Situational Marketing

Reheating Your Business Leftovers

I'm working with a client who sells GPS tracking systems to small businesses.  The process is simple - the company advertises, and small businesses with more than 5 vehicles buy a GPS phone and connect it to the software.

The company turns on the software, and like magic, can track the vehicle throughout the day.  We were talking about their marketing mix, which includes SEM and SEO, and I asked about e-mails.  The Blast Companies store is easy to use, and starting $35 a month, they can send 1000 e-mails out to prospects. 

Where do I get the leads from?  That's the question.

My first thought was to find a competitor who went out of business, and buy their database.  It's a truism that the best clients are those who've bought your service before.  Even if they were burned, they represent a group of individuals who saw value in the services you provide.   Companies go out of business all the time, usually for reasons not related to the product itself.

Finding a bankrupt, or near-bankrupt competitor and purchasing their leads and database could be the easy way to market your services with a phone and email campaign for thousands less than brand new shiny marketing campaign using print, television and radio.

Think of a failed competitor's database as cold pizza.  All it needs is a little reheating to make it a filling and delicious meal.

GIMA Meeting, Starring Chris Torbit!

Over 82% of the US population has a cell phone thus liberating our audiences from their computer screen and opening up to new ways of targeted marketing. This month, our panel of experts will discuss how to get started in mobile marketing, along with reviewing some of the most successful strategies they have encountered in the space.

Our panelists:
Rob Sprungman, Director of Sales, Midwest, AdMob - the world's largest mobile marketplace for advertisers while offering a surgical level of targeting through content, device, carrier, etc. Rob most recently was the Midwest Sales Manager for Electronic Arts (EASports.com, EA.com, and POGO.com) and has been in the interactive space for nearly ten years. Prior to interactive, Rob was a media manager and buyer for Montgomery Ward.

Chris Torbit, President and Founder, Blast Companies -  offering emerging communication applications and marketing services in text messaging, email marketing, mobile marketing and voice broadcasting that enable clients to effectively communicate with their target audience.

Steven Kelley, CEO and Founder, MessageBuzz - an innovative solution provider of choice to advertising agencies creating mobile marketing campaigns and strategic mobile communication solutions for their clients.

Join us and interact with the fast-growing St. Louis interactive community!
When:  Wednesday, April 16, 6-9 p.m.
           6-7 Networking - refreshments and heavy hor d'oeuvres
           7-8 Presentation
           8-9 More networking
Where: Monarch Restaurant, 7401 Manchester Rd, Maplewood, MO 63143, (314) 644-3995

To register at the GIMA site (Gateway Interactive Marketing Association)

No cost to you, thanks to our sponsors:

                                          

Small Business Made Easier

The Amazon blog has 5 very cool softwares they recommend.

An automatic expenser software.

A to do list that reminds you when something needs to be done.

and a free file converter.

Three free softwares that make your life easier.  Man I love blogging.  How did we learn before this came along?

hattip: Instapundit.

Automating Your Small Business Marketing

Pop Quiz time.  What's the single most important resource a business needs to succeed?  (ed. Cash!!!)

Okay, what's the second most important resource, closely related to Cash, that a business need to succeed.  That's right, it's Time.  Business owners are used to wearing many hats, and they're used to tapping many resources, but the one resources that is finite is Time.  We all get 24 hours of it a day, and that's it.

So when trying to determine what the best use of your time is, the promise of technology is a big lure.  The problem, is that it takes time to learn technology - to adopt it, and sometimes to use it.  What entrepreneurs is technology that is simple to learn, that cuts the amount of time we use on a task, and that doesn't cost more for us to use than to pay someone to do.

For taxes - we think about Quicken, until Quicken isn't big enough.
For e-mail, we use gmail, until gmail isn't big enough.

So what do you use for mobile marketing?  For e-mail messaging?  For voice broadcast?  John Jantsch gives a list of automated software pieces that he suggests on Duct Tape Marketing. We like the list, but want to add to it.

We're talking about the store of course.  Blast Companies self-service e-mail, text, and voice broadcast store.  If you're stuck sending out e-mails in large batches to clients, it's time to automate. If you want to run your own text club, it's time to automate.

Starts at $35/month for e-mail.

Should We Be Twittering?

There are so man different social media applications out there, the concern of the small business is how to get it all done. How much time should be spent on selling, closing, and your books, and how much should be spent online making connections and building a profile?

