propuesta apps para negocios profesionales instituciones escuelas

propuesta apps para negocios profesionales instituciones escuelas

división de TU ZONA CIBERNETICA
PROPUESTA APPS PARA
NEGOCIOS
PROFESIONALES
INSTITUCIONES
ESCUELAS
IGLESIAS
2012
Saludos:
Le proponemos hacer una aplicación móvil o “app” para su negocio,
práctica profesional, institución, escuela o iglesia. Ver video en
http://www.tuzonamovil.com/apps .
La misma le ayudará a:
Conseguir más clientes, prospectos, auspiciadores, feligreses
Retener a clientes y miembros actuales
Mejor comunicación con sus clientes, prospectos y miembros
Mercadeo y comunicación directa
Más ventas y/o recaudaciones
Aumentar su posicionamiento en el mercado y en las mentes de las
personas através de reconocimiento de marca
Bajar sus costos actuales de mercadeo y comunicación
Explicamos a continuación nuestra propuesta en detalle.
Atentamente,
Irving Billigue
CONTENIDO
Cómo se consigue lo propuesto
Partes que integran el app
Procedimiento para ordenar y recibir su App
Alternativas y Precios
Apéndice
Quién es Tu Zona Cibernética
Quién es Tu Zona Móvil
SMS
Qué es SMS
Qué incluye nuestra plataforma SMS limitada
Qué incluye nuestra plataforma SMS COMPLETA
Tipos diferentes de Cuentas disponibles
o Cuenta SRL
o Cuenta “Appointment Reminder”
o Cuenta Flex
o Cuenta Meneada por nosotros
CODIGOS QR - Qué son y cómo se usan
Qué es un Sitio Web Móvil
Yelp
Foursquare
Why Mobile Marketing
Forma de Ordenar
COMO SE CONSIGUEN NUESTRAS METAS
Esto se consigue integrando dentro del app:
Su logo
Icon para teléfonos inteligentes
Igualamos colores de su sitio web regular y/o negocio/institución
para hacer de su app una continuación de lo que actualmente tiene y
de lo que las personas ya reconocen
Mapa de cómo llegar a su local, tomando como referencia el GPS
integrado dentro de los teléfonos inteligentes
Su teléfono prominentemente mostrado, con la habilidad del usuario
generar una llamada con tan sólo tocar la pantalla de su teléfono
inteligente
Forma para que el usuario se subscriba a su listado de mensajes de
texto y de mensajes por correo electrónico (e-mail)
Sitio web móvil
SMS mensajes de texto directo a celulares
Mercadeo por correo electrónico (e-mails)
Integración con Redes Sociales (Facebook , Twitter, Yelp,
Foursquare)
Monitoreando su reputación en la internet
Códigos QR
Le presentamos con un Plan de Mercadeo Sugerido para maximizar
las tecnologías que ahora tendrá a su disposición
PARTES QUE INTEGRAN EL APP
El app tendrá (donde aplique) las siguientes partes:
Acerca de Nosotros
Productos y Servicios
o Se pueden categorizar
o Nombre, descripción, precio, imágen
Sección de fotos o imágenes
Mapa de cómo llegar a su sitio
Información de contacto
o Nombre del Negocio/Institución
o Teléfono y Fax
o Dirección Física
o Dirección de correo electrónico (E-Mail)
o Dirección de Website
o Horarios de Operación
Habilidad para crear como parte del menú de opciones, alternativas
costumizadas
Si aplica, menú del restaurante
Integración con Redes Sociales
o Facebook
o Twitter
o Google+
o Si no tiene cuentas con estas le ayudamos a crearlas
Habilidad para mostrar videos de YouTube
o Si no tiene un canal en YouTube le ayudamos a crearlo
Yelp
Foursquare
Forma de subscripción
Códigos QR
Panel de Control para el cliente (usted)
PORTAL DE ENTRADA A SU PANEL DE CONTROL
VISTA PREVIA DE SU APP
PANEL DE CONTROL ATRAVES DE LA PC
PANEL DE CONTROL ATRAVES DE LA PC - CONTINUACION
PANEL DE CONTROL ATRAVES DEL CELULAR
PANEL DE CONTROL ATRAVES DEL CELULAR – CONTINUACION
SU PLAN DE MERCADEO INTEGRADO
Para Mercadeo Móvil Negocio-a-Consumidor & Manejo de Clientes
Este Plan de Mercadeo Personalizado le proveerá con información detallada en
cómo Tu Zona Cibernética le ayudará a su negocio a generar negocios
adicionales. Es importante que vea este Plan de Mercadeo y a nuestros cargos de
servicio, no como un gasto, pero en vez como una inversión para generar más
ventas. La ejecución de estas herramientas de mercadeo contemporáneas,
métodos y servicios, añadirán un mensual continuo ROI POSITIVO a su
Compañía. Tu Zona Cibernética tiene el mayor interés en hacer funcionar este
plan de mercadeo para usted, de modo tal que usted continue utilizando nuestros
servicios años por venir. Estamos confiados que con la implementación de estas
técnicas de Mercadeo, trabajando en conjunto y en unísono unas con otras, le
permitirán a su compañía el relacionarse con sus clientes como nunca antes, y
obteniendo lealtad del cliente y un mejor servicio al cliente en general.
PROCEDIMIENTO PARA ORDENAR Y RECIBIR SU APP
Primero definamos el concepto reunión. Ustedes y nosotros podemos
reunirnos ya sea físicamente, através del teléfono o de la internet.
Paso 1
Reunirnos y:
Definir todas las partes que llevará su app.
Acordar toda la información, imágenes y material en general que
vamos a necesitar de su parte y definir cómo nos hará llegar dicho
material.
El cliente procede a pagar el depósito (ver próxima sección de
opciones y precios) para nosotros comenzar los trabajos.
Paso 2
Nosotros comenzamos los trabaos y se recibe del cliente el material
acordado.
Paso 3
A medida que progrese el desarrollo, se le ira notificando al cliente para
que lo coteje en su teléfono celular y nos comente sobre su satisfacción
y/o cambios que desea.
Paso 4
Procedemos a reunirmos para hacerle entrega final de su app y se le
explica con detalle cada una de las partes. Se debe de separar para esta
reunión un promedio de 2 horas.
Continua en la proxima pagina
Paso 5
En la reunión del Paso 4, el cliente procede a pagar el balance restante
del desarrollo de su app. El cliente también procede a pagar el primer mes
del plan escogido y a la vez se programa el pago automático de la
mensualidad.
Paso 6
Nosotros nos estaremos comunicando via telefónica,
por correo
electrónico, por mensaje através de Facebook o por Skype,
semanalmente, con el propósito de ser informado de cambios que el
cliente quiera, contestar dudas, y hacer sugerencias. El cliente puede
comunicarse con nosotros 24 horas al día, 7 días a la semana para
cualquier asunto.
OPCIONES Y PRECIOS
DESARROLLO DE SU APP
Precio Total ………………………………………………………….… $399
Depósito al ordenar ………………………….……….. $200
Balance cuando se le entregue el app terminado …
$199
PLANES MENSUALES
Todos los planes incluyen:
Hospedaje de su app en nuestros servidores
Monitoreo semanal
Hasta 5 cambios o adiciones al mes (no “rollover”)
Orientación y consultas ilimitadas
PRECIO BASE
Web App Solamente, no mensajes de texto ………..
$59/mes
OPCIONES A AÑADIR AL PRECIO BASE
Plan SENCILLO de SMS y Email Blast
500 mensajes de Texto al mes ………………
$40/mes
(ESTA ES LA OPCION MAS ESCOGIDA para un total
mensual de $59+$40= $99/mes)
1000 mensaes de Texto al mes ……………..
$70/mes
Plan COMPLETO de SMS
SRL C/250 subscriptores, mensajes ilimitados
$80/mes
FLEX c/1000 mensajes, subscriptores ilimitados
$70/mes
FLEX C/1000 mensajes “rollover”
$80/mes
Módulo de Confirmación de Citas
Configuración, cargo 1 sola vez …………………..
$400
Mensualidad ………………………………………….
$100/mes
Plan Completo de Email Blast
A ser añadido al plan completo de sms o también ……
puede utilizarse solo
$19/mes
FORMAS DE PAGO
CONFIGURACION DEL APP
Depósito y balance se pueden pagar en:
1. Cheque a nombre de Tu Zona Cibernética
2. Por internet con tarjeta de crédito (Paypal)
SISTEMA AVANZADO DE EMAIL AWEBER
Esto se le paga directo a Aweber, por internet, con tarjeta de
crédito
OTRAS MENSUALIDADES
Por internet con tarjeta de crédito.
Los pagos por internet con tarjeta de cédito se hacen por:
Si es Aweber: http://publicidadporemail.aweber.com
Si no es Aweber: http://ordenar.tuzonacibernetica.com
APENDICE
¿Quién es Tu Zona Cibernética (TZC)?
