MarketingOC: Fueling Sales Through Smart Marketing Communications

Is Social Media Making Your Business Look Like Your Competition?

Posted on 26. Aug, 2010 by Brian Fluhr in B2B Marketing, Blog, Inbound Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Sales

Businesses are always looking for their unique voice – that special  value proposition that you  offer your prospects and customers. That uniqueness that makes you different and enables you  to stand above the competition. Maybe it is value, features, benefits, price, service, brand – every business needs to feel that they are offering some advantage for customers to buy your product or use your service rather than the competition.

Many businesses have embraced having a Facebook page or a Twitter presence as part of their unique value proposition. We have all seen this on TV, Print, Radio and of course the web sites we all visit.

COMPANY X Is Now On Twitter!

Become A FAN On our Facebook Page!

This is indeed, a positive step forward in reaching your audience where they are spending time. However,  leveraging social medial often results in sameness - Company Y has a Facbook Page, we should have one too. Instead of showcasing the real value of your offering, reaching the specific audiences that your business targets, engaging new prospects with an innovative social media campaign to stimulate conversation:  your business becomes just another page in the social media landscape. Yes, you may build followers, but so is your competition. And that’s the problem. If you are not using social media to differentiate your business, to share the unique value your business offers to your audience, then you become just another me to company that has a social media presence because that’s just what every business seems to be doing today.

Social media provides the opportunity for your business to precisely focus on your target audience and to demonstrate your points of unique value.

Here Are Five Action Items To Demonstrate Your Unique Value Through Social Media

1. Create a company blog the focuses on your target audiences – perhaps create two or more!

Your business needs a blog. I assume you know that by now, but what if you are not leveraging that blog to reach your audience? You need to be as specific as possible with your content. It will help with reaching your audience, but also with SEO and lead generation. If your business focuses on different industries, say healthcare and transportation – it may not be a great idea to have only one blog – as the audiences in these industries, may be very different. So, just as you may have vertical channel managers, it can make perfect sense to have a blog channel dedicated to your key verticals. Your blog(s) should serve as the hub of your social media activities, not Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn. These are just channels, your blog is your social media home.  Integrate your blog into your website and focus on great content that will drive your social, seo and lead pipeline.

2. Have a specific objective.

Being there is not an objective.  I  often hear from clients that they need to have a Facebook page. But what they really need is a strategy to reach prospects through the channel that is Facebook or Twitter or ???.   The  suggestion I have is to  set your objective to drive new leads to your web site and/or your business.  Inbound marketing that leverages social media is how sales are started today.  When was the last time you took a sales call from a sales person?

3. Remember social media is for your business to connect with people.

Ask many social media gurus they will tell your social media is all about the people.  Not so, if you are in business.  Most businesses exist to make money. This money comes from relationships indeed. But if you are clear and transparent in you reasons for using social media (to increase your business)  you can be clear in your efforts to connect with your audience who wants to buy your product   You connect with people online the same way you do offline, you initiate conversation or your audience start the conversation  – but online you can efficiently reach more people over a much broader geographical area. Just like offline, people want to work with people that they know, trust and like. Social media provides you with the opportunity to grow your network exponentially, without having to leave the office.

4. Forget the rules – (sort of)

There is plenty advice out there on social media best practices and rules. The reality is,  the rules that apply are the very same rules that govern how you  communicate offline or through email. Don’t be annoying. Add value to someone’s day, life or business.  That’s really it!

5. Apply what you or your marketing team already knows about marketing

Social media is just another communication channel. The foundations of good marketing still applies in this space. If you conduct all marketing in house, give social media a try.  But really commit to it. Hiring a part time college student to create your social media strategy is a mistake. They can help you execute, but you probably won’t entrust an inexperienced marketer to run your TV ad campaign if that was the channel you were using. Why entrust inexperience to your social media channel?  If you use an ad agency, chat with them about your goals, if you want to talk to a team of folks who live and breathe social media and marketing, then contact MarketingOC

Drive-in Theater Marketing Case Study. How to make Drive-ins more profitable.

