Tag Archives: Technology

Marketing through Online Contests

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We have had some fun at my office recently, creating a video that will help to generate a feel and personality that represents our company. Mainly, it shows that we can let our hair down (or put some on) and just have some fun. We did this by putting together a rap video in the imitation of a rap song out there called “Thrift Shop.” The reasoning for this video is two-fold: Making it helped to create fun in our company, and it shows you how you can have fun by using contesting in your company’s marketing strategy.

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/64913817″>Rap For Your App</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user17964486″>Tori Rose</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

We produced this video in conjunction with a contest we created, because that is what we do for clients – we create contests. Contesting is a very good approach to marketing for a number of reasons. This Mashable article highlights the four main ones.

1)            Contests are a great tool for building your fan base.

2)            Contests enable you to engage your audience.

3)            Contests are a rich source of data.

4)            Contests empower your customers to do your marketing for you.

You can check out the full article, but to sum it up, contesting helps you to build your likes on Facebook very quickly.  You can double your likes, even if you have a lot already, with a contest. If you only have a few, you can take this up multiple times.  You can engage your audience with user-generated content, which is what we did with creating a video and asking for a video in return to win a prize. This competitive nature is part of the human drive, and when others share their personal material, it invests them in your brand.

Getting data is crucial to building relationships, and contests are a key way to do that. This data will help your company to learn a lot about your potential clients during this interaction, so you can better understand their needs and how to provide value to them.  It is also nice to have your clients share your story and to help you market. That is what a good contest can do – allow your customers to share with others and help foster name recognition.

When coordinated with an overall social media marketing plan, a good contest can be a powerful tool. What are you doing to create a contest that people will talk about and share with others? Oh, and feel free to enter our contest and Rap for Your App. You just might be the winner of a free mobile app for your company – built by Efficience, of course!

Want Big Bucks? Think Elegant Organization

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live-communityWhat is it about Facebook, LinkedIn, and Amazon that we can’t stay away from them? What makes them so valuable? Well the answer is elegant organization. Let me give you a little background to explain what this means.

Back at the World Economic Forum International Media Council, in Davos, Switzerland, Mark Zuckerberg was 22. He was asked a question by a big media mogul, inquiring what his secret was and how could the mogul’s publishing company start a community like Facebook. Zuckerberg just sat quiet for a second and, as everyone was waiting for the secret sauce, he said in his direct, geek way, “You can’t!” Then he just stared and, with everyone let down, he went on to add what the real secret was all about.

He said a little later that they were all asking the wrong question. You don’t start communities, they already exist and they are already doing what they want to do. He then said the question you should be asking is how you can help them do what they want to do better. That was it! If you think about Harvard, where Facebook was started, they were in a community doing what they wanted to do for more than 300 years. Zuckerberg just helped them do it better.

This story was told by Jeff Jarvis who was at the summit and wrote the book What Would Google Do? I had read the book a few years back.  I decided to read it again after a recommendation by sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer’s list of “A Dozen Books to Own and Read – At Least Once.” I picked it back up and started to go through it and look at how I can apply things today. We are building a few mobile applications right now that have the potential to help people organize their communities in a way that makes them better and get more information out of the community.

If you are doing anything in the area of building web applications or in building mobile apps, or you have one already that is bringing a community together to be more organized, I would think this book would be helpful to advance your thinking on community organization and a lot of other principles that Google uses to be successful.

If you think about some of the companies that help with organization, in addition to what I mentioned above, several like Skype, AOL and Yahoo give us tools to organize collaboration. You get photo organization with Flickr. Wikipedia helps to organize knowledge. There are many other successful companies and when you think about it what they are doing, it is elegant organization.

What are you doing to make organization more elegant, to make your business better, for growth opportunities, and to realize the big bucks?

Follow the Big Trends or the Small Ones?

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I have talked to a lot of people about the big trend of mobile, the growth in this area, Imagehow it is changing the way we do business, and how if we don’t want to be left behind, we need to adapt. Some of this has a longer time horizon and some of it needs to be thought about in the short-term. The point is that this is a Macro trend that is happening and one that may be less of a concern than building your small tribe of followers that make a difference to the revenue and profits of your company.

Seth Godin’s blog on Macro Trends Don’t’ Matter so Much, makes a point that I agree with for the more focused, short-term aspects that drive your business.  He says that the Macro trends, like internet subscribers some year in the future, or the number of Spanish speakers as a percent of world population, are not the key drivers to your growth and the group you are after.  We could add things like, Who will have more in Apple’s IOS or Android’s platforms by 2020? What percent of the world total output will China make up in the next 20 years?

