Category Archives: marketing consultant

Why hire a marketing expert?

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It’s a question that business owners, particularly small business owners, ask anytime the topic of marketing comes up. Why would I need to hire a marketing expert? Can’t I do it myself? Can I get my money back out of marketing? Well, let’s take these questions one at a time. Along the way, we might discover a few small business marketing tips.

Yes, you can do this on your own. There is a science and art to marketing that you can learn to do. The real question to ask is: Did you get into business to become a marketing expert or an ad agency? Unless you are in the marketing industry, then you probably didn’t. Small business marketing is all about placing information well and consistently.

Warning – small business marketing tips: Choose a marketing expert that you can speak with. There are thousands of companies that will do marketing for you over the Internet. That might work out fine, but what happens if something goes wrong? In some cases, its best to work with someone who is in your own country and that you can speak in person with if you have questions or problems.

How should you handle your marketing expert or ad agency? It’s very difficult to track precisely what you get from any given advertisement, unless you use online marketing and count per click. This is the age-old problem with marketing: how to ensure that you can find your Return on Investment.

So, one of these small business marketing tips that you won’t hear very often from a marketing expert: Make sure your contract with your ad agency includes systems for measuring performance that are iron-clad. It might be an increase in traffic or a certain number of clicks per month, but what ever it is, it needs to be part of your agreement.

Here another one of my small business marketing tips: Once you have an agreement, let your expert do their job without constant interference from you. Once you have given them instructions and you know how you are going to measure their performance, let them do their job. You don’t stand over the cable guy while he’s working telling him what to do. Why would you look over the shoulder of a marketing expert or ad agency that you chose to do a great job?

So… back to the original question: Why hire a marketing expert? What about an ad agency?

No reason… unless you want to do it all by yourself, …unless you want spend your time learning to do your own marketing, …unless you want to find the connections and outlets for your marketing. How’s that for scary small business marketing tips.

Yeah, probably not. So what should you do?

Call AdArmyGroup and get a free consultation with me. As the CEO of AdArmyGroup, I want us to be your ad agency. Get an honest, realistic assessment of your marketing needs and I explain “Why hire a marketing expert?” Also, keep reading www.adarmygroup.com for more small business marketing tips.

3 Reasons That Make Calling a Marketing Expert is a Smart Idea

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There are a number of things that can go wrong when it comes to your business. Profits could fall short of expectations, you may not be getting as many new customers as you’d like or maybe you just want to ensure that you’re able to build up better customers that are loyal to your products.

Whatever the case, a marketing expert can help you accomplish your goals by providing small business marketing tips. You can find an expert that’s efficient, affordable and objective. So convince yourself to call a marketing expert from the ad agency GTA for some small business marketing tips.

 

Reason #1: Objectivity

Marketing that originates from people already inside of your business usually has a certain bias to it. Certain marketing strategies may become favored because of what your marketing person believes that your company can afford or based on what would be easiest for your company.

A marketing consultant doesn’t know your business, at least not initially. He can use this to determine what strategy would produce the best overall marketing results for your business and give you accurate small business marketing tips. All of this happens without any in-house employees having to change their own advice for fear that it may be unpopular among their peers or even his boss.

 

Reason #2: Experience

You may have a team that has some experience with advertising your business. They may have even been successful. The difference between your team and a marketing expert in ad agency GTA is that the latter has helped hundreds of businesses succeed. In a way, he has more experience than even advertising staff for very large companies.

Simply put, an expert consultant know the strategies that will work for a business like yours. He’s experienced enough to know what a small business needs, what a large business has to do and to tailor strategies that work for your business. He can then give you small business marketing tips for success.

All of this results in more customers, more opportunities for business and more profit for your company. This is the result experts like Paul Cookson from the ad agency GTA look for.

 

Reason #3: Tricks of the Trade

As with any professional field, there are small things you eventually learn to make things more successful, efficient and faster. Marketing is no different in this regard, which is what a marketing consultant from the ad agency GTA is a smart person to call when you want something done as efficiently as possible in the least amount of time. That’s why small business marketing tips from the ad agency GTA tend to succeed.

Things like knowing the expected performance from marketing campaigns, the best colors to use in a pay-per-click advertisement vertical and knowing whether a graphic will be successful are all things that a marketing expert can do. You save time, money, effort and a number of things because he knows what works and what doesn’t. He knows the best small business marketing tips to get things done, which is something vital to your business’s success.

 

Don’t Waste Your Business’s Efforts: Call to See What Expert Marketing Advice You Can Get Today

It’s easy to waste your business’s efforts by discovering what a marketing expert already knows. You’ll save time and money simply by picking up the phone and calling to see what a marketing expert can do for your business.

Time is money, and money is vital to the success of your business. Contact marketing expert Paul Cookson of adarmygroup.com ad agency GTA to find out how you can make your company stronger, more competitive and how it can acquire more customers through his expert advice.

 

Design Inspiration

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Having a fresh spin on your work sometimes doesn’t come naturally, whether it’s the classic creative block, doing the same things again and again or just plain burnout.

If you’re experiencing any of these symptoms, it’s time for a change of pace or scenery. Give yourself a breath or two and step outside for a bit; enjoy the trees and the sunshine.

Go back and read through some of your old Design or Marketing annuals and take in some of the amazing work that others have produced over the years. Sometimes seeing what your peers have done can provide you with the energy to create something even better.

Here is a list of some of the inspirations our designers and marketing consultants take in we need a bit of inspiration:

1. Go back to the great masters: Designers El Lissitzky, Seymour Chwast, Zuzana Licko, Stefan Sagmeister, Storm Thorgerson.

