This week, while driving back from a social media conference I heard a radio ad from a furniture store offering a free tablet with a purchase of $999. It got me thinking back to the days when banks gave away toasters. Or to the current tchotchke giveaways that come in conference bags and in exhibit booths. While I wouldn’t mind a new tablet, or a new pen, or a light-up toy car, it’d make more sense if these giveaways were better tied to the value/message/benefits of the brand.Sure, an iPad giveaway might bring you traffic, it might get you RTs or tweets, or Facebook postings, it might get foot traffic to your booth or store, but what is the message you share and what is the longer term value?

Can you see the thought cloud: “Every time they use the tablet/pen/toy, they’ll think of us and that good feeling will transfer back to the brand and increase our sales.” If it sounds ridiculous, it is.

If you’re going to have an incentive item, a giveaway, find a way to make it meaningful, memorable, and valuable.  Here’s a short list of ideas:

• For a smartphone or tablet, preload your company’s app onto the tablet or load a welcome screen (can’t do that without corrupting the packaging, capture the email address and send an immediate email after winning and send them a value-add for the device).
• For gift cards, either ask if they have a way to personalize the card, or add a company sticker but don’t stop there (there’s no value here yet). If it’s a coffee gift card, invite them to join you for an informal meeting. If it’s an iTunes card, send them your company’s playlist or the podcasts that you find valuable. If it’s an Amazon gift card, include a recommended reading list of books that you’ve found most valuable to your business.
• Guess what? Your cheap booth giveaways, don’t have to be meaningless.  Tie in a benefit of your product to the giveaway. For example, consider giving away a portion of the product, a small sample of what you sell. Imagine if Mercedes-Benz giveaways were a sample of the leather used in their cars that was a car key holder. Every time you put your current car keys away, every time you felt that leather, you’d be reminded of the aspiration to own a Mercedes.

I still can’t figure how banks ever tied value to toasters, and I can’t think of how I’ll feel like I got more value/quality after spending a grand at a furniture store by walking out with a new tablet in my hands.

What do you think of incentive items?

iPad 2 A Worthy Giveaway?

One of the more raging debates and discourse you’ll hear in marketing and business circles is the value, the return on investment of social media. While there is no doubt that social media is a trend, but rather a distinct movement towards active consumerism, measuring the value to a company’s bottom line is much more complex. This week, the good folks over at MDG Advertising created a compelling and easy data visualization focused on the ROI of social media.

Infographic by MDG Advertising

This month, you’ve made it far. If you’ve followed our 5-step series, you’ve already: defined your value, defined your audiences, created key messages and created a basic action plan. You’ve got one more step, so read on.

This last step is surely forgotten, after all you’re tired, busy and behind on lots of other things on your to-do list. But here’s the reason you WANT this step. If you don’t measure, you never really know how well or how poorly something is working.

In marketing, you want some form of measurement for every action you take. For example, did the radio ad at 10am work better or was the drive-time 5:30pm ad sending you more calls. Did you notice a rise in web traffic after you sent that email? Are you getting a better open rate of emails when you send on Tuesdays or Fridays? Now there are whole books and plenty of resources on how to measure. But guess what – you can measure it. Anyone can install Google Analytics on their website, it’s a free tool and does a very good job of telling you about web traffic (if that’s important to you). Even if you’re simply tracking one thing, measure it to your bottom line.

 And to quote someone smarter than me, “If it’s not working, fail fast, learn the lesson, and move on.”  I’ll add, and if it’s working keep at it.

As a final thought from this series: when in doubt repeat this slowly: focus on the why, what and who, before you ever get to the how.

Guess what? You know more than you think, it’s just that there is so much you can do, it may seem overwhelming. So let’s start with a few basic questions and get you to an action plan you can use.

First up, timing. Is your business seasonal or cyclical? If so, ramp up marketing efforts when it makes sense. No one advertises Christmas in March for a reason. But think of timing, when does it make the most sense to try to reach your customers.  Here’s a good example of how not to plan timing – think of your college reaching out for a few dollars from you as an alum – now, you like them, you want to give, you know the value. But they call on a Sunday night at 6:30pm… wrong time and they lose you.  Think about timing.

