Author: HENRY YORK MARKETING

Henry York is a small boutique New York City agency with the resources, experience and connections to deliver “big agency” results—at a fraction of the price and with much greater agility and personal service than a large firm.

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Promotional Incentives: Cost or Investment?

If you are thinking about a promotional giveaway or incentive for your business, consult a marketing professional to help you design a program that will deliver measurable benefits to both you and your customer.

Quite frequently, giveaway items are selected for a promotional campaign without careful consideration of a long-term return on investment and as a consequence are seen as loss leaders or zero-gain programs that don’t work.

Marketing professionals know that any brand can easily be translated to a personal product or utility item. Selecting an appropriate promotional giveaway that adequately represents your product or service and is capable of being used at least once a week for a period of multiple months is the key to success.

The marketing industry has manufactured many thousands of promotional products, each designed to inspire a customer to “think of you” when they use the item. Matching the right item with your customer and intended benefit can be a challenge if you don’t have the experience or resources to make the right decision.

At Henry York Advertising, we always suggest promotional items that capture the personality of our client and are complementary to the color palette of their brand. We look for items that will be used frequently and that our client will be able to confidently inquire as to whether or not the item was useful in the course of ordinary contact with their customer. Following up with your client to make sure the gift was useful and respected is a major element of successful gift promotions and an important way to analyze the impact of the campaign.

Product quality is essential when planning a promotional giveaway, as nobody wants to receive a cheap gift. A giveaway that breaks after the first or second use is a poor reflection on your brand and offers little incentive for the customer to thank you for the gift or have a positive emotion about your firm when they use a similar product of better quality in the future.

To receive a return on investment from the distribution of promotional items, always consider how the use of the item will inspire your customer to think of your product or service and invest in quality materials that will have a long life and reflect the lasting relationship that you wish to develop with every client.

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How Can My Charity Cut Costs?

Charities are constantly challenged by the increasing cost of operations, securing donors, and providing services. There never seems to be enough money to completely achieve each year’s objectives and the one expense that tends to get cut first is “marketing”. But cutting marketing can mean cutting outreach, donations, and branding, so eliminating promotional activities can also reduce exposure and opportunity.

Marketing does not need to be expensive if it is carefully planned and executed with the assistance of a professional. Unfortunately, many charities rely on volunteers and low-paid staff to execute marketing initiatives, and these well-intentioned but inexperienced helpers can actually drive up the cost through their lack of knowledge about how to get the best deal, find the best supplier or determine the best tactics.

Many non-profit marketing initiatives are also executed under “rush” circumstances when time becomes the enemy and expensive options are pursued because there are no other options. Poor planning, a lack of supervision, and the absence of classic marketing practices cause rush expenses that, in some cases, can double the cost of marketing.

Smart and aggressive charities seek the assistance of a marketing expert like Henry York Advertising to avoid these pitfalls and can often double the impact of any promotional exercise without increasing their budget by a penny. Besides providing ideas and execution skills, a professional marketer with a network of resources can find deals that are invisible to the general public and non-profit community and stretch every dollar.

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The Effectiveness of Brand Promotion

Brand promotion is more than slapping a logo on a coffee cup and tossing it in a product shipment to a customer. Brand promotion is a deliberate, well-planned process of associating your logo, your tagline, and your value proposition with the needs of your customers and causing them to think of you when they need a product or service that you offer.

A successful branding program will make your logo memorable, your message recallable and your service valuable. But it doesn’t happen by accident and it doesn’t happen without proper execution.

Many small businesses lack the experience and resources to properly develop their brand, sometimes spending many thousands of dollars on ill-conceived marketing concepts that have no sustainable impact on their marketplace and fail to properly create any brand equity.

Henry York Advertising works with businesses of every size to create budget-friendly, meaningful and effective brand development programs that are designed to deliver long-term results. Contact us for a free consultation on how to create a powerful identity and message for your company.

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Good “Old-Fashioned” Direct Mail Delivers Better Marketing Results for Neighborhood Business

When a Manhattan doctor looking to grow his business realized that over 50 percent of his patients lived over five miles from his office, he turned to direct mail instead of online marketing to reach potential patients in his own neighborhood. And it worked—for what turned out to be less than half the cost and half the time of a digital campaign.

While a majority of small businesses invest in some form of online advertising, many are discovering that the quality of response from time-tested direct mail delivers better results overall. Marketing industry research suggests that fifty percent of U.S. consumers prefer direct mail to email and that postal promotions produce a 300% greater response rate.

By applying many of the same formulas perfected with digital promotion (personalization, timed delivery, compelling offers, and simplified methods of response), direct mail is the new medium for neighborhood businesses to connect with nearby customers, build their brand, and tailor products and services to hyper-local needs.

“The key to successful direct postal promotion is to use high-quality personalization, graphic design, and printing, and to avoid all of the cliché trademarks of old-school direct marketing. Barcoded addresses, generic postcards, and cheap paper don’t cut it anymore,” notes Hilmi Yurdusever, president of Henry York Advertising, a New York agency that specializes in direct mail.

“The impact of a promotional message being delivered to someone’s home and a consumer actually having a tactile relationship with the message is very powerful. If businesses follow the new rules of engagement and allow a professional agency to handle the design, delivery, and analysis of a campaign the results can be immediate and lucrative,” added the Henry York Advertising spokesperson.

Henry York Advertising has provided direct marketing services to a long list of local, regional, and international clients seeking to establish long relationships with consumers and commercial businesses. For information on how to successfully design and implement a direct mail campaign, email info@henryyork.com, call (212) 481-0570 or visit www.henryyork.com.