Puppy love get big licks & ticks

We all know that social media is a great zero budget tool. Twitter & Facebook are the centre of the universe for (possibly way too) many people. And they're free to use for marketers and punters alike.

But that said, it's HARD to get the use of these tools right. It's all very well to post some bland info about your brand, what's hard is coming up with something clever, engaging and basically worth all your time and effort. There's little worse than not being friended or followed!

I came across one of the smartest little social media campaigns I'd seen today - and I've watched it go crazy in literally HALF a day.

I am a PJs addict and a love Peter Alexander pajamas. I am hard pressed to open one of their catalogues and OT buy. So I do scan their online newsletter. And they had a great little story. They are wanting some "posh dogs" for their next mag shoot. All you had to do to get your dog in the running was post a pic of it on Peter's facebook page. Now, as I love dogs more than PJs, I immediately checked it out. Over 300 people had ALREADY posted a picture within an hour of the email going out. I've just checked again this evening and it's now over 600. That's not people visiting the page - I'd suspect this would be 10 times this. That 600 women who've chosen to interact with the brand today alone.

How smart is this campaign? Even if they didn't have the photo shoot angle, they took something people love - their pet - and made it about showing off their loved one. And the cost of this fabulous little brand interaction.

Ah, did I mention, ZERO.

Big ticks (and licks!) for the PA marketing team. They've done us all proud today!

And take a leaf from their book.

How can you tap into what people are ALREADY passionate about and tie it to your brand using social media? The key is in what's important to your market, not what's important to you.

Simple (+ cheap) ideas can be incredibly powerful

Had to share this with you - part of a seatbelt advocacy campaign from the UK.

Apart from the fabulous viral component of this advertising - apparently having been seen by over 1 million people now - what I love is that this adv would have been VERY cheap to make, compared to the standard TAC type ads we're all so used to.

Yet arguably, its impact is much, much greater. It's not only quite beautiful to watch, it gets across it's (multiple) messages without so much as a work spoken, a spot of gore or a score of smashed up cars.

So a very big pat on the back to the creative team that put this little beauty together - you've proven to us all that IMPACT has a lot less to do with the size of a marketing budget than you might imagine.



More about the campaign at: http://www.sussexsaferroads.gov.uk/

Just in case you can't see the embedded video, use this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjWufx3fenc

I finally get it - why people are so passionate about Apple

I've long resisted the world of Apple. I succumbed to an iPhone but have had issues with it. I considered an iPad but research showed a Kindle was the better option as a reader (and I love it!). But when my second PC laptop died in 3 years, I decided I was really to give Apple some serious consideration. I did my research and found the Macbook Pro seemed like a good option. I even got it for a very good price, cheaper than my last two laptops. I've had it a week now and, to be honest, I'm wondering how I lived without it. Forget how great it looks and feels, it just works so much better than a PC.

But this post isn't an ode to my new laptop - it's an ode to the fact that I'm finally getting a hint as to why people are so loyal to Apple. It's because they actually work very hard to make you feel part of a (brand) family.

You see, I have some queries about working my Macbook. And I discovered I can make an appointment at the Apple store - at a "genius bar" no less - to get some help. I can attend some free workshops on how to use various bits of software and hardware. I've even got telephone support for the first 90 days if I need it.

Now having bought many PCs, not only don't the retailers offer anything like this, the hardware manufacturers certainly don't.

All this isn't "zero budget" for Apple to deliver - but they wouldn't do it unless it generated A BIG RETURN. So it's money very well invested.

Things like the genius bar and workshops are also a much smarter use of retail space and customer management than I've ever seen. They've taken the same tools as everyone else - a shop, some shop assistants, a set amount of retail hours, , some hardware to sell - and they've then done something VERY clever with it. They've even dealing with some potential negatives - only ONE location and only helping people at set times they need to book well in advance - and managed to make them a positive.

How can YOU rethink your set of marketing tools and essentially CHANGE the game you're playing?

It's just a sign, isn't it?

You know, sometimes in marketing, it's the little things that matter. Small cost items that can have a BIG impact if only you put a little bit of creative thought into them.

I've spotted two signs recently that I think are worth their weight in gold. One perhaps a bit more obviously than the other.

So first, the subtle sign. I saw this in clothing store "Forever New". The sign simply says "Last of the Best Sellers". What's so good about this?

This little sign is working VERY hard.

It's allowing the store to put a bunch of mis-matched product together legitimately, in a retail world that's often focussed on making everything look just right.

It's also telling shoppers that OTHER people loved these items, so this is a great place to hunt for a treasure.

Finally, it's allowing items to be sold full price that would normally be relegated to the sale rack.

Then the more obvious choice - how great is this? Every time I walk past this office, I smile and think that these people are living their brand. They've taken a very average location (a smelly alley off china town) and a door with bars and done something to make you forget all that.

