Happy Holidays from the Lab!

15 Dec, 2011 in General, Marketing Thoughts by admin

The "Result Junkies"

Last month in the United States was the start of the Holiday Season.  Thanksgiving starts off a fast and furious couple of months full of food, family, holiday parties and travel.  If you’re like my wife and I, then you are not originally from this great state of Texas, and it means that you get to travel back to your family and native lands.  Oh the joys!

The holidays always mean something different for each person and each family. Just as is does for all of our wonderful clients with whom we would not be able to be here today without.  So as we wind down this year I want to take a moment and thank all of our past and current clients. Without you we do not exist and we are not able to explore our minds and stretch the limitations of our abilities.

We want to wish a happy holidays to all of our troops both near and abroad. Not only do you sacrifice your lives on a daily basis for us to be able to write blogs like this, you spend these holidays far from home and your loved ones.  For that we wish you all of the men and women of the armed forces, the very best holiday season, safe travels and God speed.

January is named after the Roman god Janus, who was the god of doorways, beginnings, endings, and time.  He is often depicted as having two heads, one looking forward into the future and the other looking back into the past.  It is appropriate that we take this time to reflect on the past and look toward the future.  As re reflect, we are most thankful that all of our “Result Junkies” – you – have chosen to seize the opportunities and through hard work, we have had the chance to prosper and grow and know each other in our journey.  Thank you to ALL of you for the hard work over the past year and for your loyalty and support.  Thanks to your families who understood when you went to work early, worked late and traveled away from home which added to their load. These past couple of years have not been easy ones in business or in the World – but you have contributed to improvement in both our prosperity as a company and others who have benefited from our ability to share that.

Looking to the future and what 2012 has in store for us is what makes coming to the lab everyday worthwhile.

We sincerely hope all of our friends, families, colleagues and patrons have a wonderful and safe holiday season.

Travis E. Blythe
Partner/Chief Business Development Director
Corner6labs
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The Almost New Gap Logo… A Marketing Trick?

26 Oct, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Small Business, Social media, Web design by admin

It’s almost an absolute that you have heard the hoopla surrounding Gap’s recent unveiling of their new logo. No? Well, ladies and gentlemen… I give you the “almost” new Gap logo (hint: it’s the one on the right):

Do not adjust your computer, iPhone, Ipad or Tablet? screens…this is seriously what they released to the world! But alas, the many Gap enthusiasts, my wife included, quickly made a mockery of the company’s feeble and epic failed attempt to “refresh” their now iconic mark.

If you know me then you know I am going to squeeze the conspiracy out of this story, if for nothing other than making us all think.

Many of us are more than likely going to be inclined to cough this up as a foolish corporate mistake. But is it really? Gap has been a company known to be in financial turmoil. Dwindling stocks stemming from less than impressive year-end financial reports were the perfect contributing ingredients to an impending disaster. Just last year alone the company lost an estimate 2.3% when comparing their previous years revenue, which was also down from the previous year.  If you ask me, this massive sales deficit was not only a side effect of the fledgling economy, but spoke to the fact of the company’s diminshing brand presence. It was a matter of time until a “More Panic” meeting was called.

People always say to themselves, “I wish I was a fly on the wall in that meeting”. Well folks, I spoke to a fly, who spoke to a fly, who heard it on the grapevine, who claims she heard it from Cathy, about what went on…and here is how he thinks it went down”…

“Hear ye, hear ye”… well maybe not, but I have always wanted to start a meeting off like that.

“So what do we do?”…asks the guy sitting at the end of the table, donned in his red and blue neck-tie, white Armani dress-shirt (the irony kills me), Armani reading glasses and $1500 boots (we assume the rest of his outfit is pretty standard…except for his watch which can buy both you and I a brand new house…or feed a hundred starving families, whichever one makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside).

“We shake things up!”…says the marketing director.

“We change our prices and our line”

“Tried that before!”…says Armani suite…

“Well…hmmmm…ok how about we change our brand?”

“I don’t think that is a good idea, people are comfortable with our brand…it will cost us too much money and frankly I am going on vacation at the end of the month and don’t need the headache. Any other ideas?”..says Armani suit

The intern raises her hand, me..me…me

“Anybody else?”

“me…me..me!”

“Fine, Lindsay what do you think?”

“Why don’t we just pretend to change our brand. I will create a logo with my mediocre at best Photoshop skills, and then we can release it at midnight tonight. That way we can generate some press and hope to not lose our shirts…get it?”

