There are a vast number of email marketing services available to businesses of all sizes. Since email marketing has been around for a while, many of the services have matured to the point that even novice tech savvy business owners use them with ease.

Last month I launched a campaign using MailChimp for the first time. I’d used and even recommended the service in the past, but it had been a few years. Since so much had changed with the service, I decided to give it a go and document my findings for you along the way.  For me, there was an existing list that had to be migrated to their platform, this post touches on the features used to facilitate that process as well as features for beginners and advanced users alike, and even a couple items they could improve.

MailChimp Review – 10 Useful Email Marketing Features

The list in question was about 2200 subscribers who had previously opted in to content I published over the last couple years. It was important to understand and document where each list came from so subscribers could be reminded, so as create meaningful engagement, while reducing the likelihood of spam complaints.

1 – Let’s Discuss the MailChimp User Interface

This is important for users of all levels. The user interface can make or break a customer experience with a product so important as email marketing.

If it’s hard to use, customers become frustrated and in some cased don’t execute their email marketing plan. This means they don’t get results, and don’t stick around.

On the flip side, if it’s easy, it’s enjoyable.

MailChimp does user interface with excellence. It is simple with a fair amount of white space, leaving you with a sense of “I can do this.” There are small touches like auto collapsing menus when browser is resized, easy to use wizards, and humorous dialogue boxes that keep you on track. Discover if MailChimp is right for your business here.

2 – MailChimp Review, Easy Import of Existing Lists

If you have a list in CSV format, most email services can accommodate and the import is pretty straightforward.  MailChimp takes it a step further, allowing you to cut and paste directly from Excel for the import.

The process of moving from one provider to another can be painful, MailChimp does a good job minimizing that pain.

3 – De-duplication of Subscribers in MailChimp

In my situation, I had already de-duplicated contacts so didn’t need this feature, but was glad to see it available. It’s important to note that they can only check for duplicates upon import or opt-in with the same list. Within a list you can segment further. Which leads to the next notable feature of MailChimp. Discover if MailChimp is right for your business here.

4 – MailChimp Review, Creating Segments, Groups, VIP lists

Once you have your list imported, you can create segments based on record information. If someone came to your business from a specific source, you can use that information to create a segment. You can do the same thing for custom field data to track things like customers or prospects of a specific product, for example.

Segments can also be created automatically based on subscriber engagement (opens, clicks). Users can also tag subscribers as VIPs as a special segment. Once you have a segment, an action, like sending the segment an email, can be performed.

This translates nicely on the mobile app as well (more on that in a moment). While looking at a user record, by searching for them, or reviewing activity on a recent campaign, you can manually add the contact to the VIP segment.

Again, in an age where relevance is key to getting to the inbox, and being read by subscribers, list segmentation is key. Fortunately MailChimp makes it easy.

5 – MailChimp Campaigns, Autoresponders,  Webforms & More

When it comes to MailChimp terminology of campaigns and autoresponders, this is where I had to spend some time getting educated.

From what I’ve been able to gather, campaigns are pre-programmed messages that are sent as broadcast messages to an entire list or segment and can be scheduled, this is what I’d formerly called autoresponders.

Autoresponders in MailChimp are messages sent based on subscriber activity such as webform being submitted, a link being clicked in a campaign, or a campaign message being opened.

It’s worth noting that autoresponders can only be sent “within the hour” of someone activating one.

Webform Builder allows users to create forms for publishing on websites (there’s one on this page). Giving their website visitors the ability to submit name and email. It took a little time to get used to, but overall found the drag and drop interface easy and intuitive to use.

RSS Integration – Ideal for Bloggers allows users who publish online and use RSS (WordPress uses wordpress), to fire an email to subscribers when a new post becomes available. Great time saver, and great way to build community with subscribers. Discover if MailChimp is right for your business here.

6 – MailChimp Review, Mobile App Excellence

This was one of the most surprising and refreshing features. A fully functional mobile app. I know of a company who recently had a bunch of hype related to finally launching their mobile app, sadly it was anticlimactic. Therefore I was a little jaded, but presently surprised to see STATS and solid functionality in the mobile app.

Users are able to get to all vital data in their account, and even make some modifications from the mobile app. Well done MailChimp!

