See Paula Deen Live…

September 13, 2011

Just because you weren’t chosen to be the next Food Network Star doesn’t mean you can’t still rub elbows with your favorite celebrity chefs, thanks to today’s deal for discounted admission to The Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show, which is being held September 17 and 18 at the Reliant Center. Watch Paula Deen cook live with a ticket to one day of the event and green level admission to the Celebrity Theater for $35 (regularly $71), or get closer to the action with an orange level seat for $40 (regularly $82). Or, for $12 (regularly $25), get one general admission ticket to the expo. Whether you’re a whiz with a whisk or a novice with a knife, you’ll love interacting with more than 125 exhibitors, seeing live demos, and participating in various cooking and entertaining workshops. Serve yourself this tasty deal today, and feel like a winner without having to face a panel of judges.

Want seconds? Check out The Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show on Facebook.

See Full Article on LivingSocial Houston…

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Arts and Cultural Organizations Trending Toward Using Online Marketing to Fill Empty Seats, New Online Marketing Diagnostic Tool to Help

July 14, 2011

TV commercials and radio ad buys used to be strong ways for symphonies, ballets, and theatres to get the word out, but now many groups are struggling to learn to market themselves online. “Social Media Audit,” a new online diagnostic tool, aims to help them bridge the gap.

Sunnyvale, CA (PRWEB) July 14, 2011

Many local community theatre actors are peeking out of the corner of their eye and seeing a half-full audience. With the economy inching along, a great number of arts patrons are still playing it safe and staying home. And reaching them to entice them to come to your play is becoming increasingly difficult in a world of fewer TV commercial viewers and radio listeners (thanks to DVRs, streaming online video, and create-your-own-station online radio services). So many arts organizations are turning to online channels to spread the word about that upcoming Eugene O’Neill farce.

“I’m getting contacted by more and more arts groups who are looking for help with social media and online marketing,” says arts consultant Ron Evans. “Revenue and ticket sales are really important at the moment — the economy started having major problems in 2008. That didn’t affect donations to arts groups much then, but many arts grants from foundations run on a 3-year cycle, so the pain is hitting right about now.”

It’s been a hard few years for arts organizations. In the past, a show could be made a hit by a great review in the local newspaper. But with arts coverage getting slashed or eliminated at many papers, there often isn’t a reviewer left to write the story. And that means that arts marketers who have been used to the old system for decades have a tough challenge: navigating the often confusing world of online social media sites, writing email newsletters, and shooting video clips, all while trying to launch an artistic production.

“It’s that twin focus of creating the art and marketing the art at the same time that often gets groups in trouble,” says Ron. “A half-baked online marketing plan, a rarely updated social media page… they hurt more than they help. Those problems need to be identified and fixed in a way that allows the arts group to carry on its artistic mission, and still market themselves with a small staff.”

It is this need for online marketing help that inspired Ron to create a new service in his arts consultancy: “Social Media Audit.” He explains, “We meet with the theatre, dance, or music group, and apply a score their use of online tools against other groups who have been scored before. This allows us to find the gaps in knowledge so we can fill them quickly and get the organization up to speed.” But Social Media Audit has a few tricks up its sleeve, including some techniques you might have read about in your college psychology textbook. “We tell the groups that sometime in the next six months, we’re going to score them again. We don’t tell them when, so it keeps people on their toes,” says Ron. “A big part of switching to this new way of marketing is changing existing long-term habits, and we find that the game-like element of ‘never knowing when we’ll be watching’ really changes a marketing director’s behavior.”

Social Media Audit has been workshopped with several individual arts organizations over the past nine months, and was applied to a group of 33 arts organizations in Philadelphia. The format led to measurable increases in online marketing capabilities. Workshop attendees were happy with the results. “This is a unique format approach because it has continuity after the workshop. It’s great to have a careful analysis that you can then build from as you gain more skills,” said one workshop attendee.

Read more: http://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/11/07/p1764509/arts-and-cultural-organizations-trending-toward-using-online-marketing-#ixzz1S5T8ydoK
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Should You Run A Daily Deal For Your Houston Business?

July 10, 2011
Image representing LivingSocial as depicted in...

Image via CrunchBase

Daily deals are certainly a hot topic at the moment, even in Houston.   Groupon and Livingsocial aren’t the only players in town anymore, so it’s important to consider the kinds of customers you’re trying to target and how you’d like to portray your business or organization.  We’ve seen everything from Weight Loss, Lasik Surgery, Spas, Massage, and Beauty deals to Cupcakes, Specialty Foods, and Entertainment and Adventure options.

There’s a lot of press about daily deals not being a fruitful or sustainable strategy for merchants, though mostly it’s very one-sided and ignorant of a very basic rule in marketing: not every channel suits every merchant.  When the discussion turns to the longevity of the industry, I think we can all agree that consumers will always be interested in the value of a true deal.  As the industry continues to mature, we’llalso  begin to see the development of targeted channels that cater to the localized market preferences.

