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My phone runs my life. Get used to it.

July 5, 2011

Tags: , , ,
Categories: Strategy

hand-smartphoneMobile marketing trends for small businesses

If you think there are too many people surfing the web on their phones at restaurants or checking their e-mail in movie theaters now — just wait. By 2015, nearly 45 percent (yes, almost half) of all Americans will own a smartphone.

That’s an almost 50 percent jump from where we are now, according to the technology research company Gartner, making Smartphones the highest selling consumer electronic device category.

So don’t worry if you haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon — there are many new trends businesses large and small can leverage to stand out in the mobile marketplace.

What’s old is still old. Banner advertisements have been translated from traditional websites to mobile, but the same problem exists: no one pays attention to them.

These days, web surfers are using search engines to find exactly what they are looking for and smartphone users top the list.

Instead of waiting for an ad to attract their attention, they’ll use location-based services to find local businesses and restaurants right around the corner.

If your company doesn’t appear on search engines, review websites or maps — you don’t exist!

And just as easy as it is to find a company, it is getting even easier to find reviews and offer incentives.

Yelp.com users can search and leave reviews for their favorite (and not so favorite) businesses.

Applications like Facebook Places and foursquare allow users to “check in” when they visit a business so all their friends can see where they are/were. Businesses connected to foursquare can offer coupons and other incentives to frequent visitors.

So why do you need to move on mobile? Think of life before the Internet. This is Internet at your fingertips.

Still not convinced that mobile marketing is the way of the future?

This video by Google sums it up perfectly. The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Consumers.


Want to Know More about Albany Marketing firm Burst Marketing?
Visit us at www.burstmarketing.net
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Steve Bannis

 

Marketing that loves your customer…or makes them cry

June 19, 2011

Tags: , ,
Categories: Strategy

Make ‘em laugh.  Cry.  Or yearn for family.

Just Fill a space in their hearts.

There was a time you may have heard your mother say…”the fastest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”  Not sure if the stomach has been replaced by his iPhone – but the idea hasn’t changed.

To find your way to your soul mate’s heart – or your customers – you’ve got to tug at their heartstrings.  Making an emotional connection is the fastest way to create attraction.

Olive Garden take out bigger

Recently I saw an Olive Garden commercial.  They’ve always got a big table, filled with family and lots of food.  OG’s target market is middle income families.  Money is tight and going out to eat is a less frequent event.

They want to convey a feeling of security and fulfillment.  So after eating and laughing – the very last image you see is a takeout bag.

That’s right…come to Olive Garden and you’ll have that secure feeling of being with family and you’ll leave with food for the next day!  The commercial aims leave you with the emotional feeling of abundance.  Their target loves leftovers.   It gives them a feeling like they’ve gotten great value. Value and abundence. Very powerful.

What emotional connection can your business make with your target?  Find that connection and you’ll be on your way to the beginning of a beautiful friendship.


Want to Know More about Albany Marketing firm Burst Marketing?
Visit us at www.burstmarketing.net
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Steve Bannis

 

Twitter “Stars” ready to promote your business

June 13, 2011

Tags: ,
Categories: Strategy

Got a spare $10,000? If she accepted your offer, Kim Kardashian could tell her nearly 8 million followers about your business. A little too rich for your blood? Don’t worry, Lindsay Lohan can send a sparkling product mention to her 1.8 million followers for the rock-bottom price of $3500. (according to sponsoredtweets.com)
aaaa

Vote – Who would you pay to tweet your business?

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It’s getting pretty hard to decide where to put your advertising dollar these days. Or what an advertisement is for that matter.  And those celebrities (real or otherwise) are getting some nice scratch for all the time spent building a Twitter brand.

Take Charlie Sheen (with respect to Henny Youngman)…please.  He joined Twitter in March.  24 hours later had over a million followers.  He now has over 4 million followers.  That’s a very respectable audience for a network television show.  Former employer Two and a half Men drew 2.9 million viewers.  In 90 days or so, Sheen’s Twitter following rivals a hit TV show.

Such is the power of celebrity…and celebrity news.  It’s no wonder why venerable publications like the TU have struggled to maintain their rightful place of relevance.

So maybe the Kardashian sisters aren’t right for you.  Or Justin Bieber.  Or Justin Timberlake.  Or other Twitter powerhouses commanding over $5,000 per tweet.

There are lesser known Tweeters who you might want to tap into.  I read where one guy with 7,000 followers gets $7 per tweet.  Not bad if they’re the right followers.  You can find a roster of Twitter ‘guns for hire’ on Twitter ad networks.

Here are some to check out:

Sponsoredtweets

Adly

Twtbuck

MyLikes

Check out Burst Marketing on Twitter.