7 – The MailChimp Dashboard

Upon logging in, users get a snapshot of their recent list activity. Recent Campaigns, List Growth, Top 5, and Chimp Chatter.

This is very helpful as it allows me to get key information as to database activity since the last time I logged in or fired off that campaign. Discover if MailChimp is right for your business here.

8 – MailChimp Reporting, Conversation Tracking

Reports are solid as well. Campaign centric, they inform customers on common success metrics important to email marketers like open rate, click through rate, bounce, and unsubscribes.

It also tracks link clicks, social engagement, 24 hour performance, and found on the advanced tab is “Email Domain Performance” which reveals the success metrics across domains (think gmail.com vs. yahoo.com vs. comcast.net, etc.).

If you enable “conversation tracking” the tab for campaign reporting is populated with replies that you’ve received and responded to with subscribers. Very useful feature for recalling and understanding most engaged subscribers. These can easily be moved to a VIP list for future use.

9 – Team Collaboration on Newsletters in MailChimp

This functions similar to the collaboration available in Google Docs, but with a twist. When composing a newsletter, within the editor you can send it to team members for feedback. The team member replies to the message with their input and it is tracked in one spot.

Very practical and time saving way to get a solid email marketing piece out the door. Discover if MailChimp is right for your business here.

10 – MailChimp Free Version – Affordable Version

Here’s the best part of MailChimp for many small businesses, while you are familiarizing yourself with the system, you don’t have to pay for it if your list is under 2000 records. There are some paid functions, but most who are getting started won’t need that for a bit.

The One Thing MailChimp Could Do Better

With all the things it does well, it is software, and software is in a constant evolution. Perhaps I mis-understood something and these issues are addressed in another way, or are accounted for in a forthcoming product update. At this point, there is one thing that stands out which could be done better:

(Near) Instant Delivery for Autoresponders: There should be a way for an autoresponder to go out immediately. Web visitors aren’t patient. I understand that when a webform is filled out, the required double optin email goes out right away, but an email with the web visitors requested info should be sent immediately upon completion of that process. Or when a confirmed subscriber takes an action triggering an autoresponder, it should be just as immediate.

MailChimp Review – Final Thoughts

If you are relatively new to marketing online, and want an affordable tool to build and manage your newsletter list, MailChimp is a great place to state.

It would be misleading, however, to state it was for beginners only, when in fact, it is scalable. I know of some with 500,000 subscribers who love the flexibility of the platform and it’s email deliverability. It will grow with your business, and it has flexible tech tools (API) that will integrate with other systems as your business grows.

Ready to get started. Go here and claim your free account. By using that link (aff), it support the site and allows us to post more product reviews subscribers love.

The post MailChimp Review – 10 Useful Email Marketing Features appeared first on MarketingProfessor.com.

Current intel.

Engagement with other like-minded folks.

One of the most helpful online resources from the earliest of days, it’s still early by the way, has been the warrior forum. I have found it to be a great research resource.

This week, announced on TechCrunch, the internet marketing forum giant was acquired by Freelancer.com. You can also read Warrior Forums founder announcement here.

Managing a forum can be a huge undertaking, and often not worth the resources to do so. So don’t look for freelancer.com to boost up forum chatter anytime soon. I suppose the best value it has for Freelancer.com is the database of users.

If you are new to Internet Marketing, the warrior forum can be a great place to connect with others and learn. You can learn more here. Wishing both Freelancer.com and the Warrior Forum all the best!

The post Freelancer.com Acquisition of Warrior Forum appeared first on MarketingProfessor.com.

I read something this week that got me thinking about this. It was a post (linked from image below) from real estate mogul and Shark Tank shark Barbara Corcoran published on LinkedIn. 

This post discusses the benefits and challenges of controversy marketing from one persons perspective. However, this post is incomplete. People like you have a voice, and are encouraged to use it here. In any case, this specific example may have very well served its purpose, I’ll let you decide that. 

Controversy Marketing – Barbara Corcoran Style

Simply trolling LinkedIn I encountered the post by someone I didn’t even follow at the time. The post, entitled, “Shoot the Dog Early” had just gone live, and in a cursory review, it was creating all kinds of buzz. In a word, controversy.

Barbara Corcoran basically shared her view on how to keep a sales driven organization thriving: fire 25% of the least performing staff annually. LinkedIn has a bumper crop of folks in the sales profession, and it seems many didn’t care too much for Mrs. Corcoran’s approach.

