Seth Godin (best-selling author, consultant, celebrity) does a daily blog that inspires me for two reasons:
1. Anyone who can write intelligent postings every single day (including weekends!) has it going on. (He’s at one end of the spectrum with an open mind compared to many who blurt out the same drivel every day… and no, I’m not referring to particular TV network “spokespeople”);
2. His range of motion in terms of topics is astounding.
I wanted to share with you his post from today called First and Never (click on the title to access the post) which is an interesting way of looking at change. It is interesting to note that most people devote time to resisting and rejecting change so that they can remain in their comfortable wagon rut (remember TV westerns where huge “ruts” were left by the wheels of covered wagons as they ploughed through mud?) And yet we talk about the Need for Progress (which only comes with change!)
What Seth doesn’t mention are the “lasts” – which relates to my belief that the gift in life is the present (today). Seth mentions the firsts (first time experience – often you recognize these immediately when they happen), never agains (which are retrospective looks at past experiences that won’t happen again), but neglect the Lasts. I believe that the fact that we never realize a “last time” occurrence until after it is past is an important aspect of the experience. While it might sound morbid to think that anything or everything we do could be our “last time” to do it, I prefer to turn that around and extol the moment for its innate virtue. While we lament over the never agains, it is my fervent belief that we ought to enjoy every pleasurable moment (as soon as we realize that we’re feeling something positive) and extol the people, places, feelings, smells, sounds, sights and wonder of it all. Should it turn out later to have been a “last” time we will have a fully experienced happy memory to recall.
Think about how this could transform your life – a staff meeting could become less of a chore and a bore if we take the time to chuckle when someone tells a joke (instead of lamenting how lame it was) or when we feel a sense of joy as someone describes an accomplishment. More than likely it won’t be our last staff meeting (or even a memorable one) but if we take the time to enjoy the little moments of joy as they occur, we’ll find that they are more frequent that we realize (is this what is meant by “take time to smell the flowers”?_
I know how positive this has been for me — when I take the time to recognize the moments of pleasure and joy sprinkled throughout my oft-busy day, the inconveniences and petty disturbances grow smaller. The gift of life is always the present (live for today) – and I’m finding that the 1sts, lasts and never agains are just a (good) part of overall life.
Thank you Seth for inspiring me to look at life in a different and inspiring way!
Have a good weekend!
Regards,
Carol
Carol Dekkers, Software Measurement and Global Software Development expert, author, speaker. Want to engage Carol to be a speaker at your next event? Email Ms. Dekkers at dekkers@qualityplustech.com or carol@caroldekkers.com or visit www.caroldekkers.com for details.
Buy often in small pieces. This is why we recommend a phased approach to marketing, where you offer people a range of experiences little or nothing, inexpensive ways for you before they invest in your business!
In our profession, is a classic example of the gradual commercialization of the "two stages" of the market in a way that sparks interest and then ask the funnel potential customers in a sales meeting, or free. The fact is that people tendResponding to a free, value-added supply will become a full-service price. For this reason, the conference offers free works so well! Potential clients get to know you and understand and know the value of your esteem service before throwing down $ 1,200 for their services.
Examples of "Two Step" approach:
Example I
Step 1: participate in a networking event. Step 2: Offer free consultation to meet people, you.
Example II
Step 1: Perform a now free to speak. Step 2:Please take a record "free" clipboard back of the room.
Example III
Step 1: Send a letter of "basic marketing." Step 2: Follow-up consultation and offer free phone calls.
The list is endless!
During the two phases is a good start, you should use a sturdy step by step marketing approach.
In particular: to provide multiple, simple, low or no cost "entry points" for a potential customerExperience. Thus offer more expensive products and services once a relationship is established.
For this reason, electronic newsletters are so popular (and effective if implemented in good!), For example, and also offer a free session, you can also consult with a free subscription to the newsletter. This is a perfect item for someone to meet you, is not ready to run for their performance at this time. Through your newsletter, the person the opportunity to learn step by step hasCome and trust in you. If and when the person is responsible for the service it provides, you think they call you ready? YOU!
Examples of the concept of "progressive marketing"
Example I
Step 1: Run a free interview for a local connection. Offer Step 2: During the discussion meetings to consult and comp Sign up for free newsletter. Step 3: In the newsletter offers half-day seminar for $ 99. Step 4: A half-day seminar offers products from $ 19for $ 49, another program for $ 199 and the best program for $ 399.
Example II
Step 1: Send a piece of direct mail to your target audience. Step 2: Place a link to download your free e-book from your website. Step 3: In your e-book, giving your other products and services. Step 4: A month has been downloaded from e-book, send a "call to action" follow-up e-mail with a special offer for your services.
E 'extremely important that the no / low cost of the value of the object.Nothing is more a diversion of a sales pitch disguised as a freebie. You really want to serve the people. Enter the great value and thus the possibility for people who have a higher level of experience, if they wish.