¿Quién es Tu Zona Cibernética (TZC)?
TZC se dedica a ayudar a todo tipo de negocio, individuo, institución o
entidad a vender más, a ser más costo efectivos y eficientes en sus
operaciones. Para ello ha desarrollado una serie de productos, servicios y
soluciones necesarios para alcanzar dicha meta. Entre estos se
encuentran:
Seminarios Educativos
Registro de Nombre de Dominio (“domain names”)
Hospedaje de Sitio Web (“web hosting”)
Carritos de Compra por internet (“shopping carts”)
Artículos Promocionales
Todo tipo de forma impresa
Sitios Web Regulares (“websites”)
Sitios Web Móbiles
SMS mensajes de texto directo a celulares
Listado en Google Places
Publicidad Social (“social media”)
Páginas de negocio en Facebook (“Fan Pages”)
Servicios de “Backup” a su computadora
Telecomunicaciones
¿Quién es TU ZONA MOVIL (TZM)?
Es la división de TZC que mercadea sitios web para poder verse através
de artefactos móviles, SMS mensajes de texto directo a teléfonos celulares
y todo tipo de solución móvil.
¿Qué es SMS?
¿Qué es SMS?
SMS son las siglas de “Short Message Service”. Son mensajes de texto en
masa a celulares. Utilizado por negocios, organizaciones, escuelas,
iglesias y todo aquel que tenga un mensaje que difundir. Tradicionalmente
ha sido utilizado por compañías Fortune 500, pero hoy en día ya está
disponible para el público en general a costos accesibles.
¿Porqué SMS funciona?
98% de los mensajes de texto son leidos en 3 minutos o menos. Es la
forma más rápida para hacer llegar su mensaje. Para el 2012 la mitad de la
población en E.U. habrá utilizado artefactos móviles para bajar cupones de
descuentos y hacer compras, es decir, lo utilizan en su diario vivir. Existen
2.5 veces más usuarios que textean que los que usan emails a nivel
mundial. 92% de los americanos tienen celulares, y de ese 92% el 98%
tienen SMS. Cupones móviles tienen un porciento de redemción de 20
veces más que los cupones en papel. 72% en E. U. textean mensajes, en
todas las áreas demográficas. 67% de las personas les gustaría recibir
alertas o recordatorios móviles. SMS Si Funciona.
¿Cómo Funciona?
Las personas textean una palabra pre-determinada a un número telefónico
o a lo que se conoce como un número corto de 4 a 6 dígitos.
Cuando las personas textean, sus números telefónicos son guardados en
una lista de un banco de datos, para ser utilizados por nosotros, en
campañas o envíos de texto en masa, con asuntos relacionados a lo que
contestaron/textearon.
A la palabra pre-determinada, se le llama en la industria, la PALABRA
CLAVE. Por ejemplo, una promoción que diga “textee „salvacion‟ al 727123-3456 para recibir a diario mensajes glorificantes”. En este ejemplo la
palabra „salvacion‟ sería la Palabra Clave.
Al número telefónico regular, se le llama en la industria el CODIGO
LARGO. En el ejemplo anterior „727-123-3456‟ sería el Código Largo.
A un número corto de 4 a 6 dígitos, sele llama en la industria el CODIGO
CORTO. Un ejemplo sería una promo que diga, “textee „salvacion‟ al
34523 para recibir mensajes glorificantes”. En este ejemplo 34523 es el
Código Corto.
¿Porqué le explicamos esto? Porque hay compañías que sólo trabajan con
códigos cortos, otras sólo con códigos largos, pero la nuestra trabaja
ambos, dándole a usted a escoger.
¿Cuál escoger para nuestra campaña SMS? Veamos las bondades de
cada cual.
Los códigos cortos son fáciles de recordar. La velocidad de envío es mayor
que la de los códigos largos. Sin embargo, no son exclusivos del cliente.
Son compartidos por todos los clientes de la plataforma SMS. Esto
ocasiona que si usted deseaba realizar una campaña con una palabra
clave específica, como en el ejemplo anterior, „salvacion‟, pudiera suceder
que ya alguien la esté utilizando, y usted tendría entonces que escoger
otra. Otra situación con los códigos cortos, particular de Puerto Rico, es
que la Red CLARO, los está bloqueando, a menos que se nogocie con
ellos su aceptación. Estamos en ese proceso. La Red CLARO tiene un
25% del mercado inhalámbrico en PR. Si decide utilizar nuestro código
corto, sabe que será efectivo en promedio en 3 de cada 4 personas.
Los códigos largos son más difíciles de recordar que uno corto. La
velocidad de envío es menor que la de los códigos cortos. Sin embargo,
son Exclusivos para cada cliente. Es decir, cada cliente de la plataforma
recibe un número telefónico EXCLUSIVO para su uso. Al ser nuevo y
exclusivo, tiene disponible TODAS las palabras claves que se les ocurra, y
al ser un número telefónico no es bloqueado. Para Puerto Rico estamos
sugiriendo los códigos largos versus los códigos cortos en lo que se
negocea con la Red CLARO.
¿Qué incluye nuestra
PLATAFORMA APP
SENCILLA
DE SMS?
¿Qué incluye nuestra PLATAFORMA APP SENCILLA DE SMS?
Através del app y utilizando una forma de subscripción voluntaria, se
captura el número de celular del prospecto y el cliente. El mismo pasa a
formar parte de una base de datos. Tenemos la habilidad de enviar un
mensaje de texto a todos los números celulares en nuestro listado, en
cualquier momento, o a grupos selectos categorizados através de las
palabras claves.
Incluye un código largo exclusivo (número telefónico)
Palabras claves ilimitadas.
¿Qué incluye nuestra
PLATAFORMA
COMPLETA
DE SMS?
¿Qué incluye nuestra PLATAFORMA COMPLETA DE SMS?
Interface por la Internet fácil de usar. Se le asigana un nombre de
usuario y una contraseña para que puedan entrar en su panel de
control y utilizar el sistema en línea por internet.
Código Largo o Teléfono Dedicado
Código Corto Compartido 77125
Todos los mensajes entrando Gratis
Listas/Grupos Ilimitados
Palabras Claves ilimitadas para el código largo
Envío Masivo de Textos con calendarización (“scheduler”)
Opción Text2List. Puede enviar un mensaje dado, a una
lista o varias listas a la misma vez.
Opción Text2Keyword. Puede enviar un mensaje dado a
una palabra clave en específico
Opción Cupones de Texto
Recordatorios SMS
Textee para participar de un concurso (“drawing”)
Textee para ganador de inmediato
Módulo para crear codificación “opt in” para sitio web
Módulo de preguntas iteractivas
Capacidad para “Text To 1”
Generador de Código QR
OPCIONAL ADICIONAL – TEXT2CONFIRM, también
conocido cómo “Appointment Confirmation”. Este módulo es
grandemente utilizado por todo aquel que maneje su tiempo
a base de citas. Las estadísticas indican que reduce los “No
Shows” en un 30%. Si usted tiene ahora mismo un sitema
de citas en su PC, nosotros lo integramos de forma tal que
sólo haya una entrada de datos.
CUENTA SRL (“Single Retail Location”)
En este tipo de cuenta no se cobra por mensajes, tiene todos los
mensajes saliendo y entrando incluidos. Aqui se cobra por
subscriptores a la lista.
250 Subscriptores = $80
se vende en paquetes de 250 subscriptores
Palabras Claves Ilimitados con Códigos Largos
Si utiliza el código corto 77125, el costo de las palabras claves es
de $15c/u mensual
MODULO DE “APPOINTMENT CONFIRMATION”
Ideal para todo negocio o profesional que trabaje por citas.
Quién interese este módulo tiene que tener una cuenta SRL, es
decir, este módulo es una adición a su cuenta SRL.
Cargo de Configuración de $300 una sola vez. Lo configuramos
con su sistema actal de citas (PC).
Mensualidad del módulo $100 mensual
CUENTA FLEX
Esta cuenta incluye todas las llamadas entrando y subscriptores
ilimitados.
El servicio en esta opción se vende en paquetes de 1000
mensajes saliendo. Su precio es de $70.
Los mensajes que no se usen, se pierden al final del mes.
Sin embargo, hay una opción en donde existen mensajes
“Rollover”. Primero hay que adquirir un paquete básico, digamos
1 unidad de 1000 mensajes, entonces se pueden añadir los
mensajes “rollover”. Una vez se agoten los mensajes regulares,
entonces su utilizan los rollover, los cuales nunca caducan. Su
costo de mensajes “rollover” es de $80.
Palabras Claves Ilimitados con Códigos Largos
Si utiliza el código corto 77125, el costo de las palabras claves es
de $15.