Benefits of Controversy in Your Marketing

1. Additional Exposure: People love controversy, they also love to SHARE it, as evidenced by the screenshot above.
2. Opportunity to Penetrate New Markets: One of the challenges with people who publish content or are of celebrity status is that their ‘herd’ remains the same, or simply churns. Due to the sharing of the content, controversial content will undoubtably get exposed to people who would not have otherwise seen it.
3. Galvanize Existing Market: Sometimes the best thing that can happen with a prospect or suspect in sales, is that they MOVE. Controversy motivates consumers to take sides. You are with the person/company or against them.

In the case of Barbara Corcoran, the post served to get additional exposure. She only had about 17,000 ‘followers’ on LinkedIn when I first saw the post and now has just over 19,000. The number who saw the post far exceeded her follower count by nearly 10x.

Challenges of Controversy in Your Marketing

1. Damaged Brand/Image: Spoke with someone this week whose company is responsible for customer data security. When there was a security breach a few years ago, her company broke the trend and published the breach. It was a huge risk, and as she told me “nearly sunk the company”. In the end they set a new trend in the industry, and now employ thousands of people.
2. Smaller Influence: If your aim is a wide, broad reach, being controversial in your marketing can hinder that effort significantly (see point #3 above).
3. Remaining Authentic: There is the risk of striving to be controversial. When detected, this sews distrust in the market, and people will be skeptical of trusting you or your brand again. You need to make sure that what you are being controversial about doesn’t require much effort. The controversy comes as a bi-product of what you believe.

Barbara Corcoran, she has been around for years, and  has little to lose being controversial. She only needs a few customers to be successful in the grand scheme of things, and seemed pretty authentic in sharing from her experience in the post.

Unless she has marketing aspirations that is a departure from what bred her success to date, she can afford to take a risk that is controversial marketing, as her transactions are very numbers ‘matter-of-fact’ driven (commercial real-estate). And when controversy is a philosophy she’s found true in her business, the risk is rather low.

Your Thoughts?

Did you see the post from Barbara Corcoran? How do you react as a consumer to controversy in marketing? As a marketer?

The post Controversy Marketing – Barbara Corcoran Style appeared first on MarketingProfessor.com.

While the priority was keeping an already very well organized track ‘on track’, I was unable to resist scribbling down notes during the sessions. These were world-class presentations and content. So the notes I share here are certainly incomplete. If you were at the event, feel free to comment with your top takeaways.

Before I continue, this brings up a very real issue for attendees of well run events like Social Media Marketing World. [highlight]”Which sessions do I attend, there are so many good ones to choose from?!”[/highlight] This is where investing in event session recordings can be very worthwhile (resource at end of post). Also, pay attention to the places where you can share tweetable quotes [Tweet it!] from presenters.

I came away with a better picture of how to leverage content marketing in the coming year, I hope you do too.

Social Media Marketing World – Top Takeaways

Joe Pulizzi: 5 Content Marketing Strategies Most Businesses Ignore, but Shouldn’t

• Content Publishing: Consistency is most important, yet 85% of corporate blogs have 5 or less posts.
• Sales, Savings, or Sunshine: Your content should aim to do one of these three things for consumers, increase sales, savings, or sunshine.
• Importance of Content Mission Statement: 1.) Target, Who is it? 2.) What will be delivered? 3.) Desired outcome for consumer.
• [highlight]Must have owned media strategy.[/highlight]
• Focus on subscriber database, knowing difference between those who are subscribed and those who don’t.
• How are you going to build an audience?
• 4:1:1 Ratio/Formula in social sharing, Other people’s content, influencer sharing, your content.

[quote][Tweet it!] “Just 42% believe their content marketing is effective.” @JoePulizzi via @mpdotcom[/quote]

See more from Joe Pulizzi on Twitter, or his site here.

Todd Wheatland: How to Use Slideshare for Business, the Success Formula

• Slideshare Means Business (Audience)
• Think of it as a platform in it’s own right.
• Very easy to share in other channels.
• Very Visual Platform.
• Items on home page represent hand curated content by Slideshare employees.
• Trending in social media.
• Click to tweet on presentation itself.
• Click to download on Slideshare, [highlight]squeeze pages[/highlight].