“I don’t know”… say the now overpaid marketing director…”that is a silly idea!”

“What do we have to lose? Sales and credibility?… we have already lost those by releasing those stupid looking skinny jeans”…says Armani suit

“Lindsay, you are a genius. Do it!”

We flash forward through panic, disgust, laughter, ridicule and back-tracking, only to find Gap at the fore-front of every news media, trying to explain away what happened with their “failed attempt to release their new logo”.

While we all point and laugh at what a gigantic failure that it was, I must sit back and ask myself…

WAS IT?…WAS IT REALLY?

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Web Applications in an Iphone World

14 Sep, 2010 in Tips & Tricks by admin

I know what you’re thinking, another IPhone evangelist. Well, kinda but not really.  The first thing I must do is set the topic straight by letting you know that this post is not about enabling your web application for the Iphone. The post is more about what people have come to expect in the way they interact with an application. Since Apple came out with the iphone in 2007, and I guess even before that with the MAC OS (I wouldn’t know, I am a PC… thanks to all of you leaving for stopping by) … mobile users have changed their expectations on what they expect from their User Interfaces. Apple did a good job creating a UI where you can pretty much get to anything with at most 2 clicks, a slide, a shake and a pop…try it…I am not joking. Don’t belive me, check this out… in 2008, apple only controlled approx 3% of the mobile phone market share, by 2009 they owned 13.3%. Yeah 13% is nothing compared to Nokia’s 45%, but with a growth rate that big and almost exclusive control over the mantra of the simplistic approach to usability… inevitability is just a matter of fact.

So with the ground work out of the way, now down to the real topic at hand. You launched a great web application, or software as a service, whatever you want to call it, and now you are thinking, we need to keep our clients engaged, we need to add more features. IMHO, trying to engage your customers by adding more features is like fishing with dynamite, you might get more fish but hey will be all wrangled and dismembered (for the record, I hav elways hated that term). If anything , you should be looking to simplify your application. This aint field of dreams, if you built it, they won’t come, but if you make it usefully simple and simply useful, they will flock to you like 14 year-old-chicks to the Backstreet Boys, who by the way apparently have a new album…what?…why are you looking at me like that?

Before you go putting another sardine in your application tin can, consider the following:

  • Ask yourself, is a feature addition necessary/ is it a preemptive strike. Your application can’t be stagnant I know, but simpler changes can make a big difference. Changes such as themes or layouts or simplifying the process to complete an action can make you look like a genius.
  • Don’t spend time building, spend time learning. Find out what the pains are from your customer….Hint, they really do know best. Surveys and feedback sites such as Get Satisfaction can help you make your application more customer centric..and trust me, that’s all the rave these days.
  • Always have an application log, and check it always. Your server logs can tell you a whole lot about how your clients use you application and besides, working out those very quiet bugs that just rare their ugly heads every now and then is way more important that adding a jet pack to your app.
  • Check with your marketing department, find out what keywords make you pop up in search results. No, I am not saying build your app away from your core services, I am saying make sure you know what the craze so you don’t miss out on opportunities. Make of that what you will.
  • Is my interface crisp, clean and inviting. Can users get to what they need in 3 clicks or less.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of do’s and dont’s for your app, all I want to do is give you pause. With cooler technology comes greater expectations on how to use it.

KISS ..google that $#iT

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Using videos for your business.

14 Jul, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Search Engine Optimization, Small Business, Social media by admin

Dwamian Mcleish, Our Director of Technology gets interview on CelebrityU Radio.

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Location Location Location!

5 May, 2010 in Marketing Thoughts, Rants & Raves, Social media by admin

Where are you?… what are you doing?… twitter made it popular, and if that didn’t make our current online sociali-sphere (made that up) a stalker’s heaven, location-based social networking just up the ante.

Almost every smart phone out today has some sort of Geo location capability. Whether it’s through an integrated GPS (real GPS) or estimating your location based on your nearest cell tower (Fake GPS), “They” know where you are at all times. Clever business guys took advantage of this fact, threw in a map and created the phenomenon of location-based social networking. It is estimated that by 2013, three of the major location-based social networking players will account for over 3.3 billion dollars in revenue! That’s a lot of cheddar. The fascinating thing is that analysts are speculating that this is just the beginning.