Does it suit your business?

Before preparing a deal and negotiating terms with an operator, you need to ask yourself this question. Many businesses just aren’t suited to daily deals: businesses, for example, that -

  • have low margins
  • have a low customer-return rate (or have limited way of tracking customer returns)
  • are not equipped to service a significant increase in sales/business
  • have high costs or time-investments when providing their service.

If any of the above sounds like your business, a group buying offer might not be the best channel for growth: focus on other channels for now and work out your customer acquisition cost so that you can compare the group buying cost.

Preparing for a deal

I recently spoke with a local restaurant merchant who ran a group buying offer as a kind of “loan“. He was quite fixated on the fact that the operator would pay him a significant portion of the total revenue within 48 hrs, with the rest paid after the expiration of the vouchers.

He had failed to equate, however, how much he was going to lose by fulfilling the vouchers – in fact, he didn’t know how much each of his dishes cost him, meaning he had no way of creating a package that promoted dishes with higher margins, for example.

It pays to be prepared for a deal. Here are some things worth asking yourself:

  • What is your average customer-return rate? Is it measurable? Do you have a process in place to compare general customers against daily deals customers?
  • How are you going to capture group buying customers to ensure they are return customers? Do you have social media properties (Facebook, Twitter, etc) or a mailing list?
  • How much does a customer cost you through other channels (TV, print, PPC, business portals)?
  • If you half the typical customer-return rate and assume this is going to be the return rate for group buying customers (for argument’s sake), is running a daily deal still a cheaper marketing channel than acquiring customers through other mediums?

Lastly, a very important question: do you need to?

Don’t ‘get in on it‘ because it’s the flavour of the month and all your competitors are.

You should be running a daily deal if you are not going to be reliant on the channel and have other marketing efforts in place.

If you need a cash injection, like the merchant above, you might be in trouble – it’s not going to be any cheaper than a bank loan: you’ll have less time to pay it off and it may just cripple you.

Packaging a deal

It’s worth knowing that the discounts are becoming lower in this space – the 80-90% offers got the model moving, but it’s not sustainable – the average discount is now more like 50-60% (this figure is based on professional research that I have obtained).

Once you’ve worked out what you can afford to offer, look at identifying particular products or service packages that you have decent margins on (a set menu at a restaurant, for example, or a facial and massage package).

The total voucher value should always be lower than the average customer spend. That way there is an opportunity for you to up-sell the customer with additional products/services. There’s no point offering $15 value at a cafe if the customer will never pay more than $5 on any one return visit.

After the deal

Capture customers.

Offer member cards; give them a business card (or send them a mail) with your Twitter, Facebook, etc; ask them to join your database or collect their business cards. Do whatever you can to begin dialogue with your customers after their visit.

Track everything possible.

Try and work out:

  • how much each deal customer spends
  • the customer return rate from daily deals
  • whether the exposure has impacted on the general sales/interest volume.

Want to see the complete article?

Feedback

I’d love to hear back from any Houston merchants that have recently run deals – particularly if they’ve found this article useful. If you have any recommendations or comments about what I’ve shared here, please get in touch!

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The Divergent Demographics of Groupon and LivingSocial

June 27, 2011

Another great comparison of LivingSocial vs Groupon promotion strategies and core demographic profiles. Merchants in Houston, Texas can learn a great deal from comscore’s report.

Targets, advertising strategies vary

Daily deal sites Groupon and LivingSocial saw their audiences approximately triple in the year to April 2011, with gains of 250% and 182%, respectively, according to comScore’s “State of the US Online Retail Economy in Q1 2011” report. But while both play in the same space, differences have emerged in the geographies and demographics of their users, as well as their deployment of display and paid search advertising.

The comScore analysis found that LivingSocial had an edge among East Coast-based users, while Groupon had more of a foothold among Midwest and West Coast-based consumers. This may not be all that surprising as LivingSocial is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and Groupon is based in Chicago.

US LivingSocial and Groupon Users, by Region, April 2011 (% of total)

Beyond the geographic divergence, each provider appears to attract different types of users. comScore found that internet users under 45 leaned toward Groupon, while those ages 45 and older skewed more in favor of LivingSocial. Those ages 12 to 25 underindexed on usage of daily deal sites in general, but underindexed less strongly on Groupon. Both sites were used by women more than men.

But Nielsen found the opposite age skew when it examined the sites’ demographics in March 2011. That analysis found that 33% of LivingSocial visitors were ages 21 to 34, compared to 25% for Groupon, while 51% of LivingSocial visitors were ages 35 to 64, vs. 57% for Groupon.

