Vision Blog

In the News: On July 11, 2006 Professional Carwashing and Detailing e-news featured Ron Beverly’s interview with the Advertising Specialty Institute. The topic was on how carwashes could cross-promote with restaurants, car dealerships, quick lubes and non profit organizations.

In the News: In July 2003 QSR Magazine Interviewed Ron Beverly, CEO of Vision Marketing, Inc. on Cashless Payments.

We are in the midst of a revolution. The way the world thinks and communicates has been rocked by the integration of the Internet into our day-to-day lives. In recent years, this revolution has progressed even further with what is known as the Web 2.0 movement. Whereas just a few years ago the Internet was a one-way communication system, it is now largely fueled by interaction between people all over the world through social media. Because of this, online marketing is no longer limited to annoying pop-up ads and flashing cartoon banners on websites. Social media makes it possible to find the people who are interested in your message and share it with them in a way that is personal and comfortable. The question is how. Different social media sites reach different people different ways, which makes the challenge determining where your target audience goes and what they want to see and read. The following is an introduction to a few of the key players in the world of social media, and how to use them to reach the audiences you are looking for.

Facebook

At the moment, Facebook.com is the mother of all social media. Founded in 2004, Facebook now boasts over 300 million users, 50% of which check their account everyday. Facebook is a social networking site that essentially allows the user to create a personal profile, add other people as friends, communicate with those people, and share photos, videos, notes, their status, events, and other information. Originally, the site was exclusively for college students, but now it is open to everyone.

How do I use it for marketing?

Facebook makes it easy for a business or organization to create a page (different from a personal profile) which individual users can become a “fan” of. Using a page, you can send updates to your fans, post pictures and videos, allow fans to post pictures and videos, share links, start discussions, and much more. A good example is Starbucks’s Facebook page, which has almost 4 million fans. This is a great way to share with people who are interested in what you do as well as create a more personal feel for your business.

Facebook also offers a revolutionary system of advertising on their site. Based on information individual users enter on their personal profile, the site allows you to target people based on variables such as location, gender, relationship status, interests, etc. For example, a bridal boutique can limit their advertising on the site to engaged females who live in the city, or even go to the local university. Also a concert promoter could advertise only to local college students who like a particular band. This unique system of segmentation makes Facebook’s advertising extremely effective.

Myspace

Myspace, which once was the leader in social networking, has lost some ground to Facebook, but is still very popular with about 125 million users. More and more, Myspace’s user base is shifting toward teenagers and bands. Similar to Facebook, Myspace users create a personal profile from which they can share information, photos, videos, and connect with friends. It is still the leader in social networking for bands because of the way it allows them to post music and concert dates to their profile.

How do I use it for marketing?

Myspace is much more limited as far as advertising opportunities than Facebook. Ad placement is mostly limited to banner ads on the top of the site. For a business looking to reach a younger segment or connect with music groups, creating a profile can be a valuable option, but overall, the trend is definitely toward Facebook in the social networking world.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn.com is a social networking site similar to Facebook or Myspace, which is stripped down to the bare bones for the sole purpose of professional networking. It has a network of around 45 million professionals and lets users make “connections” with other people in the business world. Because of this, marketing opportunities are limited mostly to business-to-business connections on a personal level.

Twitter

At its core, Twitter is a short-messaging or microblogging service. Twitter users utilize the site, a computer application, or mobile device (i.e. a text message from a cell phone) to post a tweet, which is a 140 character-long message about anything they want. Various other companies and sites have developed services that allow you to include pictures or even a map link of your GPS location (if you “tweet” from a device with GPS like an iPhone) in the tweets you post. While Twitter is relatively new and has fewer users than some other sites, Compete.com ranks it as the third most-visited social networking site. It sees much of its traffic from adults, and companies. Twitter users can follow the updates of anyone they choose from their friends, to celebrities, to businesses, to news headlines.

How do I use it for marketing?

In terms of business, Twitter describes itself as a communication platform that helps businesses stay connected to their customers. Also, one of the more unique aspects of Twitter is that there are no advertisements on the site except for any that a user chooses to follow in text form. The combination of these aspects of the site makes it one of the most unique and valuable tools in social media marketing and customer relationship management with two different applications. First, Twitter can become one of the key voices of your company to your customers. Updates, promotions, and other messages can be instantly broadcast to customers who actually want to hear them. It is a great way to make a business feel more personal to the consumer. Second, by searching for a brand or business name as a topic, the company is able to see what people are saying about them. In the same way, the company can follow its customers’ tweets to hear what they are saying about their experiences. A customer might never send a letter or fill out a comment card, but they are very likely to post a tweet about something that catches their attention during their experience with your business. It is like eavesdropping on your customers, except they want you to hear and they make it convenient.

YouTube and Vimeo

YouTube and Vimeo are both video-sharing sites. Posting videos online helps your business in two main ways. First, video content makes your message both interesting and tangible to a person in search of information. Most people, given the choice, would much rather watch a video instead of reading a page of text. Second, posting videos on sites like these helps with search engine optimization. By having an account on sites like these that links to you, and even going the next step and embedding the videos on your site using the easy HTML codes they give you, search engines are much more likely to view your site as interesting and rank you higher.

Now the question is which site to use. It basically comes down to quality vs. traffic. Vimeo is a less-used site, but plays videos in higher quality online. If your target audience leans toward the artsy side, or you are mainly concerned with embedding videos at the highest quality, this is the site for you. YouTube on the other hand has many more users, but does not offer the same picture quality that Vimeo does. It also is has much more clutter which includes videos of mature content (which Vimeo does not allow).