CUENTA MANEJADA POR NOSOTROS
Todos los precios Indicados son creándole al cliente (usted) una
cuenta para que através de la Internet, accese su cuenta, su
panel de control, y maneje su cuenta usted mismo.
Una realidad es que aquel negocio que no tenga un empleado
técnicamente entrenado en computadoras e internet, terminará
no utilizando el sistema.
En el caso de que usted desee que nosotros manejemos su
cuenta, se le cobrará un cargo mensual de $400 mensual.
Además un cargo de configuración de la cuenta, lo cual es
un cargo de una sola vez, de $400. Si la cuenta fuese manejada
por usted mismo, sería usted quien analizaría y configuraría todo.
Cuenta manejada por nosotros incluye:
creación de Códigos QR, 10 por mes
1 campaña SMS semanal según instrucciones del cliente
Consultoria y asesoria ilimitada
¿Qué son Códigos QR?
¿Qué son Códigos QR?
Un código QR (“quick response”) es un código de barra de 2 dimensiones
el cual se puede escanear con teléfonos celulares inteligentes. Muchos de
estos teléfonos ya vienen con un escaner, pero si no lo trajera, se puede
bajar al mismo una aplicación gratuita para ello.
Al ser escaneado por el teléfono celular inteligente, el usuario es redirigido
a un sitio predeterminado, asignado cuando se creó el mismo. Nos puede
redirigir a un sitio web (preferible optimizado para artefactos móviles), a un
flyer, a una página de negocios en Facebook (“Fan Page”), en fin, a donde
nosotros definamos. Esta opción está incluida en nuestra plataforma.
SITIO WEB MOVIL
SITIO WEB MOVIL
Ya hoy en día las visitas al internet através de artefactos móviles está
igualando las visitas al internet através de computadoras regulares como
PC y laptops. Se espera que visitas móviles sobrepasen a las anteriores
tan cerca como el año 2013, ¡EL PROXIMO AÑO!
Los sitios web regulares son estupendos, nos ayudan a contar la historia
completa, se puede incluir más información que en un sitio web móvil, y
nunca desaparecerán.
Entonces, ¿ porqué tener una versión móvil de su sitio web regular? Cada
día que pasa, más y más personas adquieren teléfonos celulares. La
cantidad de teléfonos celulares inteligentes (“smartphones”) aumenta
vertiginosamente cada año. Tres de cada cuatro contratos que vence de
teléfonos celulares, es renovado con teléfonos inteligentes con acceso al
internet.
Cuando las personas tienen una necesidad y deciden actuar sobre ello,
¿qué tienen consigo? ¡UN TELEFONO CELULAR CON ACCESO AL
INTERNET! ¿Ha notado como la efectividad de las guías telefónicas
convencionales ha bajado? Las personas ahora hacen búsquedas através
de la internet, y como descrito anteriormente, através de sus teléfonos
celulares en muchas de las ocasiones. Bien, llegan a su sitio web diseñado
para verse através de computadoras regulares pero lo hacen através de
sus teléfonos celulares.
Las experiencias son horribles. Si su sitio web regular tiene FLASH, sepa
que el 95% de los celulares no pueden proyectar FLASH, y el usuario verá
en su lugar UN ESPACIO EN BLANCO. Además tendrán que aumentar la
imágen para poder verla, tendrán que mover la pantalla de un lado a otra
para ver todo su contenido (“scrolling”). En fin, si se les hace muy difícil ver
la información de su negocio, se irán RAPIDO de su sitio web y
continuarán buscando un negocio que si puedan ver bien, ¡QUIZAS SU
COMPETENCIA!
¿Cómo se ve su sitio web regular através de teléfonos celulares
inteligentes? La mejor forma de averiguarlo es verlo directamente através
de un celular inteligente. Si no tiene uno disponible, puede ir a una
computadora regular y verlo através de un simulador en línea,
www.iphonetester.com
SIMULADOR EN LINEA
Puedes ver nuestra propuesta de Sitios Web Moviles y ordenar el suyo
atraves de http://www.tuzonacibernetica.com/sitiowebmovil
YELP
By:
IRVING BILLIGUE
[email protected]
TU ZONA MOVIL
787-529-8301
Table of Contents
What is Foursquare?
For Business Owners
How to get your business listed on Foursquare
Add Your Special Offer
Types of Offers
Badges
Interesting Foursquare Apps
Types of Offers
Creating To-Do and a Tips List
Educate Your Staff
Educate Your Customers
Watch Out for Being Your Own Mayor
Analytics and Tracking
Other Geosocial Sites
Conclusion
DISCLAIMER
While the information contained within the site is periodically updated, no guarantee is given that the information provided in this
website is correct, complete, and/or up-to-date. The materials contained on this website are provided for general information
purposes only and do not constitute legal or other professional advice on any subject matter. We do not accept any responsibi lity for
any loss which may arise from reliance on information contained on this site. Some links within this website may lead to other
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or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement.
What is Foursquare?
Foursquare solves the problem of connecting social media to direct traffic. It is a local
lead generation tool.
The goal is to get people to explore and incentivize them to do so. It is a social city
guide where people check into their location to unlock badges. Not only useful in
building a connection between the place and the people, it also is a great tool to reward
loyal customers to give them the power to spread your word.
By using Foursquare as a regular user, you are telling your friends where you are by
checking in to a business venue. By doing this you can also college points, badges,
prizes and rewards from the businesses and the app on their mobile phone.
No longer do you have to try to spend more than your competition to get new
customers. With traditional marketing methods, the more you spend, the more
customers in theory will come to your business and spend money. While true, the return
on investment can be negative and sink your business. With a tool like Foursquare at
your disposal you can outsmart and out market your competitors in the local market.
Whether you are a small café with 3 employees or a large retail store with 30, social
media tools such as Foursquare allow businesses to outsmart the competition. Dying off
are the old advertising methods in which you had to try to outspend your competition.
No matter the size of your business, you can increase sales, customers, loyalty and
frequency using social media while slashing your advertising budget.
“People use foursquare to “check-in”, which is a way of telling us your whereabouts. When you
check-in someplace, we‟ll tell your friends where they can find you and recommend places to go
& things to do nearby. People check-in at all kind of places – cafes, bars, restaurants, parks,
homes, offices.”
“You‟ll find that as your friends use foursquare to check-in, you‟ll start learning more about the
places they frequent. Not only is it a great way to meet up with nearby friends, but you‟ll also
start to learn about their favorite spots and the new places they discover.” From Foursquare.com
For Business Owners
Foursquare has been garnering a lot of action and as a business owner it is time to pay
attention. It is a mix of social networks with real life gaming mixed in all done on a free
downloadable smartphone application. Think of Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and Google
Place mixed together in a super cocktail and you have foursquare. They have been
adding 100,000 users a week and passed the 2 million user-mark this past July, 2010.
Users check into places when they arrive and can offer tips to other users to get the
most out of the business. Primarily focused on restaurants, bars and nightclubs in the
beginning, more and more categories such as retail stores and salons can add their
business locations, called venues and benefit from this app. These geosocial apps that
allow people to refer your business to friends hold tremendous value and bring the type
of business to your door that can‟t be bought with traditional marketing.
The opportunities to promote your business are endless on this site.
More Check-Ins  More Exposure  More Traffic  More Sales
Offering of specials and check-in discounts is offered for free. This encourages users to
visit your venue. You can offer free drinks for Birthdays and daily specials for your most
active users. Coupon marketing is currently offered for free through your Foursquare
venue page.
Will Foursquare provide the ROI you need? In short, yes! It is free, it is generating tons
of buzz, the target audience is the hardest to market to, i.e. young, affluent, disposable
income, tech savvy. The best part may be that since the ability to claim your business is
so new on foursquare, the chance that your competition has started already is close to
ZERO. So take action on this now, it takes less than 5 minutes and start creating new
loyalty and possibly swiping some customers from the other guy.
How to Claim Your Business‟s Foursquare Venue
Even if you don‟t plan to really use Foursquare, you should take the time to make sure
your business is listed correctly. Having a Foursquare business listing today is similar to
having one in Google Places or Yahoo Local. Being there simply allows you to be
found. You‟ll also get some added search engine visibility as Google Places is now
indexing Foursquare business profiles and the pages tend to rank pretty well. We‟re
also seeing Foursquare shouts count as citations for local businesses. The combination
of these will deliver a great search engine ranking boost.
To claim your Foursquare venue you need to sign up on their website as a user and
create an individual profile. A photo must be uploaded to your profile page and business
logos aren‟t allowed just yet.
Perform a search for your business. Chances are Foursquare already pulled your data
and added your business. If not, select “add things” up top of the navigation menu.
1) Select “add a venue”, and type your business name.
