May 2012
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Apr
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Archive for the Nonprofit Category

$5 Facebook campaign

5. March 2012 by admin.

dennis_yu_fb_ad

It cost him only 6 cents to do it.And for that price, he was able to bombard our people with ads. The cost of that inventory is a 30 cent CPM, which means it costs 30 cents to show a thousand ads. So he was able to send 200 highly targeted messages, as he details in this post on the Facebook Microtargeting trick.

Sounds less like advertising and more like super-targeted email marketing, doesn’t it?

And, in fact, it is, except for this:

• You can send these messages without needing someone’s email address.

• You pay only when someone clicks it (yes, it’s cost per click advertising).

• An impression is guaranteed when the person next opens Facebook (whereas in sending an email, you can only hope that someone will open it).

Now imagine that you’re a software company like Webtrends, building relationships with other agencies that resell your social analytics software. The founders of the data visualization agency JESS3 come to visit and you’d like to strengthen that bond. Maybe you spend $5 on a micro-targeted campaign like the one above, but slice it up to put the ad image more compactly next to the stats. You absolutely bombard anyone who works at that firm with your message almost 3,000 times. If they have 50 people, that’s 60 ads per person. Who cares that we got only 9 clicks (of which 4 happened to become fans)? The goal is not the click, but the awareness.

Total cost: $5.67 in Facebook ads

Create a specialty video with a customized message

But you could take it a step further, since those folks who do click through on the ad can come to your landing page. So imagine that we send all employees of the email marketing company ExactTarget to this Facebook landing page (warning: there is sound). And how much did this landing page cost? Only $5. We have a network of dozens of freelancers that will do voiceovers, take photos, sing songs or do whatever for a few dollars. More examples of specialty videos here.

Social media success is about pinpoint precision targets — we’re simulating the one-on-one conversations that friends have among themselves

While each of these examples might be clever or interesting, the question becomes: How do you scale this? Social media success is about pinpoint precision targets — ultimately, because we’re simulating the one-on-one conversations that friends have among themselves. But if you want to have 1,000 conversations, you need 1,000 different ads and 1,000 different landing pages. Who has the infrastructure, staff, or the budget to do that?

This is where smart automation comes in. Here’s an example of our scoring platform at work:

Webtrends sells analytics software to the big boys who don’t mind paying $100,000 per year for analytics software. Trouble is that every website needs some form of analytics. Maybe they’ll use Google Analytics — it’s free and pretty good. But we want to talk to only those customers who have the money and need for enterprise analytics software. It would be suicide to buy the keyword “web analytics” on PPC because of all the players that offer web analytics for free or super cheap.

So we took the Fortune 1000 and ran a script that collected a wide range of data — market cap, their industry, annual revenue, P/E ratio, website url, homepage pagerank, pages indexed, Facebook page, number of fans, company logo from Google images and so forth — dozens of metrics. See the detail from our spreadsheet/CSV file below.

Click to enlarge

And then we ran this data through our scoring algorithm to calculate their Social Score — how well they did versus peers in their industry. We might say, “Shell, you got a 56 and rank 7 out of 9 in Oil and Gas.” Or we might say, “Shell, why do you have only 53,548 fans while others in oil and gas have 184k on average?” Then we target people who work at Shell — not just everyone, but those people who have titles of VP of Marketing, Chief Financial Officer, Public Relations and so forth.

grid_of_logos_with_scores

endorsement_in_ad There might be only a couple dozen people and not everyone puts their information on Facebook, but it’s enough. And you can bet it gets their attention! They come to a landing page that has their social scoring report, which shows a portion of the metrics that we’ve gathered. But they have to click Like to see the rest of the report, which is grayed out.

Now what happens when that person clicks “Like”? Of course, some of their friends and co-workers see it. And as all curious co-workers will do, they want to check out what you found to be so interesting. And then when these people see our ad, it shows that their friend liked it, which makes our offer of a report that much more credible (image at right).

A move to quality targeting over mass media blasts

Now do you see how this works? It’s quality over quantity, folks. Think about who you want to target as precisely as possible. Where do they work? Where do they live? What kind of car do they drive? What TV shows do they watch? What industry conferences do they attend?