2. Read a book on something you’d like to learn or learn more about.

3. Go for a walk.

4. Take a Vacation!

Cutting out an Image in Photoshop

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Cutting out an image allows you to put that image onto any background you choose. Photoshop has a tool called the Path Tool which allows you to create an outline around an object you want to cut out. The resulting outline is called the Clipping Path.

Here is what our marketing consultant and web designers recommend to perform a successful clipping path around an object:

  1. Import your chosen image.
  2. Select the Path Tool (the one that looks like the tip of a fountain pen)
  3. Start at a point anywhere along the contour of the object you want to trace around. We recommend setting it at an area that comes to an angle so that you won’t have to fidget with the curve of the final anchor point.

Magento and Its Benefits

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Magento is a powerful e-commerce store content management system platform for small to large businesses. It’s power comes from the ability to manipulate how you want to display the products with a seamless categorizing and sorting component that takes it beyond open source carts like ZenCart or OSCommerce. The support community is one of the most active and helpful and gives its users a wide variety of extensions and plugins that enhance the abilities of the already fully-featured standalone product.

Magento is one of the most popular e-commerce solutions, with brands like North Face and Lenovo trusting its functionality and service.

The marketing consultants at our ad agency ADARMYGROUP.COM recommends Magento as a high-end website solution for any type of business that requires an online store.

Working for an Ad Agency

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Have you ever wondered what it’s like to work in an Ad Agency? Amongst all the professions in the world, an advertising or marketing consultant at an ad agency is one of the most coveted. Do you want to work with fun clients? Do you want to work with the most prestigious companies in the world? How about rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous? Or do you enjoy the challenge of brainstorming amazing creative that makes a difference in people’s lives?

The world of advertising is all of the above and more. It is an amazing experience to take a small company with 2 employees and with time and effort building smart branding and marketing strategies, see it grow into a retail giant with 50 employees. It may take months and even years but those long nights and dry eyes are all worth it to be able see the happiness of our clients.

Sometimes you’ll think, “Well, I didn’t study advertising, I can’t do this”. You can if you’re creative (and most of us are). One of the driving principles of working at an ad agency is to constantly brainstorm about ideas and learn about innovation in the advertising sector as well as the sectors you will be working with.

Never be Wasteful About Your Marketing!

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Who needs Marketing? Marketing doesn’t need to be a big burden for any company. Just get the right type of ad in the right media spots so that you can maximize the value of your ad to your target demographic. Our ad agency ADARMYGROUP.COM provides in-depth analysis of your business needs and creates a strong marketing portfolio that is tailored to your business’ main audience.

Hiring models Tips by a Toronto Marketing Consultant

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Above are some incredible shots of models that I hired to create an exciting and polished image for the outdoor lifestyle company called Muskoka  Equipment Company.  These ladies are stunning, did an incredible job and the whole experience was quite economical but yielded dramatic results. Depending what type of business you have, In most case you will benefit from hiring a male or female  model to enhance the look of your advertising, website and other marketing materials. Using models can really take your marketing to the next level and can differentiate you from your competitors.

If you have a low marketing budget and can’t afford expensive high priced models or you have a big budget but you’d rather spend it on media, a great way to find models and photographers is to create an account on istudio.com which is a model/photographer website. Once you have an account, you can post modelling  job offers on the site and/or do a search for models in your geographic area and send models messages in regards to what you’re looking for, your budget etc.

We found all the above incredible models this way and we’re actually able to have the ladies use photographers of their choice and bundle the modelling and photography into one cost to us. A professional image for your business is critical to its success, it’s sales and ultimately its profits.

Paul Cookson

Marketing  Consultant

 

 

5 Tips to Naming your company like a MARKETING CONSULTANT!

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5 Tips to Naming your company like a PRO !

TIP# 1 – Do not use acronyms. You put your company at a disadvantage when you do. It makes it harder for the consumer to understand what you do and what makes you unique. If consumers don’t understand, you lose them.

If you called your company “AMSU Shoes” because you have a daughter named Amy and a daughter named Sue, so you took the “AM” from AMY and the “SU” from Sue then merged them to create a business name. It’s a sweet gesture, but, this is not a good naming strategy.

Better to try and include a benefit to the consumer in the name or a unique selling point. Like “BETTER SHOE SOURCE” or “AMAZING SHOE SHOP”

TIP# 2 – If your business lends itself to directory advertising and/or you have a business that does trade shows. Try and name your company with an “A” if possible because you will be at the front of the directory for your category. This gives you an Advantage.

TIP# 3 – Try and make your name very clear as to what you do. The clearer and more concise, the better. Your target audience is being bombarded with messages and yours has to cut through the clutter.

TIP# 4 – Include a Tag line in your name to make even clearer as to what you do and what sets you apart from your competition. If you sell shoes at a huge discount, your tag line might be “Great Deals, Everyday”

TIP # 5 – Review the competition as part of the naming process. Say you had a burger restaurant and you thought the main competition weakness was that they fry their burgers but you BBQ yours. Maybe your name should attack the competition where they are weak. A name like “THE BBQ STATION” might work with a tag line “Grilled burgers, cause they taste better”

Written by Paul Cookson, Small Business Marketing Consultant

If you have any questions or comments or you’d like us to answer a WEB DESIGN or MARKETING question, Give Paul Cookson a call at 1.888.586.2860 or e-mail us at askanace@acewebdesign.ca

We’re Business Marketing Consultants & Advertising Pros

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Advertising and marketing is the bread and butter of any successful business. Ad Army Group realizes that once a business starts running, a marketing plan must be close at hand to pounce on any opportunity to reach new customers.

Founder, Creative Director and Small Business Marketing Consultant Paul Cookson has specialized in turning businesses around, helping companies find their footing and leveraging their strengths to maximize their profitability. With decades of retail and consumer marketing experience, and dealing with multinational corporations on a daily basis, Paul has helped businesses find their niche audience and deliver results.