Imagine a world where businesses are fully tuned in to the where-a-bouts and geographic buying patterns of its consumers. Where brands can track and influence people in places where it was only possible to assume they would be. Have you seen “Minority Report”? No? good time to go watch it… Yes, that’s where I think it’s going. Companies will take the cookie cutter messages they threw up (I don’t mean vomit even though it’s close), on a billboard and make it feel more personal to you. I have been seeing more and more digital billboards on my daily commutes. Just imagine… you’re going down the street, you look up, and the billboard in front of you says, “Hey [insert name here], wanna party like it’s 1999?…Prince tickets on sale now”. Click, buy, done… I just bought Prince tickets. Join me.

Location-based social networking means more than just informing stalkers of your where-a-bouts, or a new tool that wives and girlfriends can add to their “check up” repertoire. For businesses it will create a whole new dimension of selling, less wasted money on making an ass out of you and…well, themselves.

Want to check out a good list of location-based social networks? Click Here. corner6Labs doesn’t actually officially endorse any of them…although Travis, our VP of Sales, seems to be a 4-Square junkie. Word of advice…don’t try to steal his “Mayor-ship” he is very possessive of them and rather competitive.

Happy Stalking!

BTW, are you going to the June 18th “Nothing But Net” event put on by the Magnus Media Group? We are! Send us a quick note on twitter to let us know you will be there. We will even say hi and buy you a big Junkie drink!

1 Comment

6 Step Process to Generate Sales from Blogs

19 Mar, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Search Engine Optimization, Social media by admin

Blogs can be used for many different purposes, including sales.  They started as a simple tool to share thoughts, ideas and opinions online, since then they have evolved significantly and now they are being used in many different ways. Companies are using them more and more for marketing purposes and they are seeing the benefits. A study from HubSpot indicates that businesses that blog get 55% more website visitors . Blogging for sales is another effective way to leverage blogs and I will explain how to go about it in a 6 step process.

  1. Find a large enough group of people to talk to. Marketers are always looking for new segments to penetrate with their products and blogs are a great channel to communicate with them.  For example, if you sell executive suites to small businesses, you will probably want to target prospects based on geography and perhaps service firms. That will give you a large group of people to talk to but this group will probably be composed of several smaller groups with similar interest, so don’t stop there.
  2. Learn what is unique about each smaller group. Within that larger segment you should create a variety of content that speaks to what is unique to each one do those smaller groups. Following the example above, it could be interesting to create content that talks about the importance of first impressions, the role of branding in finding new clients, the most successful stock investments strategies or the latest high-end entertainment events in the area.
  3. Share with them and build trust. We all know that people like free samples, gifts, give away, free content, free research, extras or free trials. Use those to start building your brand and relationship with them.  Once you have built that trust and created that first impression, it is really hard to lose it – unless you really screw it. When blogging for sales you must honestly want to share knowledge and tips without expecting something back immediately, you must have patience.
  4. Be patient and keep sharing. This is key as the game has changed for marketers and sales people, if you go aggressively for the sale without really knowing where the prospect is in the purchasing process, you will create a lot of enemies that could have been clients down the road. More than 95% of your blog’s visitors will not be ready to buy so you must be softer and broader with your message to appeal to a larger group that is most likely looking to simply educate themselves. However, make sure to make it easy for those that are shopping to contact you or purchase online.
  5. Embrace your visitors and their networks. As people comment on your posts, bookmark them, share them on social networks and subscribe to your blog, make a task for you to develop each one of those relationships and ideally try to take them offline if appropriate. Don’t try to sell them until they are ready and ask more about your product or services. Developing those relationships will also help you reach a much larger audience than you can reach yourself.
  6. Keep improving your sources. The content that you put in your blog is the fuel that will get your lead generation machine going, so make sure to create an editorial calendar and follow it religiously. If you have trouble coming up with your own thoughts or ideas, you can comment on research reports, studies, do book reviews, interview other experts, etc. Don’t ever run out of gas.

Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

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3% buy now, 7% are open to it, 30% not thinking about it, 30% think they are not interested and 30% know they are not interested.

13 Mar, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts by admin

What does Education have to do with Marketing?

I was going to use the question above to title this post, but then I realized that I was making the precise mistake that I am going to blog about – Making your titles/headlines/subject lines or your entire content too specific. The consequence is that you lose the vast majority of your audience that may not be ready to buy your product or services now, but may be be in the future. Being too specific in your pitch may be damaging your opportunities to build a stronger sales pipeline in the long run. This is what Chet Holmes talks about on chapter 4 – “Becoming a Brilliant Strategist, How to Get Up to Nine Times More Impact from Every Move You Make” – of his Amazon and New York Times best-selling book “The Ultimate Sales Machine”. He calls is “Education-Based Marketing”.

