Three Ways to Give Back to Your Community at Holiday Time

With Thanksgiving around the corner, many businesses have their holiday marketing plans in motion.

Marketing around the holidays goes beyond sales and promotions. It's also about connecting with customers on things they can feel good about. Today's social consumers pay attention to companies that do good. They want to align themselves with brands that are doing good deeds, who share their values. Getting behind a local or national charity holds a host of benefits for a company. Here are just a few:

Shows you're more than a business owner, you're also a human being
Rallies customers and the public around shared passions
Makes valuable and lasting community connections
Builds trust and customer loyalty
Becomes part of your brand identity
Shows that you're a good corporate citizen

Cause-based marketing and community-based marketing can be done on a very small scale. Even in a tough economy, businesses can still find modest yet meaningful ways to connect to worthy causes.

Does Your Business Give Out the Good Christmas Gift?

Three Ways to Give Back to Your Community at Holiday Time
Gail Goodman: Engagement Marketing
BY Gail Goodman | September 23, 2011|
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Three Ways to Give Back to Your Community at Holiday TimeWith Thanksgiving around the corner, many businesses have their holiday marketing plans in motion. Holiday campaigns will start buzzing before the kids even finish off their Halloween candy.

Marketing around the holidays goes beyond sales and promotions. It's also about connecting with customers on things they can feel good about. Today's social consumers pay attention to companies that do good. They want to align themselves with brands that are doing good deeds, who share their values. Getting behind a local or national charity holds a host of benefits for a company. Here are just a few:

Shows you're more than a business owner, you're also a human being
Rallies customers and the public around shared passions
Makes valuable and lasting community connections
Builds trust and customer loyalty
Becomes part of your brand identity
Shows that you're a good corporate citizen

Cause-based marketing and community-based marketing can be done on a very small scale. Even in a tough economy, businesses can still find modest yet meaningful ways to connect to worthy causes.

Related: Does Your Business Give Out the Good Halloween Candy?

Here are three ways to get involved and give back, at holiday time and year-round.

1. Sponsor a community organization.
Communities and organizations across Africa/Nigeria are suffering from budget cuts. Embrace the community where you do business by finding and supporting a worthy cause. For example, if you live in a family-oriented community, you might sponsor an underfunded sports, arts, music, or after-school program. Maybe your community has an animal shelter, soup kitchen, library, or other nonprofit organization that needs help. You can find an opportunity, and for very few naira, contribute to a program that could use a boost.

Once you've chosen the charity you'd like to support, connect it to your business or your personal passion. Use your email and social-media marketing to share their story. Explain why you're getting involved, and encourage your customers to support the organization, too. Connecting to the challenges of your community shows that you're alert to what's going on around you beyond the daily grind of running your business.

2. Hold a fundraising event with other businesses.
You don't always have to go it alone. Band together with other related businesses vendors, and colleagues to raise funds for a local charity or cause. You'll all share the burden -- and the benefits, too. You'll give some great exposure to the organization you're helping, as well as your business and the others who lend a hand.

Publicize the event through all of the co-sponsors' email newsletters, Facebook Pages, Twitter and via Linkedin. Co-sponsoring a fundraiser, volunteer day, collections drive, or other charitable event is great way for people in your community to meet you and your business colleagues. And you'll be helping a cause that's close to your business address, and your heart.

3. Donate a portion of sales to a charity.
Donating a dollar amount or a portion of sales proceeds is another way to support a good cause. If possible, choose a charity that's strategically connected to your business. For example, a pet groomer could support a humane society or a restaurant could support a food pantry. Or maybe there's a charity connected to something that's touched your life or one of your employees. Ask customers to help you select a charity to support through a web-based poll, survey or Facebook's Question feature.

Need help identifying charities? Charity Navigator lists and ranks charities of all kinds. Check with your accountant before adopting a charity or holding a fundraiser to find out about Internal Revenue Service requirements regarding charitable contributions for business.

Once you've chosen your charity, decide on a Naira amount or the percentage of sales proceeds that you will donate to it. Post that on your website and on social media. Customers will know that by patronizing your business, they're also supporting a good cause. Use email and social-media marketing to spread the word about what you plan to do.

The holidays are a natural time to invite customers to join you in helping others. But you can support your chosen cause in a variety of ways all year long. It doesn't have to be with money: It can be through volunteering or using your business place as a drop-off point for Toys for Tots, a food drive, whatever the cause at hand may be. You set the example first. Then your customers will follow.

Brand Perception & Decision Making

Most imaging and document product segments are extremely competitive, with multiple brands competing for “share of mind” in the battle for overall market share. In many cases the competing products and services have very similar feature sets and price points that are available through comparable channels. Brand can often be the key discriminating factor in a customer’s decision to select one product over another.