These trends are nice to watch, and some of you may want to think about it more than others. However, the key is that most companies and organizations need dozens, hundreds, or thousands to make a difference in their world. They don’t need access to all Spanish speakers, to all internet subscribers, or all those on Apple’s platform. What they need is the ability to spread the word among a tribe of followers that are like-minded and passionate about your unique “purple cow” offering.

This is where you what to really drill down into who your client is and what it is he wants. Robert Bloom, in his amazing book “The Inside Advantage,” gives us a step-by-step process for drilling down to the true look and feel of who your client is and what is unique about what you are offering him.  Knowing your customers in this way will allow the laser-like focus to zero in on your tribe.

Finishing up in Seth’s blog, he says that the big trends are a numbers game, and that by realizing that, you are “treating the market as an amorphous mass of interchangeable parts.”   You realize the micro is more important than the macro and that it is about the people – that we are individual human beings and we have names, desires, wants and interest.

What is your micro group that you are focused on?

Partnering for Growth

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A few weeks back, I shared what we are dong to move forward on the path of concentration around a certain focus with mobile. We have built a mobile app platform that is customizable and appropriate for our focus of working with marketing companies. This has been an evolution for us, and one that recently has had a lot of the details come together.

As I shared before, mobile is growing and the smart phone is being adopted with exponential growth. It has provided opportunity for businesses to connect with their customers that has not been possible before. With the build-out of an app, you can have relationships with your customers or employees that is right in the palm of their hands. The convenient access to knowledge, specials, promotions, events, sales and customer data is significant.
imagesI am in Charlotte for a few days to meet with marketing companies and build relationships that will benefit each of us. We will discuss our approach and platform to make their lives easier, shorten the time to production, and create more profit opportunities. With each of us focusing on what we do best, there are lots of positive aspects to this type of partnership. We focus on building and incorporating the design, and the marketing companies focus on their strengths of design and creativity.

This gets us back to the area of focusing around a certain vertical and making the business process one that is scalable. This approach allows the process to be repetitive and efficient. When you produce different custom software projects, like we have in the past, they require a lot of effort to ramp up and go through a learning curve. But when you do, there is no long-term benefit for that extra effort. This focus will allow us to get a benefit from the learning curve of building the platform and using it again and again.
I am excited about this change in direction and having a certain type of client to focus on – a client with the need to fill a gap that is present when their own clients tell them they want to have a mobile app for their businesses. This will allow us to say “no,” when we are approached to do things that will take us down a path of lost investment and cost, instead of being profitable.
How are you staying focused, scaling and saying “no” to the things you shouldn’t be doing?

Where Is The Internet Going?

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An analyst I used to follow in my investment days, Henry Blodget, is now an editor for Business Insider, and his own company has been on top of the internet space since the beginning.  I like hearing what he has to say because he has had so many years watching the ups and downs of the firms in this space, and he offers good insight into where these companies are going.

Business Insider recently held its annual IGNITION conference with great speakers from LinkedIn, Google, Groupon, and Time Warner.  With so many people in companies that are on the forefront, you have the opportunity to enjoy a great perspective at what is happening now and where things are going.

Here are some of the key observations that Blodget made from the conference:

With 1/3 of the world population now online, it leaves 2/3 of the market left to grow.  However, since this 1/3 earns 85% of the world’s income, the growth and commercial opportunity may not be so strong.  As I have discussed before, the smartphones and tablets are now outselling PCs.  Mobile should be the focal point because that is where growth and activity are coming from.

Mobile devices have hit the half-way point in developed countries, which usually means growth slows down somewhat.  Surprisingly, consumers are willing to pay for content.  Blodget says digital content revenues are exploding!  He points out that digital advertising is growing just behind TV advertising, with most of this growth is going to Google and Facebook.

Another observation is that Google is a better source of adverting than Facebook because Google is like advertising at a store and Facebook is like advertising at a party.  He also notes that the internet has already taken out the newspaper business, so the question is:  Will television be Internet Picnext?

Mary Meeker recently released her presentation on the state of the web, and she had similar observations.  Internet growth is robust, and mobile adoption as many upsides.  Global internet users are growing at 8% year over year, and the USA has 78% penetration, while China has 40%, and India holds 11%.  Smartphones are interesting.  She shows smartphones as a percentage of total subscribers, and China was at 24%, the USA at 48%, Japan at 65%, and India at 4%.  Where do you think you’ll find the most opportunity?

All this data continues to support what we have been discussing for a while, that mobile and all the connectivity it will bring is the major wave we need to be riding right now. What are you doing to get on that wave?

 

Communication Revolution

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Back in 1995, when Robert Loest and I were telling the world about our new mutual fund IPS Millennium, we told a story explaining that, historically, change within a civilization first occurs at an inflection point and is followed by big change and then a long plateau period.