I have to say that I agree with his recommendation only to some extent. Conceptually it makes a lot of sense, however what happens when everyone else (your competitors) have also learned this? and they are changing their marketing messages too, from being very tactical or street-level to more strategic in order to build brand awareness, recognition, trust and thought leadership? I get bombarded all the time with webinars, white papers, podcasts, blog posts and videos with strategic marketing content. How to achieve better Marketing ROI with web analytics? How to incorporate Social Media into the overall marketing strategy? How to drive more leads? So, what I do with them is delete them right away because I have seen them all already.

If you noticed, the media I made a reference to, from which I get most, if not all my content, is online. Why is this important? Because sales and marketing happens on and off-line as we all know and the strategies should be coordinated but different. Being more strategic on your messaging, like Chet Holmes recommends, makes a lot of sense via traditional media and on sales activities such as cold calling, trade shows, conferences or networking. I want to emphasize that I strongly agree with such strategy when dealing offline, however, when you are online the game is different. The economics and the rules are different so you can implement a long-tail strategy to reach each segment with the right message at the right time.

I want to conclude with 6 suggestions to increase your sales performance using education-based marketing and online media (but make sure to compliment it with offline media)

  1. Create targeted education-based messages. Identify the market segments or industries that you want to target and create a content strategy for them. But you can’t stop there, you have to create different messages based on where in the purchasing process the prospect may be: not considering, thus a more strategic message; researching, thus a more tactical message; or ready to purchase, an offer based message.
  2. Use and integrate different online channels. Prospects may use different channels at different stages in the purchasing cycle, so you need to be present on all of them with the appropriate message. For example those that are researching may start (probably will) on Google so you want to make sure that your optimized (blog, website, social media sites) for the keywords used at this stage in the process with content that is more educational on why you are better than your competitor. In addition, you also want to have a separate web and content optimization strategy for those that not considering by using a more strategic message and for those that are ready to pull the trigger using for example email marketing to your house list with strong offers to those that have shown interest in your product or services.
  3. Implement adequate supporting technology. You need to have the appropriate technology given your reality, otherwise all the work that you do on the front end to drive traffic to your website, blog, social media sites and any others may be lost. Assess what kind of volume you expect to get given your investment in online marketing communications, and what resources you can dedicate to monitor and turn that traffic into sales opportunities. Then, do a through research because there are hundreds of software as a service (SaaS) providers that can help you. But make sure to adopt one or a combination of several.
  4. Develop and Nurture online relationships. Once you identify the leads, make sure to categorize them based on their time to purchase. That will give you more insight into how nurture them, what type of content to share with them and with what frequency. Engage with them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Nings and on the Blogs.
  5. Drive online interactions to offline relationships as soon as possible. It is my opinion that all these online tools; web 2.0, social media, or whatever you want to call them, will never replace face to face interaction. However they can be a great bridge to get you a face-to-face interaction and very effective tools to help you maintain and develop those relationships.
  6. Analyze and refine. Establish clear goals and objectives for your plan from the beginning. As you probably know, what does not get measured, does not get improved. Utilize the technology in place and frequently challenge the process and results you’re getting to find ways to improve them.

Any thoughts or comments? Go ahead tell us what you think.

Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

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Re-assess, Re-think, Re-imagine SEO

8 Mar, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Search Engine Optimization, Social media by admin

A few weeks ago we were invited to talk about SEO at the Dallas-Fort Worth American Marketing Association and we took the opportunity to “de-muddle” the search and content landscape. We focused our presentation on how Search Engine Optimization is evolving into what we are calling CSO or Content Search Optimization. The concept behind CSO is that with the growth of user-generated content on social media and web 2.0 sites, along with the proliferation of blogs and their integration into search results, off-page SEO is set to become more and more relevant when optimizing for search engines results. 

Search Engine Optimization has been a cat & mouse game since its inception, marketer and web masters spent their time figuring out how to game search engine algorithms to only find out that these sites kept evolving and coming up with new criteria. The beauty of this game has been that it has evolved in the direction of making results more and more like what you would find on an offline search for a product or service. The difference though is that looking for an accountant offline could take you days or weeks to find a good one. You would probably look for one on the yellow pages, then ask your friends if they knew one, then interview several, than ask for references, to end up probably working with one that worked with someone you trust.  However, online you can do this in a matter of minutes or seconds. Product or service searches on Google (using their filters, social search features and Google buzz) or searches on Facebook (which can also be filtered for friends) will, if not already, complete the entire search and selection process.

