Constant contact is an online marketing company that allows you to stay connected with your customers all around the world. With the world rapidly moving their marketing towards the web, constant contact is a great way to anticipate new customers. They offer their services primarily to small businesses, membership associations, and nonprofit organizations. Constant contact is known for their dependable email marketing. Their main goal is to help their customers find new customers, drive repeat business, and generate referrals.
Email marketing is basically sending email messages with a purpose of attracting new customers, or enhancing the relationships with current customers. Email marketing through constant contact is a great reliable way for your company to grow. With features that allow you to have a professional look, constant contact’s email marketing is more effective than regular email. No technical skills are required to create a professional looking email because constant contact offers over 400 templates to choose from. Creating newsletters are simple and fast so you can send them much more frequently than paper ones.
In order to effectively get your prospectors to respond, differentiate your data base and create smaller customer lists based on their shared interests. After you’ve done that, send them relevant information that pertains to them. This will get more of a chance for them to actually act upon your emails. The emails you send are easy to forward so if you target your audience and their interested, there’s no doubt they’ll click the forward button. This will get you referrals much more easily and allow your company to grow.
A cool feature constant contact’s email marketing offers is tracking and reporting. After you send an email you are able to see who read, clicked, or forwarded your email. This allows you to understand what the people you’re trying to contact are really interested about. You can then go back and tailor your content the best possible way for your targeted audience.
Besides the email templates constant contact offers, they also offer list management and free coaching. List management is a tool that allows you to organize and grow your contact list by combing multiple lists and segmenting them based on an audience with common interests. This is a much easier way to send out a mass email because the lists are already narrowed down to a targeted audience. If you’re having trouble with email marketing through constant contact, they offer free personal coaching and support at anytime. They present webinars, guides, and podcasts to go further in detail about email marketing and how it can boost your businesses customer service.
Constant contact is the new marketing success formula that helps create and grow customer relationships in today’s socially connected world. It’s an easy reliable way for your business to keep a strong communication line. If you use constant contact’s email marketing the right way, your customers will share your emails with their networks therefore making your business grow.
Sources:
http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp
http://landing.constantcontact.com/goog-grow-with-email-marketing-ad?utm_id=GOO-100846&cc=GOO-100846&gclid=CPXIgL3ZybMCFQOf4AodzQMA7A
http://www.constantcontact.com/email-marketing/what-is-email-marketing/index.jsp
http://www.constantcontact.com/about-constant-contact/index.jsp
The content in this article is part of Digital Ethos’s Digital Media Education in the Higher Education Internship Program, the content was created by @KaylaMarzo, a Student at Suffolk County Community college, intern at Digital Ethos.
Digital & Internet Marketing
Seth Godin’s “All Marketers Tell Stories” [Internship]
Seth Godin made a valuable point when stating, “Marketing is about spreading ideas, and spreading ideas is the single most important output of our civilization.” Godin has made several other valuable points in his book, “All Marketers Tell Stories”. He focuses on a person’s “worldview” which is someone’s own rules, values, beliefs, and biases. Even though it is very tough to change someone’s worldview, it is possible with the correct kind of marketing.
Worldviews are both beneficial yet tricky at the same time. Worldviews are the reason why our world is a diverse place. However, it is hard for a marketer to target so many people with different points of views. According to Godin, “Worldviews are the reason that two intelligent people can look at the same data and walk away with completely different conclusions.” Marketers have found a way “around” worldviews that allow them to still market their products or services. Marketers tell stories. “Consumers are used to telling stories to themselves and telling stories to each other, and it’s just natural to buy stuff from someone who’s telling us a story. People can’t handle the truth.” Seth Godin was one hundred percent right when he wrote this in his book. People cannot handle the truth, and they will do anything to go around it. In order for a marketer to truly succeed, which doesn’t happen often according to Godin, there are five steps that they need to follow.