We shared how civilization started with hunter-gathers, and people maintained that lifestyle for over 100,000 years.  Then, we had an inflection point, learning to plant seeds and grow food.  This was the Agricultural Revolution of the Neolithic Era, and it went on for a few thousand years.  Then around 1439, Gutenberg invented the printing press, and the advent of real sustained knowledge accumulation and transfer took place.

Sharing information through books led to the invention of the Watt Steam Engine in the 1760s or 1770s, and this really kicked off the Industrial Revolution, which lasted about 100 years. The transistor was then invented around the 1940s, and the Information Age was born. This lasted for about 50 years.

Then in 1995, we entered the Wired Internet Age and dawn of connectivity in real time, all the time, which has lasted around 15 years.  Now, we have kicked off the Mobile Era and the dawn of wireless connectivity.

As you can see, the timing of our mutual fund and the start of this new era lined up perfectly.  Even though we proclaimed that investing in a connected world would create value, we were unaware of just how connected the Netscape browser was going to make us.

I am sure you noticed how each era has gotten shorter and shorter.  Change progressively occurs faster, and some of the issues for business today center around this disruption which happens when we hit a new inflection point, and the game suddenly changes for everyone.  However, this also creates massive opportunity for entrepreneurs!  Anyone listening . . . especially with the new inflection point of mobile?

I was reminded of that story we told when I read a blog by David Meerman Scott on what he calls the 2nd most important communication revolution in history.  When you step way back and, as David says, take a “view from the moon,” you see that the first communication revolution was bolstered by Gutenberg’s invention of mechanical movable type.  This allowed books to be mass produced and freed people to more easily share information around the world, so they could go out and invent things and build on one another’s ideas.  This changed the world, a world that had not changed much since the beginning of time.

We are now in what David calls the 2nd communication revolution, which started in 1995 with the invention of Netscape, allowing us to have easy web browsing capability.  We are living through this time and the major changes that are occurring.  We’ve gone from a few million online to billions in short time frame, and it continues to grow.

David explains how real time communication is vital in this new age and that “you are what you publish.”  So, are you putting content out there on the web in real time?  Check out his video.

Marketing and Leadership Speaker David Meerman Scott from David Meerman Scott on Vimeo.

I would like to thank David for inspiring me.  When we met about 4 years ago, he was the one who told me to start writing a blog.  It took a little while to sink in, but about 3 years ago, I started blogging sporadically, and shortly after I began posting a blog every week.  We are living in the times of sharing content.  Are you?

Mobile Apps, Change You Can Believe In!

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The world is changing quickly. Many times we find ourselves looking up from whatever we were doing and wondering, “Where did that come from? Why are people doing it that way? How does everyone seem to know about this except me?” In the world of the internet, we all stay connected at all times and all locations, so when changes occur, they are downloaded and spread in real time. Some of us simply choose to see it on our own time frame.

Look around when you walk into a restaurant, when you’re waiting in line, when you’re sitting around the airport or subway station. You’ll notice that everyone is staring at a phone. This scene is so profound that we might be mistaken for a scene from “The Walking Dead” if our faces weren’t fully intact.

The point is that change is here, and more change is coming. Are you on board, or has the train left the station? At Efficience, we are doing educational sessions to provide awareness of these changes and how you can benefit from change.

IDC and Appcelerator conducted a survey of app developers. INC discussed this in an article and noted, “Developers are highlighting a cautionary note that all businesses should pay attention to: Mobile has the power to reshape entire industries and these changes will be swift.” They continue, “It is not enough to port elements of your existing business model over to mobile. Staying competitive in the era of mobility requires fundamentally re-envisioning traditional business models through a mobile-first lens.”

Using a mobile app opens up stratospheric opportunities for business when you consider the strategy behind this connection. At Efficience, we are doing this by building strategies for companies that will help them use features such as push notifications to make customers aware of discounted services or prices in real time to drive more people to you. This is particularly helpful to do when you are having slow traffic and want to increase revenue for the fix cost you are already incurring.

What if you are a restaurant and you want to get new customers? If you get your current customers to download your app, you can send out a notification saying, “Bring in a couple of your best friends that haven’t eaten here before and get a free meal!” The possibilities are endless and will evolve as location based technology grows. By connecting and sharing knowledge, push notification specials, announcements of special events, and updated photos, you make your good customers even better and drive them and their friends to do more business with you.

Does your current advertising and marketing connect you to customers and drive the opportunities for more revenue as well as mobile apps?

Real Commerce With Mobile!

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In last week’s blog, we discussed how we are entering the Web 3.0 world.  That world consists of mobile.  We talked about creating real value for customers and real commerce for merchants.  I recently came across some really great examples of this in an article called Web 3.0: The Mobile Era written by Jay Jamison, who has a venture company that invests in early stage mobile companies.

