Learning From the Top 10 Tech Trends of 2010

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Ken Barber

Media outlets love to post 2010 lists this time of year. CNN posted its Top 10 Tech Trends of 2010 yesterday, and it was a good one.  While some like to say “that’s cool’ after seeing a list like this, my mind started thinking of how a business leader could take advantage of these trends to attract, convert, and retain consumers.

CNN’s 10 trends are below in bold. Next to them are my thoughts on what to do with this valuable information on consumer behavior:

  1. The rise of the tablets (iPad) - Tablets are designed to provide nearly the same web experience as your regular computer, but in a more mobile, user-friendly fashion. You don’t need to create an app for these devices. You do need to recognize that more web surfing and shopping is happening on the go, and make sure your regular website has tools to meet the specific needs of mobile shoppers. Example: “Sign me up to receive hot deals via mobile”
  2. Resistance to Facebook is futile – Obvious is stating the need for most businesses to maintain a FB page. What still needs to be stated is the need to treat your FB page different than your website. Don’t just post content. Interact, post surveys, create promotions that reward interaction (see TGIF promo at right), post more viral content, encourage fans to share your page with others and check-in, link your website with your FB page via FB Connect, allow purchase behavior to be posted to FB. You get the point.
  3. Mobile Check-in apps – Yes, this was popular in 2010. Then FB created Places. This will steal lots of the fire from these apps. Nevertheless, reward your shoppers for checking-in at your store. Monitor the analytics from these apps (ex: Foursquare) and see how people are interacting with your business. (Here are some Foursquare promo ideas.)
  4. Motion-sensing video gaming – Hmm, not many ways to take advantage of this trend unless you can figure out how to get in-game placements/sponsorships (example: be the beverage that Wii tennis players reach for in between matches, etc.)
  5. Watching the web on TV – Your consumers are doing it. So make sure you have a marketing presence here. Consider using a video ad network to place :15 videos before, during, or after TV shows that play on channels such as Hulu or ComedyCentral. You will reach people who have happily dropped their cable subscription (like me!)
  6. The saga of the iPhone4 – Not much to say here.
  7. Escalation of the smartphone wars – The big lesson from this trend is that if you already spent $30K-$50K to build an iPhone app, you will have to do the same to build a Droid app since the latest US smartphone data show that the two platforms are neck-in-neck. Or, better yet, forgot the focus on apps and just build a mobile-optimized website so that your shoppers don’t have to find or download an app. They just visit your regular website on their phone and experience a great site. (Boulder, CO’s mShopper will do this for you for $99 and have it ready in a day.)
  8. App-tastic - See notes above. Apps are great, but are expensive, have to be built for every smartphone platform, and have to be found and downloaded before they can be used. Just build your mobile shoppers a website. Why? An average of 11% of global web traffic *already* comes from mobile devices.
  9. Privacy matters – Treat your personal consumer information like gold. Keep it and transfer it via secure methods. Ask consumers for permission before using, even if you are aggregating it and reporting on trends.
  10. Net neutrality – This is a scary one, especially since the December ruling suggests that those who control the infrastructure serving info via the web can now price out their competition. Yikes. Keep an eye on this one.

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Don’t guess/read minds. Survey them online, and know

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Ken Barber

Met with a great company yesterday called SurveyGizmo. Another Boulder tech start-up that saw a demand and filled it with an easy-to-use, effective, affordable product – in this case, an online survey tool.

Blogger’s Tangent: Boulder’s a great town for start-ups, by the way, in case you’re out there thinking of re-locating here, or are currently here and need a nudge to get going. Just check what the NYT says. And the fact that we are apparently the brainiest city in the US)

Back to SurveyGizmo, and online surveys in general – what business wouldn’t want to know what people think of it? Too often business leaders say “I think” when they should say “My customers told us that…”. So, here’s a list of helpful ways you should be using an online survey tool, roughly in order of business importance:

  1. Customers: What do you think of our product/service? What features would you like to see in the next version? How do you rate your last experience with your salesperson or Customer Service Representative? Which of the following product designs do you like the most? (great for testing before you build)
  2. Prospects: What are the most important things you consider when purchasing from companies in our space? What media do you spend the most time using to keep updated on your industry? (use this to plan your next media buy)
  3. Employees: What do you like/dislike about working for Company X? How can we improve our product, or the way we treat our customers?
  4. Business Partners: How can improve the quality of our strategic partnership? What are some ways we could improve our product/service that would meet the needs of your clients?
  5. Suppliers: What information could we provide to make it easier to work with us?