The first step in Godin’s “All Marketers Tell Stories” is “their worldview and frames got there before you did.” He explains that the world is full of all kinds of different people with different worldviews. If everyone was the same, marketing would be a piece of cake. However, that’s not the case. Marketers need to make their advertisements accustom to everyone and their different values, biases, and assumptions. Frames are also part of the big picture. They are elements of a story painted to leverage the worldview a consumer already has. If a marketer frames their story in terms of a person’s worldview, they will be heard and noticed.
The second step Godin points out is “people notice only the new and then make a guess”. He makes a great comparison to ideas and viruses. Viruses can spread through a community by jumping host to host. Scientists study how a host interacts with the virus. The same thing goes for an idea; ideas can spread through a community person to person. Instead of seeing how a host and virus interact, we try to understand how our brain responds to the ideas and inputs we encounter.
The third step is “first impressions start the story”. People make judgments within a fraction of a second. A marketer needs to grab the attention of their audience as soon as they start telling the story or else they will lose the persons attention. A marketer should always start with something exciting and interesting, not boring. First impressions are always key.
Godin’s fourth step in his book is “great marketers tell stories we believe.” First, you have to believe in your story, or else you will not come off believable. Sounding confident and knowing what you’re talking about will draw in a bigger audience. The story sells the product and pleases the customer.
Finally, the last step is “marketers with authenticity thrive.” Godin said, “If you commit to a story and live that story, the contradictions will disappear.” No one likes a phony person because then no one will take their time to listen to your advertisement, or even buy your product or service. When a marketer is authentic, it shows, and people will stop and listen. People like hearing stories when it involves a shortcut, money, safety, fun, and belonging. These are all factors of their worldviews, and Godin said persuading someone to switch their worldview is the same as making him admit he was wrong. People hate admitting that they are wrong, and therefore will not listen to your story.
In the end, it doesn’t matter whether something is actually better or more efficient, what matters is what the consumer believes. As a marketer, it would be impossible to be noticed without studying your audience’s various worldviews. Products and services have gotten more and more complex, so there is a lot of teaching for marketers to do. Seth Godin’s “All Marketers Tell Stories” is a step in the right direction when you want to succeed as a marketer.
Sources:
http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591841003/permissionmarket
http://digitalethos.org/a-day-at-google-new-york-opinion/
The content in this article is part of Digital Ethos’s Digital Media Education in the Higher Education Internship Program, the content was created by @KaylaMarzo, a Student at Suffolk County Community college, intern at Digital Ethos.
Real-Time Monitoring for Facebook Analytics
With new updates kicking off on Facebook left and right hopefully you haven’t missed the opportunity they have presented to take advantage of real-time monitoring of your webpage statistics and demographics. One of their newest tools is in fact, the Real-Time Monitor for Facebook analytics. Whereas before the updates seemed to arrive on an irregular basis, they have built new post level analytics that give user’s the answers they are looking for, updated, around every 5 minutes.
This has phenomenal impact for those who wanted to more closely monitor how specific posts fared, or even gauge how fans reacted to content, contest, questions and more social communication options in real-time and ask they occur. Although the new tool is currently in beta and free for Pro users, it is worth keeping an eye on for when it makes its to public release. Currently, the beta tool requires users to remain within that tool in order for them to collect the metrics and share the data in real-time, but they have plans to expand further on this functionality, hopefully with more flexibility, in the future.
What Can You Monitor with the Real-Time Tool?
You will be able to filter by a variety of metrics including, but not limited to:
- Unique Impressions
- Paid Impressions
- Total Impressions
- Organic Impressions
- Viral Impressions
- Total Engagement
- Shares, Likes, Comments, Clicks and Virality
Users will be able to monitor all of the active posts on the pages they administrate. The filter options are flexible and can be viewed as Change in Values or Total Values. This will offer marketers a unique perspective on how their content is trending in real-time.
Negative Feedback Posts
If you notice a trend that indicates an individual post is beginning to accrue more than average negative feedback, you may want to consider remove the post to help reduce damage to your average EdgeRank. This can also help your page to maintain the strongest possibility for a high-end EdgeRank.
