bGG Advertising just finished working on the Gail Singer Memorial Blood Drive here in Manchester. As New England’s largest blood drive, the behind-the-scenes work takes months of planning, dozens of partnerships, hours upon hours of coordination and most importantly—blood donors!

One of the biggest benefits of direct response marketing (snail mail or e-mail) is that you can get almost immediate feedback from your market. You should be constantly testing to see if you can beat your “control” mailing. So what should you be testing? Obviously you should always be testing your lists. Today, you can refine and redefine your target audience to the nth degree. Don’t be afraid to segment and sub-segment.

Let’s say that you were going to audition your employees for their starring role. Would you even know what kind of role you want them to play? What kind of a script would you give them to see if they could play the part?

Companies have refreshed their logos, taglines, etc. But to take something so basic and understood by their loyal fan base, and change it, even minutely, can be a costly and dangerous avenue to take when trying to refresh your brand.

Every business wants to generate new business. That’s the commonality. But that’s just about all that’s the same. Some sell high-ticket or very specialized items and services. They only need a handful of new clients to meet their goals. Others are all about volume. They have a large ability to deliver quantities of their offerings and they want the pipeline full. This is where the “one size fits all” marketing theories fall apart.