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Archive for October, 2009

Mobile Promotions: How Ringtones, SMS Promotions and Mobile Coupons Engage Customers

October 29th, 2009 No comments

Mobile promotions dovetail seamlessly with your company’s marketing objectives. While you want to increase sales and improve your revenue base, there are several ancillary goals you need to meet along the way. For example, you want to improve your brand awareness to consumers; you want to attract consumer data for future CRM efforts; you want to increase customer loyalty and drive traffic – both online and offline. Mobile promotions provide the lever to accomplish each of these goals. And they do so at a cost that fits nearly every marketing budget.

As cell phones, PDAs, and other mobile devices have flourished, they have created a new marketing platform from which you can engage your audience. Below, you’ll discover how to use mobile promotions, such as SMS promotions, mobile coupons, and ringtone promotions, to capture valuable mindshare within your market. Once you catch the attention of consumers in a way that excites them, motivating them to take action becomes far easier.
Mobile Promotions Leverage Affordable Digital Incentives
Even if your profit margins are healthy, every marketing budget has inherent constraints. It is critical that you offer incentives to your audience that are as affordable as they are engaging.

Mobile promotions are delivered digitally to consumers’ mobile devices. As a result, the cost of delivery is extraordinarily low. This is the case whether you’re allowing consumers to download songs, play instant win games, enter sweepstakes, or redeem mobile coupons. Because mobile promotions are comparatively inexpensive, you can launch them while continuing to leverage conventional marketing platforms, such as print and DOOH signage.

How Mobile Promotions Motivate Customers To Respond

The right incentives can drive market participation regardless of your product. The key is to offer incentives that your customers find immediately appealing. This is one of the unique advantages of launching mobile promotions. Consumers can download digital content (e.g. songs, games, images, etc.) instantly to their mobile devices. They can enter contests and sweepstakes for a chance to win alluring prizes.

When you launch mobile promotions to your audience, you’re not only offering consumers attractive incentives, you’re giving them an opportunity to enjoy instant gratification. Those two levers complement each other. In doing so, they trigger a response from your customers.

Mobile Promotions Capture The Mindshare Of Your Audience

If there were no other demands on your customers’ time and attention, motivating them to buy your product would be simple. The reality is that your audience is inundated with a constant torrent of offers and solicitations. Consumers instinctively erect a mental wall that deflects them. That means there’s a high likelihood your market is unaware of your product or uninformed with regard to its benefits. Mobile promotions offers a seductively simple solution.

Free song downloads, instant win games, and mobile coupons can quickly penetrate the mental wall your market has built to block other companies’ offers. These digital incentives tap into your audience’s desire for instant gratification. They are irresistible. They capture mindshare and engage your customers. As a result, your customers become attentive to your message, and far more likely to purchase your product.

Leveraging Mobile Coupons And SMS Promotions

While mobile promotions increase brand awareness, attract customer data, and educate consumers about your product, mobile coupons lift sales and improve customer loyalty. For example, you can use them to reward loyal customers with discounts, thereby driving repeat sales. You can also use them to entice consumers to try a product that you have recently launched. You can leverage these type of mobile promotions to temper the impact of price increases, or to move excess inventory.

Mobile coupons can be delivered to your customers’ cell phones and PDAs through text messages. You can communicate the offer, expiration date, and any other relevant information through short, targeted SMS promotions. Consumers can redeem your coupons at the point of sale in-store or online. Plus, because these mobile promotions use redemption-based incentives, you can easily control the financial risk.

How To Take Advantage Of Mobile Promotions

You have access to a broad menu of engaging and affordable mobile promotions that you can leverage to tap into your market and trigger a response. Ringtone promotions, free music downloads, instant win games, and sweepstakes are attractive to consumers on an instinctive level. They are seductive because they offer instant gratification. As a result, mobile promotions help you capture valuable mindshare, delivering your message to an attentive audience.

By capturing your customers’ attention, you can educate them about your product and its benefits. You can motivate them to purchase, and collect opt-in data for future CRM campaigns. And in the process, you can improve the loyalty they feel toward your company. Mobile promotions can propel your brand ahead of other companies struggling to reach your customers. In today’s competitive environment, that edge can be priceless.

–Cynthia Walker, Promotional Currency

4 Steps for Basic Online Business Promotion

October 1st, 2009 No comments

Congratulations! You’ve started your own online business and now you’re ready for online business promotion. There are a number of schools of thought about online business promotion, they all come down to the same basic techniques: social media, search engine optimization, and offline promotion. If you start this early on, the entire process can be automated and create recurring revenue for you

Online business promotion starts with a blog.

You’ve started your online business, the catalog and shopping cart software are running, and you’re carefully written dozens, if not hundreds, of product descriptions. But you’re not done. Make blogging a part of your online business promotion. Blog posts are great landing pages for your website, with a much longer and keyword-rich description than your catalog entries. Write articles about typical problems your customers will face, and show how your products are the solutions. Post customer testimonials and photos with the products in action. The blog will become the center of your social media campaign, and improve your search engine optimization results.

Use social media for online business promotion.

Social media is another important part of your online business promotion. Create accounts for yourself and/or your company on Twitter, Facebook, and any social networks that fall within your target market. Follow/friend people who fit within that niche, and focus only on them. But rather than spam them with product messages, promote your how-to articles on your blog, answer questions related to your product, and let them see you as a solution, not a pest.

Online business promotion means optimizing for search engines.

It’s crucial that your website is optimized for search engines, otherwise you’ll waste a big part of your online business promotion efforts. Do simple things, like use important keywords in headlines and anchor text, having back links to your website and blog posts. These will lead to higher search engine placement. As you rank higher in the search results, more people will find you, which will lead to more visits, which leads to increased sales.

Offline marketing is important for online business promotion.

Offline marketing is an important tool in the online business promotion toolbox, especially as you focus on a particular niche. If you sell hand degreaser to car mechanics, go to the places where the gearheads gather. Go to car shows, trade shows, and conventions. Visit the garages in your town and the surrounding area. Buy a mailing list of auto repair shops around the country, and send them a sample of your product.

Tell everyone they can only buy the product on your website. Make cards and brochures with your URL on it. While you can certainly sell your product at these events, a lot of people will say “not right now” or “maybe I’ll come back.” Give them a card and tell them to find you online when they’re ready.

By following these online business promotion steps, you can set your business to run on autopilot. What you’ll see is that your blog will be picked up by the search engines and seen by social media friends, they’ll continue to visit your website, buy your products, and this will be an automatic revenue generator for you.