Posted on 02. Jul, 2010 by Patrick Curl in Inbound Marketing, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Websites, Social Media, Video Marketing

Image by Denise Mattox

How to bring Drive-ins back from the cusp of Extinction.

I absolutely love going to Drive-in theaters. First off I love movies, secondly I love the nastalgic feeling a Drive-in theater brings, thirdly I love the price – you can’t beat two movies for the price of one. It’s really a great deal.

As excited as I am about Drive-in theaters, not everybody is. In the heyday of Drive-ins there were over 4,000 screens across the country, now there’s only 10% of that – only 400 drive-ins. It’s a sad thought but someday the Drive-in movie may be as extinct as the do-do bird. I’m  going to share some of my insights on why this is happening, and how to fight it.

Most drive-ins are family owned, which is great – I’m all about small businesses but sometimes there is older folks running the theater, people who aren’t necessarily upto speed with modern technologies. I’ve yet to see a drive-in theater who’s website is powered by WordPress, and that blogs frequently about the latest upcoming movies.

I’m just waiting to see a Drive-in theater that has a stellar social media marketing campaign. So far, their web sites are as nostalgic as their movie going experience. Each Drive-in theater web site I’ve looked at reminds me of a cheap GeoCities site back in the early days of the world wide web.

I’m going to explain what I would do as a Drive-in Theater owner to make my business rock solid, and more profitable. I’m going to break this post into 3 parts: Social, Mobile, and Local Marketing, Concessions Profits Maximization, Additional revenue streams.

1. Social, Mobile, and Local Marketing. Getting customers to your Drive-in should always be your first priority, unless you’re constantly sold out, then you can skip this step. When it comes to social media you need to be proactive and find out what people are saying about you online, address their concerns, and give a good customer experience all around.

Example: The drive-in around here I did a search on, I’m on not going to name the Drive-in I don’t want to alienate or embarrass the owners – but  on Yahoo reviews a long time ago there was a very derogatory remark left about the drive-in. Some other reviewers stood up for the Drive-in but for the most part no official spokesperson for the Drive-in stepped forward and tried to remedy the situation. I’m sure instead they lost one customer for life, and maybe others who saw that remark.

A few weeks ago I went to this same Drive-in and due to technical difficulties we ended up missing about 30 minutes of the main movie we had come to see. They didn’t say apologize or anything. I didn’t ask for my money back, but ever since that day I’ve noticed less and less people at the Drive-in.  A lot of the people I see there are regulars, and now they’re not coming back.

One remedy would’ve been to give everyone a free $5 concession stand item. Sure they might’ve lost a little bit of money, but it would’ve gone a long ways towards saving face, and saving future customers.

Social Media Marketing: Ten years ago it was important for every business to have a web site, now it’s the web profile(s) on social networks. It’s very important to create a a social presence for your Drive-in theater. People can then tweet that they are going to your Drive-in and you can tweet back at them, or you can send messages and specials to your facebook ‘likers’. The bottom line is leads – in this case people who might be enticed to visit your drive-in.  The beauty of social media is also that you can get people to help you spread the word and sharing your profiles to their friends.

People really want to connect with you, and your brand. They want to know who owns the Drive-in, the history behind it, it adds to the ‘nostalgic’ feeling. Give them what they want.

Another tip to reaching out to via social media is to contact local influencers, bloggers, and social media marketers – give them free tickets to give away on their blog, in exchange for blogging about your Drive-in. You could do the same with radio DJs too.

Mobile Marketing: SMS shortcode marketing is a great way to interact with your customers. Run a contest each night at a specific time that the first three people to send a text message to your special # will receive a free concession. To know when to text they gotta be a subscriber of your sms newsletter. — This way you can send weekly updates telling them what new movies are coming out, maybe even give them special coupons.