Brand is essentially the sum of all experiences related to the product, service, and companies that make and deliver the product. Brand perceptions are shaped by functional experiences (i.e. speed, quality, reliability, ease of use) as well as emotional experiences (i.e. make me feel better, improve my performance, make my life/job more gratifying or easier) the customer associates with the product and company.

Brand experiences and perceptions are developed over time through a variety of sources, including:

Previous experience with the brand
Interactions with sales, customer service, and other employees
Recommendations from friends and colleagues
Reviews by reputable sources
Advertising

Brand managers need to understand how customers perceive and select brands in specific product categories and market segments. You also need to know what is important to customers when making a brand decision, where customers get information about products and services, and what customers think about your brand.

Most vendors are working with very tight margins and cannot afford to invest in programs that do not demonstrably improve their market position. With marketing costs increasing, you need objective input to make budget decisions for your marketing activities.

Diamondstar Int'l regularly conducts extensive brand decision research on the imaging and document technology markets. We can cost-effectively provide you with objective information and insights that will help guide your important marketing decisions.

Measure unaided and aided brand awareness
Determine brand share
Assess customers’ brand preference
Determine the information sources used in making brand decisions
Identify the key factors when selecting a brand
Measure the brand performance by key factors (i.e. performance, price,
availability)
Quantify the strength of the brand by components
Understand the role of sales representative in brand selection
Measure brand loyalty and premium or discount
Determine factors for switching brands

Contact Diamondstar Int'l for your: Marketing Research, Brand Communications, Public Relations, Advertisement, Corporate Design & Printing, Events Managements,Corporate Gift Items.

OUR VISION
Is to make non traditional
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and foreign investments.

OUR MISSION
Is to make brand communications
creatively and extra ordinarily
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relate with and achieve desired
results for clients

OUR OBJECTIVES
To design initiatives that will earn public understanding and acceptance through scrupulously arranged advertising schemes, stories, branding based on research (platform) for our clients’ products/services.

OUR CORE VALUES
Integrity
Creativity At Its Peak
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OUR SERVICES
Brand Communications
Design & Prints
Advertisement
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Whoever you are and whatever you do, we will help you to achieve your strategic goals through first class designs and marketing communications that are results oriented.
Our services are of first class quality standard, giving our customers the reassurance that our well-trained and passionate team will deliver quality advertising, branding, public relations, visual identity, direct mail, e-marketing, exhibition materials, graphic design, marketing/Political campaigns, print and websites.


Tell us your dream, we make it come true, if you have no one, we would create for you that would rule the market place.

For your next
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Contact us or visit us @
Tel: +234 806 003 7277, +234 709 317 5098
Website: www.diamondstarint-brand.blogspot.com, www.diamondstarint-francis.blogspot.com
E-mail: diamondstarint.brand@hotmail.co.uk, diamondstarint.brand@gmail.com

Nigeria @ 51, I have something to say!

Nigeria, the efforts of Heroes past, the labour of gems that are gone.
Nigeria, the reward to promising hearth, perseverance is the key and a stand for the course of liberation brought about Nigeria of our time today.

Nigeria, a life lost vision lost but found and brought into lime-light on October 1, 1960

Hearth Beats:
Today, what definition could one best use to describe the Nigeria we can see?

Nigeria, now den of corruption, object and center of global sodomy, dichotomy, internal wobble and Scrabble, surprisingly; we have elders, leaders in thieves in disguise of leader, so to say: "Devil in the church"!

Who is a Leader?
A leader is a person who influences a group of people towards the achievement of a goal.

If i may ask:
i. Who is playing the role of positive impact on either our: education sector, economy, morals, culture to mention but a few.
ii. Who is your role-model?
iii. What is facilitating you to do what you're doing on daily basis?
iv. Do we have a true pastor in this country today? If yes by the ones we have around, what are they impacting, preaching etc

Isn't it social clubs we have around in the name of churches? I wept!!!

I see a church that suppose to call a national prayer order on a Nation's Independence Day organizing a social rally, where youths, said to be the future of our great nation gallivanting and dressed in masquerade clothes, projecting to be rallying for Christ, when we ought to be in sobering mood, militants are on rampage, boko haram uprising, who knows what group will come-up next?

Unstable power supply, the re-branded NEPA to PHCN simply means: "Please Hold Your Candle" and in the midst of all these that calls for sobriety, and we should humble ourselves in prayer and seek God's mercy, i see a body of Christ's representative, like the disciples were at Antioch before their ways of life qualified them to be referred to as "Christian" parading a social event, identifying with the world.