“Virality”
Everyone knows that your content or media has a chance at going viral on a social media network. They are famous for this on a daily basis. You will now be able to view previously unseen real-time analysis of the viral lift to each piece of content you release. Users can then study how viral, organic, and paid impressions begin to interact with the content to create even further viral marketing opportunities.
Recent Posts
Users can monitor the individual performance and status of the most recent post by viewing impressions, clicks, engagement, and even negative feedback in real-time. Brand management can easily use this vital information to identify and cultivate the performance of each post to the fullest or manage damage control by pulling those negatives out quickly when needed.
Author:
@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.
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How to Budget for Marketing
Whatever it is, the budget you put in place for your marketing for the year ahead will shape the results you achieve. Now is the ideal time to define your marketing approach and the budget that will support it. In a recent Toluna survey of businesses, 40% of businesses surveyed stated that they did not feel that their marketing budget met all their marketing needs.
In tougher times, the marketing budget is often the first thing that is cut. Yet it is commonly known that companies which consistently market themselves in a recession perform better than those that don’t. So:
- How can companies budget better to create the results they want?
- What can companies do to budget effectively for the year ahead?
Fit your strategy around your target market
Strategy is everything in marketing. But a separate strategy for your marketing and your sales approach will not deliver the best Return On Investment (ROI). Now is the best time to review your marketing approach in 2011 and identify what worked – and what didn’t. Then, apply this important data to your overall sales and marketing strategy. Which markets are you trying to reach? Which audiences do you want to grow in the coming year? Match this with your marketing approach and plan your marketing spends in careful stages, so that each part of the plan flows from one stage to another. Use inbound marketing technology to track the behaviour of your target markets and ensure that you are using the most appropriate marketing channels to reach them. This will help you get more from your budget in 2012.
Track your ROI on marketing spend
Your marketing data from the past year will provide a valuable insight into what will work over the next 12 months. So carefully track the ROI you’ve gained this year and identify the activities that have created the best results.
Be ruthless in assessing what is paying you back and what is proving to be a drain on your resources
Would these areas work better with a different approach, perhaps using inbound marketing to accelerate results and make them more profitable? You can also use inbound marketing technology to closely assess and analyse the exact payback from each area of your marketing plan – and feed this knowledge into the year ahead. Put a plan in place for tracking your ROI. Inbound marketing allows you to do this continuously and consistently, letting you to adapt and refresh your marketing activities accordingly.
Create a cross-channel marketing budget
Are you currently using all the appropriate marketing channels? Did your approaches in 2011 feed across the different channels to maximise results – or did you only focus on a couple of areas?
Recent research suggests that companies using social media or “collaborative Web 2.0 technologies” are achieving higher profits. (Source: McKinsey)
Are you one of the companies missing out on a better marketing ROI by neglecting or misusing social media and other technologies?
By using inbound marketing you can connect up all your marketing channels much more effectively, making it easier to retain any potential customers – whatever stage of buying cycle they are at. You can create a cross-channel presence that reduces the cost of building a receptive and responsive brand profile. This approach also makes it much easier to budget for the year ahead. It gives you a core strategy which then feeds out across all the channels – bringing you a better ROI for 2012.
Adapt and update
While it is important to develop a clear strategy to get the best from your marketing budget, it is also important to continuously review and analyse your results. More conventional marketing approaches have traditionally made it quite hard to view the results as you go along. But new inbound marketing technology allows you to view the impact of every single aspect of your marketing approach – as it’s happening. Use this invaluable and on-going insight to adapt your strategy and ensure you make the most of your budget throughout 2012.
What is the secret to budgeting right for marketing in the year ahead?
Everybody wants to make their marketing budget work harder. So how can you ensure you do this in the months to come? Focus on your target market and what they’re doing. By using inbound marketing technology you can get closer to buyer behaviour and demand. You can use this insight to create more meaningful connections by building relationships across all the different marketing channels. This enables you to accelerate the relationships you build with your prospects. Instead of waiting for months to view the results, you can see who’s responding – and adapt your strategy to meet the demand there and then. This ensures that your marketing spend is continuously matched with where it is most effective and that it feeds right back into your company’s sales and marketing strategy. Create your strategy, use advanced inbound marketing approaches to maximise your marketing impact and assess its impact while it’s live. Keep it consistent and targeted and you can look forward to a better ROI on your marketing budget in 2012.
