142 posts categorized "Marketing"

"Rowdy" Ronda Rousey is a force in mixed martial arts. She won Bronze in Judo at the 2008 Olympic Games, and went on to win all 7 of her professional fights with first-round submissions using the same move every time. All the while, she's used a smart media strategy to build her personal brand to the point that she headlined the first women's fight in the UFC. Your business could do worse than to take a few pages out of her media playbook.

Find her on Facebook, Twitter, The Web & Instragram!

1. Have an Opinion
   Ronda started early with a willingness to speak her mind in interviews, and recent years have seen her Twitter presence grow into its own force. Though her comments are often respectful of those she admires, she has no problem "trash talking" people or ideas that get on her nerves. The controversial comments generate nothing but extra publicity, bringing those who already like her more fervently into her fan base.
2. Bare it All
   Rousey literally bared all in ESPN The Magazine's Body Issue, leaving only the parts covered by her strategically positioned gloves to the imagination. Businesses should strive for the same kind of tactical transparency. Rousey knew her mostly male fan base would respond to that kind of revealing coverage. What parts of your business will build trust and loyalty if you show your customers what's going on?
3. Be Unusual
   In a sport full of ultra-aggressive, high-testosterone fighters and their even more macho fans, Rousey is an attractive woman who frequently observes a vegan or vegetarian diet. This gets her more attention than others at her level by giving journalists extra information and fans something to talk about. Identify the things that make your business stand out, and find ways to celebrate them.
4. Stick With What You Know
   A judo champion and daughter of a judo champion, Rousey wins her matches with grappling skills -- in fact, the same grappling skill over and over. She sticks with what she knows and wins by being better at it than everybody else. Though it's good to branch out and be flexible, focus on becoming the absolute best in the places where you excel.

You don't have to rise to the top of your industry by threatening to break people's arms, but that doesn't mean you can't learn a thing or two from this fight sport champion. Readers, which of these strategies work best for you -- or which ones do you see your competition using well to your disadvantage?

We know you're reading this blog because you're excited about the marketing potential offered by new media and 21st century communications, but there are still some old-school tricks that bring customers to your door reliably. Even as you master your social media efforts, SMS Marketing campaigns and SEO efforts, it pays to keep them in heavy rotation. 

1. Referral Business
   Word of mouth will probably always be the king of marketing. Nothing influences buying decisions like the advice of a trusted friend or adviser. That's why we encourage SMS broadcasts that offer deals for bringing somebody into the fold. Do everything you can to reward referrals and watch your customer base grow.
2. The Three Foot Rule
   Versions of this have probably been around since the first businesses began to appear, but the rule was expressed this way first by Guerrilla Marketing guru Jay Conrad Levinson. The concept is simple: never let a new person get within three feet of you without knowing about your business. Keep business cards or brochures on you at all times to make this easier. It takes a little getting used to, but you will be amazed how many new customers it brings in.
3. Focus on the Bold Print
   What was true in the newspaper age remained true in the direct mail era, and is still true online. Though all your ad copy should be high-quality, compelling and information rich, you must spend extra energy on the headline and other bold print aspects of your ads. Most people only read that part of an ad, and those that read everything usually only do so if the bold print headlines grab their attention.
4. Radio Spots
   Of the big media options, radio is still the cheapest per impression. Even though iPhones and similar gadgets have replaced much of what radio does, people still listen in droves during their morning and afternoon commutes -- which explains why Google searches for a business spike whenever it gets mentioned on the radio. This works especially well for businesses that you wouldn't expect to hear on the air. Diamond wholesalers and dance clubs get some traction, but a karate studio or hair salon can see real results.

All of these strategies work best if you combine the old-school marketing with modern methods of reaching a maximum number of people. Do you have any stories of how you blended old marketing with new technology? Tell us about it in the comments below!

When you're marketing for a startup -- or just starting some marketing -- don't try to reinvent the wheel. Stand on the shoulders of giants, as they say, by using these essential resources to support, guide and jump-start your efforts.