2) Add your address. Use common abbreviations like St, Ave, and Rd. Add your state in
CAPS- NY
Example:
155 Main St
Ithaca, NY 14850
3) Add the phone and business Twitter extension. Twitter is required but it will increase
your exposure and potential on the site.
4) Like Google Places, add related keywords or tags to the listing. HOT TIP: Add your
City/State as a tag. It helps when people are searching using their phones and nearby
deals.
5) The listing is now complete. You should download the app to your phone (Palm Pre,
iPhone, Blackberry or Android). If you don‟t have a smart phone, an employee is sure to
have one. Check in on the app and you will be the „Mayor‟ of your business.
Foursquare also has window clings and decals you can order free from their business
resource section on their site. Order some up and check-ins will increase up to 25% to
35% over businesses who don‟t display and let customers know they are active on
Foursquare.
Add Your Special Offer
To add a Foursquare special to your business, simply click on the link on the right hand
side of the Foursquare for Business page. By making it official on Foursquare, your offer
will appear in the Specials Nearby box that pops up when someone checks into a
business near yours. This, obviously, can become very powerful. Someone is far more
likely to stop into your store for a free coffee when they‟re in the area than when they‟re
sitting in their office or at home. Foursquare gives you a way to easily target the people
who are hanging out in your neighborhood (and perhaps near a competitor!).
Types of Offers
Any time offers given to every user on every check-in.
One time offer given to users on their first check-in.
Loyalty rewards given out after a certain number of check-ins.
Mayor Specials given to the user with the most check-ins.
The simplest way to start offering rewards is for the first check-in and rewards for the
mayor each month. Users will love playing the game to become mayor and it will attract
customers if your mayor offer is strong. Restaurants also like to give small rewards such
as chips and salsa when users check-in and send a tweet out to their followers about
your restaurant.
Also, make your specials unique to your Foursquare users. There is nothing worse than
the letdown after you realize everyone gets half price off of appetizers from 4 to 6 pm,
not just Foursquare users.
Badges
Users are incentivized to check in not only for discounts, rewards and hopes of
becoming the mayor of a venue one day but also to earn badges.
Small businesses currently use standard badges that users can unlock by completing
the requirements.
Here are some of the most common of the now over 200 badges available to users:
NEWBIE
Awarded for your first check in.
ADVENTURER
Check in to 10 different venues.
SUPERSTAR
Check in to 50 different venues.
BENDER
Check in 4 nights in a row.
LOCAL
Check in at the same place 3x in a week.
PIZZAIOLO
Check in to 20 different pizza places.
SWARM
Check in a spot with 50+ people.
MAYOR
Have the most check-ins at a venue over 30 days
Interesting Foursquare Apps
Foursquare has recently redesigned their application directory so it‟s easy to find all
sorts of readily available tools to use. Take a look when you have time, it‟s a great place
to find ideas for taking your promotions to the next level. I picked out a couple of the
most popular apps below.
Snacksquare.com
Perfect for restaurants that take advantage of local coupon and discount sites.
Snacksquare lets you find all the latest and greatest food and snack deals that are
closest to you. This app not only provides a method of free marketing for businesses, it
provides useful money saving device right at the tip of the consumer‟s fingers.
4Squareoffers.com
4squareoffers.com lets users search for deals on any type of product, not just food.
Venues will automatically get their check-in offers pulled as long as you‟re marketing
properly on Foursquare. Great to check what your competition is up to on their
Foursquare offer.
Creating To-Do and a Tips List
You can create a To-Do list for users with items that can be fun, a little out of the box or
even totally embarrassing. Customers who finish your to-do list on Foursquare can be
rewarded. This helps show the creative and fun side of your venue and will let
customers know your business sells fun.
Tips lists give you a little self promotion. Tell your customers about your favorite menu
items or helpful design tips with your products. Don‟t pretend you are an anonymous
user on the site, let them know you are the owner or a staff member.
If they are truly helpful tips and you aren‟t misleading your customers, they will be
welcomed with open arms. Adding your own tips first will encourage other customers to
leave tips and make your venue page come alive.
Pull Customers from Your Local Competition
The feature that I really love is the ability to pull in customers from your competitors in
the local area. When someone checks into a venue, and your venue is nearby with
Special Promotions activated, the user will be shown the offer. This presents the
obvious opportunity to grab new customers.
Educate Your Staff
It‟s great to see small business owners getting onboard with social media sites and
tools. They often missing key in these tools and new promotions is rolling out the
programs to your staff. It is embarrassing to the staff and customer when someone
walks in and tries to redeem a social media offer that no one has any clues about. It is
much different then presenting a paper coupon. There is a learning curve that must be
addressed.
This has occurred to me more than a few times. Even after talking to the manager in
one case did I finally receive my offer. One business I frequent had engaged users
writing tips for other users and the owner had never heard of Foursquare when I talked
to her about it.
Educate Your Customers
After your employees are behind your new promotion it‟s time to educate your
customers. Post a sign at the checkout, let your Facebook fans and Twitter followers
know, integrate it into your other advertising and order the window clings Foursquare
provides businesses.
People that use Foursquare are already heavy social media users. Twitter users
especially because the two tools work together so nicely. Foursquare does have a wider
appeal than Twitter because even if it is not linked to Twitter, you can still reap the
rewards and play the game by checking in. Converting your customers to Foursquare
users will accomplish a few things: it will create a sense of community, it will reinforce
loyalty and people will become apostles to your business by leaving tips about your
business.
Watch Out For Being Your Own Mayor
It is not a good incentive to your customers to come to your venue to check-in if the
Mayor is the marketing manager, the owner, the owner‟s spouse or an employee. The
chances of ousting a Mayor that works at a venue are much smaller. This goes back to
my previous point about accessibility. They need not stop checking in. There is a
simple way on the Foursquare website to give up your mayorship.
Login to Foursquare, view your Mayorships on the lower right and then click the X. You
will be prompted that you are about to give up your Mayorship.
Analytics and Tracking
There are free analytics for participating venues now as well – see who was there, who
hasn‟t been there and more.
If you don‟t plan on running offers and communicating with your customers through
Foursquare you should still look at the analytics once a week at least.
What are customers talking about?
What tips are they leaving for other users?
What are their likes or dislikes?
What is the general sentiment of their comments and tips?
When scrolling through the tips you will notice opportunities for improvement. If you see
customers asking for more specials at lunch you may want to consider that. If others are
talking about people hogging up your tables will on the internet, you may want to
implement a time limit during peak hours. These comments give you a look into your
customer‟s minds which was previously unavailable. Use these to your advantage.
Business analytics have been added to help you learn how customers were interacting
with their businesses and to make a snap to engage back. The analytics page ties
specific actions from your customers and you can now learn how to market directly to
them with high response rates.
Here‟s currently a chart they provide on their website describing the business analytic
features:
Check out the customers that checked in to your business. Thank them on your Twitter
stream and Facebook wall. In most cases people will really appreciate the person thank
you and respond in turn. Use this conversation to drive loyalty and create apostles for
your business. If anyone leaves a tip also take the time to thank them and respond. Tips
left by your customers is valuable feedback you can use to constantly improve.
Here is an example of Blush nightclub in Las Vegas following up with their customers
after the weekend check-in. This takes minutes to do but creates loyalty and word-ofmouth advertising that is hard to buy.
Other Geosocial Sites
1. Gowalla.com The main location-based social competitor to Foursquare, but
despite being founded in 2007, it has only attracted a quarter as many users as
Foursquare. Gowalla also allows users to check in at local establishments, but is
more framed around an idea of “social gaming.” The network allows users to
discover, capture, and share places and events with friends through a slick user
interface that is one of its key differentiator. 350,000 users estimated. Learn more
here: http://www.gowalla.com/
2. Brightkite.com From their site, “We would love to help your bar, cafe, coffee
shop, or business reach out to the local community through local promotions.
We‟ll let nearby Brightkite folk know your business gives them preferential
treatment, and that they should stop in for a visit.” Similar to Foursquare and also
free to sign up your business. Learn more here:
http://brightkite.com/pages/bk_ad_local_promos.html
3. Whrrl.com Whrrl is an iPhone and mobile application that lets people explore
their cities in a completely new way, discovering new places to go and specific
things to do. This allows you – a local business participating in this program – to
give nearby Whrrl users a special incentive to visit your establishment. What‟s
more, Whrrl can tell you how many times a customer has frequented your venue,
and even if they are a regular. Many businesses use this program to reward their
most loyal customers with extras and special discounts. Similar to Foursquare
and also free to sign up your business. Learn more here:
http://faq.whrrl.com/merchants/
4. Yelp They added a check-in feature to its iPhone app in January and Android
app in June and could quickly become a force. Businesses have been able to set
up "special offers" for free on Yelp for about two years, which are displayed to
both its 33 million Web users and 2 million mobile users. Learn more here:
http://www.yelp.com/business
Conclusion
You now have an easy tool to interact with and leverage Foursquare in a way that is
useful to them. Just because it‟s new doesn‟t mean it has to be confusing. Now I‟m sure
you‟re sweating a little from the amount of new work I just created in your life, but don‟t
worry. Eventually the marketing will go viral within your local market, and you will be
well positioned above your competition.