Next up, direct or indirect. Now you have two main options when taking action, you can reach people directly or indirectly. Think of it this way, do you want to ask them directly for their business or are they unavailable for direct access?  If it’s a more direct approach, what does your target audience respond best to and when? What are 3 tactics you think can directly reach your audience and influence their purchase or sale?  Is it radio ads? Twitter? Facebook? An online ad? An event sponsorship? A tradeshow? Email marketing? Of the 3 tactics you selected are you able to implement them well? If you can only send one tweet, don’t expect a run at your store. If you want radio but can’t afford to create a radio ad, well then you’ll need to find another tactic.  But what if your customer isn’t available directly to you? Or what if you want to surround your customer with your brand?  Indirect actions allow you to reach influencers that can help persuade your customers to take action. A good analogy? Direct is like you telling someone how great you are and asking them on a date. Indirect is getting all your friends to talk to them about how great you are and then they want you to ask for a date.

No matter what action you take, it’s called your “marketing mix” which is just our industry speak for the different ways you market to your target audiences.

To help you with this step, grab a piece of paper and a pen, you know old-school style. Now make divide it in thirds and write 30-days, 60-days, 90-days in each section. Now list what you CAN do realistically in the next 90 days.

This week, we’re on step three of modern marketing. It’s our short series on the basics of marketing that can help any business or brand assure they’re on track instead of following shiny new objects in the marketing world.  This week?  We’re on to defining key messages, the very core things you want people to know about you, your product or your service.

Your goal here is message transference: what would you want a happy customer to say when people say, well, “who/what’s that?” Now a lot of folks fail at this point because they A) want to convey too much b) use technical language or jargon and 3) they write them as long as the Gettysburg Address. So think of it this way, if one of your customers shared what you do and what the value is, how might they say it?  Or what would you put on the back of your business card? Think short sentences that convey a single point. E.g Let There Be Light, Just Do It, Quality is Job 1.  Now these aren’t all supposed to be taglines, but many of them could be.  But for you, focus on simple, short and action-verb centered on benefits. 

And here’s why simple matters, the goal is message transference. You want your customers to start to use the messages you develop to talk about your business.  And if you can’t remember them, all bets are on that your audience won’t either.

This week, we’re offering the second step out of five steps to modern marketing.  Last week we covered defining your value, and this week, we’re moving on to defining your audience.

Hint: it’s not everybody.

Even if everybody would buy it, you can’t market to everyone. Trust me, you don’t have a budget big enough and there is no way to be effective at marketing to every single person on the planet. Or even every person in your community.

So start by asking who would be your best customers, the first people in the door. Or if you’ve already started, ask who your happiest customers are. You know more than you think – list out their age, education, geographic location, do they have kids, drive a car or take public transport, do most of them own houses, do most live within a radius of your store, or do most of your customers come from one industry.  List out as many common characteristics as you can. If you want to reinforce this, send out a survey to your happiest or most frequent customers.

Now you may get different groups, different audiences, what then?  Rank them by primary and secondary audiences.  Your primary audience is the group who are most likely to buy or the most likely to create a long-term relationship with you. The secondary audience will still buy your product or service, they’re just a smaller group or need more efforts to make a purchase.  Remember, you have to rank your resources to ensure you get the most for your marketing dollars – spend wisely with the audience most likely to buy.

After you get your audiences more clearly defined, take time now to create a customer map on paper – answer where does this group mainly work, play, pray, shop, socialize, and surf online? (Not sure, send a survey to your customers and ask). You’ll need this info for step 4, but it’s a good idea to map it out while you’re thinking of your customers now.

Here’s the deal: you want results for both your brand and your bottom line, but you’re stuck with where to get started. Since I work with a lot of emerging companies or new brand efforts, I get this question a lot. How do we get started?  This month, we’re going to bring you 5 easy steps to the basics of modern marketing. Each step is designed to help you bring focus, clarity, direction and action to your marketing efforts.

And while we’re in the modern world and things move at the speed of lightening, be sure to work each step. If you skip one, we’ll let’s just say we’ll be bringing our wellies and helping you get unstuck.