An effective social media presence is becoming a must-have to today’s society. From a customer management standpoint, social media make your business personal and accessible. It also lends credibility to your organization when a customer sees you as active and engaged with the customer base. In addition, a purposefully constructed web of social media presence makes your business a dominant force in the eyes of search engines. Customers will be able to get to know your business on a more personal level through whichever media they are most comfortable with, and you will reap the benefits of establishing an online fan base.

Picture yourself on a boat, in the middle of the ocean, with nothing to be seen for miles around except water and a few seagulls. Your goal is to catch a leopard shark. So you spend your day on the boat dropping little pieces of stale bread into the water as you drift aimlessly through the sea. How long before the leopard shark jumps into the boat? It probably will never happen. While this scenario may sound ridiculous, it parallels the way many individuals and businesses go about marketing, usually without realizing it. Examining the five W’s (who, what, when, where, and why) can lead to marketing campaigns that are not only strategic and targeted, but also cost and time saving as well as effective! This is why by taking a lesson from the journalist’s school of thought, your business can reel in the shark instead of more seaweed and the occasional soggy tire.

1. Who?

It sounds simple enough, right? In reality, this can be a very complex question that requires much consideration and research. Different types of people respond to different types of advertising and not all potential customers or clients are created equal in terms of value to your business. It is vital to the success of your campaign to identify the types of people who are most likely to bring the greatest return on what you put into your marketing efforts. Consider demographics (their physical characteristics), psychographics (how they think), and their habits. So back to the original illustration, we have narrowed our target from all the fish in the sea down to sharks (we wouldn’t want to leave out all the leopard shark’s friends).

2. What?

When we want a friend or colleague to do a favor for us, often times simply a few kind words or a rational appeal will do the trick. On the other hand, have you ever tried using a rational appeal with a few pleasantries to get your dog, Rover, to sit or drop your new shoe that he is chewing on? In the same way, offering your colleague a dog biscuit will likely not get you very far. All that to say, the message or incentive is ineffective if it does not reflect the desired audience, a.k.a. the “who.” Consider doing the homework and conducting the research to find out what your target market will respond to. Web sites such as Survey Monkey and Zoomerang make it easy to create online surveys that can help you discover what your target responds to. Perhaps even use these surveys in conjunction with social networking sites to get them to the right people’s computers. We just discovered that the leopard shark we are fishing for prefers small fish to the stale bread we were using as bait before.

3. When?

Let’s talk about Dependent Dan for a minute. Dan is a typical college student who works all summer, but when his summer earnings are all spent, he once again becomes dependent on the funds he can convince his parents to send him. If you are the local restaurant in Dan’s college town, “when” becomes a critical question. A marketing campaign in April or May will not reach him because all his funds are gone, whereas a coupon in September might keep Dan coming back for quite some time. Spending habits are not constant throughout the year for most people. Think about when people are most likely to take full advantage of what you have to offer (maybe tax return season, for example). So apparently sharks like to feed at dusk or dawn. That could have saved us from the sunburn we got sitting on that boat all day.

4. Where?

It’s time to become a stalker (well, not really, but maybe a little bit). We now know who our target is, what they will respond to, when they will respond to it, but where should we cast our line? It’s time to think about where our audience spends their time. It has been said that birds of a feather flock together. The same is likely true of your target market. People within the same psychographic (like-minded thinkers) and those with similar habits are likely to also show up at or near the same places. Say you want to run a promotion at your health food store targeting healthy people. Healthy people tend to do healthy things. Instead of finding the cheapest billboards in town that not even birds will pass by, consider investing in that slightly more expensive billboard right next to the gym. Looks like we need to get our boat to the west coast and closer to the shore if we are going to catch that leopard shark.

5. Why?

It’s all about you! Doesn’t hearing that make you feel good? It’s true when it comes to your marketing campaigns and promotions. If you are focused and purposeful about the results you are looking for, your goals become infinitely more attainable. Too often people and businesses want to advertise just because everyone else seems to be doing it. So they end up posting ads wherever they conveniently can. Marketing with weak purpose is likely to return weak results. Do you want new customers or do you want to reinforce your current clientele? It’s all about asking the right questions of yourself or your team to develop purpose. Backing up your promotional efforts with purpose, direction, and creativity targeted at your desired audience makes an ad an effective and efficient tool for your business rather than just another piece of junk mail or clutter on the side of the highway. Why do we want to catch the leopard shark? To see how beautiful it is and take some pictures for the folks back home (and then release it back into the wild, of course).

The journalist who wrote that story on the front page of the newspaper you were reading this morning during breakfast knows how to get your attention and package the information you are interested in. While the five W’s are a standard in journalism, they are too often overlooked when it comes to marketing. The same elements that make a news article interesting and informative can also make or break the way you promote your business. Purpose and direction are two of the elements that help get a business off the ground. In the same way, they can also make a campaign or promotion successful. By integrating the questions of who, what, when, where, and why into the way you market yourself or your business, the promotional efforts you invest in become tools that grow your business and help you to reel in that shark instead of the typical seaweed.

Everyone knows that link building is important for organic ranking in the search engines. As Social Media has evolved rapidly over the last two years, I’m now asking myself, ‘Can Social Media be leveraged to increase my website’s authority’ Three questions…
6 Steps For Link Building And Driving Traffic With Social Media – http://www.interleado.com/blog

The following is a link to a video that highlights some very fun college promotions that help businesses keep their name and number in front of this powerful marketing demographic. We have sold many a customized memo boards to schools as one of the first items students buy is a memo board to write notes to each other as well as reminders, etc. Check out the video at this link.