For a small company with a limited marketing budget, the services are attractive
because they're free or cheap, require minimal time and effort, and appeal to loyal
consumers who favor local businesses over big, cookie-cutter chains.
Visit http://foursquare.com/businesses/ to see examples of other businesses using the
app to dive sales and customer engagement. Foursquare is free to use, takes minutes
to set up and literally no learning curve compared to Twitter or Facebook. The return on
your investment is measureable compared to mass media methods.
The Foursquare train isn‟t slowing down any time soon and has already dipped into
Alexa‟s top 1000 websites. I hope all of you learned something from this and take it and
apply it to your business. If you‟re looking for help in your local search marketing you
can of course get in touch with me. We can kick start you local search marketing efforts
with a bang.
WHY MOBILE MARKETING
What Exactly is 'Mobile Marketing, How Does
it Work & Why Should I Care As a Business
Owner?
If you are like most other business owners, you will have heard that you “must” do mobile marketing.
And most likely, no one has really sat down with you and explained to you
1. WHY you should care, (or: if you should care),
2. WHAT “Mobile Marketing” really is, and
3. HOW it works in practice
And that’s exactly the purpose of this short guide on “Mobile Marketing For Business”:
After reading this guide you’ll have a good enough understanding of this whole “Mobile Marketing
thing”, so you can make an informed decision on
-
Whether you actually want to do Mobile Marketing,
-
Whether you want to do it yourself, or rather get an Mobile Marketing service provider to do it
for you, and
-
If you’re planning to outsource the work, how to select a reliable and trustworthy service
provider
Question 1: Why Should You Care? (or Should
You Care At All?)
Let’s start by looking at the most important question: “WHY?”, so you can decide whether you even
want to keep reading!
If you think about it, there are 2 main ways you can increase your profits: You can either
1. increase turnover, or
2. decrease cost of sales/expenses
So when we look at the “WHY” of doing anything on the Internet, it is with these 2 questions in mind:
does Mobile Marketing (or any other Internet related activity) help increase turnover or decrease the
cost of sales?
With that in mind, let’s first look at the “obvious” reasons everyone keeps telling you about:
The Facts
The mobile revolution is pretty much global and it touches all customers. Over the last 5 years alone, 2
Billion new users have gone “mobile”.
It is estimated that in 2012, around 149 Million new mobile smartphones will ship in the US alone.
In other words:
Mobile phones are everywhere, and people use them everywhere.
The table below gives you an overview over how people use their mobile phones in practice.
Mobile Content Usage
3 Month Avg. Ending May 2012 vs. 3 Month
Avg. Ending May. 2011
Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers (Smartphone &
Non-Smartphone) Ages 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens
Share (%) of Mobile
Subscribers
May-11 May-12 Point
Change
5.3
Sent text message 69.5%
74.8%
to another phone
12.5
Used downloaded 38.6%
51.1%
apps
10.0
Used browser
39.8%
49.8%
Accessed social
28.6%
networking site or
blog
Played Games
26.9%
36.7%
8.1
33.5%
6.6
Listened to music
on mobile phone
27.0%
8.4
18.6%
This data from a recent ComScore study
(http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2012/7/comScore_Reports_May_2012_U.S._
Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share and
http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/7/comScore_Reports_May_2011_U.S._
Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share ) shows you how people used their mobile phones a year ago, and
how the usage patterns have evolved over the last year.
It is obvious, that the most common way of how people use their mobile phones is for sending and
receiving text-messages: the average user receives around 40 text-messages a day, and that trend is
going up!
What’s also interesting to observe is that the use of downloaded apps and the usage of the browser on a
smartphone has gone up by 12.5 and 10 percentage points respectively over the last year.
As you can see in the “May-12” column, three-quarters of all users responded that they’re texting
regularly, and about 50% responded that they are using apps and the browser.
Meaning:
Your biggest potential to tap into the 'natural'
user-behavior is by engaging your prospects
and clients through
1. text messaging,
2. apps and
3. the browser
Now, the fact alone that people buy and own more mobile phones isn’t very exciting in itself (unless
you’re selling mobile phones of course).
And the fact that they’re texting, using apps and the browser doesn’t necessarily help you either.
What is however exciting for you as a business owner is this:
Mobile users tend to use their phones in a way that’s very different from someone who is using a
desktop computer: they use their mobile devices to make a purchasing decision!
The 'Real' Reason For Getting Excited About Mobile
Marketing
According to internal Microsoft research, mobile consumers tend to take immediate action after doing
their online (re)search, much more so than someone who is using a desktop computer.
In practice, the purchasing decision is done and the transaction completed within minutes or hours,
when mobile, compared to days, or sometimes weeks when using a PC.
What’s even more exciting is that most of those searches are local in nature (in other words: people are
looking for a solution locally), and they are nearly twice as likely to take action as someone using a PC.
When someone uses their mobile device to do a local search, they are very close to making a purchasing
decision, and they can easily be influenced by a coupon, a special offer, and of course the convenient
location.
In practice, it has been observed that mobile phone users have a stronger desire for instant gratification
than someone doing a search on a PC: if they cannot find an item in one store, often they will use their
mobile phone to search for a nearby store that has the item in stock – rather than ordering it online!
Meaning: the mindset of someone using a mobile phone to make a purchasing decision is not
necessarily to find the best price, but to get the desired item fast and in a convenient way.
Another benefit of mobile marketing is that users have an increased brand-recall compared to
traditional advertising, and – interestingly - the vast majority remember the specific call to action!
And as you’ve probably experienced yourself, this is unheard of with traditional advertising!
To sum up:
Consumers use their mobile devices to find answers to the questions,
“What do I need now?
What do I need in the next couple of hours?”
And then they go out and get it!
Question #2: 'What' Is Mobile?
Ok, this may sound a little silly, but there is far more to “mobile marketing” than just text-messaging.
So, in the following, we’ll cover the most important aspects of mobile marketing.
And these are:
1. text-messaging (also known as SMS) and multi-media messaging (MMS)
2. mobile apps
3. mobile websites
4. (mobile) coupons
5. Quick-response (QR) codes
The first three are obviously the ones that are most commonly used by mobile phone users as you saw
from the ComScore data above.
The coupons and QR codes are great ways of getting people to take action – but only if it’s a good fit.
Let’s look at these in turn:
SMS & MMS
SMS stands for “Short Message Service” and it’s the way phones send and receive text messages. Often,
SMS is also referred to as 'Text Messaging' .
SMS is text only, whereas MMS (Multimedia Message Service) can include audio, video, and pictures. In
addition to the multimedia -content of the message, the MMS message can include up to 1,000
characters of text, quite a bit more than the 160 characters you get with an SMS.
For the time being, we’ll cover primarily SMS, and come back to the uses of MMS later on.
What’s interesting about these types of messages is that around 95% of them are opened and read
within the first 60mins of receiving them.
When you compare that with a typical open-rate of around 5% for emails, you can start to see how a
well-timed, targeted message can help you do very effective marketing.
There are many reasons why SMS have such a high open-rate, but one very important one is that the
typical SPAM rate for SMS is below 10% (only one in 10 messages will be unsolicited), whereas for
emails, well, just have a look at the spam-folder of your email-inbox.
Meaning: people trust the messages they get in their SMS inbox!
So, how can you use SMS to attract clients, increase
turnover and decrease cost of sales?
You can use SMS-marketing in 2 main ways:
1. SMS-marketing on its own is “just” a direct marketing method or tool like many others (think
email or direct marketing). Meaning, you can send out offers, and people (hopefully) take action
on them and the end-result is a business transaction.
However,
2. SMS-marketing can (and should) be used to enhance any other form of advertising and
marketing you are doing!
And it does this in 2 ways:
a. It ties different mediums together very nicely: you can easily connect typical massadvertising mediums (print, TV, radio) with your mobile website, your mobile apps or
your social media presence through something called “short-codes” (where your
prospects send a short message to a given number, we’ll cover this shortly)
b. It lets you build very detailed customer profiles (we’ll cover how this is done later)
meaning that when you send out a message, you know it’s going to be on-target!
Which of course increases the likelihood of your prospect taking action, and coming to
your store and buying something.
When your customers opt-in to your mobile marketing program then you know that you have someone
who is likely to buy from you.
And because you have their permission to send them text messages, you can reach them anytime and
anywhere with a 95% open rate.
The same principle applies to MMS, and in the “how-to” section later on, you’ll discover how best to use
SMS & MMS in practice.
