Going Local: Have to Tap into Your Own Backyard and Find Local Clients

With all the talk about how BIG internet marketing and social media is for a business, we often forget that our own backyard contains plenty of hungry prospects looking for what you have to offer. The problem people come across though is where to find these people, and what backyard are they hanging out in – well if you know your market and have a good idea of who your “soul client” is the search shouldn’t be too hard.

First of all – to find local: network. Networking is an easy way to find prospects in your area. But choose wisely, you don’t want to end up at the Farmers Networking Meeting if you farmers are not your market. Find networking groups that attract your ideal client and go there. But remember, networking isn’t about selling your services it’s about building relationships.

Speak Locally. Speaking is another great way to reach the locals, if you can speak at the functions, associations, and meetings they attend or belong to you’ve just earned yourself a star position from being in front of the room. Speaking gives you instant credibility and is a sure-fire way of bringing in more clients.

Social Networking – Strategically! If local people are your buzz, be sure to use keywords that include your city and surrounding areas. Just because social networking is global, it doesn’t mean you have to be.

Partner up with key players. The fact is there are quite a few key players in every city, start hanging out where they do, initiate a conversation or a coffee meeting and see if there is a way to partner up and share in your resources. Key players are generally givers and have built a reputation on introducing others, connecting people, and growing their network. You never know, you could be offering the exact service they’ve been looking for.

These are just a few ways that you can grow your business locally, these also apply to national marketing strategies as well – but use them in ways that work best for you and your business.

Let me know what other ways you’ve found to strategically grow your local following.

[Via http://andreacostantine.wordpress.com]

5 Fantastic Facebook Fan Page Ideas to Learn From

So your business is on Facebook, and brand engagement is up thanks to some savvy social media strategy. You may even be interested in further distinguishing your brand by building a custom landing page for your account.

But what kind of value does a custom Facebook Fan Page offer? What are your fans looking for on a social network that they can’t get from your business website? For some insight, let’s check out how some big-name brands have stepped up their engagement by investing a little more TLC into their Facebook presence.

via 5 Fantastic Facebook Fan Page Ideas to Learn From.

[Via http://aaearhart.wordpress.com]

What to be excited about in Fedora 13

EVERYTHING!

No, the Marketing Team busted their butts [I actually was slacking off and don't think I contributed as much as I could have some I'm going to leave myself out of the celebration, there is still much work to do that I can take more credit for than I deserve ] and they have come up with a list of the coolest features that you can expect in Fedora 13 codenamed “Goddard” after “Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945), U.S. professor of physics and scientist, was a pioneer of controlled, liquid-fueled rocketry. On March 16, 1926, he became the first person in the world to build and launch a liquid-fueled rocket” -wikipedia.

If you can’t tell from the artwork and the codename we are going for a rocket/space theme.

Here are the features broken down into groups based on who will be happiest to see it.

User: auto-print-drivers, langpacks, user management, color management,

network manager improvements, nouveau.

Dev: systemtap, python debugging, python3, netbeans

Sysadmin: authconfig ui, nfs, zarafa,

bfo, btrfs

Spins: moblin, soas, design, security

Here is the full list of features and how far along we think we are on them. It’s also a good place to do some reading up if you are wondering what all that mess above means.

[Via http://numberedhumanindustries.wordpress.com]

I'm Lovin It! McDonalds Dominates Olympic Marketing Scene

McDonald’s is the top sponsor for this year’s winter Games in Vancouver. Sportsfeatures.com describes how they have branded themselves as the Official Restaurant of the Olympic Games while opening three restaurant areas in the Olympic Villages in Vancouver and Whistler and the main press center in Vancouver.

Much of the advertising is athlete-themed while embracing a “Share the Gold” slogan with Chicken McNugget promotions.  Along with the golden Chicken McNuggets, stores here in the U.S. are offering a new limited time sauce.

McDonald’s is using three new advertising campaigns specifically targeting the Olympic season.  New items that have been added to the menu are the S’mores Pie and the Crème Brulee, and Crunch McFlurry.  To further support the Olympic themes, Happy Meals will include interactive toys of the 2010 Winter Games mascots.

Outside of the Olympic themed advertising, McDonald’s is also continuing their Champion kids program which began at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Summer Games.  This program offers children ages 6-14 from all around the world the opportunity to personally experience the Games first-hand.  A panel of ten ambassadors at the Vancouver Games along with Olympic athletes judge essay entries to award the winners.

As the Official Restaurant of the Olympic Games, McDonald’s focuses their advertising on supporting the Games and branding themselves through new winter themed menu items.  Their Champion kids program embraces the Olympic spirit while reaching out to involve young kids all around the world.

[Via http://imcclass.wordpress.com]

How much marketing is too much? When do you become annoying?

Well, that depends and there’s a few things you should consider. Statistics show that people need to hear a message anywhere from 9 to 29 times before they actually make a decision and decide to move forward. So, when marketing a particular product, service, or program has your target market seen your message that many times? Generally they don’t.

Ironically, since we are doing the marketing we feel that we are being annoying and sharing it too much, sending out too many emails, and overdoing it but in all honesty we are all busy with our lives and we don’t actually see or hear every message that comes across. Think about this, do you read every email in every detail that you get? Probably not.

I’ve had good friends who were marketing a product or program and I didn’t even know, I somehow missed their messages, invites, and updates about it. Why? Because I’m not always looking and something really has to grab my attention before I pay attention, plus, we are busy we may actually see it but within a matter of seconds we forget. This isn’t intentional or saying what you are offering isn’t important, it’s more that we just have too many things going on in that brain of ours.