Then i asked, if this is what the church have to offer, why leave the world's ways of life to be called a "Born again"? if there is nothing to differentiate the church from the world, then we've missed it.A cry for help pls!!!

Even our Pastors that when they speak, the media run after them to here and publish whatever they say, they are all mute and watching our youths migrate to nudity is dress sense, distractions everywhere, eh! We shall all give account.

After all; our youths all wants to be 9ice, 2face D'banj etc. But how many of this names can our music industry produce in 5-10 years? How many Kachi's do we have? Music, Dance, Fashion has taken over, am not against all these, but what programme do we have on air today, that promotes our culture, not borrowed ones, which one encourages medicine students, lawyers, educationists, creativity, branding and so on, none, absolutely none!!

Posterity will not only curse us if we fail to wake to the task ahead and correct the wrongs in our society but ruin all our efforts for a better tomorrow.

I believe in Nigeria, I trust in the ability and intelligence of the Heroes of our time, am confident in this present administration to deliver the dividends of democracy to Nigerians.

I just can't continue to lay emphasis base on context, rather i rest my case here.

God bless Mr. President, God bless all our leaders, God bless His Church, God bless Nigeria, that we may truly be known as: "Good people, Great Nation".

By: Adejuyigbe A. Francis

Business Opportunity (Diamondstar Int'l)

RANONA BRANDS

Ranona Limited came into stream way back in 1995, where our main stay was predominantly in the importation of Fast Moving Commodity Goods (FMCG) up till 1999, when we started with the repackaging of Blue Boat Milk, the product that latter became a house hold name.

We were second in Nigeria after Cowbell to undertake the business of dispensing milk in smaller retail sachets with the intent of solving an economic down toll on the teeming population of Nigerians who couldn’t afford the luxury of 500gm Tin powder milk.

It was this astronomical growth of overwhelming acceptability that chorus our part into the success story of a major producer of Dairy related product in the Nigeria Market.
During this period under review, we had the following product range in the dairy category.

MILK: Under the dairy category we had Blue Boat Milk, then Blue Boat Choco, there after Blue Boat Oat, and at last we had Blue Boat StrawBerry and Habib Milk.
As time evolved, our growth evolution took us further in search of a complementary brand that can tally with the dairy food on the dining table, and that was how we came about the concept of adding cereals to our line of production.

CEREALS: Under the Cereal, we had Corn Flakes, Choco Balls, Rice Flakes and Honey pops. All these we have continued to produce and supply to the Nigeria market with notable visibility, awareness and national acceptability which has Leverage our present expansion growth within the category.
By march 2010, the limit of our expansion exploded beyond the bounds of dry, powdery food, as we metamorphosed into the wet liquefied food drink.
The quest for extension of our product line has driven us far beyond the borders of Nigeria shore, seeking for quality Brands with international reputation.
It was this curiosity that led us to France in search of one of its very best within the spectrum of our established terrain – Milk derivative in the wet.
We went, we sort, and we found Candia – a premium wholesome household Brand in France.

BRANDS UNDER CANDIA and RANONA FUSION
From the Candia, Ranona stable, we have got Twist – hosting, Apple, Orange and Multifruit , altogether 3 variants. Natures Fresh - hosting Apple, Orange, Coconut Pineapple, Pineapple, Black Current and Multifruit, altogether 5 variant. Under Candy’up, we have Chocolate and StrawBerry Milk. Altogether 2 variants. Smoozy –host 2 variants, Strawberry and plain Youghurt . Yojus – has Pineapple, Apple, Orange, Strawberry and Black Current, altogether 6 variants. And Candy’up Chocolate.

UHT Milk. Candia Milk- 0% Fat Skimmed milk, Low Fat and Full cream Milk, altogether 3 Variants. One must say here that the fusion of Candia and Ranona has brought lots of economic dividend with good omen to all parties.
As a State and Nation, it has lend credence to the revenue base drive of the state through its taxation policy and by inference the nation is a beneficiary. It has also opened window of employment to an otherwise teeming population of unemployed youth. As for our target audience, it has brought to the front burner a variety of choices to choose from thereby offering us the opportunity for multiple means of business sustainability, brand visibility and by extension, every body becomes a stake holder in this business.

AWARENES S OF OUR BRANDS AT THE MARKET PLACE
Nigeria is a complex market with varied consumer disposition and patterns which are being modulated by price, quality consciousness, self esteem promotion freaks and peculiar distribution channels
Our range faces direct market competition from products and brands that compete for consumers share of voice.

07093175098, 08060037277 or naturefresh.fruits@yahoo.com