I would also recommend having a mobile version of your website. It’s a fact that 40% of all web site traffic now comes from mobile devices, and if you’re site isn’t optimized people looking for your Drive-in may not be able to see the web page.

Local Marketing: I could see Foursquare becoming very popular for a Drive-in, and Gowalla too. Why not offer the Mayor of the drive-in a free Large Popcorn? The mayor is someone who visits the Drive-in more than anyone else. They are your loyalest customers, and they certainly deserve to be rewarded. The special thing about Foursquare and Gowalla is that whenever someone checks-in – it tells all their friends where they’re at. Sometimes those friends will then go and meet up with that person where they are, this means more potential customers. It also could mean their friend saw they went to the drive-in last night, and they decided to plan on going the next day by themselves.

It’s also a good idea to have an optimized profile in all the local directories like Citysearch, Yelp, Merchantcircle, ShopCity, etc.

2. Concessions Maximization. Concessions is where Drive-ins make the bulk of their money. Yet, many people often smuggle food into the drive-in taking a big bite out of their proceeds. To combat this a lot of Drive-ins have begun charging $5 per car for a ‘food’ ticket. This allows outside food into the Drive-in. This is one way of going about things, but from a consumer it seems a little hard-pressured.

I think there’s a better way. First off you should make sure that your food is the best it can be, because I remember going to Drive-ins as a child and the food was about as good as school cafeteria fare, and that wasn’t that great. Now that you have better food, you should find a way to get more people into the concession house. To do this you should have a free giveaway every night. Nothing big, something small. I’d recommend switching it up nightly. For instance you could do 1/4th of a pretzel one night, half a slice of pizza another night.

These small ‘trial’ sized freebies will get people hungry, and will be a great way to introduce people to your products. If they’ve never tried your food before they are less likely to want to. I know sometimes I’d rather much buy pizza before I come just because I konw what I’m getting at a pizzeria. I don’t know the quality of food at the concessions. Of course a good social media / local directory campaign can help by encouraging people to write reviews about your concessions.

Another way I’d maximize concession purchases is to have a customer loyalty program. Initially a punch card that every 12 spends of $5 gets you a free Concession item of your choice upto $8 value. So they end up spending $60 and getting $8 back. These cards could also have another line for movie rewards. Say for every 12 trips to the drive-in  they get one free movie entry – one stamp per vehicle per entry. So in other words one stamp per car trip, not per person on the movie tickets.

Lastly, I would create some better video. The nostalgic 50′s cartoons are great – but they’re lacking in taste appeal. For some reason food looks better today than it did back then or something, but when I watch a Papa John’s pizza commercial I’m hungry immediately afterwards, when I watch a concession stand commercial at the drive-in sometimes I’m actually LESS hungry.

It might cost some money but get some user opinions of the food on tape, testimonials sell. An amateur video showing new people eating the concessions and taking taste tests would sell the food much better.As a bonus you can upload the video to youtube and share it on facebook, twitter, and your blog.

Also be sure to pass out full-color menus with coupons to EVERY car that comes through the gate. Pictures sell, and coupons sell.

3. Additional streams of revenue: There’s a lot more you could do with the Drive-in space.I’m just going to run off some ideas here:

• You could host a battle of the bands every weekend before the movies. This would give people more time to work up an appetite. People could vote on their favorite bands via twitter, sms, or online. At the end of the summer you could have a ‘finals’ competition and give away some prize to the winner. The last competition could be an all day thing that you could sell tickets to, and open the concession stand all day.
• Add a mini-golf course along the sidelines. Charge a low cost to play. Again open a bit early so people coming to watch the movies can also play some mini-golf.
• Add a cornhole game and charge a fee to play, again also open early so people can play.
• Have On-Screen advertising. You could make an extra $500-1000 a night just off advertising.
• Post billboards along the sides high enough to block out extra ambient light that might dim the screen, and also selling advertising on the billboards.
• Sell drive-in movie memorabilia, t-shirts, souvenires, etc in the concession stand and online.
• Many drive-ins already host flea markets, but if yours doesn’t that’s a great idea as well.
• Have special theme nights. Like an all night Nightmare movie festival – featuring all horror movies – 5 of them back to back. The older movies are cheaper to get usually, and you could charge more for the tickets since its a special occassion.
• Sell dvd’s on your website, or have adsense, or other affiliate ad monetization.
• If you have a large size land and extra space you could setup a Paintball area. Paintball is very popular and can bring in some decent amount of money.

