Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Why they use Twitter?

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

Twitter forecasts that by December 09 it will have over 50 million users. Google took 10 years to have 50 million people a day using its search engine and Facebook took 19 months.
Why people adopt tools like Twitter in such a fast and passionate way?

Many reasons there but one main reason is that tools like Twitter allow people to have a mass 2 way communication and this is very powerful for people and for businesses.
It is the one to many and many to one era.
Instant feedback is another powerful reason.
We can also say that many people look for leaders to help them live a better life and Twitter allows them to listen and meet other people.

The possibility to meet people is another big reason. Kind of the same reason you would go to a party. To have fun, meet people and learn more about them.
Here is where most businesses fail not only when using Twitter but other social media tools.
They meet someone and the next second they are either trying to sell you something or offering something for fre@.
People are not interested at this moment in getting things from you, they just want to know you better and maybe start a new relationship.

Do you invite friends to a barbecue and right when they get there you try to sell them Tupperware?
Same common sense goes here.
Sales will happen later when they get to know you better and the trust level is higher.
All you really have to do is let people know you better. At least a little better than they know your competition.
Did you know that 63% of people on Twitter follow people that have a nice smile?

Do you approach a guy with a sad face at a barbecue?
One frequent question we get is: But what do I do there on Twitter?
Perry Belcher, a heavy Twitter user says that 30% of the time, you should tweet about things that would make people’s life better, 10% you would compliment people. (that is something we all need more of), 20% try to make people laugh and 40% of the time you would provide good content. When you provide content you can add some soft sales calls.
I believe that is a good mix.
You should try Twitter. Twitter can be a great marketing tool in your business.

We all feel comfortable doing the things we are used to do but you need to remember that in this new economy, just trying to do more of what you have been doing thinking that will do the trick is not an option. It is like running faster on the same path trying to get to a destination when the destination is in a different place.

Posted in Small Business Marketing, Uncategorized | No Comments »

How to become viral?

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

To have a piece that becomes viral you need to:
Do something remarkable
Do something that engages people.

Like this Belgian television stunt done in a train station to promote a TV show looking for someone to play the leading role in the Sound of Music

Can you count how many people have cameras and cel phones recording and broadcasting this?

Posted in Fantastic Events, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Social Media Marketing Facts

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

Did you know?
•Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser
•More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
• Only 14% trust advertisements
•Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth

Posted in Business, Uncategorized | No Comments »

3 stages of consumer engagement

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

The 3 stages of consumer engagement.

Imagine a world when you could start a business and have people engaged with your company, talking about you to others and not buying anywhere else.
Wouldn’t that be great?
Unfortunatelly that is not usually what happens.
Most companies need to go through three basic stages before they can say they have people really engaged with their brand.

Stage 1- Listen to your market

We cannot engage people if we don’t listen to what they are saying, their wants and needs. We need to understand to which topics they react to, what they expect from us and how they want us to approach them.
Remember, the way we do business has changed a lot in the last few years and the way people buy has also changed.
Today, more than ever, it is very easy to listen to your target market. It is one reason why you should use social media tools.
You can listen and get more information about your target market than you ever dreamt possible.Twitter comes to mind as one of the best tools to listen what your target market is saying.

Stage 2
Build an audience.

We all want and need an audience.This is the moment in your business where you want to create awareness, you want attention. Attention is not easy to get today. People have a lot of options to where to look and I dare to say that the search for attention is the new gold rush.
When you build an audience, you have people that want to get together to listen to you.
This can be done with events, teleseminars, videos etc.
When you do this right, you get people participating with you on an ongoing basis.
The level of trust will increase which in today’s economy is a crucial point for your business.
At this stage is where consumer engagement really happens and it is where word-of-mouth really starts.

