Sandwich Board makes a Come Back

A few weeks ago, I noted more retail establishments than usual using people-powered sandwich boards to attract customers. It appears that this rather old fashioned tactic is making a coming back or business owners are determined to try anything for promotion.

Today, I saw a guy in a suit under a sandwich board promoting tax services. In my mind, going to get your taxes done is not an impulse buy. Seeing a signboard might make me contemplate having pizza for dinner, but taxes? Are there people driving around with receipts looking for a tax office?

The tax man with a sandwich board may, however, plant in my mind the geographic location of the tax office. But does it make sense? Track how your customers find you so you can see if your advertising is working. You can ask walk in customers, or set up different phone numbers or web pages so you can determine if the ad or sandwich board worked. The more you know about your customers, the better able you will be to target your marketing campaign.

Images.google.com has a variety of sandwich board images to entertain you.

Twitter news offered by AMA

As a past-president of the American Marketing Association Sacramento Valley, I am always delighted when the organization brings speakers to the membership that enrich the marketing field. Today the speaker on Twitter was Alejandro Reyes, Social Marketing Consultant & CEO of SacramentoMarketingLabs.com.

I agree with his sentiment that Twitter, like any other marketing tactic — web site, sales materials, public relations and the rest, should be authentic, build your brand, provide value to customers and be used strategically to differentiate your products and services.

You can follow my tweets on twitter @marketgal.

I’m back

It has been easier to dash off a brief thought on twitter at marketgal than write something more substantial on my blog. That’s my excuse anyway. And, you can see my twitter posts from this blog in the right column.

Last year, I worked on the the Sierra College new Energy Technology Program that trains Solar Technicians. See my blog posts at http://www.sierraenergytech.com/?page_id=202