There is a point when it’s too much, usually it’s too much from someone who you’d probably never do business with or don’t need what they offer. But when someone we really like and has a service that we are interested in, it’s generally not annoying. I find that when people get annoyed they probably never would have done business with you anyway.

More often than not people are marketing too little and not too much. I rarely find that someone is overdoing it in their marketing, trust me I could probably tell you to double what you are doing and you still wouldn’t be annoying to your loyal and true fans that are just waiting for you to offer something juicy and delicious so they can sign up for it, but then again you’ve got to get it in front of their radar.

[Via http://andreacostantine.wordpress.com]

Avoid These Common Marketing Pitfalls When Using Twitter

Twitter has become an increasingly popular aspect of many online advertisers’ strategies; it not only provides a venue to assemble a log of devoted followers, but it also simplifies ongoing communication with them. This is effective in and of itself at driving traffic and improving sales. But unfortunately, if you don’t know what you are doing, you can not only waste time but also negatively impact your reputation. And so there are specific mistakes to avoid if you want to succeed.

The first and foremost mistake people make when marketing on Twitter is to, well, start with marketing. It might not seem such a bad idea to start off with marketing goals, but if you want to achieve results, be aware that it isn’t a good beginning. However, by developing confidence and reinforcing your connections in the beginning, you will create a loyal stream of followers. You should first get the consent of your intended audience before you attempt to sell them something later. How should you get such consent? By first becoming involved and neighborly to them on Twitter. In being active in the forum, you will have the opportunity to forge powerful bonds with people, so that after you have gained your audience’s trust, you will be able to utilize Twitter in generating additional visits on your website, creating a database, and gathering more specific sales. But your everyday activity on Twitter should be informal and friendly. Do not be too mercenary and focused on business in your tweets, and don’t turn them into uninteresting advertisements. Marketing is serious business to you, but add some spice and humor to your tweets for the sake of your readers. Illustrate your expressive side through your tweets. If you can manage to do this, you will be helping people in a fun way and they will trust you better. Be engaging and easy to deal with, that’s the secret to winning their hearts.

Twitter’s a two-way street, though. If you want the community to pay attention to you, you have to pay attention to the community. It’s only fair, after all. You should not anticipate receiving, if you do not contribute. But the good thing is, this mistake can be easily avoided. Due to the community spirit of Twitter, your participation means following others who are in your niche a well as responding personally to any and all tweets sent to you. If you only tweet “one way” and don’t respond to the tweets that others send out, you can figure that your efforts are going to see very little return. Twitter’s simple to understand. It’s a social network. Therefore you need to build a network to socialize with -to sell your products to. That means you need to fit in, make some friends, help out your community. Don’t just talk to an empty room; draw them to your words of wisdom. Then give a name to that perfect hair product from that fabulous styling tip you sent the other day. It cannot be emphasized enough. Twitter’s a community. Throw off the suit and sit down to dinner. Be a friend, and watch Twitter work for you.

[Via http://twittermarketingpower.wordpress.com]

Living the LUSH life...

So, this week things started getting back to normal, after the great, but slightly disruptive weeks of the leadership module! It felt great to be back with Corrine, with our teams, and thinking about Temptation once again. As I said last week, we have definitely been stuck in a rut, and it feels wonderful to be getting back on track!

We began the day with some general feedback on the business plans, and started to fill in the NESTA worksheets which Corrine had provided for us. While discussing branding, brand image, our favourite brands etc, I thought back to the time I worked at LUSH (natural cosmetics company). I LOVED working there, and people often said that my enthusiasm for the products and the brand ethics were infectious. We all felt the same; we started to dress the same, act the same, speak the same and smell the same (if you’ve never been into LUSH, this may sound  bit weird, but trust me, it’s a good thing!) You can tell which brands and businesses treat their staff well… my three favourite brands… like LUSH, Apple or Benefit: everyone is always smiling, in a genuine, friendly, rather than an ‘I’m going to stab you if you don’t buy this bath bomb’ way. People who love their job make it easier to sell their product, their service, the lifestyle on offer, to anyone.

But most importantly, LUSH got the best results from their staff because they enjoy their job. I enjoyed working there so much that I didn’t mind dressing like an Easter bunny and looking like a complete loser for a week.

But, back to business. Catherine also gave us a talk on the basics of marketing, alot of which I had covered previously on marketing modules during my BA. But it was fantastic to start thinking of how models such at the 7Ps apply to our business…

After a team meeting over lunch, and filling in the NESTA worksheets Corrine had given us, it was time to face the music – our marks for our business plan and feasibility report. I can honestly say that I am so proud of the team for the marks we achieved, to get distinction level for both pieces was fab… now let’s keep this up! It was cool to get the chance to pitch our idea to Catherine, and to chat things through with Corrine, as a group.

And so to group work…. after Corrine’s web design class, I have been focusing on making the website more user friendly. I decided that the nav bar was too cluttered, and decided to divide topics and headers up into folders, to make things look a bit more organised. I changed the layout, so that all articles are accessible through a menu on a single page…

I also got started on the ‘persona’ sections of the website… the idea being that each viewer takes a quiz to find out which of our three personas, Bing, Megs or Jonny they have most in common with. They are then directed to a specially designed page, full of content to fill their needs…

This week, we are meeting as a team, having prepared a list of issues with the business which we may want to address, things we want to achieve, and how we are going to do this. I think this will be a great way to continue our newly-found momentum, so that we can continue to get the results, and the satisfaction which we deserve.

[Via http://iamthroughthelookingglass.wordpress.com]