The important role that promotional products play in business marketing plans has long been recognized. And an important factor to be considered is the target audience, as their preferences can assure the success of your program. If your target audience is golfers, you can feel comfortable with the fact that they will be very appreciative of any promotional clothing they receive. Golfers have long been accustomed to wearing logo wear on and off the golf course.

There are many types of business gifts that can be used to directly market to golfers, such as club covers, golf bags, gloves, and umbrellas. But promotional logo wear continues to be the best choice to market the rollout of a brand or product. Promotional clothing has the advantage of being seen everywhere the golfer wears it, usually in more upscale settings.

You can choose among known brands like Nike, Taylor Made, Callaway and Ping that are the most admired choices for logo imprinted golf clothing. The promotional clothing items that are specifically selected for golf lovers directly reflect the reputation of your business enterprise once your name has been imprinted. It is, therefore, imperative that the clothing is of superior quality. This is important as fine quality ensures the durability of your promotional clothing, which in turn affects the longevity of the returns that you get from it.

Suffice it to say, the longer the durability of your promotional golf clothing, the more will be the benefits that you will reap, as the viewership increases. In addition to printing on clothing, embroidered clothing is also available on custom hats, caps, uniforms, work shirts, polo shirts and golf shirts. These promotional accessories can be worn at the golf course and as office wear.

Fabric for golf clothing may either be 100% cotton or a cotton/polyester blend. The blends are known for their fine weaves and colour-fastness. But no matter what choices you make regarding the fabric or the imprint style, know that promotional clothing will always bring you a high return on investment when it is marketed to golfers.

Promotional leisurewear is gaining popularity as brand promotional gifts. Among them, the most popular is promotional T-shirts. The T-shirts offer limitless options for imprinting the brand name. They are the preferred leisurewear for all age groups of people, and hence they have a lot of promotional value. The brand-imprinted T-shirt will give a trendy look to the wearer, so the customers accept them with both hands.

T-shirts are the most effective promotional gifts because their nature allows them to communicate your marketing message to large numbers of people at a time. Once they are imprinted with the brand name, the logo will last for the life time of the shirt. When considering promotional leisurewear, you are offered plenty of choices such as T-shirts, Polo Shirts, Fleeces and Jackets, and Hats and Caps. All of the items are offered in a variety of designs and price ranges.

T-shirts are considered casual wear, and as such, they are worn more frequently to shoppings malls, sporting arenas, or public parks. These venues where large crowds are gathered allow your message to be seen much more frequently. The wearer of the shirt may also have the opportunity to interact socially with friends or family while wearing the shirt, allowing a more targeted delivery of your marketing message to the audience.

Personal interactions are considered more convincing because of the circumstance of the people knowing each other. Another type of communication is more indirect and occurs when people only see the brand name or logo displayed from afar with no interaction with the wearer. Thus, we find that promotional clothing offers better impact when spending your marketing dollars, especially if the garment is worn amongst friends or family.

To get the best out of the T-shirts as promotional leisurewear, you have to print them appropriately. While choosing the printed T-shirts for your brand promotion activities, you have to make sure that they are of the desired quality and desired colour. Both quality and design can have a huge impact in their brand promotion ability.

Promotional leisurewear has risen to the top of the preferred list among the overabundance of promotional items available today. The primary reason for the success is the fact that it delivers top notch brand exposure. Yes, brand awareness is expected from promotional products, but only promotional leisurewear is chosen by companies to deliver prime audience exposure.

Now, there are hordes of promotional merchandise company that guarantee supply of exquisite quality promotional leisurewear. To top them all a new one stems up the next day with some more options added to their collection. Get out of this puzzling equation by diving into the search yourself. There is no magic. There are only a few amongst the masses that can provide high quality, top value, and excellent customer service in a timely fashion. You’ll quickly be able discern which are simply talking the talk from those who are walking the walk.

The leaders of the corporate gift business will show themselves clearly to you, demonstrating their superiority in providing double visibility, perfect rendering of your artwork via printing or embroidery, and delivery in a timely manner. Make sure you isolate these important features before choosing your representative.

The clothing range that is moulded into promotional leisurewear has flat and plain surface. This makes anything printed on them easily noticeable. What if this characteristic is further enhanced? This may be thought to be a mere conception, but can be truly achieved by dual printing of the branding components on their body. When both the frontal and the rear potion of the leisurewear are embossed with the brand identity elements, the audiences can in no way escape them. This is how the promotional leisurewear makes for exceeding brand exposure.