Let Facebook do the work for you, running ads that target journalists who write for the Wall Street Journal, Mashable, Forrester, VentureBeat, the New York Times

Can’t afford $15,000 to exhibit at your favorite conference, plus the $3k to ship the booth out, the cost of the people to have to man the booth during Expo Hall hours, the schwag you have to give out and so forth? Then run an ad for the three weeks leading up to the conference targeting fans of the conference.

Bingo, you’ve now spent $5 to target this audience with your message and you have plenty of time to set up in-person meetings with those folks who are worth talking to, as opposed to any random people who might wander up to visit you at the show. And then you can thank them later.

Click to enlarge

Need some PR help, but can’t afford a New York PR agency for $10,000 a month? Then let Facebook do the work for you, running ads that target journalists who write for the Wall Street Journal, Mashable, Forrester, VentureBeat, the New York Times or whoever. What would you like to say to them?

Can’t afford to hire a big sales staff to cold call people who don’t want to talk to you? Easy. Just run ads targeting the competitors of your existing customers. Let’s say that Marriott is your client and you’ve got a great case study there. Run ads targeting the folks who work at Hilton, Starwood, Motel 6 or whoever. You can bet they want to know what their competitors are doing. Inquiring minds want to know!

Making waves with 5 bucks in your pocket

By now, I hope to have shown you that with some ingenuity and $5 in your pocket, you can make some serious waves on Facebook. If you’re a small business or start-up, learn how to master some of the techniques mentioned here. If you’re a big brand and looking to scale, then you’ll need some process and software automation to make this happen across thousands of conversations.

Know of any companies that offer software that will do mass personalization of ad and landing page content? Ad agencies are good at throwing bodies at client accounts — great service, but no scale. Software companies are good at building code based on a predefined set of rules that can be repeated. But success for your company can’t be solved by either a pure agency or a pure software company. The agency can’t throw enough people at the problem and the software company can’t offer a one-size fits all solution to everyone.

Only you can work the magic at your company. As much as we’d like to sell you some software, vendors like us can only assist you in coming up with the creative strategy that resonates best with your customers, the PR strategy that gets the press talking about you, a unique way to position how you solve your client’s pain. Ultimately, these $5 campaigns, whether you run just one of them or 10,000 of them, boil down to a marketing strategy — a unique, compelling message — that we can multiply out to your customers and get those customers to spread on your behalf. (Again, if you’re a smaller company targeting just a few potential or existing clients or partners, go for it yourself!)

In our next segment, we’ll explore that topic in more detail — how to get your fans to do your marketing for you. The techniques that work are probably not what you’d expect, since the world of Facebook relies upon the game dynamics of News Feed Optimization, advertising, applications and Open Graph widgets. We’ll show you how the harder you make it for customers to convert, in certain instances, the more likely they will take action. Stay tuned to learn why.

Posted in Social Network, Patents and Portfolios, Nonprofit, Facebook, Programming Code Help, Marketing, Managing Business | Print | No Comments »

Anger Management

27. February 2012 by admin.

How to deal effectively and productively with angry complaints

Never underestimate the power of the angry customer. The more a complaint is repeated, the longer its legs grow. A small issue can morph into a big deal. It can trigger a rant that ends with a referral source never calling you again. You could end up on with a social network free for all, one that won’t improve your business or reputation.

Move quickly to resolve issues. The longer a customer remains angry the more frequently he/she will tell others about what happened. As you wait to solve the problem, they continue to have no information to share about the how the problem is being solved.

Show empathy. Often this is the most difficult strategy. When a complaint comes at a bad or busy time, it is difficult to show you care. There’s and old saying, “Never let them see you sweat.” Well, never let a customer sense you don’t care that they are upset and explain to them the actions you are taking to resolve the problem.

Send a follow-up note to those who complain. Let the customer, referral source or patient know that you appreciate them taking the time to discuss a problem. Let them know the relationship is valuable, and thank them for giving you the opportunity to not only fix the problem and keep their business, but to ensure the same problem doesn’t happen again.

