4 Ways Mobile Devices Impact Your Business and Marketing

Mobile has been promoted as the next big thing almost every year for the past 10 years, but today it truly is becomingtheplatform,thetechnology you need to listen to (pun intended). Here are four ways that mobile is impacting your marketing efforts.

1. Mobile devices have a smaller screen. This is painfully obvious, but have you designed for it? Mobile screens are changing e-mail messaging structures. I read an Infusionsoft report that highlighted this and implored customers to pay attention to the mobile screen. Dozens of others have followed suit. What will your customers see on a smaller screen? Is the subject line more important than ever because it is all they might see?

It is frequently stated that e-mail is dead due to mobile and social networks. E-mail is far from dead.  Although stats show that many people are migrating to social networks to communicate, consider the fact that Facebook recently decided to create an e-mail platform. Why? Because people need and want more than short updates and chat to communicate.  If you’re wondering what your e-mail might look like on a mobile device, Web-based service providerEmail on Acidlets you test your e-mail as it will appear on many browsers and mobile devices.

The smaller mobile screen will also impact how a customer sees your website. Many mobile devices don’t allow or use Flash technology, so you have to think about that. It may be worth considering a mobile marketing platform instead. One of the top mobile site builders ismobiSiteGalore. Yes, it would be a pain to maintain two sites, but it could also be more cost effective.

2. Location, location, locationused to be the real estate world’s maxim, but should now be the marketing and small business owner’s maxim.  Location-based offers and services will change how customers engage in almost every way. Customers have the ability to be hyper-connected with their social networks.  You haveonly to look at Foursquare and Gowalla to get a glimpse of the power of location.

3. Use of mobileapps is growing.Whether you know it or not, customers are scanning and comparison shopping, on the spot, in your retail store.  Search and search engine optimization are rapidly changing. On the Droid X I’m testing and will be reviewing here shortly, one of the top apps was a barcode scanner used via the smartphone camera.  Think of how you can tie mobile coupons to your offers.

I worked on a project in Japan years ago; in that country, I could use my cell phone to pay for an in-store purchase.  Japan leads U.S. mobile technology by five to 10 years and possibly Europe and other parts of Asia by one or two years.  Along with your Google Places (or Facebook Places) page, you can add a QR code (like a barcode) to your site, to your retail store window and your e-mails. The viewer or recipient can scan that code with a smartphone and receive a special offer or welcome message.  There are a few easy QR creation sites out there if you want to create a code for your site, e-mail or storefront.

4. Text messaging still matters.Even with the growth of iPhones and Droid-powered smartphones, these are still only a slice of the mobile market. Millions of people are still engaging via text messaging and SMS platforms. Your customer will opt-in to text message (SMS) offers. You don’t have to wait for smartphone usage to completely dominate. Text is a favorite way consumers communicate, but is not used often enough as a way to market. Again, this isn’t spam, but permission-based marketing.

One of the best posts I’ve read about mobile marketing trendscame from one of our contributors, Paul Rosenfeld of Fanminder. Granted, Paul is in the mobile marketing (SMS) space and has some bias, but he paints a fair picture from all I’ve seen and studied about mobile.  One important note from that post:“Gen Yers (18-29) say their phone is the most important device they own.”I would argue that other generations are saying the same thing.

If you want to get just a taste of the many mobile applications for small business, read my19 Mobile Appspost.  What mobile apps are you using, developing, or researching?  Please share them here in the comments.

Source

Entrepreneurs Think Differently

Entrepreneurs think differently from other people. When technological changes make existing products obsolete, demographic and social changes alter attitudes, and political and regulatory changes adjust the playing field, most people complain. Entrepreneurs come up with solutions.

The Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) introduction of the backscatter scanner and enhanced airport pat downs is a case in point. John Tyner became the latest Internet celebrity for his response to the new security procedures – the “Don’t Touch My Junk” –watch the video. Others opposed to the new rules sought to trigger a pre-Thanksgiving opt out to draw attention to the new measures. And the vast majority of Americans either grumbled their complaints or stoically accepted the latest indignity of air travel in the post 9/11 age.