These are just 5 audiences who know something that you would like to know. There are obviously more. But the point is don’t assume you know what people are thinking. Just ask them!

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Drive leads, sales with Google’s oh-so-easy PPC campaigns

Posted on October 3, 2010 by Ken Barber

Working on a pay-per-click Google campaign for a client right now and needed to share how amazing Google has made it to drive highly qualified leads for a small business. Just go to adwords.google.com and create a campaign. You will have lots of help videos, tutorials, articles, and tips & tricks to help you advertise to search engine users.

Here are the steps I went through to launch a campaign. I would set aside about 3 hours to do this, but it’s WELL worth it.

  1. Create a Google Account (most people already have one). Then log-in to Adwords and create a new Campaign. Your Campaign will have several important settings, such as the language of your ads, the geographies you target, and the daily budget. I chose English ads to the entire US and only wanted to spend $15 maximum per day for one month. Yup, it will shut off after reaching $15 for that day. Brilliant!
  2. I created 4 Ad Groups for my new campaign. These 4 will obey the Campaign settings chosen above. But, each Ad Group will have its own keywords, ads, and cost per clicks associated with it. I separated my 4 Ad Groups by stages of the Purchase Funnel – people who are ready to buy, people who need more information, people who just began their search, etc. I know they are in these stages by the types of keywords they search for. Example: a person entering ‘cheap e-commerce solution’ is low in the purchase funnel and I want talk to him/her differently than someone searching for ‘e-commerce whitepaper.’
  3. Now, choose Keywords that will trigger your ads. This is fun. Find words or phrases that  your different audiences would type into Google AND, importantly, that your company has a response to. Searchers want helpful responses, so if you sell vacuum cleaners, don’t buy words like blender or oven, or you will attract the wrong people to your site. And since Google charges for each click of your ad, you wasted that money. Use Google’s Keyword Selector tool for help, visit your competitors’ sites and see what words they use, and just type words into google to get ideas. As you enter keywords, Google will estimate the amount you will be charged when someone clicks on your ad, and how often people search for these terms. You need to decide if that investment is worth it by using estimates for subsequent conversion on your landing page, and expected profit margin from a future sale. If you pay $1 per click, and 1% of clicks generate an average sale of $300 (where $150 is profit), for example, then you will make money.
  4. Next, you need to write the short Ads your audience will see when they type in your selected keywords. Google limits your characters, so just follow their template and remember to be compelling, direct, and use a call-to-action, like Learn More!, View Product Demo, or Sign-Up!. View Google’s videos on how to write effective ads, and make sure to write at least 5 ads. Google will display all ads randomly and tell you which one drive the best response. Awesome.
  5. The last part of PPC advertising is creating a Landing Page for these searchers to visit that is consistent with the keywords they entered and the ads they saw. A person searching for hardwood floors and clicking on an ad mentioning a deal on installation should not be taken to a homepage that does not mention anything about promotions for hardwood floor installation. You’ll lose them and waste the cost of your click.
  6. Monitor your performance using Google’s easy Dashboard and see which keywords and ads are performing well, and make changes accordingly. Now, I have skipped over a ton of advanced techniques for maximizing performance of your PPC campaign. Like bidding strategies for optimal placement of your ads. But Google’s help center, and Google.com itself, do a great job at educating you. Some of the fun things you can do are to:
    • show ads only at certain times of the day and days of the week
    • show ads on other websites that display Google ads (this is called AdSense)
    • Draw a customized geographical area where your ads will appear. Yes, literally draw it. This saves money if your services are only available in a limited area
    • Only show your ads to people who are on their iPhone

Let me know if I can answer any questions! It’s perhaps the most effective use of your money to display highly targeted ads to people who you know are looking for something you offer.

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Get a great cost per acquisition with Facebook’s targeted ads

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Ken Barber

If you haven’t played around with Facebook’s targeted ads yet, it’s absolutely worth your time. Especially for small businesses who have limited budgets, want to make a highly focused impact, and are focused on cost per acquisition.

Try a campaign, and then compare your CPA versus your other channels. For certain marketing goals, it will likely be the wisest possible use of your money due to 1) how targeted you can get with your communications and 2) how you only pay if people respond to your ad (the CPC model Google invented).