Tools Mentioned:

• Canva – Tool to create visuals for slideshare (Export).
• Slide Idea – iPad app for creating slideshows.
• Haiku Deck – Highly visual slides.

See more from Todd Wheatland on Twitter, or on his site here.

Tom Martin: How to Painlessly Prospect for Customers Using Social Media

• Anonymous research = lost sales for vendors.
• Sales cycle isn’t shortened, it’s just becoming invisible.
• “I seldom sell, I close.” Selling has already been done!
• Propinquity: Aware >> Know >> Like >> Buy

• T.O.M.P – Top of Mind Preference. “I don’t want to be in Google search, in fact I prefer they don’t even goto Google!”
• Putting your content on Outposts.
• Social agents: the most important customers who never buy from you!
• Taco truck strategy: Restaurant on wheels. It’s a content strategy, everyone’s site is your site!
• Cornerstones & Cobblestones: Content eco system planning.

[quote][Tweet it!] “4 Singles is better than a homerun. Awesome does get shared, but helpful gets bought.” @TomMartin via @mpdotcom[/quote]

See more from Tom Martin on Twitter, or on his site here.

Justin Levy: How to Implement Social Media Guidelines Across the Enterprise

• Most organizations stuggle when it comes to educating organization on social media policies
• Review the FCC social media guidelines.
• Get buyin from all key departments.
• Leverage video to communicate with staff.

See more from Justin Levy on Twitter or his site here.

Cynthia Sanchez: How to Grow a Loyal Pinterest Following

• Importance to have clarity as to your audience and how you can help them.
• Pinterest provides collaboration tools that increase traffic and engagement.
• Pinterest users are often seeking future possibilities, looking for creative change.

See more from Cynthia Sanchez on Twitter, Pinterest, or on her site here.

Syed Balkhi: Using Twitter as an Idea Factory that Fuels Your Blog Content

• If you are not using Twitter Cards on your website, you should be!
• Exposure strategy: Targeted twitter ads using medium sized event hashtags. Syed did this successfully for every wordcamp event across the world, grew followers and traffic.
• Bulk Buffer content for Twitter dripping to refrehs old content. 4 repurposed articles and 1 new article per day, yielded 5000 new impressions per day for wpbeginner.com.
• Tweetable moments within slideshare slides.
• Domain name research, Domai.nr.
• Write something strategic and helpful. Don’t tell them how, they can get that on YouTube.

[quote][Tweet it!] “By following smart people I’m able to filter out the crap and find the best info.” @SyedBalkhi via @mpdotcom[/quote]

See more from Syed Balkhi on Twitter, or on his site here.

Jason Miller: 7 Tactics for Integrating LinkedIn into your Marketing Strategy

• Content pages on LinkedIn at 6x more active than job pages.
• Achieve objectives with LinkedIn to: Generate Awareness, Generate Traffic and Leads, Drive Consideration and Preference, Drive Advocacy, and Build Community.
• Steps to engage on Company Pages: Establish presence, Attract followers, Engage followers, Amplify through the network, Analyze and refine.
• Make your content visual with engaging presentations (slideshare) and videos.
• Hubspot results regarding use of sponsored updates, “LinkedIn drove 400% more qualified leads than any other paid lead generation platform during the campaign period.”
• Smartphone and tablet content consumption is on the rise.

Slideshare:

• Visuals trump text when it comes to content engagement.
• Embedding coupon codes in slideshare presentation.
• Strategy: Visual FAQs with social engagement elements. Update slideshow based on social response.
• Creating visual FAQs using slideshare slideshow presentations.
• Clickable links inside slideshare presentation.

[quote][Tweet it!] “YouTube vids play directly in LinkedIn feed & can result in up to 75% higher share rate.” @JasonMillerCA via @mpdotcom[/quote]

See more from Jason Miller on Twitter, or his site here.

Matt Clark: Visual Social Branding, How to Avoid Top 5 Social Media Mistakes

• Brand well = Brand Consistency
• The misnomers of branding, it’s not just a logo, or design, it is depth of design.
• Not busy, but simple. Whitespace.

5 Social Media Branding Mistakes

1. Advertise the advertisement
2. Social media loop
3. Content overload
4. Inconsistency
5. Do nothing

Catchup with Matt Clark on Twitter. Learn more about Matt’s business here.