Want to Know More about Albany Marketing firm Burst Marketing?
Visit us at www.burstmarketing.net
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Steve Bannis

 

Is yellow pages marketing right for anybody?

June 5, 2011

Tags: , ,
Categories: Strategy

Since 2008 when online searches replaced the yellow pages as the primary means for searching out product and services, marketing advisers like me have all but given a cease and desist order against adverting there.

Vote Here



I recently read this little ditty: Why are the Yellow Pages like Nursing Homes?

They’re shockingly expensive, few people under 70 use them, and many who do are a little out of it.

Moral of the story? When you invest in Yellow Pages ads, you’re setting fire to money.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve helped free up tens of thousands of dollars for clients – allowing them to boost their online presence.

20% of all online searches are local – 40% for Mobile

But is the yellow pages right for anybody?

Well, yes it is. Despite its near irrelevancy in the B2B market, there are some business types where the yellow pages still may offer a good return on investment. These are almost exclusively in the business to consumer (B2C) area in service-related industries.

Some interesting stats:

  • 75% of YP advertisers are service businesses or installed product (think flooring) businesses. The more service-heavy, the more valuable the directory.
  • Businesses that have large, infrequent sales (roofer, divorce attorney, windshield repair) are more likely to receive a big return compared to a gas station. A roofing customer makes a purchase once in 20 years after a purchase. That’s a lead worth capturing.
  • When the customer’s location is the work site, local SEO is exceptionally difficult to optimize and a directory can assist in exposing a business to their desired service area. About 35% of YP advertisers are home-based businesses that need visibility. The print directory can act as one of their store fronts.

Print directories are made for emergency services. When water is leaking from your dishwasher. When the power is out. When you’ve got a coyote in your backyard (I used to live in the Los Angeles hills and yes, they were there).

Also, ingrained yellow page users such as seniors or those in rural areas with poor internet connections will still use them.

So, the yellow pages may not be dead after all. At least not for all of us.


Want to Know More about Albany Marketing firm Burst Marketing?
Visit us at www.burstmarketing.net
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Steve Bannis

 

Charlie Sheen, Ashton Kutcher make great marketing theater

May 16, 2011

Tags: , , , , ,
Categories: Advertising, Brand/Reputation, Decision Making, Management, Product Development, Strategy

OK.  I admit that I’m fascinated with this week’s news that Ashton Kutcher is taking over for Charlie Sheen on the #1 TV sitcom “Two and a half Men.”sheen_1894755c

Somewhere inside this whole mess with Charlie (”winner”) Sheen, producer Chuck (”my way or the highway”) Lorre, Warner Bros and CBS which stand to make/lose tens of millions lies some big business and marketing lesson.  I’m just not sure which one is the most interesting.

Biggest Two and a half Men Marketing Issues:  Vote for your choice


There’s the PR / damage control.  The threat of losing a major cash cow.  The impact of a tarnished key product that makes selling other products much easier.  The customer’s reaction to a drastic change in a popular product.  The disgruntled ex-key employee badmouthing you to anyone who’ll listen.

Wow…What a bonanza!

Do you mess with what works even if you hate it?

Two and a half Men was projected to earn CBS and Warner Bros. $250 Million in 2012.  Even with bad boy Charlie doing his thing, the money rolled in.  So, is it even a good idea to dump Sheen and bring in Kutcher – thereby messing with a tied and true formula?  Or should they have just canceled and built around something else?

What’s the damage to the show’s (or the network’s) brand?

CBS has been able to leverage the Two and a half Men brand to boost the value of shows it places around it.  Now that their dirty laundry has aired so publicly, will it be so easy to cross-sell other products?

How long will the ex-key employee (Sheen) remain a problem?

This is a nightmare scenario for any business owner.  What happens if your top employee – salesperson, engineer, executive – leaves and says nasty things about you to anyone who’ll listen?

These themes here should be familiar to any business: The loss or devaluation of a top product on the company’s finances, sales and marketing strategy.  The fallout from a poorly handled employee separation.

Good theater is watching something we can relate to – happening to someone else.  In the case of this production, the most interesting storyline is taking place off screen.


Want to Know More about Albany Marketing firm Burst Marketing?
Visit us at www.burstmarketing.net
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Steve Bannis

 

LA Dodgers’ McCourts needed a spanking – Plus personalized marketing

April 25, 2011


Categories: Brand/Reputation, Content Development, Family Business, Family/Quality of Life, Management, Strategy

The big news in baseball this week didn’t take place on the field. Out in Dodgerland in sunny LA, a major family dispute has brought that business to it’s knees.

Frank And Jamie McCourt, the owners of the Dodgers are at war. Their irresponsible management of the team followed by a pugnacious divorce forced the commissioner of Major League baseball to step in and take over the operations of the team.