Not so for entrepreneur Jeff Buskewho saw a business opportunity in the introduction of the backscatter scanner. Buske invented a new kind of underwear. With parts made of tungsten that don’t trigger metal detectors, his product provides privacy to wearers by blocking the explicit images displayed on the new scanner.

The TSA might respond to Buske’s invention by requiring those wearing his underwear to go through enhanced pat downs, but that possibility doesn’t negate what he did. He responded to a market need that was opened up by a change in regulation – a concern about privacy generated by the better images on the TSA’s new machines – by offering a solution.

Academics like myself, study why some people, like Buske, come up with new business ideas in response to these changes, while other people don’t. What we’ve learned is that entrepreneurs think differently from other people. Rather than lamenting the problems created by technological, social, demographic, political and regulatory change, entrepreneurs view them as a good thing – they are the source of business opportunity.

Those who come up with new business ideas in response to these changes also seem to have a background– work or educational experience – that provides them with the necessary prior knowledge to think up a solution to the customer problem. In Buske’s case, his engineering background helped him to come up with the idea of putting tungsten in your underwear – not the first thing most of us thought of when faced with the experience of going through a backscatter scanner.

I don’t know if we will all be sitting around the airport googling on our iPhones in our part-tungsten underwear any time soon. Having the ability to see the potential for a entrepreneurial idea in situations that just gets others irritated doesn’t guarantee business success. But it does show a different way of thinking.

Source

Holiday Marketing, a Few Favorite Things

In the spirit of Oprah Winfrey’s favorite things and the twelve days of Christmas here’s a list of classic favorites for marketing during the holiday season.  Big business knows that Christmas is a big season for sales.  It’s the chance to get those finances in the black and clear out inventory for the next year.

It is no different for small businesses.  But true to the spirit of the season, the Holidays are a great time to connect on a deeper level with our customers.  You get the chance to leave them with a good feeling and good impression of the soul and the service of your company.  And that’s good for business!  So here’s our list:

CHRISTMAS CARDS

JR Griggs, author of10 Ways to Put Yourself Out of Businesssuggests that you“send out Christmas Cards instead of emails. People will hang a Christmas Card but they will not print and hang an email.”This way your business remains in front of your customer all season long.  As for that email, it’s discarded before the next business day.

HOLIDAY ATMOSPHERE

Create a holiday atmosphere on and off-line.  For brick and mortar companies, consider playing Christmas music and giving away seasonal treats.  It sticks in your customers mind, and that’s the goal, to be the top thought for whatever the service or product that you provide. As for web based companies consider adding a little Christmas tothe site.  You could spruce up your header or banner.  Or create a special Holiday page.  Use it to connect with customers.  Conduct Holiday themed surveys, promote Christmas discounts or any Seasonal newsworthy events on that page.

FUND-RAISING

Yes, we are talking about marketing, so that we can raise our funds.  But in this case, let’s focus on the season and give something away first.  Cait DeStefano, owner ofCait’s Classic Designsuses fundraising to support a cause that she believes in.  This same action also promotes her business.  She says,“It puts my companies name out there for a good cause and brings me in sales and new customers. Right now I’m doing fundraisers for the MS Society and Philabundance. They already have a large marketing campaign in place and add my name to their lists of ways people can help out. I look at it as free marketing.”

BRANDED GIFTS

Provide the giveaway item at the next party or local event, and make sure the gift items are tastefully branded with your company and contact information.  Barbara Wells, SVP, Staples Promotional Products, says that“according to the Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), 52% of recipients do business with a company after receiving its promotional item.”I know it works for the cake ladies in my community.  They provide baked goods for our annual October youth event, and receive orders throughout the entire holiday season.

COUPONS

“Coupons are a winning strategy holiday season or not,”says J.W. Arnold ofPRDC, a public relations and marketing company based in Washington, DC. “Times are still tough and while consumers will spend more during the holiday season, they are still very cost conscious and will jump on a coupon offer.”Make sure that it:

1. promotes a product that clients will respond to, and
2. is time sensitive in order to encourage a prompt purchase.