Stage 3- Build Your Tribe

Seth Godin was the first to tell us we need to build a tribe, a community that you lead.
The first thing you need in order to build your tribe is to have a cause, a reason why people would follow you, where they feel they can contribute and feel affinity with one another and empowered.
Yes, you can build a tribe around companies and products.
Your position here is different because you help the community with the ideas and concepts and showing where to go, but you don’t lecture.
This is as far as you could think from a one way conversation and it is an important part of this new economy. Social media tought us that our voice matters and that as consumer we have a say and we can be part. Business owners need to embrace this mindset.

On the first 2 stages, you have a lot of control and it is up to you to do it well.
The third stage will follow if you do the first 2 right and if your cause, purpose is really clear to your audience.

Posted in Business, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Being found with social media marketing

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

I bet many times when you hear people talking about social media marketing you think it is only a great way to brand a company.
I don’t blame you. Since most gurus don’t really have a clue on how to use social media for business, they talk about branding a lot.
There are several other reasons why social media is not an option in marketing anymore and is a must.
Have you heard of Alexa.com? If you are one of my clients, you sure did.
Alexa is a tool that tells you the popularity of websites and allows you to compare page views.
You can go to www.Alexa.com and download the tool bar for your computer.
Anyway, I’d like you at least to visit their site and try to compare Google.com with YouTube.com and check the pageviews.
You will see that YouTube has more page views than Google.
Can you believe this?
If you do the same with Google and Facebook, you will see that many days, Facebook has more page views than Google.
If you combine Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, you will see that they will have a higher reach than Google.
When you consider what Google is as a company and as a search engine, this data is really amazing.
Now, if you go to Google and star typing some words that you know have a lot of competition, do you know what happens?
Try “beautiful girls”. That is a search term with 70,300,000 results on Google.
There are 10 results per page. 7 of them, including the first four are from social media sites.
Try now “get six pack abs”- comes with 1,200,000 results.
6 of them are social media, including the first 3 results.
When you are doing anything online for business, you need to be found. You know people will not go beyond the first or second page on a search engine looking for something.
What do you do when you are in a competitive market?
What do you do when you don’t want to spend a lot of money to be on the first page?
What do you do to stay in the first page?
Yes, my friend, you stop being a pansy and start getting serious about using social media.
Wait too much, and this opportunity willbe gone. It is going to get crowded out there.
Read this post again, it is worth, it may change your business, and it is only one reason why you cannopt wait to use social media marketing.
I rest my case. Well, at least until next week.

Posted in Internet Marketing, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Pizza Hut got it!

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

When you watch this video, you will see how Pizza Hut combined consumer engagement with sales. This app they have developed has all.

Posted in Marketing for small Business, Uncategorized | No Comments »

The customer is always right

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

We always talk about the importance of listening to your customer, have good follow-up strategies, keep a relationship and a conversation going with customers.

So sometimes, people get the wrong impression that this is the same as saying the customer is always right and that they have all final decisions. From how your business processes should be, to when they should pay you. Believe me, to understand this relationship is not only good for business, it is part of marketing too.

Have in mind that you as the business owner decide how to run your business, not the customer.
I found this blog post at Duct Tape marketing that I think explains this right:

“There is absolutely nothing wrong, in fact there’s everything right, with building a culture of making the customer thrilled at every turn, but you can’t adopt the mentality without two things firmly in place first.

1) You must absolutely set up every communication with the goal of attracting the ideal customer – ideal is a customer that values what you have to offer, values how you offer it, and determines that value is a mutual exchange of such – very much like any healthy relationship. Bad relationships come from misunderstanding yourself and what you really have to offer and the same might be said for attracting customers for the wrong reasons.

2) You must build an experience that does indeed thrill at every turn – from lead generation to getting paid.

With those two qualifications in place you can allow the customer to always be right, because you’ve designed a culture of mutual benefit and your “we won’t rest until its right” policy will serve both of you long term. Small businesses simply can’t afford to attract the wrong kind of life robbing customer and expect to make them thrilled, it’s a nearly impossible task and will be accomplished likely to the detriment of your ideal customers.”

So, repeat after me, the right customer is always right – with that mindset the accountability shifts from the customer to you.

