Finding Revenue Online

Remember that excitement in 2009 when Twitter and Facebook started to gain traction in the marketing space as the new answer to a highly competitive and congested marketplace? Well, years later, the biggest, loudest pundits to claim that every company had to have a social media presence or their company would fail, have started to shift their own marketing strategies. Here’s one agency owner’s opinion. Bob Hoffman, of Hoffman/Lewis, said in an interview on Digiday  “All I can tell you …

Increasing Personal Revenue

Did you ever have a lemonade stand, babysit, mow yards, or hold garage sales of your things when a child?  At an early age, most of us find that we want to find ways to make our own money that we can spend as we desire. We also learn that the ability to make money is dependent on certain factors like skill, talent, education, experience, and resources. It boils down to everyone is their own business, offering their talents, skill, …

Love This headline: The Death of Credit Cards

What? According to Motley Fool’s interesting presentation, the next game changer in payment systems is a replacement of the credit and debit card you carry in your wallet. They start with the advent of the Diner’s Club Card back in the early 1950’s. The ability to carry an electronic wallet on your phone is already available like Google’s Wallet. Three little letters, NFC, Near Field Communication, according to Barry McCarthy at First Data, is technology that will ultimately eliminate our …

Got a Plan? It Can Be a Gamechanger for You!

Once on a long flight back from a speaking engagement, I decided to write down all the things that I considered goals. When reviewing them, I realized the goals seemed empty. I found myself asking questions like why did I want to travel or why did I want a new home? There was no connection between my goals and a future achievement or a quality of life. It occurred to me that I had been conducting strategic planning sessions for …

QR Code – A Gamechanger for a Yearbook!

During a meeting with high school teacher and administrator for a client’s student branch, the teacher mentioned something that surprised me. He mentioned having videos in the yearbook. My client asked, “You put videos in a paper yearbook?” He nodded and said they had used QR codes to embed video links in last year’s book. Cool! They had taken a technology that was being used more for websites or special landing pages for promotion support and used it as a …

Three Ways to Make Sure Your Brand Survives

Consider these names: JC Penney, NY Times, Groupon, Sprint Nextel, Zynga, Dell, Advanced Micro Devices, and Bank of America. These large corporations include long-standing names as well as newer corporations that each had what seemed a meteoric rise. The author of this article on 24/7 Wall Street discusses the competitive edges that built initial successes of each company have been eroded or compromised by new competitors, a lack of differentiation, and failure to act in light of technology or other …

Catching Fraud – A Key Customer Contact

Just last week, an email alert from the bank where my rewards VISA® credit card is held stated a potential fraudulent transaction had been made on it. The first issue in my mind was if the email alert was real since so often phishers use copied logos and graphics to steal personal information. The second issue was to check with my husband to make sure there wasn’t an order that he might have done on the card from the out-of-state …

Target Marketing is More Work but Worth It

Creating marketing strategies and communications for smaller groups of your customers/members is demanding and time consuming. Actually, having multiple programs going on at once can be frenetic for the marketing department and confusing for front-line staff. Yet, there isn’t a better way to be more relevant to interest the most likely buyers of your products and services. For example, because we specialize in financial services, the first questions on any new promotions for our clients are: What is the goal …

Target with Special Online-Only Offers

For my Costco membership, I have the American Express credit card. For major holidays, I receive an email offer to get their AmEx gift cards for no additional fee. Having spent $4.95 or more for a service fee to get one at the grocery store, I consider that a great offer to a customer who has a relationship with AmEx online. How often have you signed up for an e-news or provided your email address to receive e-special offers and …

Find a Target Group of Influentials to Hang With

For your own personal brand, consider this fact – your next opportunity will come through someone you know or a personal connection. So, what are you doing to build the group of influential people for your career, for your friendships, for your love relationships, and more. Consider tracking back on one of your important career moves. Did someone in your network of acquaintances, friends, or family members tell you about the opportunity, refer you or give a reference? What about …