Loyal or Not?

I really want to know what you think. Growing up my family always seems to visit the same establishment for a type of service. If it was related to boating it was one place, always. If it was a book store it was the same place, always. My family as always been loyal to a place of business where ever we lived.

When I started working and making money of my own I took these same values. I have a favorite Chinese resturant I always visit, Mr. Wangs in Homewood, Al. I met these guys when I was in fifth grade and have eated at their resturant ever since. I have serveral businesses like this that I always do business with.

My thought is, the only time you should ever change where you are doing business is if you are going to be able to save a good amount of money or there is a change in the service you are getting. Now in saying about the money, often times you get what you pay for so that is a little less in my book. For me Service is the key.

So, do you think there has been a change in the amout of loyalty shown to businesses over the past couple years or do you think this is an out dated way to do business?

What Do You Do?

So today when I was e-mailing out our June special to our customers I got an interesting response from one of them. It said the following:

"We are unable to purchase advertising specialties at this time of corporate consolidation."

This is a company that is made up of over 250 independent contractors that strictly work for this company. They do have a marketing department to assist these contractors and have various other staff. So, that got me thinking this afternoon. More of less, this company depends on these independent contractors to do the marketing. Now, in saying that I do have inside knowledge in this company and know they do some institutional marketing as well. However, it is some what limited, mainly magazines and newspaper.....ahh newspaper, really?

Ok, so what I am getting at is where are they spending the money and why? I served for two years on a marketing committee for a company like this when I was in real estate. The committee was made up of all types young to old. The younger agents always fought for more spending related to the internet and other items, while older agents liked glossy magazines and newspaper. The younger agents won for a few months at the end of our terms then when we rotated off it went right back to older forms of marketing.

The issue is you have no way to track who sees your message. Internet you know who is seeing it and with promotional products you know who is seeing, and most importanly getting your brand and logo in their hand. You have ways you can follow up. Second, you are depending on contractors who might or might not be making the extra money to promote and market themsleves and the company. So when does the instution need to step in, promote the company more to give back to the contractors and build business?

Am I off base? Thoughts?