Author: Sookie Shuen is the community manager at Tomorrow People, a leading UK inbound marketing consultancy. You can read more of Sookie’s content on inbound marketing by subscribing to the Zoober Inbound Marketing blog here. You can also find her on Google+ and Twitter.
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BlogWorld and New Media Expo 2012 NY [Event]
The BlogWorld Social Media Conference and Expo returns to New York again this year from June 5th through 7th as a must-attend social media networking and educational event. They are expecting thousands of attendees from over 50 countries with more than 200 speakers for the event. With a great trade-show planned this may be the only industry-encompassing event that will help bring together those in the content creation and publishing businesses together.
BlogWorld Speakers
There will be many notable speakers attending the BlogWorld Social Media Conference and Expo in 2012.
Greg Cargill – VP of Client Services for Social & Media, Blitz
Greg’s professional career is focused on helping celebrities, brands, and products develop awareness through strategic and internet partnerships. Greg 
and his team at bigMethod have worked with some of the world’s largest brands such as City of Hope, Harley-Davidson, and Honda. They have successfully brought these organizations to the online social media marketing landscape. bigMethod was recently aquired by Blitz agency.
Greg will host a session called What Makes Big Brands Spend Money on Your Blog. He will share key points such as:
- What makes brands decide to spend money on a blog
- How much do they spend?
Linus Chou – Product Manager, Google
Product manager for Google Analytics, Linus Chou focuses on social attribution as well as real time analytics products. Before arriving at Google, he was 
an engineer for display advertising at Amazon.com.
Linus will host a session called Measuring Social Media Using Google Analytics. His key points will be.
- Always measure ROI
- Understanding how social channels are generating conversions for your business
- Learn the difference between upper and lower funnel social channels and what that can mean for your social media marketing campaigns.
Katie Richman – Director of Social Media Strategy , ESPN / espnW
Director of Social Media Strategy for ESPN Digital Media, Katie Richman is part of the startup team that is building ESPN’s women’s sports business. 
Katie began her career in 2001 with MTV Networks Brand Creative and moved onto Oxygen Media in their startup days as well.
Katie will be hosting a session titled Creation, Curation and Collection: Getting to know Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr with key points focused on providing a good understanding of tastes, metrics and segmentation options as well as information on cutting edge platforms.
Who Should Attend?
Anyone who publishes online can benefit from the knowledge shared at this event. Content creators, publishers, bloggers, podcasters, radio and WebTV broadcasters will benefit from new understanding on topics such as trending strategies, best practices, and trusted techniques to improve content creation and monetization.
Author:
@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.
Sources:
Optimizing Content Creation for Conversions
Content can mean everything to a small business that is based online. While having a high search ranking may bring in more traffic, it doesn’t always equal more sales. However, marketers who make a focused effort on creating only the highest quality content can not only improve their positions on search engine rankings, but also obtain more conversions than those who go with more mass produced, lesser quality content.
Putting Your Content to Work for You
Creating content isn’t just a simple matter of tossing up blog post about your products or services and hoping it promotes or sells itself. In a time where businesses of any size are swiftly becoming media outlets in their own right by publishing their own original insights related to their industries, companies should not ignore the opportunity to be a part of the conversation on their own with high-quality and original content marketing.
However, it is important to remember that just publishing high-quality content is still not enough. It is important to focus on how you can put that content to work to help you attain your personal business goals online, covering everything from attracting relevant site traffic to helping direct your visitors to your most valuable conversion or ecommerce pages. The right content marketing campaign will involve strategic planning and a constant and consistent execution if a business intends to increase online conversions. Optimizing your content
How to Accelerate Lead Quality and Conversion
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZzF4qzP7vo]
What is Content?
