Category Archives: Advertising

Google’s AdSense, banners, and other advertising topics.

Have You Considered Crowdsourcing To Fund Your Next Project?

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What is crowdsourcing? It’s getting people together to promote a project, usually involving money. And it is hugely successful.

Take for instance Kickstarter.com, one of the biggest (other biggies include RocketHub, and IndieGoGo.com). You create a project proposal, and the crowd votes on it by donating to your cause. If you make your projected goal, you get the money to start your venture.

In one case, a group that wanted to manufacture an specialty titanium lock for their bicycle got their money – and then some – to produce it. They had an idea, showed everyone the idea, and took in over $100,000 (instead of a hoped-for $37,500) in return for product orders in advance. This gave them the money to start.

Many of the sites are for artists rather than designers: many have projects for books, plays, and recordings. For example, a project might ask for money for producing a record or EP, or to write a book.

Generally, a project has several components:

  • A clear goal. For example Kickstarter requires a specific project with a specific timeline. You can’t use them to fund a new business, but you can to fund a new part of a business.
  • Something to give back. Many projects have things that your donation ‘buys’ you, much like the gifts on Public Service Television pledge drives. An author may send out a thank you for a $5 donation, and an autographed copy of the finished book at $50. Setting up a variety of items and price levels serves to encourage donations.
  • A total money requirement and deadline. The project is listed when it starts, and the end time is displayed as well as the progress in funds. Choosing carefully is important: Kickstarter will not give you the funds if you don’t make your final goal by your deadline (others like IndieGoGo will, but with penalties, such as a higher processing fee).

These sites are well worth a look if you have a project that needs funding. Consider them the next time you say “I’d do this if only I had the money” – because if enough people agree, you WILL have the money!

The Good (And Bad) Of Niche Branding

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I recently found a beer I liked.

Now for those who know me the statement is a rarity – I normally don’t like beer.

At all.

But this one won me over. It’s a beer named Bavaria 8.6 Red. The taste is somewhat sweet, and less malty, definitely unlike any other beer I’ve tasted.

Now, here’s the thing about niche markets: finally, someone has a beer I like that is different than anything before. But this different means everyone else hates it!

Do a search on the beer, and you’d be surprised how many people soundly criticize it. It makes sense of course; if you already like beer, a sweet beer probably won’t taste ‘right’ (or even passable).

But for the target niche market (ie me), the taste gets them new beer drinkers where there weren’t any before. Because I never buy beer if I can help it. The result? New markets and market share in a crowded beer arena.

So the lesson for you out there marketing? If you’re going after a new and different market, don’t be surprised if you get strong negative reactions from the purists who like things the way they are. Remember they aren’t your target (they already are fans of something else).

Instead, focus on the new market. And look for non traditional ways to market to them – after all, any beer ad wouldn’t work for me (in fact, I only accidentally found the beer when I was picking up various samplers for someone else).

Oh, and another thing: be careful what you call it. Here in Canada, it’s nowhere near the 8.6% alcohol that prompted the name – but you can’t really get good branding calling the Canadian version 7.5, can you?

Junk Mail – A Tree Dies For Your Sales

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We got a gift subscription awhile back to Reader’s Digest. And as a bonus, received a lot of extra spam to go with it.

Not the online email kind: the old fashioned, “junk mail” kind. Now we’ve started getting junk mail from companies we’ve never heard of, and that we can’t imagine contacting – ever.

So, with increasing loads of useless letters, we’re wondering, what do you do with the non-Internet version of spam, junk mail?

It’s not an idle question, since not only is it a mailbox filler of dubious use, but multiply that paper use by all the households on a mailing list (or for flyers, all the houses in the area), and I feel real pain thinking of all the trees that fell, just so I could get the latest drug store flyer (where ironically, there is a sale on toilet paper).

Fortunately, there is a way to solve this: there are services out there that will help you get off mailing list, reducing the physical junk mail you get, and at the same time, provide a green solution. Green? Yes; after all, less junk mail means a tree or two is saved (here’s an interesting advertising gimmick: they should have a counter, showing the estimated number of trees clients are saving by subscribing to their service).

There you have it. If you don’t like the flyers you get, you can turn them away, and reroute those trees somewhere else – or maybe, just maybe, leave them planted in the forest, eating up all that nasty carbon dioxide.

It’s a thought.

Guy Kawasaki, Chocolate Pantsuits, and This Weekend

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What do Guy Kawasaki, Chocolate pantsuits and “Diamond or Square” have in common?

In a nutshell – Strategic Objectives.

This PR agency is involved in all three:

  • They were the people involved in the famous Shreddies shredded wheat campaign “Which do you prefer – square or diamond” ads.
  • To promote Cadbury, they created the Cadbury Chocolate Couture Fashion Show, where all costumes were made out of chocolate.
  • And Guy Kawasaki, one of the people behind the original Macintosh computer marketing campaign, is a guest speaker at the 2010 IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) World Conference. Also along with him, Judy Lewis, co-founder of Strategic Objectives, is a Moderator on the power of PR to influence, the power of buzz, and social media (among other things).

The Toronto event, going from the 6th to the 9th of June, 2010, is a meeting of some of the most influential people in the Public Relations business. And as the example of Strategic Objectives shows, they are influential: these companies do the marketing that makes us think, and makes us choose.

Highlights of the convention (besides Guy’s and Judy’s parts, of course):

  • Communication in the new reality – with traditional media slowing down, but new media coverage uncertain, how can people be reached effectively? This session discusses the options.
  • Don’t talk to the media – in this media climate, unprepared speakers are like lambs thrown to the wolves. How to speak and what to say to make a memorable, yet positive, appearance is the topic of this session.
  • Words are not enough – most communicators uses images, yet companies often forget the power of imagery. Here’s how to put it to best use.

It sounds action-packed this weekend (well, PR-action packed, that is). To all those visiting Toronto for the sessions, I hope you enjoy the event!

Are Your Business Leads ‘Hot’?

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You’ve probably had this happen, too: I sent out an email recently to one of my lists, with extremely low response. So I’m left wondering, is it because the offer is no good? Wrong product for the right people? Email filtering? People too busy to open it? Or is is the weather? The time of the year? And so on.

Now this is a minor crisis, since email has a low cost to send. But in the ‘real world’ it costs big: imagine a 0.01% response when you’re using post, or having salesmen do visits or telephone calls by the hour, and the costs are significant. So it actually saves to do a bit of list pruning before – even paying someone to do the pruning for you.

For example, one site I found online, Blueberry Marketing Services, does just that. You provide the contacts, and they make sure the people are still there, and the leads are current (obviously, you’ll get poor response calling on people who have left the company!) Called Database Cleaning, this type of work can get rid of the stale contacts, and that means every call made thereafter is worth more to a business.

Of course, that’s just one aspect of a company like this. For example, they also do lead generation – actually doing the initial calls for you – which means you can get by with a smaller sales force (after all, you need fewer people when they aren’t cold calling).

What are the benefits of someone doing the cold calls for you? If you’ve ever talked to a telemarketer, then you know that good ones are few and far between. By using professionals, you pay for their expertise, but that expertise can make the difference between getting stopped cold at the reception desk – or getting put through to the president.

Companies like Blueberry exist because sales is hard – and they succeed because they can do something well that few people can (or want) to do. It’s worth keeping in mind the next time you’d like to weed out unresponsive leads – or generate new ones.