One of the inherent characteristics of using promotional leisurewear is that it can be introduced once into one market, and then the marketing message can be later spread amongst other towns, countries, or markets. This transit advertising is an advantage that promotional leisurewear enjoys that other promotional gifts doesn’t. New audiences mean new sets of eyes and add brand awareness, and thus added value. That is a good thing.

Web 2.0 can be a full time job and keeping up with the latest and greatest Web 2.0
tools takes time. Is it worth your time to use Twitter? By the time you finished reading this article, I’m confident your agree that it is.

Would you like a web 2.0 application that allows you to connect with your customers?
If you said Yes, it’s a must! What if you could even build a list that connects you to potential new customers? Well…Twitter is all that, yes a must.

Over a 90 day period on Twitter, I’ve been able to find 900+ followers who want to see what I am doing. Twitter is much like an email list, but more effective in deliverability. When you post to Twitter your followers will have your post on their page.

Connecting with your customers is important in maintaining your customer relationships. With Twitter, you do this by answering the question “What are you doing?” Twitter has Spam and you don’t want to participate, so make sure your smart about what you say and how you say it.

Asking questions is a great way to open up a conversation. Something like, “Would you buy a 3 hour Twitter training for $197?”, your followers can send you a direct message (dm) by simply putting @jnapier and typing
their thoughts.

Investing your time in a Web 2.0 requires careful consideration and Twitter is a
MUST. It’s the best, non-video Web 2.0 technology. Corporation should be using
it daily to put out fires and to keep happy customers happy. Buy MORE and Buy MORE
Often is the end result.

During an advertisement for an overnight shipping service, an announcer seriously intones ‘When it absolutely positively has to be there overnight.’ But for many, the question remains if the mail is truly delivered during the night time.

The answer is both yes and no.

Logistics of Overnight Delivery

Overnight delivery policies and rates may differ from carrier to carrier, but most share one thing in common — time frames in which overnight packages can be delivered fluctuate greatly. Factors, such as when the package was handed over to a shipping representative, can greatly affect whether important mail is sent out before the close of business.

For instance, if you were to take a package to the local shipping center of your choice before noon, your package will be in transit and may arrive at your destination the following day. If however, you get the package in near the time of closing, the package may be placed in transit but cannot be guaranteed to be delivered the next day.

Now, in regards to the terminology ‘overnight’ can be a bit misleading.

As in our earlier example, if a package arrives at a service center early enough and is designated as an overnight shipment, it will immediately be sorted in the overnight bin for delivery. This means that it will actually be en route to its destination that very day. If it comes later in the evening, most commonly after 3 PM, then the package will be placed on a mail freight air service and in some cases, this air cargo will ship out in the evening.

Again this can also depends on the policies of the company and the type of overnight delivery service you choose.

Types of Overnight Delivery

Just as there are several different mail carrier agencies, there are different types of overnight delivery packages. Depending on what you need to accomplish, the cost of the service may be expensive.

Critical Overnight

There are many packages that absolutely have to arrive on time, and in some instances, such as with medical supplies, it can literally be a matter of life or death. With critical overnight shipments, packages can be guaranteed to get there the very next day to all fifty states, and in some cases Puerto Rico or Canada. This is because the service offers special air carriage 365 days a year and seven days a week. Most other services only occur during the business week.

International options are also available although, depending on where the destination location is, it may not exactly get there on time. When purchasing Critical overnight service, keep in mind the fact that the guarantee is somewhat limited and look into other options before paying the extra expense of critical overnight shipping.

Next day Air

By utilizing commercial airlines, next day air packages can be delivered to any major US city in the US. Using modern day technology, like route optimization technology, shipments can be safely and effectively delivered on time when applicable. Next day air is a cost effective way of getting shipments to the proper locale but carries an even lesser degree of guarantee than critical overnight.

Again, if in doubt, discuss with the shipping representatives what the pros and cons of using Next Day Air.

Next day Air Saver Shipping

This type of next day service only delivers within the continental US and cannot guarantee early morning delivery. Anyone who chooses this less costly route needs to be aware of that all important fact, especially if the package has to be there before noon.

If the time of morning does not matter, but getting it there the following day does, this is a wonderful option and is less expensive than the aforementioned services.