Posted in Massage, Physical Therapy, Social Network, Nonprofit, Managing Business, Health and Wellness, Kewler Favorites | Print | No Comments »

Failures of startups

24. February 2012 by admin.

There’s no place for your product: “Investors are fond of debating which they care about more: the market or the entrepreneur. The reality is, great entrepreneurs find great markets. Many startups never achieve the elusive product-market fit. Some companies, like Facebook and Zynga, find product-market fit right out of the gate. Or at least they appear to. Others, like Intuit, go along for years until they crack the code.”

Your product sucks: ”Many potentially great companies fail because they deliver bad products. No one sets out to build a bad product. So how do they end up getting built? You can still suffer from product blindness—using your product so much that you work around the difficulties, the friction that prevents mass adoption. Just consider file sharing company Dropbox. There were other file sharing products before Dropbox, but Dropbox kept the product simple and made it easy to use.”

You don’t have vision or chops: “There’s the romantic notion of starting something—of being your own boss, running your own show, and building what you want to build. But being a successful entrepreneur means being a visionary—and being able to execute your way to making that vision a reality. ”

You burn too much money on sales and marketing early on: ”For every venture dollar invested, I estimate that more than two-thirds goes into sales and marketing costs and only a third into product development—sometimes less. Spending on sales and marketing too early means no return if customers or users don’t bite. Once you up the burn, it’s hard to go back. So make sure you have product-market fit before ramping sales and marketing.

Only your friends use your product: “So you’ve got a great market and a killer product. A few people have heard of it—the only problem is, they’re all friends of yours. Like the tree falling in the empty forest, thousands of great products have gone unused because no one knew they existed. They’re not just unknown—they’re invisible. How do you get the word out in a crowded market without incinerating cash? Build the best product and generate a lot of buzz around your brand.”

You don’t know how to use others to build scale: “Lots of companies can get a few users or sell a few products. Few can do that at scale, in a repeatable, efficient way. Today’s startups use highly leveraged approaches—freemium, word of mouth, partner strategies, and viral acquisition to drive highly leverage growth. You should too. ”

No one can understand what you’re saying: “Communication can make or break a startup. As I heard an investor once ask an entrepreneur, ‘if you can’t communicate your pitch effectively to us, why should we think you’ll be able to communicate effectively to your team?’ His words stuck in my mind and he was right. Words matter.”  Speaker training is a good idea. “One time an entrepreneur gave a pitch and looked down at the conference table the whole time. Didn’t make eye contact. It was painful.”

Your pitch is too long. “It’s bad when people realize they’re running out of time but they just start speaking faster instead of bumping up a level. They try to fit more in. It all gets lost in details. It’s awkward for everyone and really hurts the pitch.”

Your pitch doesn’t play on emotions. “Many entrepreneurs get in front of people with access to capital but failed to convince their audience to invest. A huge part of pitching comes down to psychology and emotion. Investors are primarily motivated by two things: greed and fear.”

You make excuses: ”Time and again I hear someone say they have a great idea for a company but they just don’t want to give up their current job to pursue their idea. Other times people have great ideas, but aren’t sure how to get going. Starting a company is hard. Yet dozens of people, when I asked why they decided to start something new, gave me the same answer: ‘I realized if I didn’t do it now, I’d never be able to do it’.”

You lack focus: “When I got my first check (actually, it was a wire transfer) from a venture investor some ten years ago, he gave me one piece of advice. ‘Focus wins.’ The advice is as sound today as it was when he gave it to me. In a startup, you could be doing any one of a thousand things. But focus tells you which one thing to do to win.”

There’s a lot of drama: ”A lot of startups fail because they suffer from drag. They go after small markets, build the wrong product, the founders don’t get along, or they make it too hard for users or customers to use their products. These issues create what I refer to as startup drag. Entrepreneurs have to be eternal optimists but with sufficient pragmatism to make their optimism reality. Get too much drag and it’s easy to lose the optimism and confidence that breeds success.”

“This is the last money we’ll ever need”: “Don’t say that. It just sounds naive. But most early stage companies need more money. Investors are in the business of investing money. They want to hear how you’re going to win, how you’re going to be the market leader, not how you won’t need their money.”

Posted in Wealth Management, Social Network, Nonprofit, Marketing, Managing Business | Print | No Comments »