Are You a Groupie?

Thanks for coming...

Most businesses I speak to never consider the backend work that must take place in order to MAKE a Groupon campaign successful. In fact, this applies to more than just Groupon. This can be anywhere you advertise. I only use Groupon because they have been in the news and in such a poor light. 

Hopefully I'll do them a little PR justice.

and I have no reason or benefit to say good things about Groupon. I do not use them really for anything personally, however I do see on my side of marketing that they are an effective place to build email lists.

I wanted to discuss this week why Groupon works for some and not for others and how you can MAKE it work for you. (or any advertising you may do that gets a RESPONSE, even facebook)

I think there is a common thread amongst both sides. The businesses who SUCCEED capture customer data AND implement it, while the other side either doesn’t capture that data OR just never implements it. 

Example:

If I am a woman driving 10 miles out of my way to get a cheap massage, the question you must answer as a business is, is this woman driving EVERY weekend to get a cheap massage at the recent Groupon offer? OR is this person out treating themselves at an affordable cost? Or something else?

As a business, we need to know how to tell these differences. A simple questionnaire would indicate to us which side that person is on or where in between. 

You see, we want to distinguish customers by their consumer behavior. Why? That’s the easiest thing to tell because WE ALL KNOW PEOPLE. We know if this is a person that is serious or just shopping around. Either way, you lose your message the minute they leave your store unless a committed connection was made. Commitment would be the customer giving you information in exchange for a nice discount. (the least they could do for a Groupon offer)

 As discussed last week about email marketing, we need to start list building. I came today to tell you that I love Groupon and ANYTHING that allows my clients to obtain email addresses. And to be straightforward here- they know they aren’t getting rich giving 80% off their massages (preparation). That’s 80% off of their hourly rate, 80% of the company revenue for that day. 80% more questions at 2^nd visit (if there is one) for a better rate!lol

This is where businesses fail with Groupon

The relationship stops. They come in and buy the service or product and never come back. They don’t come back for several reasons.

1-     1- You just met a “Groupie”- someone who will be willing to drive to Kentucky if it means ½ off a message.

2-    2-  No data or customer behavior information was collected at the first visit…now the ONLY visit!

3-    

          3-  No ONGOING and TARGETED effort to bring back these folks…even the Groupies!

How to Adapt:

Develop the questionnaire: Things they like and have interest in. Make it fun and interactive. You’ll find that after several weeks and months of this process, you’ll see your open rates increase, you’ll see other statistics improve and best of all, you’ll see REVENUE generated by keeping in touch and visits.

If you’re not collecting this data, then you're not selling at your full potential. NOT EVEN CLOSE. Now is as good time as any to start building lists.

 with the knowledge you get from each customer questionnaire, you are LOWERING your ROI costs and any advertising costs. See how just a little preparation can go so far? You can literally change the way customers walk in your door and CHANGE THE BOTTOM LINE. That's powerful

Email Marketing powered by StreamSend
I recommend to anyone in need of an email marketing program to look at StreamSend . I use them for everything I do. 
If you do not use this SUPER BASIC technology, you may want to sit back in your chair right now and strongly consider it.
I have a personal relationship with StreamSend, so as they said in the movie Goodfellas, "I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse"....
The first 50 people to buy StreamSend through me, I will personally write and craft your business questionnaire. What this means is that I will create the questions that are going to elicit crucial data from your customers that will solidify the relationship and make you the most money. Meaning, you will generate revenue from the questionnaire alone.

…and of course, you’ll have StreamSend to strategically record, manage and interact with your data. Fitting isn’t it!?  (its 20 bucks a month)

here’s your chance to have me...at the Groupon costs! (also quite fitting)
Just don't consider me a "Groupie"!!

 If you really have any doubt in my assessment, do the FREE trial for a month and I'll say I told yah so!
 **Notice: Remember, you can link your StreamSend email database into your website and other places online which will automatically put the customers email in to your database with their name!....pretty far out man! lol ...Also, StreamSend enables you to import and use multiple lists for e-mail campaigns. 

Please do not keep me a secret. My business is in consulting, but from time to time I'll make suggestions on products and tools that I use and believe in. Sometimes I get a commission, sometimes I don't.

Next week: Next week I'm going to discuss how to use your email lists to do FREE search engine optimization. Some people pay thousands of dollars to be at #1 on Google...I'm going to get you there for FREE next week. SendStream will be important for my lesson (you'll see why), SO GO GET IT!

 Matthew Geiger
Hudson-West Media Group
New York - Los Angeles 
matthewjgeiger2@gmail.com
Business/Consulting Inquires: (213) 375-7650

Local Searches Make Money

The theory is: if a person is accessing your google maps from a close radius, chances are they are walking in your door at any given moment. 

So think about that for just a second. It is important to be in local results because this is where the MOST people will have easiest access to you. 

The article this week is not to educate you about why this is important. I think we're on the same page as far as that is concerned. The real question is: HOW DO YOU DO IT?!  Before I say, let's establish some background:

Their are only so many Yelp and Facebook positions left that make a difference. Now Yelp and City Search and everyone are going to ask you to take a paid membership. It's a logical step in the equation of Social Media. But even the local Car Washes have Facebook now. I think one must understand that Facebook doesn't make friends or money, your business does and always will. Facebook is just a harness to your clientele. Look what they just did too...that new feed in the upper right hand side TOTALLY ruins 99% of Facebook pages. You used to rely on that start-up page where you can see everyone's status in one place. Think of Facebook moving forward as really just an image you want to portray and nothing more.