Posted in Business, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Reasons businesses fail when they use social media

Friday, July 17th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

The new episode of Who pops your popcorn? covers the main reasons why people fail when using social media. We also talk about a very cool new feature on YouTube that can increase your results and Andrew Lock host of Help my business gives you a very cool tip.
Watch our marketing web tv show now!

Posted in Internet Marketing, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Do you have a Google profile?

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

Visibility for a business today is king. Visibility can cost a lot of money if you go the traditional way, but there are simple things you can do to have visibility in the marketplace without spending a dime.

For example; have a Google profile.

Similar to a Facebook or Linkedin profile, Google profiles have some unique user benefits that can improve your company’s visibility to an untapped market. They allow businesses to present their products and services to other Google users.

Profiles show up in any Google search, and anyone can view your business profile. Google profiles also offer an “about me” tab on a separate page, which allows you to write a company bio, point out the strenght of your business, or discuss the benefits of your company to your target audience.

You are also allowed to add links and map locations. Yes you can link to external sites which will provide more information about your business. You can also link to content on Twitter, Myspace, Facebook and Linkedin and put your business location on a Google map.

Google profiles is just one way that Google and social media can help the growth of your business.
Improve your skills in social media, check our new online training programs at: marketing training

Did you know?

This can be huge for your business!
Now, you can add a link to your website on your videos on YouTube. They can click at any time without interrrupting the video. This will allow you to bring visitors right from YouTube to your site.
Did I mentioned we have a training on online videos for business?

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Rocks or Diamonds

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

by Shahar

We are living in a moment where the media is selling crisis. Most people are buying into this message.
I hope you don’t buy into that but it is a good time anyway to reflect a little on the reason you are in business and how you do business. This is a good time to think about choices. Results in business are based on choices.

We might not like to admit, but we are responsible for self-inflicting bad times or prosperity. We are responsible for our choices.

Think about this: you can choose to sell rocks or diamonds.

You can pick rocks from your driveway which will be really cheap and won’t require a lot of work. They don’t have a lot of value unless you sell them in bulk.

On the other hand, mining diamonds is a similar task although it takes a little bit more work. You might have to travel to find diamonds, you need some specific tools etc.

The difference is that every diamond you find has a lot more value than a whole truck of rocks.

You are responsible for the business you are in and the results you get.

When marketing a business, same thing.

You can do what is easy and cheap or you can do a little more than your competition, use some tools they are not willing to use. Like social media, write on blogs etc.

The value you’ll get from these efforts are also very different.

Yes, sometimes it takes a little more work, a little more effort, an extra mile.

At the end, it is your choice: Rocks or diamonds?

Posted in Business, Uncategorized | No Comments »

3 Surefire ways to get more customers, more leads and therefore, a lot more money.

Sunday, June 28th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

Whenever you see yourself in a moment when you need to make more money in your business, generate more leads and get more customers, you need to know you have 3 basic options:

1. Sell something different
2. Sell to someone different
3. Sell differently.

The one thing you absolutely cannot do: Keep on as-is.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could just close our eyes, take a deep breath and wait for bad times to go away? And then, open our eyes and see everything back to normal?

Yes, it would, but in real life, this will not happen and you will have to change the way you do things in order to get different results.
Not only that, you might have to set up the alarm clock, get out of bed earlier and go do more of the things that are working for you now.

Not to discourage you, but allow me to tell you how things really work today.
We are all living in a new economy. The people willing to do what it takes will succeed and thrive in this new economy. Willingness to change and implement new strategies are a must. It is not difficult or hard. Just need to take action.

Now, back to the 3 surefire ways to get more customers, more leads and therefore, a lot more money that I just mentioned above; think for a moment how you could apply them into your business.