So, does overnight shipping overnight–it depends on the time you drop off your package and what courier delivery service you utilize-but the one thing you can be certain of is that overnight shipping will get your package where it needs to be in the fastest amount of time possible.

Part of the appeal of customer-centricity is that it takes very little business acumen to grasp its core concept. Focus intensely on customers, align your products or services with their interests, and voila: a customer-centric culture is born. Simple, right? Not quite. Becoming a truly customer-centric organization is perhaps one of the most difficult transitions an organization can make, fraught with hidden obstacles and unanticipated challenges. Here are three potential roadblocks on the path to a customer-centric strategy, and how to get around them.

Failing to understand your most valuable customer A customer-centric strategy is only as good as its customers. You cant let the average customer dictate what you do, says Robert Duboff, CEO of Hawk Partners LLC and coauthor of the book Market Research Matters. Generally speaking, Duboff says, 20 percent of a company’s customer base generates 80 percent of its profits. Given that split, its imperative to put your most valuable customers at the heart of your approach.

Identifying those customers need not take exhaustive research and complicated measures. It can be a fairly straightforward process, as it is with the Net Promoter Score, or NPS, a metric developed by Bain & Co.s Fred Reichheld. As set forth in The Ultimate Question written by Reichheld and published by Harvard Business Press the NPS approach consists of one simple question: On a scale of one to 10, would you recommend us to your friends?

Based on the answer to that question, customers are segmented into three categories: promoters, who actively champion a particular product to their friends and colleagues; passives, who are lukewarm about the product; and detractors, the opposite of promoters. A given company’s score is simply the difference between its number of promoters and its number of detractors.

NPS has proven to be a powerful tool for such companies as General Electric Capital Solutions, which has used it not only to identify customers that are already valuable promoters but to gain insights into how it can convert detractors. For a business like GE Capital Solutions, which serves more than 1 million very diverse customers in many different industries, NPS helps us better understand what our customers are feeling and how we can improve their experience with us, says Stephen White, a spokesperson for GE Capital.

Failing to support your external customer-centric strategy with an internal customer-centric strategy Speaking of valuable customers, what about that most priceless customer of all your employee?

While most companies aren’t in the habit of regarding their employees as customers, those seeking to instill a customer-centric culture should rethink their stance, argues Elaine Berke, president of Westport, MAbased EBI Consulting, which specializes in helping organizations develop customer-centric strategies. Customer-centricity needs to come from the inside out, says Berke. Leadership must avoid a double standard that makes it OK for managers to argue with or demean staff while still being courteous and considerate to external customers.

Consider the case of the world-renowned Johns Hopkins University Hospital. In developing a comprehensive Service Excellence initiative aimed at boosting its level of patient care, the hospital included employee satisfaction as a core component of the program. The hospital conducted an extensive survey to gauge employee concerns that turned up such simple, actionable insights as making it a point to compliment co-workers and instituting criticism-free no negativity days.

Customer-centric organizations value and respect internal customers as much as external customers, says Berke. Like the old saying goes, If you’re not serving a customer, you’re serving someone who is.

Failure to identify the moment of truth Companies spend considerable time and resources developing metrics for processes, execution and other day-to-day functions but often overlook defining their moments of truth those points at which a customer interacts with a company’s product or service and forms an impression. Companies are usually very good at creating metrics around [such procedures as] production deliverables but have a much harder time knowing how to create and measure standards relating to the quality of customer service being delivered, Keith Bailey of Sterling Consulting Group says.

In defining a company’s moments of truth, Bailey suggests looking at three different angles quality of product, quality of procedures and quality of relationships. Taking a hotel as an example, the quality of the product would be the cleanliness and comfort of the rooms. The quality of procedures would be such factors as how it long it takes to check in or how long customers wait for room service. The quality of relationship would be the friendliness and helpfulness of the staff.

Considering each angle separately allows a company to isolate the negative moments of truth within each and develop a game plan for turning them into positive experiences. Procter & Gamble, for example, identified its moment of truth as that instant when a shopper picks up one of its products and decides whether or not to purchase its decision the customer makes in an average of six seconds. The company has overhauled its marketing with that insight in mind, creating a global First Moment of Truth business team designed to win over the customer in that moment.

There are as many different customer-centric approaches as there are customers, and each has its own unique challenges, but the road to a truly customer-centric strategy always begins with the same steps.