Really you just need to be creative. Think of ways that you could make even a little bit more money. Maybe add a small uptick on all your products. Most people won’t notice an extra $0.25 but add it to every item and you could make a decent amount more money than you’re already making. Just be sure to let your customers know its going to happen before you up it. They will understand, they’d rather you up the price, than go out of business. I would pay more to go to the local Drive-in if it meant keeping the Drive-in. I’m not ready to see them become extinct.

Of course if you need help implementing any of these strategies, MarketingOC would love to help you get the ball rolling. Just give us a call!

Got any other Drive-in Marketing Ideas that you’d like to share? Do you own a Drive-in and have some secret tips you’d like to share with other Drive-in owners? Leave them in the comments please, and thank you!

HuluPlus – More proof that Traditional Media is Dieing.

Posted on 29. Jun, 2010 by Patrick Curl in Inbound Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Social Media

If you haven’t been indoctrinated into the Hulu world, Hulu is a service that allows you to watch your favorite episodes of TV right from your computer. It has shows from many networks, including Fox, NBC, and ABC. Currently it generally allows you to view the last 5 episodes.

HuluPlus – lets you view the entire season – at will. Basically it’s like owning the whole season of all your favorite tv shows for only one fee of $9.99 per month.

HuluPlus isn’t released yet but it is being rolled out soon.

One great benefit of HuluPlus is that now you can view Hulu on tons of different devices including: Iphones, Ipads, Ipod Touches, Internet enabled Tvs, PS3, Xbox 360, and of course you can always watch it on your laptop, netbook, or desktop computer.

This service could be a cable killer – but for advertisers / marketers what it REALLY means is that we’re one step closer to completely eradicating tv / cable networks as we now know them, and one step closer to having ALL content on the web. Newspapers are dieing, cable tv is dieing, even radio is struggling to compete with services like last.fm and pandora.

What isn’t dieing? Online marketing especially social media (which is replacing the old traditional media), mobile phones which is the new cable network, and local which is becoming more and more important as we become more and more global.

Hulu knows that reaching out to customers across different devices means wider market penetration, it’s a game changer.

I can proudly say, that I’m one of the few who’ve given up my cable tv in exchange for hulu. It’s more affordable and I get to watch all my favorite shows for free, or $9.99 if I choose that option. It just makes fiscal sense. Just as learning, and investigating marketing for your business on ipads, iphones, social networks, and local directories makes sense.

The world is changing, we’re on the brink of a huge global shift – it’s like the start of the world wide web all over again. You can grasp it, get in for lower costs now, or wait till everyone is doing it and your competitors drive up the prices. A lot of web marketing is bid-based which means if you get in early you can bid low for advertising and marketing. Or you can wait 5 years and have to fight your way back to the top and pay twice what your competitors who got in early did.

The mobile web is coming, and it won’t just be about smartphones, and iPads. The web is about to be integrated into every aspect of our lives. Refrigerators, Stoves, Cars – every appliance we use, every where we go we will be connected to the internet.

Soon there will be apps on many devices, by 2020 – it could be every electronic device in your home. Each one of these devices is a new way to reach your customers, getting in early is the way to get noticed by the media, and potential customers.

Will you be an early adopter and destroy your competition? Or will you sit back and watch from the sidelines and watch all of your competitors steal your customers?