Here are a few questions/tips for you:

1. Can you incorporate a new product or service to your business?
2. Could you make some changes to an existing product or service and launch as a new one?
3. Could you add a continuity program to your existing business?
4. Can you find another channel to sell your services?
5. Could you sell them online?
6. Could you incorporate new follow-up systems in order to sell different services to your existing list of customers? (this is always cheaper than go out looking for new clients)
7. Can you learn how to generate new leads online using inexpensive social media tactics?
8. Could you sell using Teleseminars? (you’d be selling to different people and in a different way)
9. Can you create automated lead generation and follow-up strategies? (using auto-responders, free reports etc?)
10. Can you use tools like Twitter and Facebook to generate a flow of new prospects and traffic to your website?

Let me answer that for you: Yes, you can! It doesn’t matter what kind of business you have, B2C, B2B, with low budget, almost no budget etc.
Anyone can sell something different and/or sell to someone different and/or sell differently.
You might have to sharpen your saw, learn some new skills, but this is an easy problem to solve.
What really matters is that once you acquire the new skills you need you take action fast and implement.
Most people do not implement or just freeze and do nothing. That is the main reason why only 5% of the population ever gets rich. They are the ones that take action and implement.

People like to say they don’t do it because there is no budget, no extra money or no time. These are not the real issues.
Today, we have the internet with social media. Social media is not free, there is the time you need to commit, and it doesn’t work overnight, it is a process; but the return on your investment is huge.
By social media I mean tools like Twitter, Facebook, online videos etc.
Anyone can learn how to do it and can do it with almost no investment.

Did you know that Facebook alone has over 400 million active users (people that login at least once a week)? Do you know you could be selling to those people? Generating traffic to your store, office or website?
Did you know that 6,000 new accounts are created on Twitter every day? And you could be selling there?

Let me give you some examples of what I’ve stated above:

Sell to different people in different ways, through different channels

A pastry chef called Morita works for a restaurant in Hawaii. With the recession, attendance in the restaurant went down and he feared he would loose his job.
He started taking pictures and posting on Flickr and then announcing on Twitter what would be the desert of the day.
People started showing up, different people from a different channel. Hint, hint.
Today, the restaurant is selling way more than before the recession.

Hawaii is too far and your business could not do the same?

Ok, here is another example close to your home.

Some months ago, Pizza Hut started selling pasta (sell something different).
You probably saw the commercials. They used the fact that Americans tend to eat pasta at least once a week and that with the recession tend to stay and eat at home more. They saw an opportunity to steal sales from casual restaurants like Olive Garden (sell to someone different), and gain and edge over other pizza delivery chains.
They sold 2 million boxes of past just on the first month and plan to produce $500 million in revenue from this source on the first year.

I know, you are not in the pizza business. But your business is not different from these examples, you might like to think they are, so it would give you an excuse not to try something different, but at the end of the day, you could sell something different, to someone different that came from a different channel.

It is not about money, time or resources. It can be done.

The only thing you might need to get this accomplished is some new skills.
Maybe understand and learn how to use the Internet and social media the right way.
Maybe understand how to apply effective follow-up, generate leads, how to incorporate continuity programs to your business etc.

But not even that is a problem. Let’s cover the possible obstacles for you to invest in acquiring new skills to apply in your business:

Where to find training specific to your needs, to the point, with easy steps to implement, no fluff and proven to deliver results?

That is a very easy one! Buzzbooster Marketing just launched a whole series of multi-media training covering business issues that other places don’t.

You’d like to master Social media and use in your business, but every expert you met is broken and all they know is how to get a bunch of virtual friends.

I feel your pain! Most people think because they know how to do a profile on Facebook, they understand how businesses could profit with this.
The BuzzBoosters have a track history online, have several small online businesses and invest a lot in their own skills. They rub shoulders with some of the biggest online marketers and know what is working online.

Money is short.
Not a problem! During the launch phase, all training programs have a specials that are very affordable. They all have flex payments options too!
Not enough? Ok, I’ll give you a coupon code that you can get a 15% investment reduction. This coupon has a limited time offer, so don’t leave to the last minute.
Use the coupon code: Imsmart on check-out at www.training.buzzbooster.com

I need to know everything, so I won’t have to go look for training somewhere else.
Our trainings are based in 6 easy steps. One step per week is covered in depth. Clear action steps and organized.
For 6 weeks, you will learn all that you can apply in your business for that topic.