A great question a guy once asked me was about how to get business clients. The guy was a consultant - i.e. he was selling products and services to companies and he wanted to know if I could give him ideas how to get more business clients. Sure, I can give him and everybody else lots of ideas how to get more business clients and that is why I wrote this article.

When you are looking for new business clients, you should start with your existing partners. Companies you have worked for can endorse you to their customers. Chances are that their customers might need somebody with your skills and this is a win-win situation.

I know one speaker that I worked with, who delivers presentations to not only companies but also associations. Associations are great by the way because they have got people from all kinds of different companies who are members of that particular association.

His presentations include some advanced marketing tactics - i.e. a referral campaign and a lottery. Everybody, who gives a testimonial and gives his or her name and contact info, is eligible for the lottery. The lottery prizes are gift certificates with discounts for his presentations. This is great for him because this way he gets repetitive engagements.

I am not quite certain what his fees per presentation are but I think they are about $5,000. The gift certificates he gives are worth $500 and $250 and they must be redeemed within a specified period of time (three months, six months, or something like that). However, the main point is that the gift certificate makes people move and they take the action to hire him.

It is like burning money if they do not use it. We saw a huge jump in his repeat business because of that one strategy and it is great because he is giving something of value, the people enjoy him anyway, and now they have just got another excuse to bring him back.

It is important that people have a good reason to hire you again. I believe you can think of many intelligent ways to include such offers in your sales proposal. When you have the people in front of you, you can capitalize on that experience - just remind them later how much they liked your stuff and this will make them want it again.

Many companies think they are supplying good customer service. If you were to ask customers, many would say they deal with rude people and less than great customer service daily. If someone shared some secrets to fabulous customer service, you would definitely stand out in your market. The following five points are what can make your customers happy to interact with you and your company.

1. Integrate personal touches. During the business transaction, personal conversation is bound to occur. Displaying interest in this talk and following up on previous conversations will make the customer feel valued. It can be as small as asking how they are feeling after being sick, or about some event they mentioned with their children. It may not seem like a big deal to you, but it will pay off in the long run with your customer.

2. Tailor your customer service. This simply means adjusting your service to fit their needs. If a customer does not like talking about an order over the phone, you could email it or come in person to discuss it. Making adjustments for your customer will make them happy and feel like you want their business.

3. Consider complaints as serious. Do not be offended or dismiss a complaint, think of this as an opportunity for improvement. Be sure the customer is happy before walking away, and that they feel heard and valued. If someone is not happy, they will definitely tell others.

4. Honesty. Being honest about the good and bad of your products will make your customers trust you. If you are dishonest, they will not come back. By inegrating honesty into your business values, you will setting yourself apart from your competition.

5. Involve your employees. Explain to your employees how you expect them to treat all people who they come in contact with. Providing prizes for the best customer service is a good idea. No matter who your customer talks to, they should be treated the same way everytime.

Question and answer seminars for your customers can help you accomplish many things. Some examples are: you can create buzz about your website, increase your mailing list size, launch a new service or product, or even increase your profits.

A q&a seminar can certainly help you increase your mailing list. Put up a notice on your website that you are holding the seminar, and feel free to include the day and time, but don’t publicly announce how they access it. Instead, have them fill out a form tied to your autoresponder. Once they fill out the form, your autoresponder can send them an email with the teleconference or web conference room information.

If you are preparing for a product launch, having a question and answer seminar can work similarly to holding a press conference. It gives you the opportunity to explain the benefits and features of your product, and create publicity, and hopefully to increase your sales. The more information you can get out about the new product, and the more likely they are to want it and buy it.

Question and answer seminars also give you the platform to communicate and interact with your customers on a personal level. Some businesses will have a special seminar for only past customers. This format also is a fantastic way to get feedback on how to improve your existing product, and to get some ideas for future ones.

A smart thing to do when offering such seminars, is to record them, and sell them alone or packaged together at a later date. You can also add them as free bonuses to your other products when you sell them.

You may also wish to open up a seminar to others as a way for them to advertise. Other businesses with similar, complimentary businesses may be very willing to pay a fee for the opportunity to speak to your audience. For an effective question and answer session, make sure it doesn’t come across as a sales pitch. Presenters should be giving helpful information to the listeners, as well as find good ways to promote their own products or services.

You have several options on how to hold your q&a seminar. You can reserve a teleconference line, and there are many companies who will allow you to use one for free. Alternatively, for a small fee, you could reserve a web conference room. This would allow you to show pictures, graphs, and PowerPoint presentations to your audience. You can also choose to broadcast over both a conference room and a teleconference line at the same time.

