Archive for the ‘marketing’ Category


QR Codes – Can They Bring You New Customers?

QR Codes means Quick Response. I’m assuming you already have seen examples on web pages or in magazines, but these tools have yet to meet the mainstream. How can you use QR Codes as part of a viral marketing strategy?

I will show you how we do it.

Small Box had a lead generation tool called the Free SEO Score Card. Over the year that we ran the program, it helped us land many new clients who wanted to use Small Box SEO Services. Let’s say we wanted to take that same service viral using QR Codes for a limited time.

Want it to go viral? Add that same QR Code to your Twitter pictures, your Facebook photos, make it embeddable.

Want to go guerilla? Put it on fliers, stickers, or on the side of a car.

Never done a QR before? Google is your friend, find an app for your smart phone and try it out. And then call Small Box at 317-254-0932 and let’s come up with some ideas on how we can use QR Codes to build your business.

Search Engine Optimization

Now if you have a QR Reader for the iPhone or Android platform, take a picture of the above image and it will take you to the Small Box SEO special. For this demonstration there is a limited time offer, but it captures lead information who would be suitable for ongoing marketing and added to our CRM.

The Demographics of Social Media

Social Media Demographics Infographic

Social Media Demographics Infographic

Overview

This is a fantastic infographic from Flowtown discovered while updating our research on social media optimization. Two things that caught my eye was the age  of Facebook users. 1/3 of Facebook users are 35-54 yrs old?? So I decided to check some facts.

The Data

The data was taken from DoubleClick’s Ad Planner (now owned by google).  Digging a little deeper I found the following statement about the demographic data:

“Ad Planner demographics are generated through demographic inference algorithms that combine third-party demographic data with Google sample data. The third-party demographic data is licensed from an industry-accepted consumer research panel operated according to industry best practices by a full-service research firm.”source

Seems thorough enough for me.

Double Click Ad Planner

Facebook Stats From Double Click Ad Planner

Then I visited Facebook’s ad tool. Check out the “estimated reach” (of an ad) to 15-34 yr olds and 35-54 yr olds. They show nearly double the  younger users.

Facebook Ad Tool Ages 13-24

Ages 15-34

Facebook Ad Tool Ages 35-54

Ages 35-54

Bottom Line

It’s always important to understand the context. This data set useful for knowing where to advertise to users, which can inform social media marketing, but doesn’t necessarily tell you where to connect with users on a social level. And, in my opinion, advertising and connecting are two different things that are growing farther and farther apart.

Other Resources

There a great blog by Brett Borow titled 10 Musts for Marketing to Women on Facebook.

For more scholarly information about social media/networks, check out Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Value Swaps

value swap


A value swap is what occurs when a visitor to your website gives you their information for something they consider valuable.
It’s not a monetary transaction but can lay that foundation. An example of a value swap would be giving visitors a white paper or some valuable information after they fill out a form with their contact information.

It’s a fine line to walk between giving site visitors enough information to convince them of your expertise while not giving away the farm. A value swap can help create some balance. On our site we have an SEO Score Card that we give away for free in exchange for visitors taking the time to tell us about their website, search keywords they want to target and some other information. These score cards take about an hour to make but they also serve as a valuable sales tool for us. After delivering the score card we are in an excellent position to recommend Small Box services to fix any problems the score card revealed.

Our client Antique Helper gives free antique appraisals in exchange for contact information and this creates auction consignments. Someone wanting to know what their antique Tiffany vase is worth might also be interested in selling it via auction when they find out it’s worth $3000!

Does your website have a value swap? Why not? I would guess every business has some piece of information they can swap. Figure out what that is and start swapping!

Fanvertising or To Fanvertise

I was hanging out on Musicalfamilytree.com, a Small Box project focused on archiving Indiana music and conversations about it, and one of the members, Kevin D. McCollough, used a term I hadn’t heard before- “Fanvertise”. He asked if it was ok to “fanvertise” on the site and then linked to something he liked. Sure, I said, and hey, that’s a really cool word! I did some searching and it appears that it has been used a few times but not much. Right now if you Google fanvertise the post from Musical Family Tree shows up near the top of page one and the comment was just left yesterday. That means it’s not in widespread use in my experience.