Pat Flynn: How to get Your Podcast to the Top, What Works and What Doesn’t

• Podcasting is a great marketing tool, considering that [highlight]the average visitor to your website stays in terms of seconds, where podcasts can be up to an hour or longer.[/highlight]
• Keys to performing well on iTunes podcast search, Great Audio, Great Artwork, and Great Findability.
• Questions to Consider: What’s your position? What makes your show irresistible?
• Make the launching of your podcast an event.

Case study with ConversionCast

1. Hired someone to create voice podcasting content.
2. Created right position and USP (unique selling proposition).
3. Recorded 45 episodes beforehand.
4. Created buzz.
5. Emailed teasers to subscribers.
6. Published 5 episodes out of the gate.
7. Blog post, and emailed subscribers with CTA & Incentive.

Wrapping it Up – Taking it Home

Lots of proven social media marketing strategies and tactics were shared at Social Media Marketing World. If you are anything like me, I found there was too much content to consume in the time given for the sessions attended, let alone the ones missed! As with most things in life and business execution of ideas separates the winners from non-winners, and it’s important to make room for inspiration and fresh ideas. Hope you found this helpful. (If so, please share it with your networks).

Were you at Social Media Marketing World? Come away with some new or inspiring info? Now’s your chance to share your takeaways with the world using the comment boxes below!

If you’d like access to all conference slides and recordings, good news, they are available for purchase, follow the ad on the right side of this page. They are made available through Social Media Marketing World virtual ticket. I will download the audio recordings to my iPhone, and play them in the car (dead time learning) or while walking my dogs.

*Image Credits: Speaking photo, Ashley Coombe, other images courtesy of SMMW Virtual Ticket.

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Next week’s Social Media Marketing World will be one of the premier events of the year. In this post I’ll share seven ideas to prepare for to make the most of this or any event. I will also share a link to my agenda and how we can connect in person at the event. 

Social Media Marketing World – 7 Ideas to Make the Most of It

Going to Social Media Marketing World in San Diego this year? Going to other events in the coming months? Below are some ideas to help you make the most of it. Even if you only implement one of these ideas, you will be further ahead for doing so. Ok, let’s get started.

1 – Prepare to Maximize Event Opportunities

Someone recently said to me, “life always seems hectic to the run up to traveling to an event, I end up saying, ‘Oh, I should’ve printed new business cards, oh well, too late now!'” This has happened to me, but as I reviewed things, it most often came down to the fact that I was simply unprepared. Don’t let that happen to you.

Set aside 2-4 hours to prepare for the event. Ideally this is done 4-6 weeks out, so you can prepare new marketing or other materials as needed.

Determine what you need to have in order to make the most of the precious hours at the conference.

• Who do you want to meet?
• Who in your network is going?
• Who would you like to have a breakfast or other meeting with?
• Is there someone you’d like to interview? Audio or video?

2 – Come Prepared to Learn

No doubt an event like Social Media Marketing World will have some tremendous content. What sessions are most important and relevant to where you are at in your stage of business? Are there burning questions you have about a subject matter that you could ask of a presenter?

Take Notes: However you like to record things, come prepared to do so. It may be a paper journal, an electronic note taking system like Evernote (my current favorite), or perhaps audio snippets you record on your smartphone. Notes are designed to be reviewed for application purposes. So don’t overtake on notes, rather jot things down that you think, if applied in the next few months, can make a measurable difference in your business.

3 – Come Prepared to Meet People

Checkout the list of speakers at the event. Are there some you’ve heard of, but never met in person. Make a point to attend their session, and greet them afterward.

Are there like-minded people at the event that are likely dealing with the same challenges/opportunities you are? These can be incredible connections at and after the event. Is there something you can come prepared with to give them (a tipsheet of sorts, etc.)? Consider lessons you’ve learned in your journey that might help those you rub shoulders with at the event.

You may consider scrolling through the search results of the event hashtag for people who will be there. Which brings me to the next point.

4 – Come Prepared to Engage

Engagement means involvement. Minimize distractions from the home office so you can be fully present at the event.

Face-to-Face: I’ve notice what I consider a ‘sad’ trend in recent years, people aren’t focused when meeting face-to-face. It’s as if you represent just another tab open on their browser, or another update in their flittering social stream.