1. The 5-Minute Guide to Cheap Startup Advertising A guest post by Rob Wailing for OnStartups.com. If you're as new as your company when it comes to startup marketing, here's the best rundown of what you absolutely need to know.
2. The Quick-and-Dirty Tips Network Nobody in a startup has just one job. QDT has short podcasts with tips on everything from marketing, to money management, to public speaking. Each is just 5 to 10 minutes long, and supported by extensive blog content.
3. 10 Marketing Tips for Every Startup The web is full of "X Tips" articles. You're reading one now. But classics are classics for a reason, and this post over at TheNextWeb.com is the best of its genre for this purpose. Read it before your strategy sessions for ideas.
4. The Four-Hour Workweek You've heard of the book and seen the TED talk. Ferriss's ideas won't always cut your work week to 1/10th or smaller what it is right now, but they're always applicable. They'll help you prioritize your time, identify your most important goals point your company in the direction that's best for you.
5. The Blog Tyrant If you think commercial bloggers aren't startup entrepreneurs, you haven't been paying attention. Ramsay Taplin's advice about blogging will help you build a base for your company's web traffic, but it goes beyond the blog into the realm of startup strategy.
6. What the Founders Wish They Knew The only thing better than learning from your mistakes is learning from other peoples' mistakes without making them yourself. This article asks 10 recent startup successes what they wish they'd known before opening their own companies.
7. Startup Success A podcast, now in the 150+ episode stage, where Bob Walsh and Patrick Foley cover startup strategies, tips for marketing and interviews with thought leaders and influential up-and-comers.

The trouble with lists is they're never complete. Readers, what other resources had the skinny you wish you'd known before getting started? Better yet, what advice and experience can you offer yourself? Join the conversation in the comments below.

Another Ez Texting SMS Marketing integration? Yes! Eventbrite makes it easy to plan awesome events. Ez Texting makes it easy to connect with your contacts. In other words, a perfect it. Our Eventbrite integration allows you to quickly and easily sync your event attendees into Ez Texting. Why would you want to do that? Already know the answer? Login to Ez Texting so sync up to Eventbrite now!

Before The Event
Short, sweet 160 character text messages are a great way to build excitement about your event. Whether you're teasing out info about the event or upselling attendees with special offers, text messaging is the perfect medium to quickly reach out.

At The Event
Stormy weather. The band is late...really late. If you've already synced your event attendee list to Ez Texting you won't break a sweat. Login, tap out a message (using our smartphone optimized site), select the Event group, and in less than a minute you can update everyone. No computer...or smartphone? No worries. Text-from-phone allows you to text your event attendees using any mobile phone.

What Else?
All the awesome SMS Marketing features at Ez Texting. Want to get the pulse of the crowd? Poll your event attendees using our SMS polls feature!

Don't have an Eventbrite account? What are you waiting for? Check out their features and then signup now!

When we debuted our first integrations (MailChimp & Highrise), we promised to keep adding new web apps to the list...and today we've got another one for you. You can now sync your iContact lists directly into your Ez Texting account.

The options for iContact are similar to the other email marketing integrations:

• Connect list(s) to Group(s)
• Perform manual or automatic syncs

Setup is quick, but it does require a bit of copying and pasting, so we put together a step-by-step guide. Once the initial setup is complete we'll handle the rest!

Valentine's Day SMS Marketing campaigns seem like a no-brainer for February content, because almost everybody is thinking about Valentine's Day....and that's the problem. It takes a lot for a Valentine-related marketing message to get any kind of attention. Instead, try cycling in content about other lesser-known holidays and events.

The reason Valentine themes rule February marketing is because it's the most famous holiday of the month, but consider some other holidays. Some people know about, while others are obscure enough that you get to inform as well as entertain and sell.

• February 12 -- Abraham Lincoln's Birthday
• February 14 -- National Organ Donor Day
• February 14 -- National Condom Awareness Day
• February 16 -- Do a Grouch a Favor Day
• February 18 -- President's Day
• February 20 -- George Washington's Birthday
• February 20 -- Love Your Pet Day
• February 26 -- National Pistachio Day

The month also has its fair share of observance and awareness markers. February is.....

• American Heart Month
• Black History Month
• Canned Food Month
• Heart and Stroke Month
• National Wise Health Consumer Month
• National Senior Independence Month
• National Children's Dental Health Month
• National Weddings Month (despite June being the busiest month for weddings)
• National Grapefruit Month

The first week of February is World Salt Awareness Week and National Consumer Protection Week. The second commemorates Burn Awareness and Congenital Heart Defect Awareness. Week three of February includes Children of Alcoholics Week, National Cardiac Rehabilitation Week and Random Acts of Kindness Week. The fourth week of the month encompasses both Trails Advocacy Week, Freedom to Read Week and National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.