I’m ADD
So are we! That is why we cover all bases. The training programs have easy to watch instruction videos and how-to videos, audio, and text. You can learn using what you feel comfortable with. All material is available for download, so you can use when you feel you can focus more.

I’ve no time.
Time is our most valuable commodity. There is never enough of. That is why these trainings are so effective and different.
They last 6 weeks, but you will have access for a lot longer. Don’t forget that you can also download everything, and use when you have time.
You don’t have to attend classes in one specific time. You consume the training when you can, where you want. Just need to have internet access and a computer.

I need support!
You have it. We’ll support you all the way. After all, that is our mission “to empower entrepreneurs and business owners”. We want you to succeed. We want you to see us as partners.

I need to feel safe!
You are safe with us. We have the BuzzBooster ironclad guarantee. If you don’t like, you get your money back.

The only thing you need to do is take action!
Choose the training program that you want now! You’ll have instant access and will be able to apply what you learn right away.
Then, take action and implement right away, so you see more customers coming, more sales happening, more money flowing into your pocket.

Remember: www.Training.buzzbooster.com
You have flex payment options.
Use coupon code: Imsmart for 15% off.
Offer is limited; prices will go up in mid-summer.
Bonus: When you join one training program, I’ll send you a FREE CD of your choice and one issue of the Engage Magazine in the mail.

Questions: 801-8429765 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Here are a few of the training programs available:

Rank First on Google -Ultimate SEO Course!

Discover How You Can Profit With Online Videos!

Generate an Avalanche of Leads and Traffic to Your Business!

The Power of Continuity Programs – Make Money Over and Over Again
Twitter for Business: Harnessing the Power for Profits in 140 Chars!
Facebook For Business Magic!
Create a powerful joomla website from the ground up!
Powerful Direct Response Marketing Strategies
7 Steps to Increase Productivity
Magical Follow-Up Strategies for Business

Secrets of information marketing business

Social media inside out

How to create a sticky business- The power of positioning

Posted in Marketing for small Business, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Your business personality

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

Brand goes way beyond logos and taglines. Brand is the customer’s perception of your products or services.
Every touch point with the customer defines and reinforces your brand. This includes how you answer the phone, your appearance or the appearance of your sales force, your website etc.
It is critical for your business to manage this perception and to differentiate yourself from your competition.
Does your customer’s perception match the personality you want them to see?
Here are a few points to consider:

1. Are you really different?
What differentiate you from your competition? Please, don’t say it is customer service, quality or good price. These are expected and cannot be considered added benefit.
What differentiates you must be relevant to your customer and unique to your company.

2. Do you and your customers speak the same language?
Use their words and not your own. Pay attention to what your customers say when they interact with your company. On your website, find out what the search terms are.

3. Always remember you are selling to people and not to businesses. If you do B-to-B remember that it is really B-to-P. Business to person.

4. What is the emotional gain that your customer receives when doing business with you?
Make things simple and meaningful to your customers. Do not complicate.

5. Consider every point of contact an opportunity to reinforce your message. Use everything you can to get your brand reinforced, your website, packaging, direct mail, appearance.
6. Make your message relevant and special to the person placing the order.
Think of your brand as a persona instead of a commodity.

Defining and refining your business personality, or brand is a necessity. Your business should be constantly re-evaluated to make sure the message is consistent with your audience.
Remember that your audience is made of people with real lives, dealing with daily challenges.

Don’t leave up to the customer to decide your brand, this is up to you.

Posted in Marketing for small Business, Uncategorized | No Comments »

How To Use Twitter For Business Domination

Saturday, May 30th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

Do you ever eat too much?? Like when you eat too much of a yummy thing and feel so full you can barely walk? (I know a little too well how that feels!)