Select Demographics of Visitors to Groupon and LivingSocial, March 2011 (% of each group)

However, Nielsen also found that visitors to both sites were similar in that nearly two-thirds were female and that their visitors were more likely to be affluent and better educated than the average internet user. In contrast to comScore’s May analysis, LivingSocial’s visitors trended younger, slightly more affluent and more highly educated than Groupon’s. In addition, Nielsen found visitors to LivingSocial 49% more likely than the average American online to earn $150,000 or more, while Groupon’s visitors were 30% more likely.

Rewinding to February 2011, Morpace found that the plurality of Groupon users, 40.2% , were 18 to 34 and that less than a quarter were 55 or older.

Demographic Profile of US Groupon Users, Feb 2011 (% of respondents in each group)

The dynamic nature of users opting in and opting out of Groupon and LivingSocial’s emails may, in part, be responsible for driving changing user demographics from month to month. This is a plausible scenario given consumers’ fickle spending behaviors and the services’ monthly churn rates.

In April, Groupon’s churn rate was 18% while LivingSocial’s was 22%, according to comScore. As of Q1, Groupon had about 83 million subscribers compared to LivingSocial’s 26 million.

The larger site has an edge with consumers in terms of awareness, according to research from Bloomberg and YouGov.

Level of Familiarity with Select Social Deal Sites According to US Internet Users, June 2011 (% of respondents)

Where advertising is concerned, while neither Groupon nor LivingSocial skimps on spending to attract users, they place a different emphasis on how they promote their deals.

Read Complete Article…

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Restaurant Newsletters: A Sad Commentary & Why They May Not Be Working

June 26, 2011

This is a great take on why restaurants should take the time to really connect with their customers.  It’s great to collect an email address, but if you’re going to ask for a birthdate, then every customer should receive a birthday announcement, card, or voucher for something delicious to enjoy on their special day. Mr. Cohen also addresses the need to steer away from offers that “aren’t valid” as they tend to make the restaurant goer feel a bit more disconnected than they do otherwise.  Read on…I’m sure you’ll enjoy!

Restaurant Newsletters:  A Sad Commentary & Why They May Not Be Working

by Joel Cohen

I plan on unsubscribing to your restaurant’s newsletter.

The information in your emails is irrelevant. You asked for my first name, yet you don’t address me by that. I’m still a “Dear VIP” to you! You asked for my cuisine favorites and I replied, “Italian Food” and you send me specials on seafood. You asked for my street address. Why do you need that, especially since you already asked for my zip code?

And when you send me your offers, they are full of “not valids.” Not valid here, not valid there, not valid this day, this week … and not valid this hour! Let alone needing a magnifying glass to read all of the fine-print restrictions, if you keep doing this, soon I’m going to be a “not valid guest.”

You asked for my birth date and you didn’t even send me a birthday card. You continue to email me twice a month with stories about you. I don’t care about you, since I’m not convinced you care about “Dear VIP” me.

If you want a relationship with me, then get to know me. I am not like your other guests. Repeat. I am not like your other guests.

And, let me get to know you. Who are you? Who is the owner? What’s he or she look like? Why haven’t I ever seen him/her in the restaurant? Why hasn’t he/she ever come over and introduced himself/herself to us? Isn’t that how you start of a good relationship?

Read more…

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LivingSocial’s 5 Simple Tactics for Getting 30 Million Subscribers

June 12, 2011

LivingSocial’s 5 Simple Tactics for Getting 30 Million Subscribers

livingsocial2

By Michael Alexis

When LivingSocial launched in 2007, the co-founders thought it would be interesting to match a user’s location with their interests. The model has evolved to selling vouchers to users for local experiences, and LivingSocial now serves daily deals to over 30 million subscribers. Want to know how they did it? Earlier this month, Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com interviewed LivingSocial co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy. In the interview, Tim reflects on the early days and shares the strategies LivingSocial used to fuel its explosive growth. This post includes five of those strategies.

1. Build Connective Tissue

Tim believes LivingSocial’s over 30 million customers are “establishing that connective tissue with us, where we send [them] a great thing to do every single day”. How can you reach as many people as LivingSocial does? Tim explains, “to do that, we have to know what your email is”, so “we just made it as blatant as we possibly could”.

By requiring first-time visitors to provide an email address, Tim says you help those people who “would want to subscribe and wouldn’t really know how to do it”. Don’t miss out on this opportunity, because as Tim points out, “email is one of those things that people keep open as a tab in their browser all day long. So if you have a compelling value proposition, then it can work”.

Take Away: Email is still a powerful way to directly communicate with your users and it can amplify the viral spread of your messages. In certain businesses it may be more effective than social media.