The way I see it, nobody was ever minding the store. The owners lived in an alternate reality and demonstrated sheer lunacy. They ran the business into the ground and nobody was watching.

Give someone else the keys

Such can be the case with family businesses. The owner reports to no one. Family distractions, being in over their heads, poor leadership skills and ego can produce horrible decisions. Who’s going to tell the emperor he has no clothes?

To avoid the pitfalls inherent in family business ownership decision making, get yourself a boss. Or at least make sure someone is looking over your shoulder.

Suggestions to protect you from yourself -

  1. Build a trusted Board of Advisers and give them some real authority to veto bad decisions
  2. Appoint an official arbitrator to settle disputes between family members quickly and in the best interests of the business
  3. Find a great accountant and attorney and report to them on a monthly basis. Allow them complete access to your books and have them each conduct a surprise audit once a year.

Owners of family businesses are in the enviable position of having greater control over their lives. But you’re human. You make mistakes. You don’t know everything. You have family problems. And you have a healthy ego or you couldn’t run a business.

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Smart marketers know personalization

A recent survey of marketers around the country show that the benefits of personalized marketing – online and offline – has been embraced:

Chart personalization 04-19-11-lp


Want to Know More about Albany Marketing firm Burst Marketing?
Visit us at www.burstmarketing.net
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Steve Bannis

 

“Canstruction” shows how non profit marketing needs to work with shrinking funding…Plus social media sites used by business

April 18, 2011

Tags: ,
Categories: Marketing Blueprint, Strategy

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to view the Albany, NY version of  “Canstruction”  – a unique design competition at the New York State Museum to benefit the Food Pantry.

This proves once again that channeling creativity + talent + motivation into a program package can yield extraordinary results.  And it holds and important lesson for those interested in non profit marketing.

[Vote for your favorites by leaving a comment]

Show them how to help…and they will

No doubt, these are challenging times for the Capital Region’s non-profit organizations.  Funding uncertainties are pushing boards and leadership teams to the limit – scrambling to make up for budget cuts and a likely future with lower public funding.

We’ve encountered numerous organizations that have dedicated leadership, staff and volunteer advocates, but are concerned that they are treading water.  They’re not able to stay ahead of the wave of shrinking public funds.  There is no shortage of the will to do what’s necessary – but there has been a crisis of direction.

In short, there are too many cooks in the kitchen.

The key, we are finding, is in the adoption of programs that give each constituency a role to play.  Local organizations need to invest in the development of a vision – one that is more encompassing than their own mission.

This example, canstruction.org, is a national organization dedicated to unite multiple groups of people in feeding the hungry nationwide.  Their vision is carried out through “Canstruction” competitions nationwide.

Canstruction’s vision:

Wherever a Canstruction competition is held thousands of hungry people are fed, a greater awareness of the issues surrounding hunger is brought home to the public, and a spotlight is placed on the design and construction industry giving back to the communities it helps build.

Why Canstruction succeeds:

They have used the building blocks of a marketing plan to the fullest advantage:

1. Target Markets:

  • Primary – design and construction industries
  • Secondary – the general public and display spaces

2. Relevant Message:

  • Design and build stuff with cans and you will get exposure and goodwill while the hungry get fed

3. Call to action:

  • To the primary target – participate, fulfill you role;  To the public – view the contest and donate food

It’s a win, win, win program.  The program is fun and interesting.  And it’s effective.  Last year, canstruction.org raised enough food to provide over 1.5 million meals.

That ain’t small potatoes!

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Canstruction sculptures from the exhibit.

Comment on your favorites


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Want to Know More about Albany Marketing firm Burst Marketing?
Visit us at www.burstmarketing.net
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Steve Bannis

 

Maintaining Customer Targeting … killer direct mail envelopes

April 11, 2011

Tags: , , , ,
Categories: Business Development, Customer Focus, Marketing Blueprint, Strategy

I’ve got some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that all the hard work (and billions in tax incentives) expended supporting the “Tech Valley” dream is looking pretty good for the Capital Region’s long term prospects.

The bad news is that you’re probably not going to get a piece of it.

In the strategy sessions we hold with clients at our office, we spend lots of time defining the target market.  Discussing distribution strategies.  Brainstorming tactics.  We argue and debate and ultimately whittle down all the possibilities into a finely honed formula for producing more sales and profits.

And then a client asks one final question; “how will we monetize Global Foundries?”

I get it.  I really do.

The Albany – Schenectady – Troy market is #58 (source: The Nielsen Company) and the transition to a more diversified private sector in our economy has been hard fought.  We have a right to feel good about our wins.  But are we entitled to get a little piece of the action?

No.  No we’re not.