Lately it seems like I’ve been consuming a little too much of Twitter. It’s all over the place! Celebrities using it, Jimmy Fallon mentioning it on his show, Ellen DeGeneres being funny with it, evening news targeting news about Twitter, magazine articles, Sprint commercial, Today Show segments, etc…

Why? Why do some things catch on more than others? I don’t really have an answer for that other than a few elaborate concoctions of my creative mind, but I’m glad it happens, and even happier that I can use it for business! Here’s how you get started…

Go to http://twitter.com to create an account.
It?s easy to set up an account and customize your page. Make sure you link back to your website in your “about me” options.

http://tweetdeck.com/

Twitter can be a little overwhelming sometimes, too much going on, hard to keep up. Use a tool like TweetDeck to manage your account. It’s important to interact as much as it is important to be in the know of things. TweetDeck will allow you to see at a glance who has sent you a message or who has talked about you. There are other tools out there that will help you manage your twitter account, but I really like TweetDeck because it will also manage your Facebook account!

Need a twitter applicaiton for your phone? TinyTwitter can do the trick! http://tinytwitter.com/ and so can

Think text is too boring? Could say more with a picture? Use http://TwitPic.com to twit pictures. Pictures are great because they portray a greater level of trust.

Twitter is great fun and keeps you in the know. It’s important to use it as a customer service tool as well as relationship building tool. What are people saying about you? Find out by using http://TweetBeep.com – Just like Google Alerts, Tweetbeep tracks Twitter conversations that mention you, your business or your products and services. Alerts are sent to you via email.

Schedule future Tweets with http://twuffer.com. Why? Recommended uses include:

* Tweet hourly/daily/monthly announcements
* appointment/milestone reminders
* run a time-based scavenger hunt
* notify subscribers about upcoming podcast or video episodes
* appear to never sleep

Increase sales and engagement with your followers by offering exclusive deals on Twitter. With the simple coupon creator for businesses http://twtqpon.com.

Looking for people to follow? Do it with http://TwitSeeker.com
TwitSeeker is basically an alternate search engine for finding twitter.com users – “twits” – and browsing the results all in one combined control panel. It finds twits not by what’s posted in their bios but rather based on what they’ve been tweeting about lately.

Twitter is a manageable process that can be adopted for all types of lifestyles, busy or inactive. You?ll just need to integrate it within your normal work flow. It?s addictive but once you understand how to use it, it?ll be a very effective tool indeed. Here are a few ways in which you can use Twitter for business beyond the use of Twitter as a life streaming device:

Personal branding – Twitter is a social media platform you can use to build your personal brand. It has the primary benefit of developing a casual persona and establishes you as a social personality that is connected and approachable. As Twitter adoption increases, new users will be drawn towards well established Twitter personas.

Get feedback – Need an alternative perspective on how a website looks or the right course of action to take? Blast out a message asking for advice and you?ll receive replies from other users. This collective intelligence can be used as fodder for articles or projects.
Hire people – Need a good logo designer, marketer or programmer? Send out a message asking for recommendations.

Direct traffic – Twitter can be used to get traffic to your websites or the sites of friends. If you ask your friends to tweet about it, the message will spread faster and further as other active users pick it up. There is a viral nature to all types of news, even on a site like Twitter.

Read news – Twitter users often link to useful sites or articles and can be a source of scoops and alternative news.

Notify your customers – Set up a Twitter feed for the specific purpose of notifying customers when new products come in.

Business management – Twitter can be used as a company intranet that connects employees to one another.

Event updates – Businesses can use Twitter as a means to inform event participants and latest event happenings/changes. This is a hassle-free way of disseminating information, especially when you don?t have the means to set up a direct mobile link between you and the audience.

Find prospect – Twitter can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online.

Acquire votes – Send a link to your stories you?ve submitted in other social news sites like Digg. Sometimes your followers will vote up the stories because they agree with it. This allows you to acquire more support for your efforts on other social media websites.

Are you convinced? You better be! ;)

Follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/buzzbooster

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

The Power of Gray Hair

Thursday, May 28th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

Why marketers ignore aging consumers?