Most of these tips are classic, Christmas marketing tools (some of which can be used all year round).  Consider this your Holiday reminder.  And although we are already in the season, you can implement these quickly.  The best marketing plan is the one that you actually implement.

Source

Innovate IT, Management, Employees and Social Media With Empowered

Now that everyone has received the memo– or tweet– on social media,  a new memo has arrived on your office table: How does an organization manage employees who daily use social media to get things done?

That’s the question Forrester execs Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler answer in their fine book,Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business(Bernoff co-authored the bestselling bookGroundswellwith Charlotte Li). I met both authors at a New York mixer, and had also listened to Bernoff on a Harvard Business Review podcast.

Just as it has empowered customer choice online, social media has also empowered employee productivity.Empoweredencourages businesses to make the most of that power shift.  A quote on page 16 sums up the authors’ mission:

“The tools to change your business, to become more responsive to these empowered consumers, aren’t the problem.  It’s the way your business runs that needs to change.”

Explaining the nuances of social media’s impact on customers

Empoweredis a great read for the informed business owner. It’s grounded in Forrester research, naturally, and studies from various sources, but not excessively academic.  The insights are splendidly clear. Take the following quote on the traditional customer acquisition funnel, for example:

“In the funnel people became aware of your company, consider its products and then a few of them buy.  But now the mass influencers among your customers are broadcasting information about your products… This suggests a different view of the funnel, one in which sales is no longer the endpoint.  Once you have sold a customer, good service will create happiness.”

The first chapters elaborate on mass online influences, differentiated by social media personae called Mass Connectors and Mass Mavens.  Mass Connectors are people who share links in social networks, while Mass Mavens share opinions through blogs and discussion forums.  Examples demonstrate how success connecting to personae can come in unexpected ways.  For example, read how Ford’s well-regarded Fiesta Movement campaign had to create Fiesta enthusiasts first:

“Ford’s challenge is this: The people who talk about cars are well-off and influential, but rarely own Fords… Ford had to create customers by letting them drive the cars for a while to prime the pump and get the discussion going.”

The examinations have the right depth and scope to explain why certain social media contain nuanced opportunity. Mobile and text message topics are a welcome delight, advancing the social media discussion to territory where other books have failed.

How HEROes can save your business

Here come the HEROes, employees who take initiative to solve customers’ problems through the same social media tools customers casually use. As a result HEROes are in the best position to engage customers, increasing brand value, improving customer service and elevating awareness that leads to sales. Anyone can be a HERO, such as Leonard Bonacci who developed GuestAssist, a text messaging system to manage disruptive Philadelphia Eagles fans.  Fans with a problem send a text to a short code that matches their seat so that a rep can arrive to discreetly resolve the issue.

“Despite the ease of the system, only a few hundred messages get sent each season, few enough that they’re far more likely to help with satisfaction than to overwhelm the staff… Two years later the NFL made what the Eagles were doing a leaguewide practice.”

Although the case studies involve corporations, the ease of implementation implies that small businesses can use similar techniques.  Read the segment “If you sell to small businesses, marketing and customer service need to connect” to gain some ideas.

Create accord between IT and management to best serve your customers

Later chapters examine the implementation of HERO activity organization-wide, asEmpoweredoffers solutions to help innovate and collaborate on HEROes ideas to create effective strategic advantage.

“The problem in a HERO-powered business isn’t coming up with ideas. The problem is figuring out which of those ideas should be nurtured and which should not.”