Therefore, in my view, first order of business is face to face engagement. Be there. Look people in the eye. Resist the temptation of being distracted by people beyond or behind those you are speaking with.

Digital: This is a much lesser engagement priority, as mentioned earlier, follow the event hashtag, and participate there if someone says something cool in a session or keynote.

5 – Come Prepared to Follow Up

You’ll likely come away with a few of business cards? Prioritize those cards for follow up, and have a time caved out when you can do just that within 3 business days of returning to the office.

Ideally, have a follow up system in place that you can tee up from the event. I use Infusionsoft for follow up, with their business card mechanism, they go into my system and will get a personalized message from me after meeting them, and several days after the event is over.

Having this in place frees me up tremendously. Having the cards in the system when I board the return flight means I can focus on important things when I get home, like being reunited with my family, catching up on work that may have mounted while I was away.

6 – Come Prepared to Not Sleep

This is kinda funny, but I find true. At an event like Social Media Marketing World, the days are long, for me 16-18 hours. There is so much to do, and so many amazing people to meet, I want to maximize my time. After trying to convince myself to get a good nights rest at conferences, I realized that’s what it’s supposed to be like, because I’m so busy connecting with people.

If you return well rested and charged up, something may be amiss. Which leads to the final idea.

7 – Come Prepared to Recover

The plane ride home represents stage one of recovery. Review your notes, business cards, and setup a priority list of action items for the first 24 hours back in the office.

Know that when you get home you may need a day or two to simply recover. This is especially true if you are traveling internationally, or spanning multiple timezones. Preparing for this, will help you return to work with clarity and energy!

You Be There? Let’s Meet!

Like to connect with me at Social Media Marketing World? I put together a post detailing where I’ll be at and how we can connect. It’s here: Let’s Meet at Social Media Marketing World.

Your Turn: How do you like to maximize events? What are your thoughts on these 7 ideas? Chime in below

The post Social Media Marketing World – 7 Ideas to Make the Most of It appeared first on MarketingProfessor.com.

Important Assumption: It’s key to extract fair value for your product or service, a business must be profitable so that it can grow, expand, and continue to meet the needs of customers. A business that goes without a profit, unintentionally, for an extended period of time isn’t a business, it’s more like a passion or a hobby. Let’s plan to profit.

What Amazon Prime Teaches Marketers About Price Increases

In the case of Amazon, they went without a profit for years, and early on many experts thought they wouldn’t last. Yet here they are today as the top internet retailer who sells hardware solutions, owns the Washington Post and has more things in the pipeline.

1.) Amazon built a history of delivering amazing value

Prime has been around since 2005. During that time, they have refined the Prime offering from a “Get two day shipping free on one million products” to:

• Two day shipping on over 20 million products
• Unlimited access to 40,000 movies and tv shows
• 500,000 books to borrow from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library

All this for a mere $79 per year. That’s value, over the long haul.

2.) Amazon didn’t raise the price out of reach of most

Prime has been around since 2005. At the same price. I don’t know about you, but from what I can tell, since that time the cost of living has gone up noticeably. So has the cost of doing business. So raising the price is justified.

What was smart, is that they stayed under three digits, raising it $20 to $99. For the year, that is about $1.66 per month. This keeps the price within reach of most subscribers.

3.) Amazon reminded me of the benefits of prime, one I never new about

I’m on my second year as a prime subscriber. I did it for the reason some of my friends did. It was pre holidays, I wanted the convenience of buying online, but who wants to pay for all that shipping?

What I didn’t know was of all the benefits. I knew of the Prime Instant Video, but I am an existing Netflix subscriber and didn’t found the streaming from Amazon thus far to be sub-par. What I didn’t know of was the “over 500,000 books to borrow from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.”

This is something I need to check out (chime in the comments below if you have any experience with it, feedback).

Amazon build a pattern of value add without price increases, while not promised in the email, it’s clear they plan to continue this pattern.

Marketer Takeaways

Here are some questions I think of as a marketer in light of Amazon Prime’s price increase:

[unordered_list style=”arrow”]

• How can I deliver amazing value now and in the future so that I can introduce a fair price increase at the right time?
• When considering a price increase, what increase yields the business what it needs without burning the customer base, but yielding enough that an increase won’t be needed again for sometime?
• When introducing the price increase, how can I position it so that customers are reminded of the value built into the program over time, which is available to them now (see the first point above), while justifying the price increase?