Mobile Apps
Although the use of mobile apps is going up quite dramatically as you saw from the ComScore data
above, there are very few applications where a custom mobile app for a small business really makes
sense.
Why?
There are several reasons, but the biggest one is the lack of visibility:
You can think of an app like a closed shop without any signs on the outside.
Unless someone is specifically looking for your app, they won’t find your business.
A mobile website is typically visible in the search-engines, so if someone is looking for “Italian restaurant
NYC”, they’ll find a list of Italian restaurants in NYC.
But they won’t find a list of apps by the Italian restaurants in NYC.
True, if you have the resources, an existing “mobile” list and a solid social media presence where your
business has a strong following, then you can successfully launch an app and get enough traction to
make it worthwhile.
But, for most small businesses this is not a reality and they cannot justify the investment of time and
resources for something that is pretty much a long-term strategy.
Then there is the fact that most apps are only opened a couple of times (those apps that get opened
repeatedly are either really useful tools people use all the time, like the Facebook-app to access their FBaccount, the weather-forecast, that kind of thing, or silly things like fun games to play whilst stuck in
traffic)
The online retailer shoes.com did a simple test where they compared how much revenue they were
generating via either a mobile website or a custom app.
The mobile website generated 80% more revenue than the app.
We hope we’ve sold you on the idea of not getting a mobile app as the first step into the “mobile
marketing world”.
Now, are all mobile
apps bad?
No, there are a few examples where it
makes sense to have a custom mobile app
developed, and that is when you have a
loyalty or reward program and/or a VIP
club or if you have a large ecommerce side
to your business.
One such example is the Starbucks app,
which lets you track your reward-stars and
also acts as a payment method.
As you can see, as we mentioned above: it’s
an app that gets used on a very regular
basis, and is hence a ‘useful’ app.
Apps can also use more the inbuilt features
of your phone. So if it makes sense to use
the “location” functionality, the in-built
camera to scan codes, and to offer coupons
and easy checkout methods, then sure, an
app might be the way forward.
But for most small businesses we recommend getting their “mobile feet” wet with a mobile site first.
Summary
Mobile apps are generally not recommended as a first step into the mobile marketing world, you are
much better off investing your marketing budget in a mobile website, where
1. you can get the same level (or better) of interaction with your prospects and customers,
2. plus you can use a mobile website to build your SMS-list, and of course
3. you get found in the search-engines, whereas an app isn’t.
Mobile Websites
A mobile website is a website like any other website, the only difference is that it is optimized for the
small screen-size, and the fact that navigating around a website, and entering data is cumbersome to
say the least on the small screen of a smartphone.
In the following image, you first see the Starbucks.com website, the way you would view it on a desktop
computer.
The small red frame illustrates what you would see if Starbucks did not have a mobile website: only a
very small proportion of the overall information available on the screen.
This would create a rather dissatisfying user-experience on a smartphone, which is why most big
companies have a mobile version of their website.
The next image shows the mobile version of the Starbucks.com website:
As you can see, there are only two items in the menu at the top (1): “Sign in” and “Find a store” (these
are the most important things people on the move are doing: it’s back to instant gratification, “where
can I find the nearest store?”)
The rest of the menu is hidden in
the small box with the 3 horizontal
bars (2): when you click on there,
the menu opens and the user can
select from the different options.
The video from the desktop version
above has been replaced by an
image (3) to make sure the site
loads faster.
Finally, in order to avoid vertical
scrolling (there is no horizontal
scrolling to begin with), there are 3
additional pages immediately
accessible by clicking on the small
grey dots below the main image
(4).
This way the user has access to a
lot of content without having to
scroll at all.
And at the same time, the homepage (and any other page) is kept
clean and smart-looking, and the
user always knows where they are
and where they want to get to.
Coupons
Alright, let’s start with a little reality check:
If you’ve been around for a little while, you may have tried coupons in print-advertising (newspaper?)
Actually, statistically speaking, you probably haven’t, because you have heard over and over again that
coupons don’t work.
And it’s true: when you have coupons in a newspaper, then unless you have a system in place that tracks
how they perform, and you’ve trained your staff to keep entering all returned coupons in the system,
and you have an offer that converts really well (aka: people love it;-), then coupons can be pretty tricky
to make profitable.
Fortunately for you, this is where “mobile marketing” really shines!
See, you don’t have to invest in some expensive newspaper ad just to find out whether or not a coupon
works.
First of all, with online technology, you can easily do something that’s called “split-testing”:
What you are doing is sending one coupon to a one (small) segment of your list, and another coupon to
another (small) segment of your list.
Then you simply observe, which one works better, and you then send the winner to all those who
haven’t seen the coupon yet.
Or of course, you keep refining your coupon to get even better conversions.
Btw, you are of course not limited to creating one ‘best’ coupon offer.
With online technology, you can easily create highly converting coupons targeted at different types of
customers.
That way you very quickly hone in on offers that get your prospects and customers excited, meaning
more visitors to your business!
Secondly, mobile coupons are highly measurable – you can accurately measure which coupons were
redeemed, who redeemed them, when they redeemed them, what else they bought etc.
With paper coupons, this requires quite a bit of additional ‘logging & tracking’ work, but here, because
everything is virtual already, you have all the numbers you need at your fingertips.
QR Codes
QR codes are the barcodes of the online world.
The only difference is that instead of using a bunch of parallel lines
like the barcodes do, the QR codes are 2-dimensional as you can see
in the example on the right.
QR stands for “quick response”: the idea behind this is that you do
not need to enter a lengthy URL or a website, but instead scan the QR code with the phone-camera,
which then redirects you to the target URL.
In practice, you can use QR codes to forward the user to pretty much any online destination.
This could be
1. a website
2. YouTube Video
3. Google Maps Location
4. Twitter
5. Facebook
6. LinkedIn
7. FourSquare
8. App Store Download
9. iTunes Link
10. Plain Text
11. Telephone Number
12. Skype Call
13. SMS Message
14. Email Address
15. Email Message
16. Contact Details (VCARD)
17. Event (VCALENDAR)
18. Wifi Login (Android Only)
19. Paypal Buy Now Link
20. A coupon
For this to work, the user has to install a QR-reader app on their smartphone.
This app then decides what the right application is to view the information (email, browser, text-viewer,
…) and opens that application with the corresponding information the QR code is “pointing to”.
The QR codes have a little bit of redundancy built in, meaning that if a few of the little black and white
dots aren’t ‘perfect’, the QR code can still work.
Some people are exploiting this in a very creative way: you can e.g.
put your company logo into a QR code, and the code will still work.
On the right, you see an example of a QR code that has the BBC
logo embedded.
One problem with QR codes is that there are ways for spammers
and hackers to distribute malware through QR codes.
The more of this kind of information is reported in the media, the
less likely people are to use QR codes.
But, if you decide to use QR codes in your marketing, you should make sure to use managed QR codes
where you can get analytics of how often a particular code is being scanned, plus by redirecting the
visitor to different destinations, you can once again do easy split-testing to find out what offers work for
a particular target audience.
Question #3: How Do I Actually Do Mobile
Marketing In Practice?
In this section, you’ll find plenty of tips on how to implement the various mobile tools.
SMS/MMS
Remember, SMS helps with your marketing in 2 ways: you can use it to
1. do direct marketing campaigns to reach individuals with very targeted messages
2. enhance other forms of advertising you are doing
How can you do the 'direct marketing' part?
In a nutshell, here is what you do:
1. You build a ‘list’ of people who are interested in receiving SMS messages from you
2. You can then send targeted messages to that list
In that sense, it is very similar to having a list of email addresses, or even doing a direct mail campaign,
where you rent a list of names, and send them a direct mail piece.
But, as explained earlier, there are huge differences in how effective these mediums are:
Because there is that inherent trust, resulting in that high open-rate, combined with the ability to do
very targeted message-campaigns, SMS-based marketing has a huge advantage over the other forms of
mass-marketing mentioned.
To give you a few examples:
Imagine you’re a restaurant owner, and you have overstocked on a certain item. It is now very easy to
create an SMS campaign, offering a special deal on that item for anyone who shows up this afternoon.
The same goes for any business that has to deal with ‘slow times’: whenever there aren’t enough
customers, you simply send out an SMS and make your customers an irresistible offer.
However, and this is a very important point many people who get into SMS-marketing overlook:
SMS is best used to deliver time-sensitive promotions that are designed to move the hottest items at
the highest price points instead of using it to just ditch overstocked items.
Remember the “instant gratification” we mentioned earlier? The key here is time-sensitive, often
combined with exclusivity that makes the big difference - and we’ll cover more of this later on.
Another example: say you’re a real-estate agent: nothing easier than sending out an update to anyone
who has expressed interest in a particular property, or is looking for just the type of property that has
just come onto the market.