Simple Mobile Marketing Ideas to Reach Local Customers

Posted on 07. Jun, 2010 by Brian Fluhr in Blog, Inbound Marketing, Mobile Marketing

There was a time not so long ago, that businesses were hesitant to set up a web site for their business. Today, billions of dollars of business results from the Internet and the fact that the majority of businesses have a web site. It may have taken a few years to get to and not every web site is achieving its full potential to serve as a lead generator or a sales generator, but yet, the majority of businesses have a web site. The next evolution of the web for businesses to reach their customers has already begun: mobile marketing – that is, reaching and engaging your prospects and customers via their mobile device.

Based on the current rate of change and adoption, the mobile web will be bigger than desktop internet use by 2015, according to Mary Meeker, the well-regarded analyst from Morgan Stanley. This means that in the very near future, a mobile device, whether it is an Android, an iPhone or an iPad, will be the primary way people interact with your business on the web.

With any new technology or marketing channel you always have two primary choices:

Take Action Now or Wait To See What Your Competitors Do.

Of course, we don’t suggest waiting – but we also understand that you may want to proceed with caution. Here are four simple mobile marketing ideas to help your business begin taking advantage of mobile marketing to increase your business.

1. Leverage SMS Marketing. Text messages allow you to immediately integrate mobile with your existing marketing efforts. Text messages serve as a highly personal messaging option that your prospects and customers opt in to receive thus providing a highly measurable form of communication and promotion.

2. Create A Mobile Web Site. Offering an engaging mobile web site experience is essential to reach your prospects and customers on the go. Tailoring your web site for mobile devices is essential – even though many phones offer a full web browser – chances are – your web site is not optimized for the small screen. In fact, ensuring a mobile website experience is often more cost effective for your business, and more accessible to your customers verses a custom application that must be downloaded in an App Store.

3. Mobilize Your Content. When you create content for your web site, think about how that content will be viewed and distributed to users who choose to consume your content on a mobile device. It is very different experience reading a white paper on a cell phone vs. a desktop – so consider offering a condensed version for mobile readers.

4. Start Benefiting From Mobile Advertising. If you have ever leveraged pay per click advertising or banner advertising or any form of web based advertising – it is time to take a serious look at mobile advertising. Highly targeted mobile advertising is still in its infancy – but yet, proving to be a smart, effective channel to reach your prospects. In fact, Google’s purchase of Admob, the pace and results that mobile advertising offers to businesses are set to take off.

Thanks to: http://adage.com/smallagency/post?article_id=144059 for inspiring this post.

Leveraging Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing T0 Reach Customers

Posted on 21. May, 2010 by Brian Fluhr in Blog, Inbound Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Social Media

Marketing and advertising used to be so easy. A copywriter would come up with the message, an art director would come up with the creative and a media planner would find the channels to blast your advertising to as many people as possible –and that outbound marketing formula worked pretty well.

But over time, traditional methods e.g. direct mail, TV commercials, telemarketing and trades shows  have become less effective. Technology and behavior changes including: Tivo, do not call lists, DMAchoice have empowered buyers to make choices about what advertising they wish to experience and even block it out all together. As a result, an updated approach to what has always worked well, word of mouth advertising, is proving to be the preferred choice of buyers engaging with brands – and as a result, how your business should be communicating with your customers.

According to HubSpot, an inbound marketing software provider:

Inbound marketing is a set of marketing strategies and techniques focused on pulling relevant prospects and customers towards a business and its products. Inbound marketing is becoming widely accepted marketing because it complements the way buyers make purchasing decisions today — using the Internet and related media to learn about the products and services that best meet their needs. Inbound marketers offer their audiences useful information, tools and resources to attract these people to their useful site, while also interacting and developing relationships with customers on the web. Inbound marketing tools include blogging, content publishing, search engine optimization, social media and social networks.

Leveraging inbound marketing takes a strategy and requires the appropriate tactics – just like traditional outbound marketing, but in the end, inbound marketing will lead to better relationships with your customers, more leads and more sales.

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MarketingOC specializes in inbound local, mobile and social marketing services for small and medium sized businesses.

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