By now you likely know that content can be any number of things. Everything from eBooks, blog posts, webinars, podcasts, case studies and more can be very educational, relevant, high-quality content that brings audiences back to your site and with each return, closer to your valuable conversion pages or links. Make sure that your content supports your own business goals and the educational needs or wants of your target audience.
Content Marketing Strategies
There are a few optimal thoughts to keep in mind and keep your websites content focused on.
- Content should speak to the content audience
- Identify the goals you expect your content to achieve
- Create your audience profile
- Do your keyword research
As with any type of content, anytime, it is incredibly vital to have a content writer who can engage your readers effectively. We have covered some of the best ways to fit a content writer to your specific needs on DBMEi with several of our professional freelance authors and guest contributors content. Take the time to check them out.
- What a Successful Company Blog Says about Your Business
- Optimizing Your Landing Page for Better Conversions
- The Most Important Social Media Ingredient, Remarkable Content
- What the Wedding Industry Taught Me About Branding
Author:
@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.
Sources:
3 Tips to Synchronize Online and Traditional Marketing
As much as the online community loves to promote the effectiveness of a well-designed online strategy, it’s impossible to deny that
traditional media can be hugely effective. What get’s lost in much of the debate about online vs traditional marketing, though, is how
incredibly powerful they can be when used in tandem. Here are three ways to make it happen.
1. Play Ping Pong
In The Thank You Economy, Gary Vaynerchuk explains how playing a game of ping pong between social and traditional media can launch customer
engagement through the roof.
In the book, he argues that simply including the URL of a Facebook page at the end of a TV commercial doesn’t go nearly far enough. Instead, the commercial should include a genuine call to action that encourages viewers to find out what’s happening online.
Once the users visit the social media page, they should find not an advertisement, but a genuine community of like-minded people. All the energy and excitement surrounding the community can then be harnessed and channeled. It can be used to spark new ideas that can make their way back into traditional media.
When a meme makes the leap from an online community to traditional media, the people who were involved in the creation of that meme will feel vindicated. This further improves the engagement and keeps the community coming back for more.
In the book, Vaynerchuk applauded the success of an Old Spice campaign that, in many ways, accomplished just that. The character from the commercials was placed into the social media realm, where he interacted directly with the audience. Taking things a step further, he responded to requests from the audience by recording new videos that incorporated their ideas. This resulted in an incredibly successful campaign.
But Vaynerchuk also had some harsh words for Old Spice, because they failed to keep the game going. They eventually stopped engaging with
their audience, treating the social media phenomenon as though it were a TV advertising campaign that could just end without so much as a
farewell. He feels that the campaign should have been used to develop lifetime customer value that would have kept customers coming back for
more for the foreseeable future.
2. There’s More to Social Than Marketing
Chris Brogan is one of the most widely respected voices on social media marketing, so it’s no small thing when he says that social media is about more than marketing. One of the most important changes that social media has brought about is the ability of the customer to talk about you.
What does this have to do with incorporating traditional marketing? Consider the value of actually understanding your audience. In 1998, marketers were willing to pay between four and five thousand dollars to conduct a focus group consisting of less than ten people for two hours.If people were willing to spend this much for two hours with ten potential customers to figure out how they thought and what made them tick, imagine how much they would have paid to have access to a never-ending conversation with thousands of potential customers.
The amount of data available at your fingertips is staggering if you are just willing to listen. Insights gleamed from relationships that were founded by social media can be an incredible source of traditional marketing ideas. Taking the time to really understand your audience and how they think will dramatically improve the impact of your traditional marketing efforts.
Building relationships using social media can also help expand your influence. A phone call only takes place between two people, but social media allows you to have a conversation of comparable intimacy with hundreds or thousands of people at the same time. Do not underestimate the power of influential relationships. They have always been the backbone of a strong business, and the intensity of this has only been magnified by the power of the internet..
3. Reach Critical Mass
The most important thing that social media has to offer is right in the name: social. It’s about the conversation. It’s that conversation that keeps users coming back, gets the word out, and makes things happen.
A conversation, by definition, demands more than one person. Most people are hesitant to start or join a conversation unless one has already been started. As the old saying goes, nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.
