I see the industry from many sides, both in my role as publisher of the PPAI-award winning FreePromoTips.com and as a distributor. My perspective is different from most, and that enables me to publish content that is of interest to our industry.
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By now you have heard the fact that overall industry firms grew at 1 percent, while industry online firms grew at 33 percent. According to PPAI research, “The proportion of online sales compared to total sales in the industry increased by 4 percentage points from 13.6 percent in 2013 to 17.9 percent in 2014.” Wait, you have valuable relationships and great service, yet overall online firms are growing faster than traditional firms? Why is that?
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In building our PPAI-award winning FreePromoTips.com program into a valuable resource for the industry, we have always made a conscious effort to keep it out of the radar of the non-industry online community. This is a program with content that specifically is focused on the promotional marketing industry.
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I’ve recently had a revelation. For many years, I have worked to build up a significant online presence for my PPAI-award winning, content-driven program, FreePromoTips.com. Our industry database for our e-newsletter is 50,000 and we have a strong social media reach. I’ve shared about this before, but that isn’t the point of this commentary.
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In a recent commentary, “How Does Amazon’s Business Model Affect Us?” I alluded to how online efficiency will change how products are being purchased, even promotional products.
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Our evolving industry business model continues to be a hot topic. Recently I started wondering how an online purchasing mentality, I’ll call the Amazon click-to-buy world, affects our industry. It begs the question, are we (aka distributors) really needed? It’s getting easier and easier for end-users to buy online or direct from suppliers.
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I am hardly an expert in the area of social media. In my personal online life, I will post pictures of my cute, but very weird dogs and family outings. I’ll occasionally “check in” at restaurants, since it’s important for my “friends” to know I’m eating well and hanging with the right people that I “tag.”
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One of the most frequent points of discussion with distributors this past week during the course of the PPAI Expo was the perceived threat of Internet direct business.
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We’ve all seen ways to buy and sell—from brick-and-mortar to online shopping; from receiving letters to being deluged with email. The handwritten card seems to be the new way to cut through the clutter that we created by trying to reach buyers on their terms. The irony is that the everyday interpersonal medium from our pre-1990s world is becoming a little more exciting simply due to its rarity.
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What do you do when a prospect tells you they can buy the promotional products you’re recommending cheaper on the Internet?
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