So, the questions are: How do you optimize your web presence? How do you embrace word of mouth and user generated content around your brand? How do you grow a network built on trust and reputation? In a few words, and you can watch the presentation below to get more details, the answer is three-fold.

First, you want to establish an editorial calendar because it will help you increase content quantity, quality and your will get more subscribers. Do simple math, more content + better quality = better search engine ranking. Add a little of smart marketing and you will get more readership and that will drive more subscribers (or potential customers)

Second, become a publishing warehouse as it will help you get your target audience in the format and timing that they prefer the most. Take the topic for the day, week, month, whatever your reality is and put in your “content development process” to create blog posts, articles, presentations, tweets, white papers, questions, videos, podcasts, etc. or whatever your target audience respond best.

Third, leverage personal branding to distribute content to networks built on trust and reputation. As stated on a previous blog employees can become a great channel to distribute your content.

By Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

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What does Employee Retention have to do with Social Media Marketing?

8 Mar, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Social media by admin

Everyone talks about the importance of embracing Social Media as a marketing channel because it is free, easy to implement and everyone is doing it. But I also want to emphasize that it is a great channel to retain and engage employees. Leveraging employees, and their online networks and presence, in corporate social media initiatives helps marketing get the brand in front of the target audience via a channel and network built upon trust and reputation. Employees, on the other side,  fulfill their need to express themselves, develop their own personal brand for professional growth and get the opportunity to integrate their work life with their personal and social life more smoothly.

Employees and their families are online and using social media related sites more than ever before (I assume I don’t need to give a stat on this to make the point) and they like to share personal and professional content with their networks. The beauty is that these networks are built on trust, reputation, friendship and real business relationships. Therefore, they listen to what each other has to say making it a great word of mouth channel for a brand. However, many companies are still concerned that access to social media sites while at work could be a source of loss in productivity…well, let me say that the next outlook version integrates with Facebook and other social media tools and most of them have mobile devices. So, I would say that corporate mind-set will have to change much like it did 15 years ago when email came up. Next are six simple ways to start embracing employee social media activities to boost your marketing target reach while retaining employees.

  1. Set expectations and boundaries: Define how social media can help align employees with your business and marketing goals and what the objectives are for social media. Then be specific on what the expectations, implications and limitations are for employees. Clearly and frequently communicate this to them to make sure they are aware and accountable for their actions, but don’t force them into social media and make sure that they don’t feel that they have to do it.
  2. Educate them: Create a program to coach them on the benefits and limitations of each tool for social and professional purposes.  Show them examples of what to do and what not to do. Do it frequently and embrace knowledge sharing amongst themselves. Encourage employees to try it and find their own social media style.
  3. Invite them to participate: Share with them all your news, campaigns, events, promotions, offers, etc. and ask them to share them with their networks. But don’t stop there, make them part of it by asking them to provide content and help in the creation of these initiatives
  4. Use incentives: Contest are great, I recommend setting up daily, weekly or monthly contest to rewards those that participate the most or help reach the goals of the initiative at hand.
  5. Give them feedback: This is key, no one knows how they are doing and how they can improve if they don’t get any feedback. Give them metrics, comments, ideas and feedback in general on how they are helping the company. They need to know the consequences and implications (positive and negative) of their actions to improve them, correct them or embrace them.
  6. Embrace their ideas: Social media is all about user-generated content and participation, so companies must incorporate employees ideas into their programs. Employees are the ones closer to the customers and prospects and understand better than anyone else what make prospects and customer click or engage. Create the appropriate mechanisms to incorporate their social media ideas.

By Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

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Brand Spanking New Digs

5 Mar, 2010 in General, Progress Report, corner6labs stories by admin

New C6 WebsiteCompanies always get excited about launching a new website. In reality, maybe they are the only ones who care about the new website, but the excitement is nothing short of motivational. That’s how we feel here at C6 with the launch of our brand new biz front.

The new website is geared towards answering the question of who are are and the powers we yield, as well as a full on endeavor on the SEO front.

Check it out and let us know what you think. And if you feel like stopping by for a little bubbly, let us know and we will save you some.

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