Once you have your time, date, and method of delivery set, it is time to promote. If you already have a mailing list, make sure to let them know about your event. As noted above, you could display some teaser information on your website, as well as any email or forum signature lines you may have. If you have an affiliate team, get them in on the promotion, too. If you don’t have any affiliates, ask your online friends to help you spread the word. You may want to consider paying for some advertising, as well.

After you have some experience holding question and answer sessions, it becomes easier to plan and promote future ones. These can be a fun way to promote your product and service and connect you with others- be sure to enjoy the time you spend doing it.

At first glance, big picture thinking and customer focus would seem to be mutually exclusive terms. After all, the first phrase connotes a farsighted, panoramic view of business, while the second implies an intense, laser-beam-like concentration on the customer. Yet as revealed in Magnifying Customer Focus: A Study of Current Trends and Future Possibilities 2006-2016, a global study commissioned by American Management Association and conducted by The Human Resource Institute, the terms are not only compatible, they are inseparable.

The study finds that customer focus is a top strategic concern for many businesses today and is ranked as one of the most important needs concerning issues ranging from leadership challenges to ethical behavior and innovation. Yet it also reveals that there is a wide disparity between what activities companies practice when it comes to customer focus and what they should be practicing.

The study asked respondents to rank a variety of strategic actions in each of five areas environment/culture, communications, HR practices, measurement and organizational practices in terms of what their companies are doing now and then to rank those same actions in terms of what their companies should be doing. Here is a closer look at the results for each of the five areas.

In environment/culture, having the support of top management ranked number one in both the should-do and doing-it-now categories. On the surface this would appear to be a heartening result leadership is doing what it should be doing.

But that good news is undercut by the number two should-do action: having leaders set the example with customer-focused behaviors. This is only number four in the doing-it-now category, meaning that while leadership may nominally support customer focus, it is not necessarily supporting it with its actions. Perhaps that helps explain why including customers in our corporate value statements ranked number two in the doing-it-now category but only number six in the should-do category; mission statements are all well and good, but its action that counts.

In the communications area, Magnifying Customer Focus finds that companies are falling short of communicating the customer focus message internally. Respondents ranked the action of having an internal plan in place to communicate customer insights number four in the should-do category, but only number seven in the doing-it-now category, suggesting that many companies are missing this crucial component. Its important to note that this doesn’t simply mean leadership handing down memos. It means employees at all levels of the organization must share their perspective and facilitate feedback from the customer so the company can get a true picture of the state of its customer service.

Companies are placing too much emphasis on market share as an indicator of customer satisfaction, according to respondents results in the area of measurement. Regularly measuring market share ranked third in the doing-it-now category, but eighth in the should-do category, strongly suggesting that respondents believe this particular metric is of little value when it comes to gauging customer satisfaction. Bain & Co.s Fred Reich held has gone even further in questioning the relevance of market share as a reliable measurement of customer satisfaction. Reichheld maintains that although companies may capture market share and generate considerable revenue from dissatisfied customers, it is actually more costly than profitable in the long run to do so.

When it comes to HR, expecting employees to anticipate customer needs ranked number one in the doing-it-now category and number three in the should-do category. It seems that while the respondents believe this strategic action is important enough to be included in the top three of actions that should be taken, it is not the overall most important action. That distinction belongs to providing customer-oriented employee training, an action that ranked number one in the should-do category and number three in the doing-it-now category, a surprising result considering the number of customer service training programs currently in place. The takeaway from this seems to be that while companies may think that they?re addressing customer service training needs, they are in reality falling far short.

While the organizational practices area is a broadly defined subgroup with substantial overlap with the other four areas, it did produce some interesting results of its own. For example, responding to demands for customization and personalization ranked eighth in the doing-it-now category but ranked only twentieth in the should-do category. Customization and personalization have been hot topics lately, with many proclaiming them the next big thing, but clearly the survey respondents consider them overrated as a customer focus issue.

Conversely, the tactic of being customer-focused at all customer touch points, not just sales training and customer service ranked fourth in the should-do category and twelfth in the doing-it-now category, revealing a large disparity between its perceived importance and the extent to which its executed.

That point an urgent reminder that customer focus needs to be instilled throughout the organization and not isolated in one or two departments serves well to sum up the entire survey.