It looks like they are always targeting the young and hip and the young families, even though these segment is a rich vein.

The 50 plus generation is responsible for 40 percent of retail spending in the U.S. and Western Europe.

This is a huge opportunity that many marketers do not explore because many still believe that older consumers are stuck in their behavior and are brand loyal. They can’t see the other side of these myths.

Even though they know that this group has money to spend, they don’t take into consideration the longevity of this spending. A person that is 50 today has at least 30 years of good life ahead. When asked the lifetime value of a customer, you need to consider their different phases. Their children are grown, inheritances were collected and they have reached professional maturity. This makes an audience ready and prepared to explore more brands, products and services that will make them live better.

One reason this happens is because marketers are not prepare to offer campaigns that are unique to this audience. Let’s face it, most companies let the young marketers lead and don’t have mature, experienced professionals that would be able to target this demographic. The dialogue here is totally different from other younger generations.

Very few brands make a different effort, like L’oreal, Porsche Carrera and Fidelity investment.

Let’s take a look on some needs of this audience:

They need products that help them stay engaged. From anti-wrinkle creams to easy to make meals for two, vacations packets and lighter tools. Products with good quality but simple to use. This generation is always willing to pay a little more for things that will improve the planet for future generations.
Communication should be customized. For example, changes in eyesight call for easy to read fonts as well as bigger fonts and high contrast colors. Carefully crafted massages since age breeds cynicism.
Consumers want brands that fit their personalities rather than the ones that try to define them. This is because after 50, self-perception is fully formed and they want brands that match that perception. This is a crucial point because at a younger age, we want brands that define groups we hope to become part of.
When dealing with health and lifestyles it is better to target different aspects of life like retirement, spousal illness and being empty-nest. People don’t go through these phases at the same time, so don’t assume reality is the same for all.
Don’t put everybody under “mature audience”. Today’s 50 plus market lived in very different formative years. Some saw the WW II, others great changes in technology.

You cannot suffer from the same kind of myopia and overlook this segment. Welcome this segment and understand the consumer value they have and adapt some of your marketing strategies to attract this audience.

By Shahar Boyayan

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

What to Tweet about?

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 by The BuzzBooster Team!

Twitter can be used in two ways. One is to convey information, the other is to spark discussions.
Ideally, a timeline should contain a good mixture of both kinds of tweets.
Here are a few options used by companies:

Give tips on one specific topic
Customer support.
Feedback
Category/sector news
Company news that are interesting
Current events that impact company business or that you are promoting
Reports from the floor of events such as conferences
Special offers to Twitter followers (discounts, promotions, contests)
Don’t forget to use your imagination. Some companies are already using Twitter to take orders and suggesting different uses for their products, others have Twitter parties for specific groups.

“What not to tweet about?”
Just Tweet about things that could add value. .

“How much time will this take?”
Twitter is a qualitative, rather than quantitative, brand channel. It’s a great tool to build dialogue, engender trust, establish brand loyalty, and to raise awareness.
Try to spend 2 to 4 hours a week on Twitter.

If you think it is too much, reallocate some of your time and effort away from older techniques and try the new. You’ll have fun, learn a lot and will be able to demonstrate new expertise and innovative marketing approaches.

“What is proper Twetiquette?”
Stay positive. It’s easy to get snarky, easy to scoff.
Thank people who follow you with a Direct Message. Twitter allows you to send private messages (called “Direct Messages” or DMs) to individual users. Rather than publicly replying, send a DM saying thank you.
If someone asks you a question, respond via DM. If your response would benefit a number of followers, reply publicly.
If it makes sense, thank those who retweet your tweets. If you see “RT @yourname” in your Replies, it means someone has found your tweet valuable enough to share with their own followers.
There is some debate about automatically following those who follow you. Some think it’s only fair to follow those who follow you, as a sign of mutual respect. Others only follow interesting Twitterers, regardless of whether or not they follow you.

What is the first step?

Open a Twitter account, start following some people and listen to the conversation. You will soon get the feel and the addicting bug!

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »