runs for a shorter amount of time. Print ads in newspapers and/or magazines, billboards placed around town, and spots on local radio stations are great ways to do that. Especially if they’re trying to target an older audience. And the same can be said with direct mail marketing.

TV Commercials

a family sitting on the couch together with the dad holding a tv remote

As for TV commercials, they’re still largely effective. Despite the growing popularity of streaming platforms, TV commercials are still very relevant. Most streaming platforms even offer a free plan, which comes with ads. Examples include but are not limited to Hulu, Peacock, YouTube TV, Tubi, and more. But the same would still be true, even without these free plans. TV is still the best way to increase brand awareness as it can effectively get your product, service, and/or company in front of a mass audience.

There are also times when TV viewership is higher than ever. Holiday specials bring in a sizeable audience, but the annual Super Bowl is the first big event that comes to mind. While sports TV can generally bring in a male-dominated audience, the Super Bowl is a unique opportunity to rope women into the mix as well. And it’s not just because of the halftime show. Super Bowl commercials have become just as popular as the game. They’re not only watched by millions of people but also talked about. Not just through word-of-mouth but on social media as well. From the last Super Bowl, commercials cost an average of $7 million per ad for 30 seconds of airtime. As expensive as that is, it’s worth the effort if you can afford it. In return, you’re not just getting the ad revenue, you’re also getting a guaranteed audience of about 100 million viewers.

Marketing today includes a lot of digital avenues, namely posting on social media and advertising on Google. With everyone already online, it just makes sense. But traditional advertising is still relevant for businesses that know how to use it to their advantage. For smaller, more affordable efforts, print ads, billboards, and radio efforts are a great way to reach local audiences. But for bigger brands who can afford to pay more for a TV commercial, it can be worthwhile.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#ads #advertising #business #businesstips #commercials #digitalmarketing #directmail #googleads #local #magazines #marketing #marketingdigital #newspapers #radio #smallbusinesses #socialmedia #superbowl #tech #traditionaladvertising #tv #tvcommercials

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol.73 "Tokyo Olympics 2020"

7月

23日

Vol. 73

July 22nd in the U.S. is the 23rd in Japan, so while it is a year late, it is the date of the Tokyo Olympics. This will be the second time the Olympics will be held in Japan during the summer. The first two in the winter were in Sapporo and Nagano. It is the fourth time that Tokyo has declared a state of emergency due to the coronavirus. So all of the Olympic events in Tokyo will be held without spectators. The sale of alcoholic beverages ends at 8:00 p.m., and restaurants are also operating on shortened hours. At this point, many countries, including the U.S., are not allowed to enter Japan.

At this time, Olympic officials can freely enter Japan. Also, Olympic officials are traveling around Japan as tourists. Even though they are not supposed to be allowed to travel in Japan. As you can see, many people in Japan have doubts about hosting the Olympics, and the Olympics itself has a bad reputation. For this reason, many sponsors continue to keep their sponsorship out of the public eye in Japan.

I think this is a big miscalculation for companies that thought of the Olympics as an advertising medium. The influence of TV and newspapers is declining now that we can hear the voices of many people on the Internet. I believe that the influence of the Internet is huge. We all need to think about how we can utilize the Internet when we think about business marketing and public relations.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.
info@pspinc.com
https://pspinc.com
1404 140th Place NE, Bellevue, WA 98007 USA
800-232-3989
425-957-0808

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#Advertising #Japan #Olympics #TokyoOlympics

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol.67 "Do you need a website"

6月

11日

Vol. 67

It is said that it is normal to have your domain and run your email and website there, but is it really necessary? The reality is that even if you set up and run a website, you may only get a few visitors each day and possibly no business from it. PSPINC has been developing and hosting websites since 1996, and recently we have been asking this question.

For example, Amazon, which you have likely used, is a website. As is your banking services, the place where you book tickets, where you reserve hotel rooms for trips, and where you look for restaurants. Needless to say, those companies would not be able to exist without a website. Therefore, a website is necessary.

However, let's consider other informational pages. A typical company website contains company information, business description, product introduction, job openings, achievements, and so on. So the power or function to attract people does not exist on the homepage itself. However, this does not mean that the pages for this information are unnecessary. Depending on your needs, there may not be a requirement to spend a lot of money on a website that contains these things. Even if you do, the content is likely to remain the same for a long time, so the information is sometimes enough.

People who come to your website will find your company on search engines as well as other sites and come to get the information they need. Therefore, if you are going to spend money on your website, you may want to find out how people find your website and spend money to make it stand out through these channels. This may be through the Internet, other advertising opportunities, or it may be through social networking sites or blogs. The larger the scope of your advertising and PR activities, the more effective they will be. Therefore, it is unreasonable to think that you can do everything on your website alone.

If you have any questions about public relations activities on your website, please contact us at any time.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.
info@pspinc.com
https://pspinc.com
1404 140th Place NE, Bellevue, WA 98007 USA
800-232-3989
425-957-0808

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#PR #PSPINC #SocialMarketing #advertising #blogs #website

Customer Surveys: Ask the Right Questions

4月

16日

image source: pixabay.com

We often ask questions with some expectation of the answers before we hear them. When asking our customers for their input, however, we must willingly set aside our opinions and remain neutral if we want to get honest feedback and learn something valuable from them.

According to Peter Drucker, guru of business management, the fax machine is a prime example of the influential power in our questioning techniques.