Let’s get started.

Define your value

Seems simple right, but few companies every get to what the value is for their product or service. Start by defining what you do and focus on benefits to your customers. Keep it positive, non-technical and most importantly, convey one single thought. Next, ask how are you unique, what distinguishes you from another company? Answer the “why” – why would people buy your product or service and answer the “what” – what do I get for my money.

If you’re not sure about this, ask your customers – what do they get from your products or services? Sometimes we find our best answers by listening to our customers.

Every company has a visual story to tell. Every. Single. One. And this year, we want you to start thinking of how to share your company, your talent, your product, your services through video.  We’re not talking ads (honestly who watches anything for the ads, except for the Super Bowl) we’re talking about you creating a compelling visual snapshot that share something different with your customers or clients.  Why? Two great reasons: 1) YouTube is the second largest destination for search on the whole web; and 2) according to Forrester Research, video indexes at a rate 50 times higher than text. 

First, grab a smart phone with a video feature or grab a Flip camera for about $120.  And since this whole series is about easy ways to get started, you’ll be happy to know that Flip cameras don’t require software or video training/editing skills. It’s all right there in the camera with it’s own easy steps. Videos for the web don’t need to be broadcast quality, they only need to be good for your web-based audience. Most videos that do well are short, say less than 2 minutes, so keep it in mind when creating your video. (By all means, if you have the cash, make it Oscar-worthy!)

Now, let’s get you started on YouTube in 5 easy steps approach:

1. Go to www.youtube.com and create an account

2. Click on the yellow “Upload” button on the right hand side, select video file.

3. On the new screen, press the button to “Upload Video File”

     a. Locate the file on your hard drive and select

     b. Now YouTube will start the upload

     c. Video cannot be longer than 10 minutes

4. While video is uploading, scroll down to add the

     a. Title – Use keywords that matter, think of how you’d search

     b. Description – Use keywords but be clear about what people will see

     c. Tags – Enter a listing of keywords related to the vide

     d. Category – Select the category which most closely matches your video

     e. Privacy – you’ll want to select Public for most videos

5. Now click on “Save Changes”

     a. You’ll see a message on the new screen that reads, “Success…”

     b. After the video is done loading, you’ll see a “Live” message and your video is now posted.

What makes great video? Share your expertise, answer a question, show a customer event, demonstrate a product, showcase your new offices and more. It’s about showing your customers something more than what they’d get from reading text. For example, if you’re a tire shop, share a short video on how to check the pressure in your tires. It’s a lot easier to see how to do it than how to read it in the car manual.

There is heaps more to spreading your videos around, but for now, create the visual and get started. Send us a link!

(Oh and the irony, we should have made this post a video. So noted.)

It’s already mid-January and on your to-do list was to get started with Twitter. It’s not too late – that’s the nice thing with social media – it’s rarely, if ever to late.  Twitter is a short-messaging platform with great reach to audiences, in fact, according to the research more than 51% of Twitter users will follow a brand or company. Twitter works on multiple levels and has far-reaching benefits. But let’s save the sales pitch and just help you get started. Here’s your step-by-step approach to setting up and to starting to tweet:

1. Go to www.twitter.com

2. Register as a new user

     a. You’ll need a Twitter user name (and yes you can change it later) so keep it simple and avoid punctuation or complicated spellings if possible

     b. You need a 100×10 image (also called an avatar)

     c. You need a bio – 140 characters; key words matter (searchability), if as you’re representing your company, state it (transparency) and finally, caution: this is public

NOTE ON MOBILE:  You can check Twitter and send Tweets from your mobile phone. In fact, many people use Twitter exclusively from mobile phones. On the home page of Twitter are options for downloads at the bottom of the page.  E.g. For the iPhone, HootSuite or Tweetdeck are free options and both are very easy to use; simply download and install from the Apps Store.

What Do I Say?

Now that is the real question isn’t it? The best way to think of what to post is: What has your attention right now?  While Twitter asks you, “what’s happening?” that’s not necessarily the right question to consider.  Describing, sharing, or posting what has your attention is a bit more specific, and quite honestly, interesting.