One definitive step is to not block social media usage among HEROes.   You’ll hurt your business more in terms of productivity and costs by trying to block a genie that is already out of the bottle, according to Bernoff and Schadler’s interviews with employees.  Instead, the authors advocate “speed and collaboration” to systematically:

• Build collaboration systems that extend existing tools
• Make sure anyone participating gets value instantly
• Dedicate people to the rollout
• Solve 80 percent of the problem, then stop and listen
• Build adoption slowly and virally

The authors also suggest aligning HERO social media usage to business objectives through management’s assessment of project risk and IT’s re-imagined role as educator and risk mitigator. Here’s a quote about the role of the IT department in a HERO environment:

“IT has two new jobs:

1. Train and educate information workers about how to keep themselves safe
2. Help HEROes assess, manage and mitigate risks associated with their projects.

Note what is included here: IT is not responsible for risk. Instead, people in IT must advise workers to keep them safe, and help them to improve the security of what they do.”

Savvy insights on IT and management roles abound, particularly useful in a world now acclimated to cloud computing and SaaS. Cross-organizational councils are also suggested, as well as a HERO“compact” to best promote roles and responsibilities.

If you want to grow your business, read this book

I love the potentialEmpoweredhas to teach small businesses the nuances in social media, marketing and customer service to profitable result.  The book complements other social media and marketing books, as well as service books likeService Innovation, but it truly stands alone as a resource for how an organization can be revitalized from within and in the eyes of its customers.

Source

Convert New Readers With a Sneeze Page

New readers are stumbling upon your blog and joining your community every day. However, because of the nature of how blogs work, users who find your site today may never see all the great content you posted last week. They’re starting from today…which means they won’t benefit from all the information you’ve been working hard to write since you started your blog, because they don’t know it’s there. Creating a Sneeze Page for your blog can help them find it.

The term Sneeze Page was coined by Darren Rowse, aka Problogger, way back in 2007and describes a page that is designed to“propel people in different directions deep within your blog,” introducing them to posts that you’ve previously written. Basically, it introduces new readers to some of your best content and encourages them to engage with your website. You can create Sneeze Pages based on a time period (TheBest Posts of 2010), a theme (Top SMB Social Media Posts), a product (The Complete Guide to {Product Name}), an event (A History of BlogworldExpo), or anything else that you think may benefit readers.

How to Create a Sneeze Page

Because you’re essentially just repurposing content you’ve already written, creating a Sneeze Page takes virtually no time. To get started, go over your archives and decide which topics or content could benefit from a Sneeze Page. Where do you have a lot of overlapping content? What path are you trying to create for visitors? What do you want to highlight?

Maybe you notice you have a bunch of posts centered on one topic or you want to create a Best of 2010 post that you can point people to as we approach the holidays and the new year. Whatever it is, go through your archives and start grabbing the links for those content pieces and aggregating them.

As you put the page together, don’t just make it a series of links. Instead, you’ll want to create some new content to describe what each link is about and the benefit for the reader should they click through. Writing a few lines of content for each link will increase the page’s usefulness because you’re giving people a sneak peak at what they can find. Once you combine your links with your descriptions, that’s your Sneeze Page.

Once you’ve published your page, make sure you heavily promote it. That means displaying your Sneeze Page prominently on your blog and/or website, putting it in your sidebar, incorporating it in navigational elements, and placing it in any other high-activity areas on your site so that readers can easilyfind it. You’ll also want to promote the page via a post on your blog and link to it from all of your social media accounts. Basically, you want to make absolutely sure that people are able to find this page.

It’s really that simple. I love using Sneeze Pages to point people to evergreen content that they may have missed if they’re a new subscriber to the blog. As the holidays approach, you may want to consider creating multiple Sneeze Pages that you can point readers to while your business slows downfor the holidays. It gives you some time to step away from your blog, while also allowing your readers to familiarize themselves with content they may have missed during the past year.

Source

Show Your Support for Small Business Saturday!

This post is underwritten by American Express as part of itsSmall Business Saturdayinitiative.

Black Friday we know.  It is the biggest shopping day of the year here in the United States.  The Friday after Thanksgiving is famous for sales and crowds.  Some of you can taste the discounts now.  Even in this economy, faithful shoppers still dive in looking for the perfect discounted Christmas gifts.  Others shop for the thrill of the day.

But what about Black Saturday (my name)?