Mobile acts as a much tighter link connecting advertisers and users, which makes it easier to close a transaction.  Jay says “Now technology services have the ability to leverage not just the social graph data from Facebook, but even more real-time / real-world information.  Your current location, weather, traffic, local merchants other friends nearby, how often you’ve been to this specific store or location are available (or will be soon).  And this in turn provides a whole new level of commerce opportunities for potential advertisers.”

Let’s look at a few companies that are already doing this, like Waze, ShopKick, and Foodspotting.  Waze is a service for social mapping and GPS.  It provides the fastest routes around congestion with real time traffic information.  You can also get offers for the cheapest gas along your route from Waze.  Do you think this will drive some people to do business through those offers?

Another mobile app called Shopkick is pretty neat in that it turns the shopping experience into a game.  It rewards shoppers for tasks and quests that they complete, and Shopkick is showing that shoppers spend more money in stores while using their app.

How would you like to know the best dishes to buy at local restaurants?  With the Foodspotting app, you can.  It knows where you are and shows you the pictures of what others rate as the best food at nearby establishments.  This is very cool for the merchants because they can offer promotions to those that are looking at the dishes they want to order, which will drive people to go there to eat.  What’s to think about?  You are looking at a yummy dish that you already are dying to try, and a promotion comes along with it.  I am seeing the dollar signs, are you?

As I assume you are staring to guess, the world of mobile is going to be exciting for both the users and businesses out there.  This is not a world of ads that will pop up on your screen.  This is more about the creative interaction that can occur when you position all the technology that we have in our hands in a way that engages our customers to want to spend money with us.  This will be a disruptive world and one in which the innovators will be the winners.

What are you doing to engage your customers with the mobile experience and make them more eager to spend with you?

 

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Web 3.0 is Mobile, Are You In?

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As I have discussed in many past blogs, we are seeing a major shift in how people access technology as more people move toward Smartphones.  I see a world where business will be driven by the connectivity we all have with one another based on that little device that acts as an extended appendage for most of us.

We all have an internal desire to be connected.  As I spend time with my family in Rochester, NY, I listen to the conversations of my nieces and hear their infatuation with the latest phone technology and getting a new or upgraded phone.  At this point in their lives, they consider that to be a major accomplishment.  Why is that?  I would say it has to do with the knowing that they can share and connect more with their friends and the world around them.

If you think of this from a business perspective, you’ll see the opportunity to connect with your customers as well as their friends, which will create more business prospects.  You can connect with your sales people on the road to update them on all your products, services, and even competitor products, so they can be more effective.  People working on projects in the field can update software, coordinate with others, and access so much more information to get the job done.

Web 3.0 is mobile!  Web 1.0 was about connectivity with the likes of Netscape, AOL, Google, and Yahoo, and Web 2.0 was all about social media with Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter.  The main elements of Web 3.0 will be:

Real Time

Location-Aware

Ubiquitous (everywhere at the same time)

Sensors

Smaller Screens

The key for the 3.0 mobile world is real value for customers and real commerce for merchants.

At Efficience, we are building an infrastructure to help companies get a mobile platform up for themselves along with a strategy to make money using their mobile app.

I’ll have more on real examples of how consumers and merchants can be mobile in order to get real value in the next blog.

How are you using mobile to reach new customers and realize more business?

The Power of the Crowd

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I wrote a blog in July 2011 called “What Disruptive Technology is Sneaking Up on You?”  I also wrote another one more recently called “Crowdfunding, the Savior for the Entrepreneur.”  Interestingly, they have both been pulled together by the disruptive technology guru Clayton Christensen.  Clayton spoke with CNNMoney for an article they featured on his involvement in crowdfunding.

As I explained in my previous blog, crowdfunding will allow companies to raise money with their social contacts for partial ownership in a company.  You can raise a lot of money by asking for small investments from a large number of people.  Think of this like a mutual fund that has lots of money to invest, but one individual investor may only put in $500 while another puts in $10,000.  Crowdfunding gives the investor the opportunity to invest in people they know even if they don’t have large sums of money.  The previous laws placed tight limitations on this.

Clayton pulls disruptive technology and crowdfunding together when he points out that crowdfunding has the potential to disrupt traditional financiers.  He has invested in a platform that is being created to help bring together both the investor and the company trying to raise more capital.

As I’ve said before, I think this opportunity is going to be big!  It will change the game for many people, most importantly the entrepreneur.  Ideas and opportunities that would have never gotten off the ground before will now have a better chance at a good start and could become job creating machines.

Now, the important ingredient for anyone with aspirations to grow and get funding is a strong social network.  The theme we had back in my investment days was connectivity.  We invested in companies that were creating the infrastructure which would bring us together.  We have all heard “it’s who you know, not what you know.”  This rings even truer today with a major focus on people.

What are you doing to grow your social network?