Here’s how it works. Click ‘Advertising’ at the bottom of any Facebook page, and click ‘Create an Ad’.  On the next step you are already writing your lead copy, your more detailed copy, inserting an image, and then choose where the ad will take people–your destination website. The excellent UI shows you–in real-time–the ad you are creating. (See image on right for how I filled out this page. And see FB’s great FAQ on designing ads)

Next, the fun part. Who do you want to talk to? You will quickly see the great marketing paradox in action – you can achieve a massive reach if you are less targeted with your audience. But less targeted people tend to generate lower response rates. Or, you can hyper-target your communication which limits your reach, but also typically boosts your response rate from a more interested audience.

You can target down to the city level, and even specify a radius around that city. In my case, the screenshot at right shows that I only want my ad to show to people within 50 miles of my home town of Boulder, CO. When I make that selection, Facebook shows me exactly how many people will see my ad if I keep these settings. I then enter that I only want people 21 and over seeing my ad, and my audience numbers drops further. But I am refining to people who are great candidates for my digital marketing consulting services, so I like the trade off.

I enter the term ‘marketing’ as yet another filter, which means my ad will only show to people who have entered ‘marketing’ as a like, interest, or occupation. Again, I am gambling that this filter will produce stronger response rates. The screenshot above shows that these filters will result in 11,820 people seeing my ad at any given time. Since I only need a few clients at once, this reach is more than adequate. In fact, it rocks.

On the next page I choose only to pay when my ad is clicked on and then set my daily budget (great feature, also from Google). I review my ad, enter in a credit card, and my ad is up and running in the right column of Facebook to just those 11,820 people that I believe represent the best targets for my consulting business. Brilliant!

Give it a try and see if you are as enamored as I am with this amazingly easy method of delivering targeted communications.

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The easy & cheap way to open up a mobile sales channel

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Ken Barber

Wanted to share this press release from mShopper which announces a cheap, fast, and effective way for any retailer to open up a new sales channel for its on-the-go consumers.

The retailers I have spoken with lately are all in agreement that they need to be selling to smartphone users, but are intimated by where to begin, how much budget to allocate, what to ask for, how to integrate with their other channels, and how to know if it’s working.

mShopper has come up with a very appealing solution. Take your existing product data feed from your e-commerce site and use their self-service website to design your store, collect subscribers, send out alerts, and drive sales.

Here’s today’s press release

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Use online surveys to collect market & employee insights

Posted on June 27, 2010 by Ken Barber

I have become a huge fan lately of the online market research tool Zoomerang. Definitely check it out, since it’s free for your first four surveys and remarkably easy to use.  Here are my two uses in the past 3 weeks:

Consumer Research – testing most effective web copy and design

  • My start-up (www.mshopper.com) needed some quick and dirty market research to identify the most effective phrases and images that would encourage an online shopper to sign up to receive hot deals sent to their mobile phones
  • Copy Test: Would mentioning a ‘shopping spree’ do the trick? Or store credit? Or cash? Should we lead with the call to sign-up and follow with the financial incentive? Or the other way around?
  • Design Test: Would a picture of a pile of cash elicit the most clicks? Or a smartphone? Or a smartphone spitting out dollar bills like an ATM? Would a square or rectangular image catch the eye better?
  • Zoomerang allowed me to insert 10 image files into a multiple choice survey question, and then create another open-ended form to get more specific feedback. You can send out a link, mail it to a list, or embed it on a website. The stats are nicely collected and displayed as well.
  • The bottom line is that mentioning “shopping spree” and using copy mentioning the opportunity to ‘get first dibs’ was the winner. The largest design showing the pile of money and a bolded mention of $250 not-so-surprisingly took the first place for design.
  • FYI, take the 7-question survey here!

Employee Research – collecting feedback on improving a production process

  • As a manger of developers, I wanted to identify ways to easily improve our production process
  • I quickly created a 10-question survey which sought feedback on ways to improve our communication, resources, testing process, work schedule, etc.
  • The results that came back reinforced some areas I had a hunch on and disproved other ideas I was about to implement.  VERY helpful. It’s a super easy way to gather constructive feedback from a workforce and demonstrate your commitment to them at the same time. And much easier to field than the traditional paper surveys.