Tweets tend to fall into three categories: personal, conversational, and promotional.  Almost all successful people on Twitter blend these three categories.

How Do I Tweet?

1. To post a “tweet” simply enter in your 140 characters and hit update

2. If you need to include a URL, use http://bit.ly to save space

3. If you “re-tweet” someone else’s post, start it with RT @theirname

4. If you want to direct message (DM) someone simply exchange the “@” for a “d”

5. If you reply to someone, simply go to the right of their post and you’ll see an arrow icon, click on it. 

     a. this leads you to an update box that has @theirname in the box

     b. this is considered an “open conversation”

     c. take it to DM if you go to more than 3 back-and-forths, otherwise we’re all just eavesdropping

A few notes on etiquette:

• Understand this is social media and not broadcast media (or think of it as no one likes someone who only talks about themselves)
• Do not send off 20 tweets in a row or send tbd tweets – you can lose followers
• If you post someone else’s tweet, include the RT and credit in your post
• If you and another person have more than 3 replies on the same topic, take it offline or to email
• Some text-speak is common, such as “IMHO” (in my humble opinion)
• All of this is in a public domain – heed proper caution

Now there is a lot more to Twitter, but this will get you set up and get you started. There is lots of help out there to help explain how to follow people, the etiquette and the lingo to Twitter. But for now, just get started. And be sure to follow us at www.twitter.com/cloudspark.

In the New Year, you wanted to start a blog for your business or for fun, but you can’t seem to decide on WordPress and you just want to get started. Welcome to the land of so-simple-it’s-like-email and it’s called Posterous.

I like Posterous because of its simplicity, but also because it takes away the technical queasiness when you want to share a video or a photo album. It’s like having your tech-savvy friend take your email and make it a cool post.  It really is that simple, so let’s get started. Here are your step-by-step instructions on how to get started with Posterous:

1. Go to www.posterous.com and create an account.

     a. You’ll get a confirmation email from Posterous asking you to confirm your account.

2. After you sign in, you’ll be taken to the page below and asked to email your first post to the email address post@posterous.com

3. It’s perfectly normal to send a simple first-post such as an introduction

     E.g. This is James with MyBusiness. I’ll be sharing more about X, X, and X.  If you have questions, comments, or ideas for posting, feel free to email me at james(at)mycompany(dot)com. You can also include a photo of your business or other image or video.

4. Next, go back to your Manage page and select Settings this is the place you can add an avatar (photo), your name and professional contact information.

5. You can also change the background theme

     a. Go to My Posterous at the top of the page

     b. It will take you to your personal page

     c. At the top, select the “Posterous” button, it will expand and from there you can select Themes.

     d. Choose a background theme that suits you.

     e. Save changes at the end

6. You can post anytime by emailing post@posterous.com

    a. Common things to post include: Answers to commonly asked questions, New information on new services or products, Examples of good work or innovations working for clients, Photos of new offerings, Photos of teams in action, Videos related to your work, products, services,  

Monitor

Posterous allows you to receive auto-notifications when people comment, link, or respond to your post.

1. Under Manage, look for the Notifications option under Settings. 

       a. It’s a good idea to set up notifications around posts, links, comments.

2. If someone responds with a question, it’s a good idea to reply right there on the post so that others can read the answer as well.

Can I Comment on Post?

Posterous offers full commenting capability with the ability to enable anonymous comments as well as require Posterous, Facebook, or Twitter authentication. See the Commenting and Posting section of Settings from your Manage page.

Spreading the Post

This is one of the best features of Posterous, it will automatically help you spread your blog posts to other social networks.

1. Under Manage, you can select AutoPost

     a. This pulls up a menu of other social sites

2. You can select your posts to be automatically shared with other sites, for example, on Twitter

     a. This saves you from having to remember to share your good thoughts with other social sites, Posterous will do this automatically for you.

3. Be sure to save changes at the end

Posterous really is this simple. So if you’ve thought about creating a blog, but have stopped short because you thought it’d take too much time, well not any more. If you can send an email, you can blog.  You can always find answers on “how-to” at http://help.posterous.com/. Now send us a link!