If there's nothing in all of those days you can use to engage with your subscriber list, you're probably better off sticking to basics (we've got some ideas for you there too). Whether you celebrate these observances humorously or seriously, with a sale or a trivia contest, you'll get the attention you deserve by standing out. Don't forget to look into local festivals and events for additional opportunities. Basketball, wrestling, volleyball and swimming seasons are still running strong at your local high school, and the weather may just be starting to change.

Talking about the weather might be cliché, but it's something everybody has in common. You can use this commonality to engage with your subscriber list using some or all of these cold-weather themed SMS marketing ideas.

1. Record Lows Mean Record Lows Announce early in the season that you'll be offering a ridiculously big discount coupon on the first day of the season that breaks a cold-temperature record. Send weather updates from time to time to keep people interested and engaged. When the day comes -- you may have to dig into some obscure temperature records to make sure it does ("coldest Thursday of the decade," for example) -- drop your coupon with a one-day time limit.
2. Weather Advisory Services Since you're already tracking the weather for your record lows campaign, start updating subscribers to any heavy weather advisories you hear about. Offer suggestions about traffic safety, saving on heating bills and other tips related to the chilly weather. If your business has goods or services that can help your subscribers manage the cold, include some coupons.
3. It's So Cold Contest Do this once a week, offering a simple discount to all participants and a larger deal to the winner. The rules are simple. Each participant finished the sentence "It's so cold...." in the funniest way possible. Share winners on your website and Facebook pages for cross-platform success. Offer bonus points to people who can come up with an answer that matches your business.
4. Awesome Hat Ambush Use this to generate instant business on a slow afternoon. Send out a buy-one/get-one coupon with a two-hour time limit just before the lunch break or evening shopping rush. Offer an even bigger BOGO to anybody who shows up wearing an awesome winter hat. The definition of "awesome" is up to you and your staff.
5. Winter Sports Events Winter has great opportunities to sit down in front of the tube with friends, such as the Superbowl and the NCAA March Madness basketball playoffs. As these events approach, broadcast trivia and other notes celebrating the season -- and announcing related specials your business will offer. During the game, hold a trivia contest or similar even to hold engagement ant interest.

Have you dropped any particularly interesting or effective SMS campaigns during the cold-weather months? Tell us about them, or your best ideas, in the comments below.

We're excited to announce the launch of our latest integration - one that we know so many of you have been waiting for - Constant Contact

Setting up the Constant Contact integration is extremely easy. Login to your Ez Texting account, click Integrations under the Advanced Features menu, and when that page loads you'll be able to add a new Constant Contact connection. After you've authorized the Ez Texting application you'll choose the lists you'd like to sync from and the Ez Texting Groups to add those contacts to. As with all of our integrations, you can sync manually or have us update the sync whenever you login to your account.

What's so great about connecting your Constant Contact and Ez Texting accounts? SMS Marketing and Email Marketing are perfect compliments to each other. By syncing your contacts between accounts there's no longer a need to manually export and import contacts. Everything is done in seconds - and can even refresh the list every time you login so your list is always up-to date.

While email marketing is great for long, rich content - and will never be replaced - text messaging allows you to reach those same contacts in a different, complimentary way. Short & Sweet (160 characters), universally supported, and with open rates over 90% within three minutes of receipt, text messages allow you to reach nearly all of your contacts, wherever they are, whenever you need to reach them. Text messaging is great for appointment reminders, mobile coupons, and time sensitive info.

If you're new to SMS Marketing, be sure to check out our Free SMS Marketing Resource Center, as well as dozens of tips, ideas, best practices and dos and donts right here at the blog.

You can also check out Ez Texting over at the Constant Contact Marketplace!

Login now - or see all of our web app integrations.

One issue with SMS Marketing is it's a bit of a grind. You send out message after message. Sometimes you see a few extra customers. Sometimes you get a fun response. Most of the time, though, it just feels like extra work. 

