by MIMO Solutions | Internet Marketing, Smarketing Blog, Social Networking
I began working with local owners of 6 radio stations about two years ago. The sites had broken links, missing images, alignment issues, and several pages with outdated information. They only sent email blasts when they happened to sell a sponsor for one. Also, the company gave away banner ads on their homepage as added value to advertising packages on the radio. They had the ability to simulcast on the internet for 4 of the 6 stations, but the links were hidden on content pages or broken. In all fairness, they had no one to do the work and no budget because the websites were losing money.
Initially, we sat down and evaluated the most glaring needs. We repaired all the broken links, images, and pages. We started with the worst sites and worked through them one by one up to the best looking and most effective site. The website traffic and listenership jumped up 20-40% for every station the month following the updates. After we knew we were not causing any more damage to our online reputation, we started laying out a plan to rebuild the sites and our marketing plan to grow their audience and revenue.
We decided the target audience was the local public and listeners of their stations with a secondary target of advertisers trying to reach these visitors. After some brainstorming and research, we put together a marketing plan to attract these targets and create relationships with them.
Some of our plan included:
- Making listening online as easy as possible.
- Providing local information such as news, traffic, weather and gas prices online.
- Making listener registration for email blasts as easy as possible with subscribe and unsubscribe links.
- Sending email blasts every Wednesday with information, coupons, and advertisements.
- Redefining online advertising as non-traditional revenue, instead of free added value.
- Setting uniform sizes and pricing for ads so they were easier to sell.
- Incorporating the websites in all on-air contests and promotions.
- Creating blogs and content that could be easily updated.
- Creating recruitment pages for job seekers and employers as a new revenue stream.
Finally, we redesigned the sites with a completely new designs and new content, even a new operating platform. All 6 stations now stream online and have links to listen live on their homepages. The sites were re-launched to public and promoted heavily on the air, on promotional products, and other marketing materials. The company now has a plan for how to attract visitors, maintain their websites, and sell advertising. Most importantly with the new sales generated online, they can afford to update and grow their website.
by MIMO Solutions | Smarketing Blog
At a time when so many businesses are shutting their doors, good customer service can help keep yours open.
Customer service is an often-overlooked solution to weathering slow periods. Investing in strategies that build customer loyalty has a big payback: It leads to repeat customers. And when you gain repeat business, you can easily lower your marketing budget to acquire new customers. You’ll improve your profit margin, enabling your business to grow. After all, the cost of acquiring a new customer is six to seven times that of retaining one, according to a Bain & Company study.
Most people are willing to pay more for good service. Eighty-five percent of consumers said they would be willing to pay more than standard prices to ensure a superior customer service experience, according to a 2010 survey by Harris Interactive and RightNow Technologies.
It’s easy to let great customer service fall by the wayside when you’re concerned about keeping the doors open. But in tough times, great service is more crucial than ever. “Our prices are not always the lowest, and with this economy, that personal touch, the personal service has been why we are still in business while some of our lower-priced competitors are not,” says NFIB member Patti Dynes, owner and president of Lettuce Duit Inc., which manufactures award ribbons, trophies and plaques in Galien, Mich.
by MIMO Solutions | Smarketing Blog
Can the mind help cure disease? What role do the emotions play in preventing illness?
What is the relationship between the thoughts you think, the feelings you experience, and the overall health and well being of your body? This is a very old question, but modern science has developed some innovative new ways to determine the answers. And, while what they are finding may startle some people, it doesn’t surprise me a bit.
It turns out that improving the quality of your life lowers your chances of developing serious mental and physical illness and also improves the speed and likelihood of your recovery. And if you want to improve the quality of your life, you must start by improving the quality of your thinking.
You see, the quality of everything that happens to you in life – all your accomplishments, all your behaviors and activities, all your relationships – are rooted in and based on what goes on in your mind. Your beliefs and expectations determine what you try and don’t try, how hard you try, and whether you give up or ultimately succeed.
Your thoughts about who you are and what you are like determine those with whom you associate, what you take into your body and how you care for yourself and others. So if you are interested in improving your likelihood of living a long and healthy life, take a long and careful look at your belief system and spend some time examining your thoughts and values, as well.
If you don’t like what you see, remember, you can change it. I know you can do it.
by MIMO Solutions | Social Networking
7 Common Sense Social Networking Rules For Business
- If you wouldn’t say it to a client or boss – don’t say it where they can read it either.
- If you wouldn’t say it to your grandmother – don’t say it on your public posts.
- If you wouldn’t say it to a police officer – don’t post it on your social networks. For that matter, don’t do it either.
- If you plan to lie to your boss – don’t put the truth where they can see it.
- If you plan to go out and get drunk and know you have a tendency to post while drunk – give your phone to a friend to keep for you.
- Learn how to use privacy settings and understand how visible your posts are on different social networks.
- If you want a place to vent – create a completely different identity for yourself to do that. Name no names in your posts, and make no connection to your other profiles or email addresses.
by MIMO Solutions | Smarketing Blog
The gloom is hard to miss: Libya, oil prices, budget battles, a pull-back in stock prices, or downward revisions to GDP…and about how these will cause weaker growth (or even a recession) ahead.