They've already demonstrated how creative they are before their prospective client have literally walked through the door!

So next time you're thinking, it's just a sign, ask yourself...how can I make my little sign work as hard as it possibly can?

Oldie but a goodie - refer a friend campaign

The most exciting thing about a customer is that they know OTHER potential customers - people just like them, thus also very likely to buy the same sorts of things from the same sort of places. This is something many, many companies seem to forget - to their own detriment.

I recently booked some flights through webjet and this week I was sent a "refer a friend" promotion. There were several things I thought were clever and "zero budget" about this marketing idea.

1. Most of webjet's advertising seems to be posters at airports & billboards. For anyone who has ever booked a campaign like that, you know they are VERY expensive. This would have been peanuts in comparison, even if they had to pay for the flights they're giving away.

BUT

2. If you notice the Qantas branding on the plane in the creative, I suspect this means that even if they had to pay SOMETHING for the flights, they didn't have to pay the full price. Although I suspect, as webjet likely puts a lot of business Qantas's way, they may even have had the prize flights donated for nix.

Thus, this promotion will only have cost them a bit of a brain power and a bit of design/web work.

Let's say this was $10,000. And let's say they send it to 50,000 people on their dbase. Even if only 10% respond (and they'd likely get more as this is a great incentive sent to a market who've proved they are in the market for flights!) that means 5,000 people respond. If these 5,000 only send to TWO contacts, that means Webjet have reached 10,000 people for a cost of $10,000.

A paltry $1 a "well-targeted" propspect.

I don't know abotu you, but I think a buck is a pretty low introduction fee to someone who's likley to spend hundreds of dollars with you in a single sale.

Don't you?

So webjet, congrats on pulling out this "oldie but goodie". You got me to email my friends. And I'm a cynical marketing type!

Don't be shy - ask for a discount!

I was reminded again the other day of a great "zero budget marketing" mantra:

"If you don't ask, you don't get!"

What inspired this reminder, I hear you ask?

A publisher called to sell me some advertising space in a local area directory for one of the brands I work with. Whilst I don't usually go for advertising, this directory was a good match for the company and it had a direct response element, in the form of a voucher, my personal marketing favorite.

But - the advert was too expensive. The brand has a teeny, tiny budget - like many businesses.

So I cried poor and said that if they had "distressed space" (advertising industry speak for space they can't flog and will slash the price of at the last minute) - and if they could make this distressed space half of the quoted price - we'd take the advert.

And a week later, they called back, saying they really wanted us in the directory. And we got the advertising space for ... half price. Exactly what we'd asked for. So we could advertise and everyone walks away getting something they want.

So, let's say it all together..."If you don't ask, you don't get!"

How spending $320 can earn you $43,200

I saw a great "zero budget marketing" tactic in action on the street this morning that has some inspiration there for us all.

I walk past a cafe strip, where there are 6-7 places you can grab lunch or - more importantly for many people - a coffee.

One of these locations is actually a restaurant. And they are also a cafe that does coffee. But to the passerby, it looks MORE like a restaurant, thus people bypass it to go to a "coffee shop".

Obviously the manager cottoned on, and realised they were missing out on the very lucrative morning coffee trade. How lucrative can coffee be, I hear you ask? It has a HUGE profit margin - the average latte costs around 20cents in "materials" to make. A good barista can pump out about 100 in an hour. And an average coffee price in the city is $3.

So that's $300 in revenue in an hour for about $20 in material and $20 staff cost. Around a 750% return. Highly profitable if you can sell a lot of coffee!

So, back to the idea. The restaurant had one of their staff members, with a blackboard and some vouchers, directing people to go and get a FREE coffee.

So clever, so cheap. Being conservative, a regular coffee drinker would buy a cup once a day, 3 days a week (actually, most serious caffeine addicts do 2-3 every day!). And if you like the coffee and one place, and it's a convenient location, you're likely to buy these three coffees every week for the 48 weeks you're working.

This translates to around $432 in revenue in a year - for a promotion that would cost around FORTY CENTS! 20 cents for the coffee and 20 cents worth of staff time.

So again, that's spending 40 cents to get $432 in revenue over 12 months.

Image if they got only 20 new people a day on this promotion and they ran it for 5 days.

The restaurant will have generated $43,200 in revenue from this promotion, which will have cost a few hours a day in staff time (say $300) and $20 in free coffee.

If only we all got that sort of RETURN ON INVESTMENT!

So it's a great little case study that encourages you to think about what you should be giving away, to get customers to try (and hopefully love) your product or service. Not all margins are as healthy as coffee - and luckily not all products are addictive - but even if you get a fraction of the results, this is a hugely successful zero budget marketing tactic.