It may not be a popular notion, but as big a win as landing Global Foundries promises to be (along with GE’s planned job growth, Sematech and others), that tide will not lift all boats.  Most of us are still going to have to do the hard work of marketing and selling to our usual customers and pursuing other growth opportunities.

To that end, keep your eyes on the prize – your core customer.  We use a specific tool – called the Audience Decision Matrix – to create the laser focus needed to capture their attention as the economy warms.  Do the work needed to get inside the head of the decision maker and who has their ear.

Learn their routines.  Where they hang.  What they think is important.

Don’t let the Malta miracle distract you.  Stick to the fundamentals.  If you’re meant to get a share of the winnings, then good planning will bring the opportunity to do so into focus.

**********************************************************************

Envelopes that sell

I came across a really enjoyable entry on the Direct Creative Blog about great direct mail envelop designs.  Online coolness gets all the love and adoration.  But here is proof that great creative (and money making power) is still put on paper and in the mail.

A direct mail envelope for a recipe book. Lots of color and excitement with a token showing through a window to encourage involvement -

Here’s one selling a conservative newspaper. Simple design with a focus on a bold headline, teaser copy and a token -

Having seem my share of inter-office envelopes, this one’s caught my attention -

Here are some more envelopes featured on the blog:

envelope-sample-03

envelope-sample-04

envelope-sample-06

envelope-sample-07

envelope-sample-08


Want to Know More about Albany Marketing firm Burst Marketing?
Visit us at www.burstmarketing.net
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Steve Bannis

 

Babies strike it viral – just dumn luck?…Plus building your email list

April 4, 2011

Tags: , , ,
Categories: Marketing ROI, Social Media, Strategy, media mix

Last Tuesday, I heard some serious baby babble coming from the office next door. My colleague Jennifer was hysterical watching these twin babies having a “conversation.” In case you haven’t see the vid, it was absolutely a conversation.

The view counter read something over 7,000 views – plenty popular, right? In the next two days it got national play on GMA and was video of the day somewhere else. As of this morning the twins had a worldwide audience…with over 13 million views and counting.

Striking it viral is like catching lighting in a bottle.  Like hitting Lotto.  And there ain’t no strategy for winning the lottery.

It’s luck.  Not a strategy.

For all those out there who are convinced they’ve got the approach to go viral.  Who have completely bought into the thought that social media is a cheap, simple way to market your business – I’d like to offer a few simple words of discouragement:

No it’s not.

It’s not easy.  It’s not cheap.  (if your time is money)

Over the last year or so it seemed every Capital Region chamber, business and civic organization has had a presentation on Social Media marketing.  They showed up in droves.

Was it interesting?  Yeah.  Have you built your list of friends and Linkedin contacts?  Probably.

But, have you made any money with it?

I’d argue that the only thing that’s gone viral is social media itself.  Facebook has a zillion members and is making money hand over fist.  Are you?

Look, using social media as part of a well conceived, overall marketing strategy can make sense.  Just don’t go thinking that every new friend you add brings you closer to hitting the lottery.

Got an opinion? Share it with us.

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Marketing chart of the week – building your email list

Email marketing strategies have matured and are no longer strictly about increasing the number of subscribers. Today, the priority lies in building a quality list of names.

A survey of more than 1,100 marketers to provided insight into the level of effectiveness of each list growth tactic used by their organization.  Here are the results:

Chart - email list building

These results align well with content marketing strategies. Tactics that deliver value to the customer such as purchased products, downloaded material and webinars develop trusted relationships which enable customers to share email addresses and contact information. For this reason, company blogs and published articles have become an excellent method of capturing email addresses.

Expect to see growth in mobile capture in the coming year as marketers rank the effectiveness positively and the difficulty low.


Want to Know More about Albany Marketing firm Burst Marketing?
Visit us at www.burstmarketing.net
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Steve Bannis

 

Cool Facebook Facts

March 27, 2011

Tags: ,
Categories: Strategy

Facebook continues to fascinate.  So we thought it wold be cool to share some of the facts we recently picked up on their press pages:

facebook_logo-300x300

People on Facebook

  • More than 500 million active users
  • 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
  • Average user has 130 friends
  • People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook

Activity on Facebook

  • There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
  • Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
  • Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
  • More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

Global Reach

  • More than 70 translations available on the site
  • About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
  • Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application

Platform

  • Entrepreneurs and developers from more than 190 countries build with Facebook Platform
  • People on Facebook install 20 million applications every day
  • Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook on external websites
  • Since social plugins launched in April 2010, an average of 10,000 new websites integrate with Facebook every day
  • More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook, including over 80 of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and over half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites

Mobile

  • There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
  • People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users
  • There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

Check out Burst Marketing on Facebook.


Want to Know More about Albany Marketing firm Burst Marketing?
Visit us at www.burstmarketing.net
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Steve Bannis

 

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