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Using Psychographics
Question Number 3: How do you gather psychographic data? All of you market researchers are scratching your heads already. Yes, we know what psychographics are, and we know why they’re important. Now tell us how to get them and use them! Really, it’s not as hard as you might think. It just takes a bit more time than typical statistics. Demographic information is easy. You ask a handful of profiling questions in a research survey and count the answers. I know, it’s a bit more complicated than that to actually analyze the data, but I’m talking about pure collection. Statistical…
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The Importance of Psychographics
Question Number 2: Why are psychographics important? For those of us in marketing who understand the science, the answer is fairly obvious. But many times, we take that for granted and tell our clients to gather psychographic data without telling them why. This can be frustrating for the client and doesn’t really help build a relationship. In the simplest of terms, psychographics aid in market segmentation and help you identify your perfect customers within the pool of potential customers. Separating out the group of people who shop at your store every day and tell their friends about you from the…
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Pyschographics Redefined
Question Number 1: What exactly are psychographics? Psychographics are the holy grail when it comes to marketing and sales. They are more than just the external characteristics of your customer. They run deeper than past purchasing habits. Psychographics are the why behind consumer behavior. The reason a man chooses one brand of wrench over another has just as much to do with how he feels about the wrenches as their performance and associated marketing budgets. Why a woman chooses one clothing line over another is more involved with how she perceives the brands’ fit with her sense of style than…
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Security
Nothing can ever be truly secure. The best we can muster is the illusion of security – create a veil through which our world looks private and closed off from the idle hands of those who would disrupt it. I’ve been working quite a bit on website development lately, and I’ve been thinking a lot about web security. The fact of the matter is, if one person can get into a website (through authentication, of course) then there’s someone out there with the skills to circumvent any security measures you have and also get in. It’s like the old bank…
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What’s Holding You Back?
The other day, someone asked me what appeared to be the most unassuming question possible. “If there was something you could start doing today that would improve the quality of your life, what would it be?” On the surface, this seemed to be a very harmless question. I almost had an answer. Then I stopped to think for a minute. If there is something I could start doing right now, why haven’t I started doing it yet? What’s holding me back? This leaves me wondering: if there’s something I could do in my business that would drastically improve its standing…
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How Twitter Makes You A Crappy Writer
Last Friday, we talked a bit about how Twitter can make you a better writer. While there are hundreds of reasons Twitter can be a fantastic tool, there are just as many reasons it can be detrimental. Writing concisely is important – but so is writing to be read. A good writer understands her audience. She knows what words will make the most sense. He knows what kind of a tone to take while discussing particular concepts. Unfortunately, Twitter seriously limits this ability of writers. When you’re restricted to 140 characters, you end up sacrificing the “best” words for the…
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How Twitter Makes You A Better Writer
The topic of this post is based on a suggestion from @carlincomm – “101 Reasons that Twitter makes you a better writer. 1-A tweet is a great headline. 2-140 characters builds discipline. 3-more fun” One of the trickiest parts of marketing is writing concisely – painting a picture of a thousand words with a few eloquent sentences. Whether it’s a one-sentence tagline or a page-long direct mail piece, the ability to fully explain an idea in just a few words is vital to success in the industry. Few marketers that I know are also good writers, and they invest a…
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Speaking in Code
I wrote my first computer program when I was 10 years old. It wasn’t much – it ran on DOS, only displayed a few lines of text, and took forever and a half for me to figure out. Oddly enough, I was so jazzed about programming that I announced to my parents that I wanted to work with computer when I grew up. I taught myself QuickBASIC and spent far too many days inside working on my computer than I’d like to remember. When I was in middle school, I transitioned into web programming. The Internet was still young, and…
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Secret Sauce
I grew up in the Boy Scouts. We went camping several weekends per year and had a lot of first-hand experience with surviving in the outdoors. I met mountain men, Indian skills instructors, and experienced survivalists. All-in-all, Boy Scouts was a blast as a kid. One of the coolest things about Scouting is that they let you play with fire. I always had at least 2 boxes of matches on me. When I finally got a lighter, I had it with me all the time. Fire was fun … and even easier to use. One of the tricks of fire,…
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Bloatware
One of the coolest podcasts I listen to is WordPress Weekly, hosted by WP Tavern. I build web sites primarily in WordPress, so it’s refreshing to have someone else research the newest features and plug-ins for me. I like to stay abreast of the plans for WordPress development, too. It makes it easier for me to deliver new content and site designs to my clients, so they can make the best use of the Internet as a marketing tool. This past episode of WordPress Weekly carried an interesting question: Is WordPress becoming “bloatware?” By bloatware I mean a piece of…