Another way you can use text-messaging is for appointment-reminders – this has been shown to reduce
the no-show rate significantly, meaning you don’t find yourself with nothing to do, just because a client
didn’t show up.
How Do I build a list or prospects in practice?
The technical part of this is relatively straightforward:
Either people just give you their cell-number, or you use something called “short-codes” and
“keywords”:
The short-code is a 5 or 6 digit phone-number which is allocated to you by the carriers, and your
prospects then send a short keyword to that short phone-number.
These short-codes are approved individually by the carriers, which is one of the reasons why the overall
spam-volume is so extremely low: if you don’t play ball and get too many complaints, then the carrier
simply terminates your short-code, and you can no longer send text-messages.
In other words: you are only leasing the short-code, you don’t own it!
In practice, most businesses don’t have a unique short-code, but share it with several other businesses,
meaning it is much cheaper than having your own dedicated short-code.
What is unique on the other hand is of course the keyword, which is the short text the user sends to
your short-code.
So, as an example, you could have the keyword “VIPCLUB” and the short-code 123456 and whenever
someone sends a text-message with the text “VIPCLUB” to the number 123456, you can do all kinds of
things with that information, including of course storing the number of the phone from which the text
was sent.
Incidentally, people do not necessarily need to send a message from their phone to be added to your
list, they can also submit their request via a web-interface.
The beauty of this system is that you don’t need a smartphone to be able to use short-codes!
Meaning: whilst the use of smartphones certainly is going up dramatically, for the time being there are
still a very substantial number of phones that do not have smart-phone capability (and hence cannot use
things like QR-code readers, go to a website etc).
And that’s about it – from the technical perspective.
In practice – although not difficult – there are a few specific steps you need to take to make sure your
signup-process is 100% compliant (so you don’t get kicked out by the carrier), but that is beyond the
scope of this whitepaper.
Tu Zona Movil
If you would like us to explain to you what you need to look out for when creating your signup process,
feel free to contact us for a free consultation at (787) 529-8301
The second part of the signup equation is this:
How do you get people to
actually sign up to your list?
You may be familiar with the classic “squeeze” page on the Internet,
where someone offers you a free report, or a video or similar in
exchange for your email address.
The same principle applies here:
You offer something of value, and in exchange the user gives you
their contact details and their permission to contact them through
SMS marketing.
Now, because of the nature of mobile, the classic “here is a big
report” approach does work, but it is not necessarily the best way
of getting users involved.
Methods that are much better suited to “mobile” (and which are
better integrated with your overall marketing strategy) are
1. Polls & surveys
2. Contests & sweepstakes
3. VIP-club membership & loyalty/rewards program
Polls & surveys, and contests & sweepstakes tap into the viral nature of the SMS-medium, and VIP-club
memberships let you do what we referred to earlier:
Sell hot products at a premium, rather than discounting everything and only getting people into your
story via “money off” coupons.
Take e.g. a popular restaurant with long waiting lists.
If there is a cancellation, you can now send a quick message to your VIP list and tell them about the
table that has become available.
Normally, they’d have to wait (probably for a long time) to get a table without a reservation, here’s their
chance to jump to the front of the line, just because they’re in your VIP club.
In general, the more you treat your VIP list like true VIPs, instead of a “let’s get rid off some overstock”
outlet, the more success you’ll have with it.
There are plenty of ways to get traffic to your mobile offers:
You can (and should) include your short-codes with any traditional form of advertising you are doing
(newspaper ads, TV, radio, …), you can do online-advertising (there is even mobile-phone specific
advertising), you can use your social media presence, incentivize referrals, the list goes on.
Ok, great, so you can build a list of prospects, now you might be wondering:
“Excellent, I can now send messages to my list
every day, or can I?”
No, (un)fortunately not!
Remember the trust-thing we discussed earlier?
If you start sending out daily emails, you’ll quickly get labeled a “spammer” and people will unsubscribe
from your list very quickly.
Having said that, one of the great advantages of SMS-marketing is that you can market to your prospects
100% legally!
When done properly, there is nothing spammy about SMS-marketing (hence the high trust-factor) –
quite the contrary, people look forward to your messages.
The beauty of the system is: you are required to tell anyone who signs up how many messages they will
be getting at most – so there’s never a surprise, and you can easily test what rate of messages gives you
the highest signup rate.
To sum up:
SMS-marketing is great for reducing advertising costs, because
of 3 factors:
1. Due to the high “trust” factor, open-rates are high and you get great responses to your
marketing
2. You can tailor your offers much better than say with email, print-advertising, direct mail etc,
because in the process of building your list, you can collect very detailed information about the
likes, needs and desires of your target audience, so you know what the market wants to hear
from you
3. SMS-marketing enhances any other form of marketing you are doing
How Do You 'Enhance' Other Forms Of Advertising?
One thing we haven’t mentioned before is that you can use SMS marketing in 2 very different ways,
which goes back to your strategic objectives:
You can either use it to let people request some information (text for info) or you can use it to get
people to join your list (text to join).
Text For Info
Text For Info implies that there is no signup required.
This is a great first step to get people to check out what you’ve got to offer without them having to
‘hand over’ their contact details.
It’s a little bit like the “I’m just browsing” visitor to your business.
Until they’re satisfied that they’re likely to find what they are looking for, they are not overly keen to
talk to a sales-assistant.
Examples could be information on a property, like the schools in the proximity, local transport and so on
for a real-estate listing.
It’s just good, solid information, but no need to go any further.
Only once the user is satisfied that this might be a good deal, then they can and will move forward and
give you their contact details.
The Text For Info aspect is hence great to start conversations with prospects, enhance your traditional
advertising like print-ads, radio & TV advertising, cinema advertising and so on.
You can also use it to attract fans to your social media presence, ask for feedback, arrange a call-back
and many other options of creating that first point of contact.
The beauty of this is at the same time as you’re offering your prospects good, solid information, you are
also tracking the performance of your individual offline ads.
You simply use different keywords for your print and your radio ads, and you’ll quickly see which one
generates the better response, so you can focus more of your marketing budget on the medium that
works best for you.
Note, in sufficiently large towns and cities, your newspaper should be able to run different ads for
different regions where the newspaper is published. Make sure to use different keywords in the
different regions so you can measure where you are getting the best response (and no, the newspaper
sales-reps are not going to like this, because obviously you are not going to buy advertising in areas that
generate no response)
Text To Join
The obvious reason for using a Text To Join approach is to get prospects onto your list, so you can keep
marketing to them and make more repeat-sales.
The not-so-obvious reason is that once they are on your list, you can start building customer profiles,
and then send specific targeted offers to the appropriate segments of your list.
Over time you are building up a better and better picture of what your customers want, so you only
send them offers they are likely to respond to.
Tu Zona Movil
There are obviously many different ways you can do this. So, if you would like to arrange for a
complimentary strategy session where we help you figure out what approach might fit your business
best, feel free to contact us at (787)-529-8301
MMS
MMS supports a wide range of media, including video, audio, pictures, slide-shows etc.
That means you probably already have quite a bit of useful content you can use for MMS-campaigns and
if not – it can be created relatively easily and quickly.
Now, because of the multi-media aspect of MMS, one of the main applications of using MMS is to do the
“soft” part of your marketing - evoke feelings to create brand awareness and brand loyalty.
Basically, you tell a story people can connect with.
And one of the best ways for doing this is to capture behind the scenes content that’s not shared
anywhere else (remember the whole VIP-thing?). See, because it’s exclusive, users start looking forward
to your messages – and isn’t that something we all want: customer who are looking forward to our
marketing?
Other ways of using multi-media content is when you have “virtual” content to show to your prospects,
but you cannot be physically present at all times.
An example would be a real-estate agent who puts all the relevant information about a property into an
MMS (images, video, contact info, written description) which a passer-by can request when they see the
‘for-sale’ sign outside a property.
But, as you know by now, the same effect can be achieved with a well-designed mobile website.
And of course: MMS don’t work on traditional mobile phones, only on smartphones.
So, for the time being, our recommendation is:
Get the hang of using SMS properly to connect and enhance the various part or your marketing, then,
once you have identified a particular group of prospects and/or customers who mostly use smartphones
AND they would likely respond to “behind the scenes” type content (because e.g. they are part of your
VIP club), then start adding MMS to your marketing mix.
Mobile Websites
The 'Technical bit'
Most businesses have a ‘normal’ website these days. And quite a few of those websites run on a content
management system like Wordpress, Joomla or TYP03.
There are so-called plugins (little bits of code you install on your website) that automatically convert
your normal website into a mobile website.
And although some of the results are actually visually acceptable to the user, there is a major drawback
of this approach:
Google and the other search-engines cannot tell that it is a mobile site.
And that is a problem and here is why:
Currently and in the foreseeable future, the search-engines regard normal websites and mobile websites
as 2 separate entities.