Twitter is one of those services that is hard to quantify for the small business owner.  On the one hand, it gives you instant access to a lot of people.  On the other hand, it's just as addictive and distracting as instant messaging.

And this is in a marketplace where most businesses still haven't figured out best practices for e-mail marketing, websites, and mobile marketing.  If we can't get the basics of online marketing right, how can we focus on social media?

In this week's Carnival of the Mobilists over at Taptology, SmartMob's Howard Rheingold tells us why he's hooked on Twitter.  It's all about moving or dying.

Openness — anyone can join, and anyone can follow anyone else (unless they restrict access to friends who request access)

Immediacy — it’s a rolling present. You won’t get the sense of Twitter if you just check in once a week. You need to hang out for minutes and hours, every day, to get in the groove.

Variety — political or technical argument, gossip, technical info, news flashes, poetry, social arrangements, classrooms, repartee, scholarly references

Reciprocity — people give and ask freely for information they need (this doesn’t necessarily scale or last forever, but right now it’s possible to tune your list — and to contribute to it — to include a high degree of reciprocation)

Entrepreneurs have to learn to succeed.  Corporations sit at the portion of the cycle where economies of scale work.  For small businesses, looking for new ways to address old problems is our lifeblood.  Communities like those we can join on Twitter give us creativity from dozens, and then hundreds of other smart people.  Oftentimes, the answer to our problem is merely looking at someone else does in another industry, and applying it to ours.

Move or Die.  Find a way to learn.  I'm not saying Twitter will make you money, but it does give small businesses a way to connect with many people without having to drive to see them.  Is your social group online?  Find out where they are, and go join them.  Move and Learn, or die.  It's the nature of all business.

Rules Of Texting In Business Marketing

We often hear from clients who want to use SMS texting to reach clients and prospects.  We think it's a great idea, but to approach business texting correctly, you have to realize it's a different business than e-mailing.

E-mail marketing is pretty mature.  We understand the rules, which usually mean don't send out multiple unwanted emails to people or businesses, and make sure they can opt-out if they choose.  The idea is that you can first reach out to someone, but you have to make it clear they don't have to get your e-mails, and they can shut you off if they want you to leave them alone.  That's the theory behind CAN-SPAM, and it's why we manage opt-out options for e-mail marketing.

Text requires more work. You can't send out thousands of text messages to a list of cell phone numbers the same way you could buy a list of e-mail addresses.  Text costs the consumer money, and if you're sending out unwanted messages, you're could find yourself fined or in other hot water for doing so.

Your goal is to establish a text club.

Text Club -This turnkey application allows mobile users to text in a keyword to a shortcode and choose to receive SMS text messages either daily, weekly, or monthly from a brand. Text Clubs are a great resource to create loyalty through mobile only coupons, specific alerts and brand updates.

So what do you do?

First, you establish an opt-in message. You have to get people to signal their willingness to be sent messages.  This can be created by using other marketing (like radio, direct mail) where you ask people to send you a message to join your text club.  You can create a website online that asks people to sign up, much as you have them sign up for your newsletter. Or you can launch an e-mail marketing campaign suggesting people sign up to get mobile messaging.

The goal is to get people who are already engaged in your product or service, to get special treatment and communication from your company.  This means you want to target a smaller number of prospects then your e-mail lists, with the tradeoff being people that are more likely to become your customers.

Social Media Strategy For Small Businesses

This blog is part of a new strategy for Blast Marketing.  Our goal was to get involved online, raise our profile, and gather information about our industry and our place in it. 

The blog is a portal to outside information. John Jantsch covers this topic in his discussion of social media over at Duct Tape Marketing.  He understand that blogs, and all social media, are not tools, but part of a strategy of joining the online world.

But, if that’s the only way you view social media, as a set of tools to perform a set of tactics to reach the set of objectives you have always tried to reach with your marketing, then not only are you really missing the opportunity, you will probably find yourself wondering what all the fuss is about.

You can’t approach new media with old thinking. Taking full advantage of social media requires understanding and adopting a specific social media strategy.

First and foremost you must appreciate the differences between social media and, say, direct mail. With direct mail the outcome is likely to create an action, with most social media, it’s to create a connection. Both of these have equally important places in the long-term health of a business, but how they happen is significantly different. Try to do one with the other and results may actually backfire - ie: Ads on Facebook?

