Retail & restaurant marketing

SUMMARY: Reputation management, customer service and protecting the brand are all tied together. Finding new customers is a crucial part of consumer marketing, but retaining existing customers is also very important.

This case study looks at how Dairy Queen balances the challenge of handling customer issues while not being in total control of the entire process due to its individual franchises. We look at Dairy Queen’s process, and offer actionable items on being proactive, highlighting how customer comments can improve product development. read the complete case study

SUMMARY: Each year, digital marketing offers innovation in existing channels, and creates opportunities in new areas. This makes it a difficult, but exciting time to be a marketer, as digital efforts allow you to track what works, and what doesn’t, in your campaigns.

Our final 2011 B2C article looks at four trends to watch in 2012. Mobile marketing tops the list, and online privacy is a growing concern for all digital marketers. Likewise, there are still new developments in PPC advertising, while optimizing local search is an area primed for growth. read the complete article

SUMMARY: Wholesalers who supply products to independent retailers still depend on face-to-face meetings as their bread and butter even as ecommerce evolves. But one national wholesaler has embraced the Internet to boost orders for their reps.

See the steps they followed to create an email newsletter program. Retailers who subscribe are ordering 36% more often than those who don't, plus their orders are 13% larger. read the complete interview

SUMMARY: For the past five years, brick-and-mortar retailers have been (slowly) shifting marketing dollars away from TV toward online; that shift is still happening, but today online is not the only medium benefiting from it. Event marketing, word of mouth and traditional print advertising may also soon be seeing a lift, says George Anderson, Editor-in-Chief RetailWire.

Here are the top four trends Anderson has spotted in retail marketing for 2006.

Trend #1. Comparison shopping online, purchasing offline

Over the... read the complete article

by Anne Holland, President

Although I live in a fairly small town on a not-so-big island, every day as I drive to work on the mainland, I pass signs for eight different garden centers.

Obviously it's a garden-crazed community that I live in. But even so, with eight garden centers duking it out on the main road (not to mention the ones off it), the competition for marketshare is ferocious.

It's also tremendous fun for those of us... read the complete blog post