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Panel discusses why large brands should market locally

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Ken Barber

Had the pleasure of attending a great speaker series put on by Denver’s Red Door Interactive on Tuesday. The topic was Local Marketing for Larger Brands and was the third panel event I attended from RDI. (See write-up on first and second panels)

The panel consisted of an excellent mix of  strategists, large brand marketers, and local marketing experts:

  • Jami Zakem, Director of Client Services, Yelp (blogger note: I love this site)
  • Deborah Jourdan, Director of Consumer Marketing, Cricket Communications
  • Martin May, Co-founder, Brightkite
  • Tony Felice, Senior Strategist, RDI

Here are my notes from the day – very educational:

  • When deciding which marketing channels to be in, it’s essential to go where your consumers are. Try hard to avoid the ‘bright shiny object’ syndrome of pursuing the latest channel.
  • Field of Dreams is a fine movie, but its lesson of “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t work for social media. Again, make sure you are where your consumers already are as best as possible
  • Difference between Social Media and Social Networking
    • SM: It’s what advertisers engage in
    • SN: It’s what users engage in – building networks and sharing information across them
  • Good audience question – why should we focus on letting consumers comment about us on social media sites when we want them to contact us directly?
    • Yelp: Review sites are here to stay. Yelp receives 33 million monthly visitors – it’s where consumers are sharing information. And, 83% of reviews posted to Yelp are positive.
  • Another good question – how can a company possibly manage all of the social conversations?
    • Panel agreed that you can use popular tools such as cotweet and hootsuite to manage posting and listening. Still, Martin May (Brightkite) noted, today’s consumer expects a 24/7 response from companies, and we can’t possibly work 24/7
    • Other helpful social media listening tools (from expensive to free): TNS Cymfony, Neilsen BuzzMetrics, Radian 6, Social Mention, peoplebrowsr, filtrbox
    • Deborah (Cricket) mentioned how her company developed a ’10 Commandments of Social Media’ which governs Cricket’s social media participation. Specifically, it encourages ALL employees to get involved and support the dedicated social media team.
  • Why go local? One panel member nailed it when they said that it can be used to publicly demonstrate a company’s commitment to customer service
  • How does a company track social media conversions?
    • Answers: Links to brand site, coupons (excellent!), and a tracked phone line.
  • Best practices of local SEO – make sure your company has other ‘citations’ on the web. Citations are address listings for your company that are posted on other sites. Google sees this as more evidence that you deserve to show up when a user searches on a nearby location. Examples would be to have a Google Places, CitySearch, and Yelp listing.
    • The great thing about talking to people performing local searches is that they are further down the purchase funnel (i.e. someone searching “dentist wash park Denver CO”)
    • Companies should consider buying keywords down to the neighborhood level
  • It’s important to send people on mobile devices to your mobile site. Smart phone growth will continue to grow at incredible rates. Consumers will have a mini-computer in their hands and will be on the move, near a business, and companies need to give them something to do.

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(Even More) Reasons retailers need to go mobile

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Ken Barber

The talk around my professional network continues to be what retailers are doing to sell to their on-the-go consumers at the time an impulse purchase arises. It’s definitely an opportunity. And huge challenge.

Where to begin? It’s a new channel, so many retailers I speak with are reluctant to dedicate a large initial investment and then hope that it eventually pays off. Not in this economy. There are lower-risk alternatives, however, where companies have done all the heavy lifting to get you mobile. And you just need to plug in your product catalog and flip a few switches and you’re mobile-enabled in under 2 hours for $50. Boulder’s mShopper is one excellent example of a low risk, high-potential-reward option.

But, there are still retailers that aren’t yet convinced that they need to be where there consumers are. For this group of late adopters, here are 5 articles from just the last 2 weeks outlining the benefits of being where your consumers are:

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Newspaper: “Get personal, develop your mobile presence”

Posted on April 28, 2010 by Ken Barber

It seems everywhere I look lately there is some stat or story about how mobile commerce is the next big leap forward, similar to when we all knew that e-commerce was the next big thing in the early 2000′s.

Well, I wanted to write one of those articles too! Luckily I still write a regular column on Digital Marketing for the Denver Business Journal and my editor needed an article last week.

So, please read “Get personal: Develop your mobile presence” and leave comments here.

If there is one point I was trying to make it’s that retailers have a lot to gain by being involved in such a personal, trusted new sales channel. And if they don’t act, their competition will.

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Why Best Buy loves mobile

Posted on April 10, 2010 by Ken Barber

The senior director of interactive marketing for Best Buy (Tracy Benson) spoke at the National Retail Federation’s Retail Innovation & Marketing Conference in March and presented the following video entitled ‘Why Best Buy loves mobile” to the audience.

The short answer is that it creates tremendous business opportunities for the brand to conveniently communicate their product line to their consumers and then facilitate quick and easy transactions

Take a look, and see if you share Best Buy’s view on how the incredibly personal nature of mobile represents an exciting business opportunity for retailers.

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