2. Help Your Customers Find Lunch

Have you ever thought “Hey, I’m going out with one of my coworkers, we’re going to grab something to eat, where should we go to lunch today?” Tim realized, “right now, there’s really no way for merchants to compete for your business or try to compel you to go there when you’re in the market”. So the LivingSocial team created InstantDeals, which Tim thinks, “is one of the big, new places that the space can go”.Instant Deals work by providing real time offers with all sorts of different merchants. Tim describes Instant Deals as being “like an offline Google search. If you went to Google and typed in ‘nice blue handbag,’ they’d give you a great set of results. If you typed in ‘where should I go to lunch today,’ they don’t”. Tim says Instant Deals is “really providing the answer to that” and that “it’s a really compelling experience that we can bring to our members”.

Take Away: Ask yourself: What problem am I solving? Is there a demand for my solution? If you can confidently answer those two questions, then you might be on your way to something great!

Read more: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/30-million-subscribers/#ixzz1P5Kmdx20

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Capturing Insights from QR Codes

May 27, 2011
Example of Micro QR

Image via Wikipedia

Can QR codes provide measurable insights that other marketing tools cannot? Check out the powerful analytics from this retail case study and learn five simple steps to capture and leverage metrics for your next QR code campaign.

As a new technology, QR code marketing can be intimidating. The key is determining how it can add value and produce tangible ROI. To do that, let’s take a look at the actual analytics for a QR code campaign and review the insights.

QR Code Analytics – U.S. Retail Case Study

Below is a screenshot sampling of QR code analytics from the Delivr QR code management platform depicting actual metrics from a national retail QR code campaign. (The campaign owner wishes to remain anonymous.) The product was sold nationally across the U.S. at retail stores. QR codes were placed on the exterior product packaging and linked to additional use instructions and tips. Take a quick look at some Delivr QR code analytics for this retail campaign.

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LivingSocial ropes in SocialMedia.com for $3 million | ZDNet

April 19, 2011
Image representing LivingSocial as depicted in...

Image via CrunchBase

LivingSocial ropes in SocialMedia.com for $3 million | ZDNet.

A couple years ago, SocialMedia.com came out of the gate as one of the first companies to build out an effective ad framework and model that was working and raking in the cash. They were one of the first companies to integrate friends’ photos into Facebook Ads. Eventually Facebook had tried acquire SocialMedia.com (the company) but after being turned down, Facebook went after them legally for privacy policy violations.

Read more.

Source: ZDNet

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Becoming a Big Deal

April 13, 2011
Image representing LivingSocial as depicted in...

Image via CrunchBase

With Groupon and LivingSocial leading the pack, daily deal sites are one of the hottest businesses out there right now, so it is probably no surprise that several hundred eager entrepreneurial types packed in for the Daily Deal Summit in New York City Wednesday.

Although LivingSocial, which just landed $400 million in venture capital and whose CEO is expecting to see $1 billion in revenues this year, joined the panel discussions, Groupon, the Chicago-based startup that started the deal craze was conspicuously absent, although it sent a rep, according to summit organizer Jay Weintraub, who estimated about 500 attendees showed up for the summit, about twice the number that had preregistered.

Read more: http://www.portfolio.com/executive-style/2011/04/06/daily-deals-summit-brings-in-a-packed-crowd#ixzz1JS7kX0eQ

Source: Portfolio.com

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Social Media Marketing For Small Businesses: Stories You May Have Missed March 25, 2011

March 25, 2011

Another Friday is upon us, which means another edition of Splash Media’s “curation station” as we highlight a handful of stories on social media marketing for businesses from the week. Today’s topics:

LinkedIn Hits Another Milestone

The self-described social network for professionals is now 100 million members strong worldwide, which has prompted another round of analysis regarding LinkedIn’s worth for businesses. Mashable’s Todd Wasserman posted a very helpful infographic detailing all the demographic information you’d want about the network, while Jennifer Bishop of Australia’s Content & Copy provides more reasons why businesses should consider using LinkedIn for online brand management.

The “Color” Of Social Marketing?

The tech blogosphere has been painting a hype-filled picture this week regarding Color, a new iPhone app from the people who brought you the music service Lala. Color uses smartphone photos to create instant, real-time networks based on how many other iPhone users are in your general vicinity. While other tech journalists debate the pros and cons of whether people will actually want to do that, Adam Lashinsky of Fortune gives a very convincing argument for the location-based marketing possibilities that businesses could take advantage of if Color does indeed become popular.

Social Media Mythbusting

Gareth Bloor of Memeburn offers a must-read primer for leaders of small/mid-size businesses who are still on the fence about this whole social media thing. 10 Social Media Myths That Undermine Business Strategies includes some still-popular misconceptions such as “Our customers don’t use social media” and “The threat of negative posts/comments is too high.”

What did we miss? Tell us in our comments section about the stories you believe are necessary weekend reading for small business executives regarding social media and the online conversation. And we’ll see you back here bright and early on Monday.

Source: Splash Media

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