But the world is always full of potential events that could cause a panic, recession, even a depression. The world is never perfectly “safe.” If nuclear war broke out or if Saudi Arabia got into a nasty civil war, the risks to the US economic environment and the stock market would rise immeasurably.
But, this was as true in the 1980s and 1990s, during one of the greatest booms in US history, as it is today. And, yes, you might say that the risks of these things are higher today given unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, but before you forget, the Cold War was awfully tense, too.
But let’s get real. Any of these events would be completely separate from the economy today, which is being boosted by easy money and an underlying upward trend in technological innovation. In fact, our economy today, because of technology, has a built in shock-absorber. With so much done online, the economy is less susceptible to rising energy prices than it was 30 or 40 years ago.
Every day, we are leaving the prior recession further and further in the rear view mirror. Yes, fourth quarter real GDP growth was revised down to 2.8% at an annual rate (from 3.2%), but the composition of the growth was very favorable for the future.
The pace of inventory accumulation plummeted in Q4. Retailers were caught off guard by the strength of consumer spending, leaving their inventory-to-sales ratio at a record low. Everyone in the production and sales chain needs to rebuild inventories. And the recent surge in just about every manufacturing survey suggests the process is underway.
Real final sales – GDP excluding inventories – exploded in the fourth quarter, growing at a 6.7% annual rate, the fastest pace since 1998. About half of the growth of final sales in Q4 was net exports, which have been very volatile in recent quarters. Looking at the full year of 2010, real GDP expanded at a 2.8% annual rate, the fastest annual growth rate since 2005.
Yes, unemployment remains high, but it is the growth in government that has lifted unemployment. The part of the private sector that remains intact is pulling the economy up at a very respectable rate. We expect it will continue to do so and that corporate profits and the stock market will continue to climb.
Nothing is ever perfect and there are always things that could go wrong, but history suggests the pessimism ramping up these days is just more of the same we have lived with for so long.
Stay positive – it’s the right thing to do.
by MIMO Solutions | Smarketing Blog
What does the theater have to do with your company?
In the theater, the “fourth wall” is the wall between the actors and the audience. Behind this wall – the world of the actors is exactly as the audience imagines it. The good guys and the bad guys all fit within the story being told. If the fourth wall is “broken” the audience is directly acknowledged – the spell broken. Once broken, the fourth wall is hard to reconstruct and the audience may not be happy. Think of Jean Valjean in Le Miz, in the middle of the first act, turning to the audience and speaking in a normal, loud “Brooklyn” accent – “Yo, couldja get off the cell phone – I’m tryin to work here!”
The Fourth Wall of Business is similar. As the owner of your business, your employees look up to you. As a leader – you are their “hero.” If you are a customer service pro, clients look to you as their rescuer. Doctors, Attorneys, Accountants, Architects are the professionals we place on a pedestal. The pressure is to maintain the “fourth wall.” Owners and professionals break the fourth wall with actions that don’t fit with the story. When employees see the boss crying, drunk, acting out, cheating, lying, or acting out of character – the spell is broken.
Years ago, my father was loyal to his physician, until one day the doctor told my dad “your gall bladder needs to come out.” My father picked up his coat and left the office without a word. The doctor called him later that night and my father told him”it’s in my record that I had my gall bladder out 10 years ago, good bye.” This was an honest mistake, but for my dad – the fourth wall was broken, the hero was an illusion.
All leaders must always be leaders – in and out of the office. People follow people who are like them, they like them, and they like them back. Business relationships are frequently dissolved for “they just are not the same person anymore.” In my career, I have seen bosses cry, cheat, lie, cause others to lie – all outside the character I thought them to be. They lost my loyalty and my relationship changed to one of mutual distrust. Why? Because of they would do it to them, they will do it to me. They broke the veil of the fourth wall. Yet prior to the break – I was blindly loyal.
Do your managers, salespeople, and frontline customer service team exemplify what your customers expect?
by MIMO Solutions | Smarketing Blog
I was reading one of our books, The Inch Principle by our management specialist, John Condry. I came across a chapter that might be helpful to you in thinking about your business or anything in life for that matter.
I think you are probably like me and we look for solutions to problems and try to find a perfect or permanent fix for issues that arise in business. John suggest in Chapter 4 of his book to stop looking for solutions and start treating the condition. In other words, you can’t cure the disease or problems of being in business. You can only manage and treat the on-going symptoms.
If you stop looking for a magic bullet and start treating the symptoms of the problem, you won’t waste time and money on solutions and instead, you will make steady progress toward improvement of the situation.
For some reason the idea of Henry Ford came into my head and that analogy made sense. Ford said that if he asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse, not a car. Ford probably did find a magic potion to make people start wanting cars instead of horses. He probably worked hard on treating the symptoms like: they didn’t know it existed, they didn’t know what it did, and they didn’t know it was better. He probably started one at a time and built his business the same way we do now, through networking, sales, and hard work.
I really enjoyed John Condry’s book. If you want a copy, email me or click here.