As always, there is much more we could say about this topic, but I hope you had the idea and runs with it! The key is to provide added value to your potential customers. Let learn from you. Be yourself and let your personality, knowledge and experience. Transpire
This takes time, but it did not happen overnight. Be patient! And remember, there are people out there who are waiting. People who can only serve. Go see! Reach out. Enter the value. Give them options, they can do. Be sufficient time for a measure to build confidence. People want what you offer and when ready, is what they call.
But this is why I think students and young professionals especially should take advantage of Twitter:
A lot of professionals have Twitter, if they are there you should be too
Twitter is an easy was to establish your personal brand and show people you are knowledgeable in your industry
Twitter can help you stay on top of potential jobs, companies and networking opportunities
Getting started: No one wants to hear what you are doing every 5 minutes, but you can share what you’re learning every couple of hours! Read publications that interest you. Tweet cool finds using a service such as http://bit.ly/ to shorten links. Eventually you will start to develop a pattern to your tweets about things you care about. For example my tweets revolve around Augmented Reality in Marketing, Technology, and Philanthropy. By finding unique articles about these
TIPS:
Meet a professional? Follow them; it is an informal way to stay current on what they are doing and another touch point beyond their clogged Outlook inbox.
Asking a favor of a professional? Check their tweets first to see what is going on in their life, if they are out of town or seem busy hold your email until their tweets indicate less stress. It will seem courteous and improve your chances of getting a reply.
Care about a company? Follow them and search for them on Twitter, so when that interview comes you don’t just have the knowledge of a couple of news articles but a real time understanding of what people are saying about them.
Follow recruiters, they often post job openings!
Interested in Communications, PR, Advertising, Marketing or Technology? Check out #coldpavement a great informal networking event happens monthly learn about it through twitter!
You will be amazed as your tweets start to get re-tweeted or you get thanked for sharing cool information!
There is far too much to cover with Twitter so many ways to use it and so many examples of networking and job hunting success via twitter. At the end of the day Twitter places you and your personal brand into the conversation, if your not part of the dialogue someone else will be.
If anyone has tips about how to get listed, get more relevant followers or wants to tell me your twitter experience, leave me a comment or give me a shout out @belmontej http://twitter.com/belmontej
As promised, I wanted to quickly discuss competition and the role it plays in developing your marketing strategy.
Traditionally, Marketers approach competitive forces by completing a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (S.W.O.T.) analysis. These are effective at gaging your product or services position in the marketplace and where resources might best be focused.
Too often however, we get caught up in press release wars and the race of first-to-market. These tactics result in internally focused strategies and quickly, almost immediately, lose sight of the consumer and their needs; a fundamental marketing error. Yes, we must pay attention to the competition, but look only to determine what information is being brought to the industry or marketplace. Only then, can you forumulate an appropriate response that is valuable to your consumer.
An example.
Thought-leadership and the idea of “content as king” are getting a lot of buzz in the b2b marketing world lately. Do we watch what content the competitors put into the marketplace and then respond with our slightly better, slightly more insightful content? What is the result of this approach and how does it impact our customer base? We must vet our responses to all competitive content from the point of view of the customer and ask ourselves, am I responding to the competitor or educating the customer? More often than not, we are simply responding to the competitive focuses at play and disrespecting or ignoring the customer. The end result here is not that you’ve demonstrated superiour thought-leadership, but rather, thought-followership and have succeed at introduced confusion into your marketplace.
Don’t lose sight of your customer.
Of course we need to pay attention to competitive forces, more importantly we need to understand how these forces are impacting our customers and the marketplace. Respond to competitive content not for the sake of responding, rather in ways that represent your brand appropriately, support your position in the market and educate your customer. Only then will you be able to effectively combat the competition.
"Sometimes you need their attention first," said the old farmer, who had just finished off his mule in the forehead with a two-four. End The mule, a little 'surprised, but he is tenacious and has initiated moves plow.
Perhaps Dell has some mule blood contains.
Dell is to discover what green marketing discover their fourth year of their career – namely, the service is a product. Like all products, quality and suitability for the needs of the customer determinesSuccess. Because the technology is complex, and users of technology can not last long without the support will be essential to differentiate the long-term economic success.
(A malignant part: if they are a good example of bad customer service, speak with anyone who can use web hosting from 1and1.com, a company that explores the depths of the customer routinely ignored. The horror stories about 1and1. Com technical support would be Reduced Steven King.)
Customers arewho are most vulnerable and often suffer from a degree of frustration when they decided to support the request. Support will be as important (if not more important) than the commodity itself.
Dell discovered this the hard way.
Once praised for customer service, Dell slid down the slippery slope to reduce the support of cutting costs. All he really cut his throat just as the Internet, but everything has exploded with terrible stories of support services for Dell.
ThenMichael Dell is back, some companies would enter inclination, and things turn during their service groups.
