If you run a physical business such as a cafe, or shop and you want to create a bit of buzz on social media why not ask your customers who are with you now. Ask them to tweet over their coffee about where they are. If they show you the tweet, give them a free refill. Works with Facebook or Linkedin as well.
Easy, low cost, personal and effective.
Whatever your business can you ask your customers right now to refer you?
Minute Marketing – Quick, Simple marketing tips, stories and ideas that you can start in 1 minute. It’s not all about email!
Paul was previously Marketing and Communications Director at Havok and currently works with JoltOnline among others.
Paul had some brilliant advice and war stories from his time in Havok, Pirtomedia, Demonware and Plastinum on how they, as a start up, had go out and sell to the leading companies in games and film. Image it seams is vital but not that difficult… or expensive.
I got a lot of great points to take away from the day and here they are in no particular order.
PR
Start your PR locally. Use it as your training ground to hone and practice your message before you move international.
With everything showing up on Google do not underestimate local press. A Wired journalist rang up Paul after a story in the Tipperary Star popped up in his alerts.
Develop relationships with three key Journalists and publications.
THE trade publication of the industry.
A national publication
One international publication.
Wired is THE publication for a technology company and it took Havok a year from initial contact to getting covered in the magazine.
The easiest way to get international PR is to get on a plane and go have a drink with a Journalist and start a relationship.
Journalists do not write for their readers first. they write for other Journalists and their editor. Remember this when pitching a story.
It’s easier to get coverage if you ‘promise’ to take out advertising in the future. Most trade magazines are run at a loss to maintain an audience for other business activities, events for example. So do not stress too much if you are unable to take out advertising for a long while.
Third paragraph PR is better for credibility. The public are very media savvy. They recognise a PR piece about a company for what it is.However if your opinion is mentioned in an overall industry piece it lends more credibility to you being an industry expert.
You are the best person to tell your story. Do not use a PR firm to be the middle man. It annoys Journalists.
Business
The first sale was for $1 to get past the ‘First Customer’ credibility problem.It was a marketing deal in return for using the customer in PR, Marketing and Case studies.
There is value in everything you produce. Watch out for opportunities. Havok had an artwork tool to help users of their main product. 3dStudio Max wanted this for their application and it generated a nice bit of money for Havok over 3 years.
Paul believes Tradeshow stands are a waste of money. Think smarter or of a ‘Meta Stand’.Instead of a stand Havok would organise wacky transport (with a bar) carrying VIPs from a tradeshow to the afters party and again at the end of the night back to their hotels. A fraction of the cost, and more memorable.
One horror story in the early days of Havok involved 250k on a stand, intending to make a splash. They ended up wedged between Microsoft and Sony who each spent about $10 million to launch their next gen consoles. It almost broke them.
At a tradeshow in Calais they rented a $20k Yacht and moored it outside the event instead of spending the $200k cost of a stand inside. They also got to save costs by sleeping 8 people and eating on it as well.
For a tradeshow all you need is you and a laptop walking around. Just as effective.
In most cases you are not selling your features. What you are selling is reduced risk.Customers assume that your product works. They want to know you will be around in 3 years and will not make them look bad to their piers and boss.
And last was a question from the audience asking if the Trinity name helped them abroad when making contacts and selling. He said at the time no but after the very successful companies that have emerged over the years including Havok and Jolt Online it can open doors now.
Happy new year. I hope you are well rested from the break and that Christmas was good to you. Welcome to 2010. A new year, a new opportunity to try new things and I can feel it in my water, it is going to be a good one.
To jump start your marketing I have put together a wonderfully simple online marketing plan for you for the year. It is put together as a checklist and it has the basics filled in with space for you to add your own twist and cross them off each month. It also includes few tips on what holidays and events you can use each month. It is based on one I have been using last year and I can tell you it helped me focused and on track.
Go ahead and download, print it off and hang it over your desk. This year you are going to be ahead with your marketing!
If you think you could do with some more information on how to get started or improve your email marketing campaigns sign up to our free email marketing course. More useful tips and tricks are found on our monthly newsletter so feel free to sign up below.
Keep us posted and let us know how the plan helped your business and let us know how we can improve it. We will showcase replies right here on the blog.
We love Christmas at Toddle HQ and to celebrate we have released two Christmas email templates just in time for the holidays. Why not save a few trees this year and send your clients and subscribers a Christmas ecard with our cool designs. Sign up and try out our festive newsletters using the sign up box to the right of this post. As always, these templates will work great with Outlook, yahoo mail, Hotmail, gmail and others. We hope you love them as much as we do!
Christmas Wrapping Christmas Gift
Of course you can add some Christmas cheer to any of the existing newsletter templates by adding some seasonal images from the always great iStockPhoto.com for as little as $1 an image.
Here are a few of our favorite images. Just search for ‘Christmas’ or ‘Santa’.
Wow, I hope I have this guys love and passion in 30 years time and to still be working at something I love.
What ever niche your business or passion is in, there is a way you can make it work.
John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA which stocks over 500 soda pops sourced lovingly by John from around the world.
I got fed up and designed a protest poster against all the doom & gloom in the media. I have had it hanging on my wall for two months now and I still love coming in to the office and seeing it each morning. It is full of advice, quotes and facts showing the recession is not the end of the world, it is one great big opportunity for you to shine!
The poster is now available on Zazzle.co.uk so you can order your own gorgeous print. Any money made on the posters will go to the Samaritans who have been busier then they should be lately.
The prints are on a very-heavy weight paper with a really lovely matte finish. Details: A substantial, very white print medium with a matte finish, imprinted with UV-resistant archival inks (100+ years of fade resistance when displayed indoors and protected from direct sunlight).
You can adjust price, sizes and paper weight on Zazzle and even add a frame if you are feeling flush. The one i have linked is €27.50 and is the one i have in the office here.
Small
Size: 38cm x 57cm Paper: Heavy Satin Finish
€13.10
Large
Size: 58cm x 88cm Paper: A very heavy matte finish, imprinted with UV-resistant archival inks
€27.50
Large Framed
Size: 58cm x 88cm Paper: A very heavy matte finish, imprinted with UV-resistant archival inks
Online Wine Shop Curious Wines caught my attention today by showing how they promote their products through partnerships in off line world.
This is such a great idea.
Where do your customers start to think about your product and are you there?
Minute Marketing – Quick, Simple marketing tips, stories and ideas that you can start in 1 minute. It’s not all about email!
Dutch Link Strategist Peter van der Graaf, who had set up a PR ’stunt’ just prior to the last World Cup. A client had wanted to bring more soccer related traffic into his site prior to the World Cup. The online marketing company set up a ‘demonstration’, outside the Dutch soccer team’s training camp, by women protesting the amount of time their men spend watching soccer – calling for the cancellation of the World Cup. A Brazilian news agency picked up on the story and it started getting mentioned on web sites across the world, eventually getting a spot on the CNN site — and that online marketing company had one very happy client. So this shows us that a bit of creativity can take you a long way.
Minute Marketing – Quick, Simple marketing tips, stories and ideas that you can start in 1 minute. It’s not all about email!