The reason for this should by now be obvious:
The search-behavior of someone online is very different from someone who is searching for something
on their mobile device.
So the search-engines ‘know’ this and they try to serve up content that is most suited to the particular
modality.
Now, if your site is a normal site and it is just using a plugin to ‘fake’ a mobile site, then the searchengines ‘think’ that it is a normal site, and they will treat it as such: namely preferably show it for
‘normal’ searches, not for mobile searches.
What to do in practice
So, in practice what you should do is set up a so-called sub-domain (typically, the “www” at the
beginning of your domain name is replaced by “m”) and install a mobile specific site on there.
So, if your normal site is
http://www.yoursite.com
then your mobile site would live on
http://m.yoursite.com
and your normal site then redirects to your mobile site (“redirect” means that if the site recognizes that
it’s being viewed by a mobile device, it’ll automatically serve up the “m.” site.
You may have heard about .mobi domains – these are not essential to have, but if you already have
yours, or you’d like to reserve it to protect your brand, all you’d then do is redirect the .mobi to the “m.”
domain.
The 'Design' Bit
When designing a mobile website, you have to think again how and why people are using their mobile
devices:
a) They are unlikely to enter any significant amount of information (they mini-keyboards are just
too cumbersome) and
b) They are after instant gratification (the attention span of a mobile searcher is even shorter than
that of someone who is on a PC)
These things mean:
Streamline your site as much as you can!
It has to be easier and faster to navigate.
That means:
1. fewer (and smaller) graphics,
2. fewer (or none) and shorter videos,
3. fewer menu-items for navigation
4. use click-to-call functionality whenever possible, so your visitors don’t have to type in your
phone-number
5. reduce the number of links on the page
6. avoid using forms and tables – hardly anyone is going to type in big messages anyway
7. integrate a map if possible – make your site as visual as possible. Remember: you can’t print out
directions, but with a good map it’s relatively easy to find your business.
Here are a couple of examples of what a good, clean mobile website can look like:
Coupons
With coupons, it is essential that you start
with clearly defined objectives to make
them work.
Do you want to use coupons to reach an
audience you wouldn’t reach otherwise?
Is your main aim to increase the average
order size?
Do you want to encourage referrals?
Are you aiming to increase the overall lifetime value (LTV) or your customer?
All of these are good things to aim for, but
depending on what your goal is, different
types of offers will be required.
The good news is:
Although you can always ‘guess’ what a
good offer might be, in reality you will have
to test.
And yes, that’s good news.
Because far too many business owners spend forever trying to figure out what the ‘best’ offer might be,
do one campaign, see no results and never use coupons again.
See, there are so many factors that affect how a particular target audience will respond to your offer,
that it is nearly impossible to make the right ‘guess’.
So, rather than worry about making the right or wrong choice, just start with something that makes
more or less sense, and test yourself to success.
And because it’s so easy and cheap with mobile technology, you can do this very, very quickly and
affordably – and certainly much cheaper and faster than putting a coupon in the newspaper.
Now, there’s one big topic we need to cover, and that is
Redemption
How do your prospects or customers actually redeem a coupon?
Here are the most common ways:
1. The customer presents the code on their mobile phone, and the cashier simply gives them a
discount.
2. The customer presents the code on their mobile phone, and the cashier enters it into the
checkout system (much better, as all your tracking is done automatically now)
3. Alternatively to entering the code manually, the cashier can scan it – if you have the technology.
In this case the code is typically in the form of a barcode, meaning you can only view it on a
smartphone. If you go down this route, you should make sure to have an email-to-print
function, so those who do not have a smartphone can receive an email with the code and print
it out on their desktop computer.
4. The coupons are downloaded to a reward-program, and the customer can then use the ‘credit’
as they please. If you have a reward-program app, these can then e.g. display which of the
coupons have been redeemed, and when they expire (if you have an expiration date, which is
highly recommended)
Now, although this sounds straightforward, in practice you will have to train your staff – you will not
believe the number of times the checkout staff are totally confused by the coupon they’re seeing (often
for the first time), then ask the customer to print it out (“from my mobile phone???”), and so on.
It is nothing complicated, but you and your staff should run through the whole process a few times to
make sure you are creating a positive experience for your customer – you certainly don’t want to lose
them now as a repeat customer simply because of a bad checkout experience.
This is of course not an issue if the coupon is applied straight to the reward-program where the
coupon/discount is applied automatically at the checkout.
QR Codes
You have probably seen QR codes in many places, like posters, bill-boards, t-shirts, business-card,
menus, for-sale signs put up by real-estate agents and so on.
So, you might be thinking: “I must get a QR code and put it all over my marketing material”
Well, that depends.
See, QR codes are really only useful if your target audience has smartphones.
On top of that, the reality is that only about 6-7% of the population who own smartphones have actually
installed (and know how to use) a QR-reader app.
And from those 6-7%, there is a strong bias towards young males who are tech-oriented.
So, in practice, although it looks ‘hip’ and ‘must-have’, the reality is that unless your target audience is
using QR-reader apps, then right now they are not a necessity.
If you decide to use QR codes in your promotional material, here are a few tips and examples to help
you create successful campaigns:
1. Make sure to have enough white-space around your QR code. If there isn’t enough of a clean
border between the code and the rest of your ad, then many older phones (yes, even
smartphones) have serious difficulty deciphering the code.
2. Make sure to use managed QR codes where you can track the performance of your campaign
and split-test yourself to success. Otherwise you’re just shooting in the dark and probably
wasting a lot of money in the process.
3. Don’t limit yourself to promoting your own materials: once you’ve engaged users and/or
enrolled them into your VIP program, you could follow the example JC Penny implemented over
Christmas last year: when you buy a present for a loved one, you can record a short message.
This message is then played when the recipient of the gift scans the barcode.
4. Add short informational videos to complex items in your store: again, the QR code redirects to a
short video. This has e.g. been implemented very successfully in galleries, museums, triathlon
stores and so on.
5. Think “social”: you can do referral type competitions, where if someone buys a product at a
friend’s recommendation, the referrer gets a reward. This can make a strong impact on your
social media presence.
6. You may have received a “Favorite Places on Google” card to put up in your shop-window: all
this does is redirect a passer-by to a Google page about your business. You obviously want to
make sure that the information the user finds at that site conveys the message you want to send
out!
7. If you manufacture your own products, then you can provide more information, more of the
backstory behind the product and of course an incentive to sign up for your SMS list through a
QR code on your product.
8. Don’t ever think about sending out a QR code in an email. Yes, people do this. And no, it’s not
really possible to take the camera phone off to scan the code in the email…
9. A similarly silly place is billboards by the roadside: unless you’re willing to hop out of your car
and walk up to the billboard, you’re not going to be able to scan that code.
10. And no, you don’t have reception in airplanes and subway stations, so putting your QR codes
there doesn’t make much sense either.
Summary
Over the last few pages we have taken a good look at why you may want to do mobile marketing, what
you need to know to understand the technology, and how you might apply it in practice.
We had a look at the main technologies SMS, mobile website, mobile app, QR codes and coupons.
For most small businesses that sell mostly locally or at most regionally, we don’t recommend mobile
apps to begin with, and unless you have a rather young, male, tech-oriented target audience, you
probably don’t need to worry about QR codes just yet.
Instead, we highly recommend you start building an SMS list, most likely through the use of a mobile
website and coupons. Keep focusing on traditional advertising media like the newspaper, radio and TV
ads, but start integrating them through everything you are doing online – and SMS is a great tool for
doing just that.
Celebrate the fact that with mobile marketing it is now very easy and cheap to simply split-test yourself
to success. And successful campaigns obviously mean higher turnover and profit, and often enough
lower advertising costs.
When using SMS, you need to recognize that like many other technologies, it is just a tool.
And you still need to know how to use that tool.
As we’ve discussed above, consumers search very differently on their mobile device than on their PCs:
their search terms and their intent are different, meaning the offers, the call-to-action, the coupons etc
that work in traditional advertising, most likely are not optimal when it comes to the mobile medium.
The same goes for online advertising: if you are using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, then you need to
take into account the different mindset the user has when “on the go” – ads that work online, may well
be a flop when used for mobile advertising campaigns.
The second big issue is that all of these technologies have to be integrated into an overall marketing
strategy. Especially SMS which almost acts like the glue that holds all your marketing efforts together.
You constantly have to ask yourself what you are actually trying to accomplish and how can you use the
mobile tools to achieve that goal.
At a more tactical level, you might be asking questions like:
1. But how do I build my database?
2. How do I design dynamic, compelling mobile campaigns?
3.
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How do I integrate these tools into my overall marketing strategy?
If you would like to meet for a free consultation where we can help you with these questions, feel free
to contact us at 787-529-8301
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