Before the fax machine came to market, U.S. manufacturers conducted market research asking, "Would you buy a telephone accessory for upwards of $1,500 that enables you to send, for $1 a page, the same letter the post office delivers for 25 cents?" You guessed it; the answers were no and U.S. manufacturers did not pursue the fax machine.

On the other hand, as Drucker pointed out, Japanese manufacturers asked a more straightforward question: “Is there a market for what the fax machine does?" And they realized fax machines could replace courier services like FedEx in the 70s. As a result of asking the right question, Japanese manufacturers were first to market and more dominant in fax machines than U.S. companies in the 80s and 90s. It was too late for many U.S. companies to follow suit.

Collecting feedback from our customers is beneficial, but only if we phrase our questions in such a way that allows them to be honest and think for themselves. If we are going to take the time to survey people, make it worthwhile. Prepare ahead of time, keep it straightforward, and take the bad with the good – because it all helps to better your business.

#Advertising #B2B #Blog #CRM #CustomerFeedback #CustomerSatisfaction #CustomerService #ENnews #FocusGroups #Marketing #OfficeTips #OnlineSurveys #PSPinc #SmallBusiness #Surveys

How to Host a Focus Group

4月

11日

image source: pixabay.com

Hosting a focus group to get more granular feedback from your customers is a great way learn what’s working, what’s not, and what the people want. The feedback can help you make better informed decisions when it comes to introducing, modifying or discontinuing products or services – instead of relying solely on your gut instinct.

Follow these five steps to host a successful focus group:

1. Define your Mission

What do you want to learn from your participants? Plan your focus group around a purpose and stick to it.

2. Recruit Participants

Carefully consider the people you invite. Think back to your plan for the focus group. Should you invite business people or consumers? What ages? Does income level or location matter? And should you be talking with people who are loyal to your company or people who have stopped purchasing your products or services? Maybe you need a good mix of everyone. You might consider sending out a questionnaire to pre-screen participants.

3. Provide Incentives

Time is money so be sure to reward the people who participate. Perhaps a discount or a gift card. Whatever that is, put yourself in their shoes and determine if the incentive is worth your time.

4. Interview

Interviewing participants in person is beneficial because there is much more to answers than words. Tone of voice and facial expressions can say a lot too. You can really capture the feelings in person. Prepare questions in advance and be very straightforward when delivering them. Don’t use a lot of adjectives or language that can be leading. Stay objective and try to get non-biased answers.

5. Take Notes

This is your chance to get more than a yes or no answer, so take advantage. Take notes on how the users engage with you. How do they appear? Do they smile? Are they agitated? Are they struggling to answer right away?

For a successful focus group, you need plenty of preparation ahead of time. You can find lots of sample questions online to give you ideas!

#Advertising #B2B #Blog #CustomerFeedback #CustomerSatisfaction #CustomerService #ENnews #FocusGroups #Marketing #OfficeTips #OnlineSurveys #PSPinc #SmallBusiness #Surveys

Simple, Immediate Surveys get Results

4月

9日

image source: pixabay.com

The best time to ask a customer about their experience with your business is immediately after your transaction or interaction with them. Life is busy and our memories get muddled because of it, so don’t wait too long to get feedback. Ask when when it’s fresh in your customer's mind.

If you want to keep it really simple, ask just one question: “Are you happy?”

Here are two ways PSPinc is doing that:

Feedback Form

We implemented a simple email survey through our CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system so whenever our support staff helps a customer, the customer immediately gets a follow-up email asking them to rate their experience with us. This can tell us a lot about how we are doing, and also what kinds of issues customer are having.

Opinion Stand

On a tablet next to our lobby entrance, we ask customers, “How did we do?” and they have the option to give their feedback on the tablet as they exit.

Don’t miss an opportunity to connect with your customers. These simple and quick surveys can provide a lot of great insight into what you’re doing right and what you need to do better.

#Advertising #B2B #Blog #CRM #CustomerFeedback #CustomerSatisfaction #CustomerService #ENnews #Marketing #OfficeTips #OnlineSurveys #PSPinc #SmallBusiness #Surveys

How to Get Customer Feedback

4月

4日

image source: pixabay.com

Learning from our customers equips us with information to better our business. In a previous article we discussed using analytics as a tool to understand our customers’ online behavior. Now let’s talk about reaching out to those customers to get their feedback.

One of the best and easiest ways to engage with your customers is to create a survey for them. Surveys are easy to make and you can customize them to ask broad questions or get very specific – it all depends on what your company needs from it.

Here are some key points for you to consider before you start your survey:

- Determine your goal for the survey, and what you want to get out of it.

- Compile your customer list, preferably emails, to which you can send the survey.

- Consider offering an incentive (coupon, freebie, discount) if they take the survey.

- Come up with your questions. Keep it simple and neutral, don’t lead your customers toward a particular answer. Stay completely objective. Consider questions like: How do they like your product or service? Where did they learn about you? What else would they like to see your company offer? What is your strength / weakness?

- Keep it short and tell them up front how long it should take to complete the survey. Everyone’s busy, don’t get greedy with their time.

- Be sure to follow-up at some point so your customer doesn’t think their time and feedback was wasted.

- Consider asking some of the tough questions, even if you’re worried about receiving criticism. Remember, you’re not looking for a testimonial; you want to understand how you can improve. Customers might appreciate it.

Once you figure out your questions, then you can find the survey tools. PSPinc has an online form program, so if you need any help, contact us! We would be happy to assist you.