This is where traditional media can be immensely powerful. By sending enough people your way, you can reach the critical mass necessary to get a conversation started. This can be accomplished without traditional marketing, but it’s often much easier to reach this point using something like traditional advertising.
Social and traditional media can amplify each other in ways that weren’t possible before. By keenly understanding the difference between the two media, it’s possible to reach a wide audience, listen to what they have to say, and appeal to them in new and powerful ways.
Author:
Kathy S. is a freelance writer and car insurance expert. She lives with her husband in Georgia where they enjoy weight training and comparing car insurance together.
Sources:
Digital Marketing: Why Your Businesses Phone Number is Crucial to Success (Part 1)
“Name, Address and Phone Number, oh if you have a website or social media page you can add that two, but we don’t care” the Internet!
Phone Numbers are Crucial to Success!!! They are more important than domains!
It used to be you used a fancy 800 number to look impressive or to develop branding, take 1-800-FLOWERS for example. 1-800 Flowers was a great branding campaign that generated massive brand recognition for a referral service.
Google really brought the attention back to local when it launched Google places. Google used both the local phone number and the address to enhance its search results to bring business back to local merchants and while it sent SEO professionals scrambling, local business owners were thirsty to learn more.
Why Phone Numbers are Crucial!
Take any listing service or data set and you’ll find three consistent elements to how it organizes its data, first is the name, second the phone number and third is the address. Website domains and social media are nowhere to be found now, nor will they in the future. In fact, when Patch Media launched its local directory for Merchants and Business Owners the AOL local sensation had one problem, no address no listing… Google places needed that three digit identifier to decide if the address matched phone number, and Yelp listed businesses by name, phone numbers and address.
Branding Trend: It’s All Local!
In a time when people are being frugal with their money, they’re a lot quicker to call a local number then an 800 number. The fact is people actually avoid 800 numbers because they prefer to have someone local and hesitate at the thought that the number will be routed to India. Local is the big Brand in the United States right now, take a look in both Traditional and Digital Media and you’re bound to see the word Local at just about every other turn.
Phone Numbers: How Do I Get Them, Use them, Keep them?
There are a few tricks that can help local business owners stretch their influence and presence. Take MagicJack, a nifty little device that sells for $20 and provides phone service for $20 a year! After Google Places launched black hat SEO professionals started buying these as fast as they could. You see they take the MajicJack, register the phone number and then connect a local name to the local number and give it a local address through something like a UPS Store.
i.e. The Actual business is a plumber in Parkland, Florida with a 954 area code number. The blackhat SEO Pro would buy (5) five MagicJacks with local phone numbers, then open a UPS Box in towns around Parkland that the plumber served. Five Splash Pages later, that plumber looked local in 
six locations but really only existed in one.
If you’re a digital or virtual business, then the issue is the same. The phone number is crucial to looking local and you may be in NYC, but with the right number you now appear to be in LA, Moscow, Paris, Chicago, Miami etc. If your using a service like Regus and their Virtual Office, you can set the Magic Jack or Vanity number to forward to that location until you have an office or employee to forward it to later.
Port a number! Always Port a number, I inherited a phone number 4 years ago and I still get calls for children’s clothing from some company that had it before I did. If I sold children’s clothes I be rolling in free leads.
KEEP YOUR NUMBER!!!! The Android and Mr. Number Effect
Want to know what’s really pissing off telemarketers and collection agencies?
Android and Mr. Number! Android phones from version 1.5 have had a feature that allows people to save a contact and set the contact to forward directly to voicemail. Mr. Number is an application on all devices that blocks suspected spam (set by community feedback), unknown numbers and numbers you blacklist! So before you give up your number and get a new one, better think twice. If you do get a new number check it against the Mr. Number database, if its listed as a spam, credit collection or telemarketer get rid of it!
(Part 2 – Using Phone Numbers to Track Marketing Success)
Sources:
Snaptag Versus QR Codes
QR codes have been a new and unique source of executing mobile marketing campaigns in recent times. Many seem to not only enjoy participating by using them, but have actually begun to look for offers from those with QR codes and may even have begun to ignore those that do not have them at all.