So I wrote up a quick definition of Fanvertise and posted it to my Twitter account. Here it is as well:

Fanvertise- when a person or “fan” promotes third party goods or services without direct compensation.

I would consider it a sub-category of Viral Marketing but mostly I just like the word better. Viral has a nasty, sickish sound to it, right? Fanvertise sounds fun and captures what people are really doing.

So how do you get Fanvertising? It is obviously much more desirable than traditional advertising since it’s free and the other is, uh, not. It’s also cheaper than traditional PR since PR agencies can be pricey too. Both advertising and PR are often needed and are usually effective if executed correctly but they don’t have nearly the ROI of real and mostly free (not counting your time) Fanvertising.

I see Fanvertising as a 3 step process:

Fanvertising Step #1. Be awesome at what you do, you cannot suck. You have to have the happiest customers on earth or at least in your industry. In being the best you will give your customers the emotional foundation for singing your praises via every channel at their disposal.

Customer service should be treated as a marketing expense not an afterthought. Happy customers will bring you more customers. This is true in the B2B and B2C worlds.

Instead of focusing on selling your product or service, focus on making your current customers happy. They will then do the selling for you. This is the core of Fanvertising. Don’t think about new customers until you have taken care of your current ones.

Fanvertising Step #2. Be an enabler. Give them the tools to tell their stories, not your story. Your story doesn’t matter that much on its own. It only has really impact when combined with a customer’s story- “I’ve spent years looking for a good carpet cleaning service and now I’ve found it in XYZ Company, check out their website, Facebook page, etc- here. Highly recommended!”. If you don’t have easy ways for your fans to Fanvertise your company then they will most likely move on and not get around to it. Make it super easy.

Fanvertising Step #3. Say “thank you”. Don’t ignore feedback, good or bad, acknowledge it, engage in a conversation if it’s bad, spread it around if it’s good. Remember what the Bible says- “Let others praise you”, just don’t forget to say “thanks!”.

In the brave new world of Social Media there are so many opportunities for Fanvertising. Make sure you are following these three steps and Fanvertising will start growing your business.

How Much Should A Website Cost?

http://www.thedigeratilife.com/images/money-questions.jpg
Determining what to budget for a new website can be difficult. Many times a company has a “brochure” site from 5 or even 10 years ago and is now ready to build a “real” website. In my experience companies choose a number based on their current cash flow or what they paid the first time around. “If we paid X dollars then we should pay 2 times X this time”. I can understand that way of thinking but I think there is a better way of determining the correct budget for a best-in-class website.

First off the Web and media has changed substantially since that “brochure” site was launched. In the late 1990s and early 2000s it didn’t do much harm for a company to have a brochure style website. But now companies need to see their websites more like broadcast platforms. Often times their website’s content will be accessed as much from third party sites and services (Google Local or Maps, Search Engines, RSS feeds, Social Media etc).

Companies need to think of websites as being similar to radio or TV stations that are broadcasting their content 24/7. Websites are no longer just destinations. They are channels that flow out and across the web in various formats. At least that is what a modern website does. So before you think about what to spend think about how this is not the Web of the late 90s or early 2000s. Heck this isn’t even the web c.2006!

So how much should you spend on a modern website that acts as a broadcast platform?

I recommend looking at your media budget and determining a percentage to invest in the Web . I would recommend at least 50% since it’s pretty clear from all the data that the Web has the best and most demonstrable ROI of any marketing effort. The take that amount and extend it to 3-5 years. If you spend $2000 a month on marketing then allocate $1000 a month to the web times 36 to 60 months.

The beautiful thing about the Web is that you can test and see what works, tweak and repeat until you are seeing a phenomenal return. Every investment takes time to bring a return but with the Web you will be able to see it more clearly and usually more quickly.