I think the best way to look at social media is to view it as a way to open up access points. These points can then be leveraged to create content, connection, and community. Do that well, and they can also add to lead generation, nurturing and conversion.

John doesn't just write about social media, he lives it.  For many years, Duct Tape Marketing has been one of the most successful websites on small business marketing.   His foray into podcasts, blogging, and other forms of social media has been a model of how to gain big benefits from small actions.

That's a big promise, but the key to social media is that success comes from altering the way you do business.  Participating in social media makes you smarter, more transparent, more aware of your business, and ultimately, more prepared to take advantage of new web trends.

hattip:  Bearing Fruit Consulting.

Mobile Technology In The Doctor's Office

This was a neat story from Mobivity.  Greg went to the doctor's office and saw them using tablet pc's to take patient information and do a show-and-tell for symptoms and to send an e-mail full of nutritional info.

I remember reading about that several years back.  It's pretty cool to hear that the tablet is actually showing up in the doctor's office.  It's a helpful reminder that mobile isn't always about cell phones.  It's about meeting people where they work and live.

Integrating Your Viral Videos With List Management

We all love video.  Internet users prefer video ads over banners, YouTube videos are much cooler than reading the Drudge Report, and JibJab is more entertaining than reading the morning's editorial in your local paper.

Knowing this, smart companies are after that elusive online tool, the viral video.  Your goal is to create something memorable that everyone wants to see, so they forward it to their friends and you get free advertising.

National companies pay big bucks for viral video campaigns, and getting a couple hundred thousand people to watch your feature is the measure of success.  Sadly, those large companies don't attempt to gather information from the video viewers.  The ad is quickly forgotten, and the opportunity to generate a list of interested prospects is lost.

Most of us don't have a couple of million to throw into such endeavors, but we can use video editing software to create viral videos that target our customers, prospects, and referrers.  The following video is created by a martial arts firm called Martial Arm that sells training equipment.  Their video looks good, and drives home their message, and ends with a call to buy their products.  The video is one that appeals to their target audience, and when it makes the rounds, people who would be the perfect customers to ask if they want to sign up for further contact.  Check out the video.

Most people who get the video will want to see more, and if you have a newsletter, SMS messaging, e-mail contacts, or a phone call list, you can quickly build an opt-in list of contacts who want what you're selling.  You can manage these campaigns using software like Consumer Decoder, which allows each viewer to determine if they want to opt-in after seeing the video, and how they wish to be contacted.  None of this is expensive.  The video is built using Flektor, a free video-editing software that you can use to embed the video in blogs or your MySpace page.  When you're looking for a marketing partner, look beyond the technology and determine if you are meeting goals with your advertising. Combining video with a list management campaign is an efficient way to generate a lot of interest with a minimum of cost.

To Be Successful, Just Be Yourself?

One of my favorite small business gurus is John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing.  John covers a wide array of topics at his site, and has brought in a team of experts to cover even wider ground at the Blog Channel.

Today, on his own blog, John covers the question of coolness.  Small businesses, in their effort to compete, often try to pick up something new, something, cool, that will drive their name recognition ahead of their competition.  Using their speed and their ability to adapt, the small business owner hopes to "brand" themselves as cutting edge.  And it works - sometimes.

John has some words of advice:

In the end, the right look is simply a matter of discovering the most authentic look, and for that matter, feel, words and experience, for you. Regardless of how it might be perceived by some. If authentic is conservative, embrace it, if authentic is wild and edgy, go for it, if authentic is cheesy, go full on cheddar.

There are few things more painful to witness than someone trying to be something they are not. On the other hand, there is something very approachable about someone just being who and what they are - even if we don’t happen to view ourselves that way.

The problem with cool is that it's so elusive, and it's always changing. Look at clothes in the 80's, or the way kids wear their jeans low (Take pictures if you can - the better to embarrass them when they're older).  Companies have the same problem.  When they're cool, it often means they'll just be embarrassed later when someone brings up the past.

Remember that cool is anti-authority.  For some companies, this works.  For those that deliver solid services, cool isn't the brand you want.  Even HVAC dealers want to be seen as professional, and their product is all about cool!

So be yourself, just like your momma told you.  It may not be cool, but long term, it's better for you.