[/unordered_list]

How do you react to these points? Chime in the comments below.

Finally: [highlight]A price increase won’t kill Amazon Prime, and it won’t be the end of the world for your business either. [/highlight] (Tweet That) In taking pointers from Amazon if you practice delivering amazing value to existing customers, and position your increase properly, your price increase will be a near non-event. You may even profit from it!

The post What Amazon Prime Teaches Marketers About Price Increases appeared first on MarketingProfessor.com.

99designs is a site I’ve used a fair amount for design projects. In fact, the original MarketingProfessor.com logo was birthed from that site. The number one reason I like it is your design work is launched into the community as an interactive contest complete with back and forth, commenting, rating, etc.

Recently I’ve seen it used in a clever way to absolutely know what your market wants. It’s a 3 step process.

3 Steps to Getting a Professional Design Your Market Wants

In order to utilize this strategy, you must have a fair sampling of people in your social networks or preferably your email marketing list that will respond to your communications. If that isn’t something you have just yet, see our Budget Conscience Guide to Getting Traffic for some ideas of how to get around that.

1 – Post Project and Engage

First thing you are responsible for is understanding the purpose of your design, your target market, and even concepts or ideas that you’ve run across and can share in your design spec. These aspects go a long way to helping designers understand what you are after and it encourages more engagement.

When posting the project, whatever service you use, I recommend using the visibility enhancements for your design project so that it is found easily by designers resulting in a decent number of submissions. In the case of 99designs they have changed their model over the years. They currently have 4 levels of service, Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum. When faced with options like this I generally select one of the middle options, do what makes sense for you and your budget.

Engage. Designers will take time to build and submit something, and they are often left waiting for feedback for too long. It’s important to be there quickly to provide feedback on these submissions. It creates more buzz and excitement around the project for everyone involved and will move you close to a great end result.

Note: No matter what the project, your level of responsiveness on outsourcing websites is proportional to the quality of the end result you receive. [Tweet That]

2 – Message Your Network for Design Feedback

Once the design is seasoned on the site with several good designs to choose from, it’s time to involve your network.

Send and email or a social status update including a link to the page where they can vote for designs. This is huge. If indeed your network consists of your target market of buyers of the product the project is being designed for, it is a great way to build anticipation with your network.

When clicking through I ended up on a landing page showing me several designs to vote on. Here is a partial screenshot.

With 99Designs they give voters the option to be notified when the winning design is selected. Smart feature on their part to complete the circle and extend the reach of their valuable web service.

3 – Share Winning Design and Offer Call to Action

Upon awarding the design, take the time to communicate back to your network the outcome. 99designs will do this for those who had opted in, but you should also leverage this as an opportunity to build relationship with your subscribers and social connections. I recommend shooting a video, thanking them for their involvement, and inviting those interested to get on the notification list when the product becomes available.

This is a solid way to build a small hot list of potential buyers who will likely provide product feedback when you release a “charter customer” opportunity to them. The information and feedback received in this small launch will allow you to further improve the product for subsequent larger launches.

Result of his contest is here.

In the end getting solid output for the investment has never been so easy. By creating a good spec, engaging contest participants while also driving targeted traffic from your list and other sources to the contest for input, you will get a solid outcome. Chime in below, what design services have you used to get great work done? What do you like and what can they improve?

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Last week there was a video from a scientific channel on YouTube that has created quite a buzz. It exposes a little known issue by most Facebook advertisers (until now) who aspire to get genuine followers on the behemoth social network, but in all their striving end up getting likes from pods of “Click farms” in developing countries.

This is a scientific channel, breaking down the realities for business owners and marketers attempting to leverage those eyeballs on Facebook to build their brand and get more customers, when it appears that Facebook has pulled the wool over many of their eyes.

Facebook Fraud Goes Viral

As someone who has a brand page on Facebook that I have been locked out of, and another public figure page that was built using Facebook’s ad network, this is of particular interest. More than that what are clients and readers doing with Facebook besides building Facebook’s balance sheet.

Here’s the well researched video by the folks over at Veritasium. Even if you’ve watched it once, watch again, there’s a lot in there. Chime in below with your thoughts and reactions.