But you can take some inspiration from success stories. Just like winning the lottery (even better than winning the lottery, since it's more likely to happen to you ), knowing about how others did well can help you believe you can do it, too -- and give you some ideas about how to make it happen. 

1. Ace Hardware Knows Which Way the Wind is Blowing
   Ace Hardware is a national brand with local or regional ownership. Westlake Ace, a franchise owning 88 stores across 7 states, allowed SMS subscribers to opt-in for weather notifications based on ZIP code. These warnings not only provided valuable weather information, but also notes about how to prepare -- and what to buy at Ace Hardware -- to be ready. It resulted both in higher sales as storms approached, but in a huge subscriber increase as people got friends to sign up for the weather warnings.
2. Coca-Cola Goes Mad in March
   People drink Coke while watching TV, and Coke has figured out that people drink Coke Zero while watching sports on TV. During March Madness (the NCAA Basketball championship tournament, always held in March), Coke sprang for on-air announcements during the game related to prizes and codes printed on various Coke Zero/Diet Coke products. The end result meant interacting with the brand and the game simultaneously. It's not as though Coke really needed more brand awareness (it's the most-recognized logo in the world), but the March Madness initiative didn't lose them any ground.
3. Land's End
   The clothing catalog giant went big for Mother's Day with an SMS campaign that reads like a "Nagging Mother" joke. In the week prior to the day, they sent three different reminders to get a gift for Mom...and a note that a Land's End gift card would be perfect for just such an occasion. This one didn't increase subscriber lists significantly, but boosted sales of both gift cards and merchandise.
4. San Diego Chargers
   Most teams have an SMS list to let fans keep up with the team throughout the season, but the Chargers went one step further. During the off season, subscribers receive updates about star players and training regimens, alerts on local appearances, and opportunities to get involved in polls and trivia contests to win Chargers swag. If there's a better way to keep in top-of-mind awareness when not immediately relevant, we haven't seen it.

What about in your area? Do you have colleagues or competitors who really nailed SMS this year? Tell us about them in the comments below, and how you plan to beat them in the coming months.

As the New Year begins, remember the importance of a full-year content calendar. Here are 52 weeks of SMS Marketing campaign ideas to get you started:

1. New Year resolution contest.
2. Come in from the cold.
3. Aren't you glad the holidays are over?
4. Happy Martin Luther King Day!
5. Crazy weather photo contest.
6. Bring a friend discount. 
7. Valentine's Day celebration.
8. Know your presidents quiz (in honor of Presidents' Day)
9. SMS Haiku contest.
10. Ugly dog photo contest.
11. Spring forward to Daylight Savings Time.
12. Spring Equinox = buy one/get one free.
13. Holy week.
14. Spring Break (exact date may be different in your area)
15. First flowers photo contest.
16. Bring a friend discount.
17. Earth Day information quiz.
18. May Day practical joke photo contest.
19. Early Mother's Day event.
20. Armed Forced Day appreciation discount.
21. Memorial Day weekend.
22. Memorial Day picnic hangover recovery week.
23. Summer's coming student appreciation discount.
24. Early Father's Day event.
25. Summer Solstice = big bulk discounts.
26. Biggest summer vacation plans contest.
27. Independence Day celebration.
28. Discount if the temperature beats a record.
29. Worst summer outfit photo contest.
30. Enjoy our air conditioning sale.
31. Summer picnic supplies discount.
32. Outdoor extravaganza sidewalk sale.
33. Bring a buddy discount.
34. Summer stuff clearance event.
35. “What I did this summer” text essay contest.
36. Labor Day celebration.
37. “Good moms, good moms, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they go to school?”
38. First leaf of fall photo contest.
39. Autumn Equinox = but one/get one free.
40. First local high school football game (might vary by region).
41. "I left my jacket at school/work" contest.
42. SMS holiday countdown.
43. Holiday savings poll.
44. Halloween hints series.
45. Halloween contest.
46. Collector series week one.
47. Collector series week two.
48. Black Friday Sale.
49. Last minute holiday shopping.
50. Winter Solstice = lowest prices of the year.
51. Christmas greetings.
52. Happy New Year!

Not all of these ideas will work for every area and every business. Use what works for you and insert your own ideas when you have better ones. The important part is to systematize your SMS presence with a content calendar. The better you plan your marketing, the more it will pay out over the year.