Answer:

What we want to do as business owners to differenciate ourselves in the Local Searches, is use more than just conventional means. Conventional means are now facebook and twitter. if you had Facebook 5 years ago and were putting in time, etc, you would have been able to do something with it. So instead, why not use video? Google is the #1 search engine as we all know...do you know what the #2 search engine is? Youtube. Notice I use the term search engine. That being said, Video aside from it's qualities for keeping people longer on your website or blog, etc- it is the 2nd most sought after means of information. And the best part is that video can be tailored to reach the local searches to maximize visibility or national.

You can't do anything to your Facebook to make it any better than the next guy. It's a piece of real estate at this point- but you CAN make a video better than the competition. Because you might shine in certain areas that your competition does not. You can use video to exploit that and change minds, change opinions. It always surprises me when businesses don't protect their reputation and good name with more authority.This is not hard or expensive work either. What we have learned in our business and through our clients is that video doesn't need to be some huge Hollywood production. In fact, you'll find most successful video are homemade! Have you ever seen the elder couple who didn't notice that they were recording themselves on their new laptop??...then the old guy starts making faces. Probably one of the most entertaining videos we've seen in a while. Did that have any production value? editing? effects? It was REAL. Viewers want real. Usually we get called in to not just shoot, film and edit the video, but to identify, target and use social media strategy TO PLACE AT THE TOP of local searches. That's how to use local searches to make money.


Get started making video with simple and straightforward software:
10% off muvee Reveal X Business

Matt Geiger
Hudson-West Media Group, 2011
matthewjgeiger2@gmail.com

Don't Get Bounced at the Door

One of the most important measuring tools of your business are your email open rates." Open rate" really just means how many people opened the email when you send something like a newsletter or coupon, whatever.  

You can tell A LOT about your business just by having an email list and seeing who and how many open. I see so many businesses that have either huge marketing campaigns with very small open rates, or, I see a business with a small contact list but very high open rates. Those are the two opposites of the spectrum. Our goal as marketers is to have some common ground in between. We shouldn't expect a 50% open rate, but we should have an understanding of what that number is and what it needs to be to generate revenue.

The average open rate is around 10% of emails. That means 1 out of 10 people on average are opening your email and reading your message. This figure in 2003-04 was around 25%.

So why the big jump?

That's why we wrote this to you. At this very moment in time, the FTC (Federal Trade Commish) is putting pressure on Google and other mail providers (hotmail, aol, yahoo,etc) to get rid of spam and stuff that clutters the system. Oversaturated isn't the word, more like infested and plagued. We all know the feeling and it's about time.  

Impact is two-fold:

1-      Sorry guys,no more cheap Viagra, Vicodon or whatever other wonderful offers they've made us over the years.

2-      You must be very careful not to be spotted as a "Rogue" mailer. It's going to be a process to send emails to the masses. Everyone will be required to copy and paste their IP address within each email (caller id), Certain language will also raise red flags, for example: "Re:" and other phrases. 

They are looking for this stuff so they have set up filters. They don't care if you're good or bad, just don't make the mistake or risk losing your entire email account and possibly web-reputation. Start learning the technical stuff in your email marketing. Email marketing is great because it's a place that any business owner can usually be effective because they know the answer to questions. And that helps sales.

Today I think it's fair to say that your content is your relationship. Your customers build rapport with you based on the information you present them with. Have you ever been on vacation with your girlfriend or boyfriend and some random, sweet couple tells you EXACTLY what to do and where to go. How good does that feel? Don't you want to just say "you're so cool come with us!". That's what you're evoking out of the customer when you provide valuable information.

You may ask then, what does my website need to do?

When it comes to content, the typical webpage contains within it a landing page, message page and a sales page. This has sort of been the standard model for some time now. Google will be looking for content rich websites moving forward. Lot's of information and high CTR (click through rates- this means: are people going through your site? or just landing and leaving in 2 seconds). Here are some things to think about when adding to your site:

1-      You have savvier consumer behavior

2-      Low bounce rates on emails to customers and potential customers

3-      Have a broad web presence in addition to the website

4-      Make sure to have Original Content on your site. Something no one else has in your field

We are moving in to a higher standard of internet usage, higher innovation. Like any new communication, it evolves. We go through processes to make it better. There are those that try and push the boundaries for personal gain, there are others that don't push for gain. Either way, rules come down and both sides have to deal with it. But it's not some random process either. It can be predicted almost to a tee. We can simply look at other communication processes in our lifetime and see how they have evolved. When I take a moment to think about it conceptually, it reminds me of salesmen from the 1950's. A father at home with his family at this time would be thrilled if a solicitor were to call the house during dinner. They actually felt unique and special from this "personal hello"- so they would get up from the table and their family to speak with the salesman as if it was important. I hope that illustrates the point clearly. The system gets abused, the dad gets ripped off by a phone solicitor, and it starts a chain effect. But in 1950, it was new, it was a respected and common way of doing things. Fast forward to today and these changes are occurring just like any other form of communication that we've ever had. For us at our company, we see the internet and where it's headed and furthermore, how your customers behavior changes. We can predict the future without a crystal ball and tarot card reading. Why can we do this? Because nothing about these cycles have changed. History tends to repeat itself.