Of particular interest was the breaking news of Dell trying to offer flexibility in their services. Like most vendors, Dell has offered the service boxes "- set of predefined and rigid differentiated services. Often, customers found themselves with few options, either to buy services from less than they need, but they could afford, or pay for services that they need,For the few who did. This is the norm in the industry but not optimal for the customer. However, it is easy to understand, model, price, explain and sell.
In other words, is the product marketing people lazy.
Dell breaks this model, and this will probably be put ahead of the competition by Engendering lucrative service contracts and more satisfied customers.
(Under its new system for small and medium enterprises – consumers), the Customerto support specific modules instead of the typical gold / silver / bronze style support packages. Because every organization is different in terms of complexity of their IT infrastructure and the extent of their internal talent, their need for services is very individual. Some businesses need to get the support of Linux, while others have kernel hacker on staff. Others might have storage needs exotic, while others offer is not good with a simple NAS.
Dellensure that everyone gets what they need, and not think, not what they do.
Marketing has two points in this game. First, the creation of products that people want is the key to success in the door to begin. The service is part of the definition of products. Define the right offer service and take all the product easier to buy.
Perhaps more importantly, that the service is of paramount importance to customer satisfaction. And 'well-documented that customer satisfaction leads to highSales of repetition (more money),) positive word-of-mouth sales (plus customers (even more with more money) brings. not the services of law and offer them a good, it 's opposite effect.
Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with Jimmy Ellis the Director of Optimization Research at MarketingExperiments.com about their take on form optimization. I was pretty impressed.
I’ve been doing a lot of research on CTA and form optimization as I’ve been changing things up on oshyn.com. Of course, I didn’t want to change just for the sake of visual appeal – although that was a big part of my concern.
I’ve been reading different blogs and websites including my favorite MarketingProfs.com to find out the ‘best practices’ on forms that lead to conversions. We online marketers spend a lot of time, effort and money to get people to our websites, to forms, and it’s a terrible (yet preventable) loss when they fail to complete the form and convert to a lead. We often wonder, “WHY?”
It’s personal.
Often, when people arrive on your “landing page” with a form or CTA, they have arrived without knowing much about your company. They found you on Google, Twitter, Tumblr, a press release, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, an
In my class this semester we discussed an article “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson. He later wrote a book “The Long Tail” in 2006. In Chris’s article he explains his theory of how the internet propagates a power law he calls the long tail.
A brief explanation is the wall that is hit in the retail market is caused by a lack of shelf space, store area, even number of movie theater screens. These limitations impact the amount of offering that can be carried whether if be music, video, books, food etc. The effect is that physical locations are limited to selling higher volume sellers while products that don’t have a high demand are left off of the shelves. The internet has changed this dynamic as Chris asserts in his theory. Now the internet can provide consumers with a source for less demand products but the easiest is data that can be sent over the web as opposed to physical products though that exists as well. As our choices are narrowing in the realm of traditional media, online media is raising the bar by filling the niche of harder to find media. The purchase of the low demand products does add up and purchases show as a long tail.
Erin Scime’s article The Content Strategist as Digital Curator is a Part 2 to the Chris Anderson’s ‘The long tale’. Erin takes this conversation to the next step by discussing how online media sites become curators of the media they provide. In a museum a curator is responsible for selecting and arranging art in a manner that conveys a story or is viewed as a collection. This same role is also seen in the world of digital media.
My personal daily use of Pandora is a prime example. In 2000 Tim Westergren founded the Music Genome Project. Previously in the film industry, Tim was aware of the factors directors looked for when sourcing music for their films. He and a group of music heads reviewed some 400 elements of songs. The project now has over 700,000 songs and songs are still reviewed and added daily. The Music Genome Project is used as the music selector in Pandora. When you select a band or a song in Pandora it selects a playlist called a “station” based on that selection and similarities with other songs based on the elements of a song. The playlist is further refined by giving songs a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”.
Pandora uses the Music Genome Project (MGP) as a curator of your musical experience based on your taste. If you friend people on the website you can send each other “stations” making you a curator as well. Having been a user of Slacker and Napster I find that the MGP does the best job at matching my taste and I’ve found some great artists that I would not have found if not for the selection Pandora chose. Pandora’s digital content manager is a skillful curator or popular and more obscure music content. It’s the only place I’ve found one of my favorite disbanded groups, Captain Beefhart, more of a memory of college days then a current interest. The Iphone quadrupled the Pandora membership in 2008 and their future deals with Ford, Alpine and Pioneer to bring Pandora into the automobile will continue to increase their membership.
I enjoyed the article and now see examples of this theory everyday so I wanted to share it with others.
References
Anderson, C., The Long Tail.
Scime, S. (2009) The Content Strategist as Digital Curator. A list apart. Retrieved on January 27, 2010 from http://www.alistapart.com/articles/content-strategist-as-digital-curator
Story and video clip about Pandora. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2010-01-12-pandora-free-radio_N.htm
HotPads has great mobile functionality for housing shoppers on the go, so even when they are away from their computer, they can still find your homes for sale. Their mobile site for all smart phones, Android app, and iPhone app contain great features like:
Map-based housing search using your GPS location or an inputted address
Detailed listings with photos, pricing, and full descriptions
Rental and For Sale housing search
HotPads’ Android App & iPhone App
HotPads’ Android Application and iPhone Application allows users to experience the same great functionality of searching on HotPads from the convenience of their Android phone.