What is a QR Code?
QR is short for quick response and that is exactly the purpose of the QR code. These codes take an element of data from transitory media and sends it to your mobile device. The code will give you details about that business, item, or even discount information on products and services.
QR Codes are more useful than a standard barcode in that they can store a more data and a wider variety of it. QR codes commonly include URL links, text, coordinates and more.
How Does This Benefit Businesses?
Most marketers are well aware that mobile marketing is becoming increasingly more important, almost by the day. No method of advertising could be easier than one that consumers reach out for, instead of being asked to look. QR codes allows those consumers who prefer not to be barraged with overt marketing tactics to choose where they will show interest in a product or service.
There is really no limit to the options that can be embedded in a QR code.
- Running a restaurant? – Embed a great recipe, a buy a meal get one free discount, a special on this evenings dessert.
- Authors – Add a QR code to the back of your book that enables a consumer to get extra features or hidden endings to your script.
- Good health practices – Doctors, or other medically related practices can add good tips and tricks for healthy living to their QR codes, update them every month for innovative creativity in the medical field.
Vital Aesthetics Arrive to QR Coding
Traditionally, QR codes have retained a Rorschach look to them, leaving the responsibility on the advertiser to make sure consumers know whose QR code they are scanning. However, with Snaptags, QR codes and increasing brand awareness have meshed nicely. Snaptags have traded out that whole inkblot look for a code ring that serves the same functional purpose.
Who is Using Snaptags?
Because of the applied branding ability on Snaptags not previously available on QR’s, we can now see who is actively using them.
Picture c/o http://www.socialsnaptags.com/
Snaptags Cons?
Although Snaptags no doubt win out in the aesthetic element, there are other issues that can make Snaptags less beneficial than they appear. Many venture because of the supporting copy, Snaptags are not as easily accessible as QR codes. Snaptag stands by the fact that all advertisers would need to do is determine the required supporting copy, but this does lend itself to the inaccessible accusation.
Many current QR code advertisers agree that if a mobile marketing campaign is managed correctly, the aesthetic element of the Snaptags versus traditional QR’s is hardly advantageous.
Sources:
Customer Engagement for Small Business
Telling business owners that they need to have some plans for customer engagement is easy. However, once they have absorbed that tidbit of helpful information, many may be lost as to what customer engagement can actually entail. Most likely, there is nothing that you in particular are selling, that can’t be found somewhere else. So what can the small business owner do to show that their product is the right choice for the consumer?
Be a Customer for a Day
Spend a day emulating the actions that your prospective consumers do.
- Call your customer service number.
- Go through the motions of purchasing your own product.
- Fill out your contact forms.
Make sure that your customer experience matches your outlook and ideas.
Build Communication Options
Not everyone uses Facebook and Twitter believe it or not. Make sure you have traditional methods of communication as well as digital ones. List phone numbers and a physical address for your business, even if it is online based.
Exercise and Act on Your Listening Skills
It isn’t enough to reply to customers questions or request with generic terms. When prospective consumers ask for discounts or other beneficial options, show them you are listening by enacting them. You will get no better word of mouth advertising then having a consumer who can say “I asked for a discount, and they gave me one!” This doesn’t mean you have to offer that discount to everyone who asks, but you should never outright ignore those request.
Show Your Integrity
Since bad news can travel with light speed on the internet, you may need to go out of your way to show your customers that not only are you expert at what you do, but that you back that professionalism with personal integrity. Show your customers that the people behind the brand care.
Let Your Customers Advertise for You
Anything that you can do to get your consumers to share their product or service experiences with the public will provide you with two benefits. Obviously it will give you the valuable advertising you are seeking, but it will also provide you with media that you can post to help build top-notch links for your site. Don’t expect your customers to do this for no reward though. Their time is valuable too. Try to run contest for the best written or video reviews of your project. Reward the winners appropriately for their time spent talking about your products and services.
Above all it is important that any consumers approaching you for your products or services walk away with the sense that you are a brand they can trust and rely on.
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