American Express declares the Saturday (November 27, 2010) after Thanksgiving asSmall Business Saturday.  It’s a new initiative to encourage buying from small businesses.  But why shop locally when national chains like Starbucks for my tea and Barnes& Noble for my books has everything I need?  Well, there are quite a few interesting and compelling reasons.  Consider the two below.

Small business makes local communities go round.

We live locally and we need our communities to thrive and that takes resources.  The3/50 Projectsays that for every $100 spent at local small businesses, $68 returns to the community.  That’s a lot returned to the community— thank you, small businesses.   But a better way to drive that thank you home is to shop.  Which brings me to another  interesting reason to participate in Small Business Saturday.

Shopping locally gives you a taste of the community.

It’s true my local bookstore has a smaller selection and my local coffee shop doesn’t know what venti is.  However, that book store features local authors and holds book signings and readings in a building that may be as old as the city.  It has it’s own flavor and when I am there I become a part of it.  That local coffee shop has music on Friday and Saturday nights and hot food with local names to remind me that I am not in just any old town.

Every time I shop locally I am pleasantly surprised by the interesting venues I find.   In fact, I think I’ll start celebrating Small Business Saturday now.

If you plan to join me then drop by theSmall Business Saturday’s Facebook pageand“Get Involved!”   If you “Like” the page then American Express will donate a dollar to Girls Inc. to empower them to become entrepreneurs of tomorrow.  Amex cardmembers get a $25 statement credit, too.   You can“Like” the Small Business Saturday Page on Facebook by clicking below:

Source

5 Tips for Working With Outsourced Designers

Your small business relies on a professional and consistent look and feel. But how do you achieve this when you don’t have the resources to have an in-house marketing design team? Print design, Web design and advertising copy – all of this can be quite complicated. Outsourced designers are a great way to bring in design expertise when you need it…but managing creative professionals has its own set of unique challenges.

Here are 5 tips for working with outside designers:

1) Provide context.

Help your designer understand what your business does. Explain the goal that you are trying to accomplish with the design work. Realize that the designer does not have the same view into your business that you do. By providing context around what it is that you do and what you are trying to accomplish, you not only help the designer create better work but also help focus his or her creativity on the problem at hand.

2) Use a style guide.

It is smart to have a style guide created so that all of your collateral materials will be consistent and professional looking. A style guide is a set of standards for design of your company’s materials/documents/manuals. For a small business, a simple style guide should have the preferred primary typeface/headline/header font and secondary typeface/body text font, primary and secondary colors and general rules for on-page spacing. The goal of the style guide is that if someone seesyour company’s mailing and then visits your website, they should naturally understand that they’ve come to the same company’s home page.

3) Use examples.

Provide examples ofboth designs you like and designs you do not. A good set of examples is a great starting point for your designer. You should not only have examples, but have specific reasons why you like or dislike them. Opinions/reasons will help the designer focus on using the elements that you like best and keep him or her from wasting time recreating elements you didn’t consider important.

4) Sketch and scan.

Another great way to share your ideas with the designer is to sketch the design on a piece of paper and scan it to share it with the designer. The goal is not to pretend to be Michelangelo, but instead to get your basic layout ideas across. Do not spend a lot of time with this, but instead just scratch out something as a jumping-off point from which the designer can begin to create something appropriate for your needs.

5) Keep in touch.

Have a regular schedule for when you and the designer will check in with each other. You’ll want to update the designer on any changes that might impact the design and promptly provide feedback to them as needed. Prompt and decisive feedback is crucial to a good relationship with a designer.

Bonus tip: Give constructive criticism.

Do not be afraid to provide criticism. The designer cannot read your mind, so you need to be honest when you do not like something. You should not feel bad delivering negative news if you can do so promptly and in a positive manner! Be polite as you state the negatives, but make sure you do state them– otherwise it will be close to impossible to get the design you want for your business.

Have you used outside designers? What have you learned from working with them? Any tips to share with theSmall Business Trendsaudience?

Source