Housing shoppers can search by their current GPS location, or by entering a specific address to search nearby.
After narrowing their search by price and bedrooms, housing shoppers can opt to see all results that match their criteria on a map, or in the traditional list format.
They can see detailed listings that include pricing, photos, and descriptions and then contact you directly via email or telephone with one touch!
You can learn more about the Android App here: and the iPhone app here, or just give them a try (they’re free!) by scanning the respective QR codes below
For all users who don’t have an Android or iPhone, HotPads still have a great Mobile Site for all smart phone users.
(These mobile apps and sites are also really helpful for real estate agents to pull up comps and see what else is for sale in a particular location!)
The wait is nearly over as iPad pre-orders start is only 4 days. The pre-order date has been a large source of controversy and speculation. Now, along with the waiting game, the betting is over. Well, almost.
Apple has posted the dates for both the pre-order and the availability date on the iPad product page.
Not sure what to splurge on this spring? Well, whip out your credit cards, and break open those piggy banks. Can’t stand the long lines at the Apple store? Pre-order on March 12. Up for the long line of entertainment at the Apple store? Plan on standing all day on Saturday, April 3.
Not sure how they plan to structure the delivery as many delivery services don’t run on Saturday. So, it’s a tough question. Stand in line all day Saturday so you can get to know your new iPad for the rest of the weekend or pre-order and run the risk of sitting around waiting until Monday.
New spring/summer scents have been uploaded to the Scentsy website. I cannot wait to get my hands on these new Scentsy Bar scents. Here is a list of the spring/summer scents: cherry limeade, go-go-goji, sweet clementine, mayflower, mad about mint, plum delicious, calypso, berry blush, sugar, and grape granita. I will have these in stock soon. While you’re waiting, check out “My Scentsy Auctions” going on right now on ebay. The 3 auctions end: Wednesday, March 10, 2010. Don’t miss out on these last minute savings. Supplies are limited.
A discussion on the difference between a brand and a commodity is going on at one of my groups on LinkedIn. This discussion was initiated by Marco Monfils from Hungary. More than 150 comments have been made so far, indicating that marketing and sales professionals like this topic. It is interesting that respondents presented their own definition and description of brand and commodity, no author was quoted and the comments varied greatly. I noticed two significant trends as follows:
a) Though there are more than 150 different comments, these could be grouped into eight major categories. That is, most of the respondents differentiated between a brand and a commodity either via value-addition perspective, loyalty and relationship, functional & emotional attributes, brand personality & experience, perceived value & expectations, needs & wants, unique identity or price.
b) The respondents come from a diverse professional background including Business & Financial Consultancy, Sales & Business Development, Account Management, Marketing, Business & Franchise Owners, and Real Estate. Most of the respondents are from other than marketing profession. Being in the CPG marketing, I considered branding a purview of marketing because marketers are responsible for creating pull for brands. This differentiation is getting blurred and marketing is a cross-functional discipline now, especially in B2B interactions.
I took the liberty of picking the comments that I liked and present these to you here with the name of the group member.
A brand is a product that is elevated above commodity level because of its added value in the mind of a shopper or consumer. By Lynn Wentzel
Commodity resonates with consumer at the functional level; brand goes beyond, resonating at the emotional level. By Keith Kelley
A Brand is that Commodity with a personality! By Thomas Bullock
A commodity is a product, a THING, tangible. A brand is a[n] idea, a thought, a feeling and is intangible……. As Herb Lubalin said, “Products are made in the factory. Brands are made in the mind.” By Bob Bischoff
…… THAT THE BRAND PROMISES AND DELIVERS By Valerie Skala Walker
A brand provides an ‘experience’, a commodity does not. By Chad Symens
A brand improves the life of its loyal consumer because it constantly brings a new and better feature or experience – it innovates. By Dana Mosora
Brand is what people identify with. A commodity is traded, bought or sold. By Craig Castle
And my two-cent worth is as follows:
Brands create and satisfy consumers’ wants, commodities meet consumers’ needs.
Taking a leaf out of Dan Heath’s book, Brands live in the penthouse of Maslow Hierarchy of Needs; commodities live in its basement.
Which of the above brand and commodity description you like or how would you differentiate between the two? Please comment here and let us know.
From time to time I will share real stories from my incredibly successful career in marketing. Some are funny, some are painful, some a bit of both. They all happened. Here goes.
In 2003 as I was wrapping up stuff and cleaning out my desk after 20 years at the Seattle office of an inter-galactic super agency I received an email from a client who has since gone on to to lead a Fortune 500 company. Here it is. I haven’t changed a word other than to leave his name out to avoid embarrassment for both of us.
Jan,
I understand you’re moving on to a new phase in your life. (Here was a bunch of praise about what a genius I am.) I learned a lot from you about managing the client/agency relationship that I will carry with me forever. Among the key learnings:
1. Never work with a client that is closer than 2000 miles away. This minimizes the face-to-face contact that is so unnecessary when you can blame each other for revenue misses and budget overruns by email.
2. The agency always has an advantage when the client is dysfunctional and disagrees internally about what its brand should stand for and who their consumer is.
3. Never return emails from the client that challenge why the agency costs so darn much to do everything.
4. Always return emails from the client that invite you to a “bash” at the trade show, or to a sales meeting in a warm weather place.
A wise man indeed. Of course I replied. I will skip the shameless suck-up praise I poured into the email as it might sicken you.
Here is my reply, unchanged:
I can see that you have learned well when it comes to managing the agency/client relationship. I too learned a few things about clients along the way:
1. Clients want a partnership with the agency as long as the agency does what the client says.
2. There is an inverse relationship between how much a client talks about its vision and how real the vision is.
3. Clients and agencies approve advertising ideas together. When things go well, the client attributes the success to their incredible business acumen. When things go poorly, it’s because the agency made the client do bad advertising.
4. The best clients have sales meetings at really cool places and pay for the agency to stay up late, drink and miss the morning sessions.
5. The best clients give their agencies lots of free stuff.
6. The best clients know that the only good advertising is TV, BABY! Particularly, if the tv shoot can be in Europe, with supermodels, an unlimited expense account and the agency folks get to walk around in black clothes and be on their cell phones/Blackberries constantly.
7. Most clients will admit that the best thing about having an agency is…TICKETS!
8. All clients want their agency to be good, cheap and fast.
9. Bad clients are in the risk aversion business. Good clients are in the risk management business.
We have entered a PayPal Developer’s Contest. First prize is $50,000 cash and $50,000 credit from PayPal. As you know, startups can ALWAYS use money like this and we need your help to get it.
To win, we need you to vote for our demo in the contest before 11:59 PM Friday night, March 5th. Sounds easy, right? It is.
You need to have a PayPal account to participate. If you don’t have one, click here and you can set one up. Pick Personal. It is fast, easy and free.
Once you have your PayPal account, click here or on the screen shot below to be taken to the contest. The first screen will look like this:
Click on the VOTE NOW link to start. You will be prompted to login to PayPal. Honest, this won’t take very long…
Enter your account name and password and then click Log In. If this is your first visit to the PayPal Developers Network, they will automatically redirect your browser to a screen like this.
Please enter a screen name (usually in the format firstname.lastname), check the Java and Social networking boxes and click Submit. You will then be directed to the contest page (finally!) shown below.
Please enter our contest entry number D1039 in the search box in the top right corner and click Search.
You will see our video demo (entry) into the contest on a screen like this:
Please click on the Vote button in the top left corner and you are done!
Except, of course, if you really want to watch the video. If so, click on the Play icon in the middle of the screen.
Please send us your feedback on our (very short – we were only allowed 2 minutes) demo. We’d love to hear from you.
For today’s mixology posting, I am going to send you to Michael Brito’s recent post on managing a social media community. It is being said over and over again, but it important in any size organization to make sure that you have the right person in the role of your community manager. You need someone who can authentically be the voice of your organization as well have the time to communicate.
For years, marketing has been done traditionally through direct selling and advertising on trimedia – print, TV and radio. When out-of-home (OOH) advertising was introduced, marketers reformulated their marketing mix to include billboards, transit ads and street signs to be visible to more customers in less time and less cost. As I recall, during my days working for an Ad agency, OOH was still in its infancy. Advertising was mainly done on mainstream TV, Radio and Print and those that are seen in Light Boxes, Bus Waiting Stations and Public Transportation were considered rogue or guerilla style marketing. However, those are days gone old.
Since technology keeps on growing and evolving, creating more digital distribution channels that can reach more consumers in a more timely, relevant and personal fashion, advertising through mobile phones and the Internet have received much preference from majority of marketers today – this is called DIGITAL MARKETING. For most of us, we actively use our emails to correspond and send information. A huge majority of society has forgotten to use traditional or “snail mail” since the internet came about.
I truly believe that any innovation brought about by creativity and out of the box ideas are born due to demand, and this has been the life blood of marketers in general as we see today. As St. Peterian Marketers, the following are suggestions of how to utilize current technology that could easily translate into sales going above and beyond one’s quota.
For this month, I would like focus in on maximizing the usage of these modern instruments in terms of Sales and Marketing. For introductions, let me capture your attention on a few glaring facts that would surprise and excite you about the web in general.
Pinoy Facts
We Pinoy’s do know that TXTing is our favorite past time. We use it 24/7 for work and play. If you are like me, my cellphone is next to bedside table like an invisible umbilical cord that is attached wherever I go, even in my sleep. Aside from the mobile communication, a growing number of Filipinos do actively participate on web activities either for emails, information, gaming and networking.
Many of us have our own nook in the web either in Friendster or Facebook where we interact and socialize with our friends, families and associates. This is called Social Networking.
According to Media in Mind TM 2006…
There are about 20 million Filipinos who access the web everyday
75% percent log on to an internet café, while 19% access them in schools
As our population is relatively young, a huge portion is dedicated to internet gaming (as seen in most internet café’s)
Drop in print media such as newspapers and glossy magazines contribute circulation loss and ad reduction to free news on the web wherein Ad spending is allocated elsewhere
Where Internet is often used (Nielsen Media Index 2008)
Here are some additional facts from Nielsen Media Index of 2006-2008 that may shed light on the increase demands for below the line activities.
Radio, DVD’s, Billboards, Cinema and Internet have even or growth indicators that Filipinos often participate and listen to.
Steady decline on TV and Print in the past 2 years of the survey
There are indicators that the market seeks other alternatives than the norm. Innovation and creativity play a vital role
Pinoy Activities on the Web
Aside from email usage “gaming” is another popular web past time at 45% (Nielsens Media Index of 2008) perhaps mainly due to the youth populous of the nation supplemented by numerous internet café’s where internet is cheap and accessible.
For marketers, advertising on known traditional media is no longer the norm. We have to explore other below the line platforms to get our message across. In recent years, television, radio and print have been dropping steadily as measured by Nielsen Media index of 2006 (see graph below)
Ad Agencies, Marketers and companies seek newer and more innovative ways in bridging the communication gap with the audience. Relatively, internet and mobile usage seems to be the growing segments that provide some opportunity among various media platforms available.
Some Digital Marketing Examples…
1. Email Marketing/Email Blasting
Email Marketing uses this opportunity to send an advertising or promotional message to a targeted audience using a mailing list or database. Email Blasting can reach a large number of people in just a click of the ‘Send’ button and compared with direct mail or printed newsletters, email is less expensive. A great example is when you access your yahoo email account (I am pretty sure, you have one) located at the right hand side of your screen are Ads that push their content and message in an email. But beware…
Push emails can lead to Email Blasting (don’t we hate those, personally I do!) Make sure that your mailing list has consented to receiving your promotional emails otherwise you are guilty of spamming. According to Wikipedia, spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately). Spamming in Marketing has an adverse effect rather than sending a good connection with your target, spams result to annoyance leaving a bad taste in one’s mouth offsetting the real motivation and objective one’s program. Ergo, use with prudence and discretion.
2. SMS
A few years ago, when part of my job was to use SMS as a medium for advertising, we have utilized SMS as one of the below the line activities for companies and individuals to market their service and product cheaply. Hence, the Philippines being known as the TXTing Capital of the World, usage of this medium is but obvious to most advertisers. On the average, Filipinos send 400 million text messages a day. Like Email Blasting, SMS is direct, immediate, time saving and cost effective. It makes customers and business available to each other 24/7. SMS ads can also be personalized (i.e. using images in MMS) to suit and appeal more to your target market segment.
Telecommunication companies are highly regulated and have set guidelines for the entire telecommunications industry. SMS ads must always have the consent and permission of the recipient and contain instructions for opting out of the marketing communication otherwise can be considered as spam. SMS ads should be within these regulations otherwise the company/individual might be sued for committing such violations.
Furthermore, mobile ads are normally limited to 160 characters of text and 3MB of images or audio/video files. Nowadays, SMS ads, push and pull messages are done by content providers or aggregators licensed by the big mobile operators. (source from HAS Communications)
3. Blogs and Forums
Most of us are familiar with websites that are a wealth of information of almost any topic known to man. However, a sub-category of websites are known as blogs and forums that have interactive tools creating dialogue between consumers and audience. Most modern companies use blogs to relay information and explain about their products and services to their user community and sometimes become information resources. They are also an excellent way of getting feedback if one’s products and services meet the demands of consumers. It is also one way of widening your social network as blogs and forums cut across various interests, professions and hobbies from all walks of life. Usually, blogs create engagement with the reader or audience in a participative manner enabling them to give feedback immediately. Many trends and news information begin on blogs nowadays and snowball from there. Blogs and forums should be taken with caution. As they are public information, hence a bad comment could be easily translated to bad publicity snowballing into a media disaster.
4. Social Media
Social media refers to websites that publish user-generated content. Two of the top four websites on the Internet today are social media sites namely Youtube and Facebook. With FB alone you can create buzz (viral marketing) and it building relationships with customers and potential clients. You can also link your social web pages to your corporate/personal web site to generate more traffic. Last year alone, the Marketing Department of St. Peter ventured into the usage of Facebook with the Pink Casket as the primary focal point. We used our own photos and others inside the Pink Casket during St. Peter DeathCare Week. This social experiment proved to be a huge success with over a hundred of Pink Casket photos across Facebook transcending to Television news clips, and foreign news headlines.
Conclusion
With society and the environment moving at a frenzied pace, the ways of communicating to everyone get more varied and deeper. No can say what’s the next best thing in terms of utilizing technology for communication and marketing means. As we speak, Apple just released, the iPAD the next breakthrough in the line of MAC products addressing the need for ebooks, internet access, presentations and applications. Would I buy it? Perhaps. In the same manner when I switched to using an iPhone. I may be a hardcore book reader but reading on a digital pad may take sometime getting used to.
Technology as exemplified wit mobile phones, computers, the iPAD and others. The trick is to adopt to the situation and evolve with it. As a Marketer, let us use these tools than conform with social and environmental changes to our advantage-representative of the New Age Marketer for the 21st century.
Self-publishing is on the rise. Arsen Kashkashian, the buyer at the great independent Colorado store Boulder Book Store (which we know as Boulder Books) reported on Twitter that self-published books account for more than 1% of sales. “Many look like books from major houses,” said Arsen. “We have three, four, five authors coming in almost everyday to get their books on our shelves. We charge a fee; still they come.”
How far will this trend go? Will traditional publishers disappear? Certainly some will, but we don’t think that this marks the end of traditional publishing—but publishers had better be nimble.
One thing big publishers do well is cultivate audiences and maintain sales channels (i.e. distributing books to the marketplace, either directly to readers, or indirectly through retailers). Self-published authors can do the former through a robust speaking schedule and online presence. The latter is tougher, though a lot can be accomplished by tirelessly doing events, getting in catalogs (which can mean paying), and selling online.
Publishers are good at the nuts and bolts that require special expertise: editing and development, design, production, distribution, pricing, channel management, marketing, and sales. A self-published author would be wise to invest in some equivalent of these roles, since no one person, no matter how talented or brilliant, can do everything well.
Screenshot from justunfollow.com ’s landing page. Great for people who use the service as a popularity contest – “What! You don’t wanna follow me?! FINE. I won’t follow you!”
You can follow me on twitter: @connectwithcoop. I may follow you back if you provide some sort of value to the conversations, if not, don’t expect me to follow you just to be nice.
Thank you for connecting,
Cooper
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No other tune could accompany this post as well as Ella Fitzgerald’s rendition of There’s a Small Hotel from the album The Rodgers and Hart Songbook Volume 2. Check out the rarely-heard verse! Hit the play button below, or if you’re getting this by email, visit the blog to listen.
Today my RSS feed coughed up a New York Times article by Susan Dominus about the joys of www.foursquare.com. Read the article or go on the website to learn about Foursquare. That’s not the point of this post.
Susan Dominus met one of her sources for the article at the Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington Ave between 47th and 48th. From my experience, the choice of venue might be no coincidence. And it represents the power of social media.
First let me say that, in my opinion, the Roger Smith is one of the coolest unsung spots in NY City. Its president is talented Connecticut sculptor James Knowles. The property is maybe the last remaining property of his wife’s family’s hotel holdings. The couple has lovingly embraced the Roger Smith, renovated it and given it one of the most delightful personalities in all NY hotel-dom.
I first met Jim Knowles in the early 1990s through a client Joe Scott, founder of upscale Connecticut landscape design firm Glen Gate, who engaged Jim to create an award for his most creative designers. At the time, Jim hosted Monday evening starving artist dinners in the penthouse of the Roger Smith. They were unspeakably charming and so supportive of the New York arts community.
Over time, I’d stop in there to view the artwork on display and noticed that the hotel was succeeding in attracting international visitors. But I will go out on a limb and say that it has become uber-popular with home town folk since social media guru Chris Brogan has made it his official NY stopover.
Chris tweets about the Roger Smith to his almost 125,000 Twitter followers – including me — and frequently mentions the hotel in blog and newsletter posts. So when a New York Times reporter doing a story on the website Foursquare.com hooks up with interviewee “Damien Basile, a 29-year-old social media consultant, and several of his Foursquare-happy friends”, it stands to reason that this person likely learned about the Roger Smith from a Chris Brogan post and might well be wanting to establish Foursquare mayor-dom and badges at Chris’ NY hotel of choice. (Again check out Foursquare or the Times article to interpret the aforegoing.)
Makes sense to me. But more important, and what I’d share with clients, is that recognition in the social media realm has real dollars and cents value. The fact that Chris has established authority and endorses the Roger Smith likely makes it a destination for social media types and probably led to the NY Times recognition. Chris…you’ve proved it before, and if I’m not all wet here, this proves it again.
Obviously, I’m connecting the dots, but if somehow Damien Basile sees this post, please let me know if I’m right or paddling in the wrong pond. Or if Chris Brogan learned about the Roger Smith from Damien or other NY social media folk I’ll reverse, of course. But it was one of those tasty moments that seemed more than coincidence. And Chris’ endorsement of the Roger Smith certainly can’t hurt – regardless of who learned about it from whom.
With marketing, perception is more important than reality.