*Video Powered by EV Player reviewed here.

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The impact of social media on marketing over the past 10 years has been significant. Facebook leads the conversation, with breakneck growth for much of their 10 year history, boasting well over 1 Billion users worldwide.

In record time, marketers now have the ability to carve out a very targeted audience, who returns to the site on a frequent basis, and present their brand to an audience who visits the site from a computer, tablet, or smartphone.

If you are not leveraging Facebook as a marketing platform for your business, these numbers paint a compelling picture that is worth considering or reconsidering for almost any business.

10 Years of Facebook – Stats Marketers Need to Know

Now this chart has quite a bit of numbers in it, below I will discuss the ones in bold (my emphasis).

Over 1 Billion Users

This is pretty well documented, but in case you missed it Facebook has 1.3 billion users and growing. That is about 18.7% of the world population. While there may be exceptions, they are few and far between, your customer and prospects are very likely on this behemoth social site.

Mobile Marketing with Facebook

Equally interesting, the number of mobile users is about half of the entire Facebook user base. That means over half the people who have an account also visit it from a mobile device. This is a significant shift. Not only are has Facebook made social possible, but the industry has moved dramatically that people want to connect with friends while mobile.

Facebook Repeat Eyeballs

48% log in on any given day. That means they come back. As wonderful as email marketing is, the “effectiveness” numbers have been declining for some time now.

So while subscribers may not be a engaging with a marketers emails as they once were, on the other had Facebook has nearly have of their users come back to their network LOOKING FOR STUFF. Whether they are bored, curious, or wanting to see those photos from last weekends trip, they are returning, and your message could be there.

Facebook a Hub for Content Marketers?

Lower down in the graphic you’ll notice a section entitled “Every 20 Minutes on Facebook” you’ll notice that there are 1 million links shared. That’s 72,000,000 links shared every 24 hours.

Are you helping to satisfy this demand? If you produce valuable content for your market, you should be sharing it on Facebook. You may or may not obtain a new email subscriber on your site, or even get the click on Facebook, but in the fight for attention, you are getting YOUR BRAND in front of users again and again. You can even setup Facebook ads in 10 minutes to target people in your market with your content.

What’s Next with You Facebook?

If successful, the next 10 years won’t be ones with phenomenal user base growth (although it will grow), it will be Facebook learning how to monetize visitors without also turning them away to alternative sites. What about you? How are you using Facebook in your marketing? Chime in below.

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T-Mobile Marketing Solves Switch Problem – Get’s Customers

There were more than one ad, but here’s the one I’m referring to.

What’s Smart About What T-Mobile is Doing?

Speaking to their target market’s greatest frustration. Nothing worse than feeling forced to do something you don’t want, or not permitted to change your mind without significant pain, right?

Presenting themselves as the solution of choice. They are going beyond simply identifying the pain, they present themselves as a solution to your pain, offering to pay the breakup fee with your current provider (there are terms, of course), in exchange for joining their family.

Fun, yet clear call-to-action. This is important. Some feel that a strong call to action impacts the “know, like, trust” factor in their marketing, not so with T-Mobile. What they want you to do is clear with language like “it’s not you, it’s them.” Leave your current provider, and get into relationship with us!

What Can Marketers Learn from This?

How can you apply this example to your own marketing? The lessons here are numerous, here are some things that stand out to me.

What is the primary frustration your market has in working with competitors? Figure that out.

• When talking to prospects in your business ask them their greatest frustration working with the competitor.
• Visit online sites like Amazon and others that sell products or services which posts reviews from customers. Read the bad ones, find common themes.
• Have this investigation as a regular part of your market research, things change -fast!

Exploit competitor weakness, BE the solution. It’s worth noticing that T-mobile did it tactfully, no display of competitor coverage maps, etc. just sticking with the pain without naming names.

Celebrate new customer courage! Rejoice with new customers that come on board. Take photos, may or may not be appropriate to make a #BreakupLetter but pick something that fits that celebrates your new relationship. You might even create a site or a hashtag to amplify on the web like T-Mobile is doing.

Not sure what the results will be from the T-Mobile Superbowl campaign, remarkably it actually sold something. I’m thinking it may be one of the most profitable Superbowl campaigns in some time.

What are your thoughts, lessons from this campaign?

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