Marketing

By Ramon Ray –

Recently I wrote about how PunchTab lets you give incentives to your online audience to award them for various actions they take – such as how many times they Tweet or some other action.

Today Fanplayr announced an integration with Constant Contact, quite powerful. But beyond this, Fanplayr continues the genre of “gamification” making a business action fun. For example, match the apples and win a $10 coupon.

“The competition for consumer endorsement is at an all-time high as marketers seek to attract customers to fan pages and increase ‘like’ numbers in pursuit of increased sales and loyalty. However, something more needs to be added to the mix to benefit and engage the consumer as the potential for ‘like fatigue’ also increases,” says Mary Wardley, IDC Program VP CRM Applications Research. “Gamification and suppliers such as Fanplayr offer a mechanism to brands to truly engage with and reward their customers and not merely bombard them with messaging. At the same, time Fanplayr allows brands to control the level of reward for better cost control.”  (more…)

Getting your business noticed can be challenging. To show your business stands head and shoulders above not only your smaller competitors but also the dominant players in your market, you need to differentiate yourself from the pack.

You may already be familiar with the concept of a “value proposition” — a fancy term for a short statement encapsulating why customers benefit from doing business with you. But even if you have one, it might not effectively differentiate you from your competitors or show the true value your business provides.

As a small business owner, you usually assume your value proposition should perform two key functions when it comes to the competition:

1. Show the value you provide that small competitors don’t.
2. Show the value you provide that large competitors don’t.

But, in reality, your value proposition should focus on just one thing: Showing the unique value you provide to your target customer. Period. (more…)

So you’ve spent a large amount of time and money creating and launching a great new product yet you’re still eagerly waiting to generate sales. You have high volumes of targeted traffic, plenty of fancy banner ads and you’ve done everything just right. Or have you?

How could it be that launching a high quality product that’s relevant to your audience, implementing a robust online marketing effort with heaps of hits, banners & text links posted all over the place -and still it’s only half the battle?

It might seem hard to believe after investing so much effort. This is not always the case in the world of online marketing and business but truth be told if you really want to seal the deal & sell your product, you may have to be more proactive and engage in actual conversations with potential new customers and clients. That means either talking on the phone, one-on- one emails or, dare I say it, in person. (more…)

Sally Field is famous for getting excited at the 1985 Academy Awards ceremony about the fact that her peers like her. And these days, that’s the reaction you may have when people choose to “Like” your business and organization’s Facebook Page. But what happens after the Like?

Yes, when it comes to Facebook, it’s important to be Liked. After people Like your Page, you need to engage them and drive them to take action. That’s how you’ll get results. How do you actually do that? Here are some tips:

1. Feature an exclusive offer. One of the best ways to see results from your Page is to frequently run special offers specifically for your Facebook fans. In fact, in a study of consumer behavior on Facebook we found that two of the top 5 reasons people Like a Page were to receive discounts and promotions, and to gain access to exclusive content. (more…)