For instance, there has persisted for some years a widespread perception (based mostly on marketing hype) that Toyota and other Japanese autos are in many ways superior to American autos.
I never bought into that notion, which I always felt was based more on perception than on solid facts.
Want a job in Toyota marketing department?
And now we have irrefutable facts that (to me, anyway) prove that Toyota autos are not what they are cracked up to be –
• To date, more than 8.5 million Toyota vehicles have been recalled (by far the largest auto recall in history).
• The four separate recall programs are not because of minor problems. Every one is due to factory defects of major, critical components that, during malfunction, can cause a driver to lose control of a vehicle –
1. Accelerators that arbitrarily stick (even at high speed) and cannot be unstuck;
2. Accelerators that arbitrarily get hung up on floor mats;
3. Brakes that arbitrarily stop working;
4. Drive shafts that arbitrarily crack and fall off of vehicles, causing the driver to lose control.
• Mr. Toyoda (that really is his name), the highest exec for Toyota, has drawn sharp criticism around the world, and especially in Japan, for his mishandling of the whole fiasco.
Nobody knows for certain how the Big Toyota Recall mess will all play out, but to me it clearly proves my point that perception generally means more than reality.
Yes, I know there are many who can provide stories about his or her amazing Toyota, Honda, Nissan, or Mazda vehicle that has been such a wonderful, reliable vehicle. And when folks tell these stories they always talk about how the vehicle has over 120,00 or more miles on it, etc. etc., etc.
To which I say: “Big deal. So what?”
There are just as many owners of Chevys, Fords, Buicks, Chryslers, Jeeps, Hummers, Cadillacs, etc. that can provide the same sort of stories. Just take a random look around you while you drive anywhere around any U.S. city or town and notice the large number of GM, Ford, and Chrysler (or Dodge or Plymouth) vehicles that are 15 years and older still on the road.
Consider my own story. Here’s a list of GM vehicles my wife and I have owned since the late 1980s — a 1986 Olds Cutlass, a 1986 Olds Ciera, a 1989 Olds Ciera; a 1986 Chevy Suburban; a 1995 Geo Prizm; a 2001 Chevy Impala; a 2003 Saturn Ion; and a 2005 Chevy Equinox.
Now, get this track record –
When I traded in every single one of these GM vehicles, each one had more than 120,000 miles on it. And guess what — NOT ONE OF THE VEHICLES HAD EVER BEEN IN ANY SHOP FOR ANY TYPE OF MAJOR ENGINE REPAIR. The only type of repair work done on any one of the GM vehicles we drove were the typical routine jobs that are common to all vehicles — things like replacing a battery, or replacing worn out belts or hoses, or replacing turn-signal bulbs. And I was so glad I drove a GM vehicle the few times I’ve had to make minor repairs, because there’s never a concern about finding parts. GM parts are readily available nearly everywhere, and almost always cost less than equivalent foreign brand auto parts.
We are still driving the 2003 Saturn Ion, which is now approaching 140,000 miles and “runs like a top” (as the saying goes).
Wonder how many auto owners are able to match that sort of performance — 8 GM vehicles, each one providing more than 120,00 miles of reliable service, with no major repair work (just typical, routine maintenance).
I remember when I was about to purchase the 2001 Chevy Impala. I did a lot of Internet research, and had narrowed my choices down to two vehicles — either a Chevy Impala, or a Toyota Camry. I chose the Impala, and here’s why — the Impala’s sticker price was less, the Impala got the same gas mileage as the Camry, the Impala had more interior space and more cargo space, and the Impala had a smoother ride. Boy, am I ever glad I chose the Impala, which turned out to be perhaps the best vehicle we ever owned. The only maintenance it ever required was regular oil changes. That’s it. Period. It gave us nearly 130,000 miles of trouble-free service before we traded it in.
The original tires on that Impala lasted for more than 90,000 miles. When I put new tires on it, there was still enough tread on those tires to perhaps push it to 100,000 miles, but I did not want to push it. The tire store owner was amazed that the tires were the original tires and had so many miles on them. “But, then again, in some ways it does not surprise me,” he said. “That model of Chevy Impala is one of the most perfectly balanced vehicles ever made, and I’ve heard so many stories about what a great car it is.”
And so, while perception may continue to sway many in what they purchase, I, for one, always try to base my purchases on solid facts and personal research (that’s also why I have purchased only Apple Macintosh computers for many years, and why I stick with Nikon digital SLR camera equipment).
Humans are compelled to count. We count everything. Days, weeks, months, years, birthdays, money in the bank, salaray levels, years of experience. It’s part of the human condition, even to the evolution of civilization.
As startup entrepreneur we need to let our people count something. Whether it’s the savings they made or they friends they have, there needs to be a way for them to keep track. So our people know they have made progress. Commerce is an anthropological game of football. So we must keep score. But it must go beyond the corporate scoreboard of profit, share price, turnoever, number of employees… it has to be an audience focused score. Like followers on twitter. It has to be about them, not us, it’s how humans roll.
