Month: October 2013

Psychological Marketing Analytics and Decision Making

October 10, 2013

When it comes to business, you can’t only look at the numbers, technology and process. You have to look at your audience as well. You are marketing to the people and the best way to go through this process is to understand their mind and how they are thinking. By analyzing the psychological aspect of decision making, businesses can understand marketing to their customers from another spectrum.

Don’t just use statistics to capture your audience. Create a story for them to relate to, which is much more convincing. It gives more life and meaning to what you are trying to convey to the people. By bringing the data to life, people can see how this information is used and how relevant it is to them. Numbers are just what people can see, but stories give a background and emotionally connect with your audience. This connection makes you memorable and is more convincing that raw data itself.

Present the minimum amount of data needed to make a decision. You have to give people enough information to convince them that your product or service is worth it, but you don’t want to give them everything. By giving the correct amount of push they need to reach out to you, you are creating the best call-to-action tactic. This goes hand-in-hand with inbound marketing as customers are reaching out to you for more information rather than you massively advertising and asking people to use your product or services.

Use the customer’s voice. By presenting customer feedback including reviews, testimonials and past experiences with the product, you bring life to what you have to offer. If you show examples from the past to your audience, they are more likely to take action. It’s harder for a company to convince people to partake in something, but when you see others that are on the same side as you participate and have success, you are more likely to do so as well in hopes that you will achieve the same result.

Push choices instead of stating absolute recommendations. When people see that they have choices, they feel more in power. It makes people think that you are personally catering to them rather than being shoved into a general direction by a business itself. You need to understand that people don’t like to be told what to do and this includes “absolute recommendations.” This method also make it easier for people to accept the data that you are throwing at them as they are brought into the process of becoming a lead or customer.

Businesses need to understand that they are dealing with people. People are emotional and indecisive. If you understand the psychological aspect of marketing, you can pretty much sell what you have to offer to anyone. Statistics are important to add on to your case but the supportive stories behind them are what makes them stand out among others. People don’t just believe what they hear, but rather what they have seen you do in the past. It helps to give them an idea of what is coming for them in the future. Along with that, if people can make their own choices, they will feel more willing to participate if they can dictate their own future with your business as well.

Push Notifications Mistakes for Mobile Marketing

October 9, 2013

You know those pop ups that take over your phone screen? Those are push notifications and anyone with a smartphone knows what those are. Though they are a great marketing tool for business, you have to be careful about what you send through push notifications. These pop ups are just like those you find on your computer when you are happily browsing the web and sometimes, they can get really annoying. Here are some mobile mistakes to avoid when it comes to push notifications:

1. Not asking for the user’s preference is a big problem. Some people like hearing everything there is about an app while others like to only hear the ones that are geared towards them. With apps like ESPN Scorecenter and Yahoo! Fantasy, people really only care about their own teams and players along with those they are versing. Therefore, you need a preferences section for your app so that they only get notified of the things they are interested in and not bothered by the rest. It’s important to see the behavior of your customer so that they stick with your app and product. If you annoy them too much, they will delete the app and you are left with one less customer. By giving the people what they want from your app, you will make happy customers that can in turn tell advertise to others about your wonderful app capabilities.

2. Do not spam your users! People have their smartphones on them wherever they go and they don’t want you to continuously advertise to them all day long. Give them only the important news. By giving them constant updates throughout the entire day, you will annoy your customer and they will most likely turn off the push notifications for your app or just end up deleting the entire app as a whole. Push notifications is a privilege and should not be overused.

3. Timing can make you or break you. If there is some emergency, you can send a push notification in the dead of night. Other than that, wait for an appropriate time to deliver your message. How would you feel if someone sent you a promotional notification at 4am, when you have to wake up at 6am to get ready for work the next day? If you would be pissed, your customer would be too. Make sure you understand the impact timing has on your customer or they will no longer be your customer. Another aspect of timing is that if it is important news, it should be timely. Don’t send a push notification about something that happened earlier that day. I’m sure they have read about it already somewhere else.

4. Only appropriate messages please! This is basic marketing but some businesses still don’t get it. You need to understand the demographic of your audience. If you don’t, then you will send the wrong messages. Research and understanding is very important when marketing to people. You don’t want to piss off your audience like the My Pet app did when they practically cyber bullied a child with their notifications.

Push notifications are a great way to get the attention of those who already opted into your services. You understand that these customers already are interested in what you have to offer. Now all you have to do is keep them happy so they remain your loyal customers. However, it’s understandable that when you have too much of a good thing it can get overwhelming. These are some common mistakes businesses have made in the past and I hope that you do enough research to prevent any of these big mistakes from happening to you.

VWM Rebrands SOS Chefs E-Commerce Platform

October 8, 2013

SOS Chefs is a store that provides chefs with the highest quality of foods and spices. This luxury store located in the Lower East Side has catered to many well-known and prominent chefs throughout New York City. As a distinguished store, SOS Chefs understood their presence to the public should reflect upon their outstanding products and services and because of this, they turned to Van West Media to do the job.

With a highly-experienced branding background, Van West Media understood how to rebrand SOS Chefs to reflect their essence as a business. By using the craft paper-like texture and natural colors throughout their branding, SOS Chefs products have a high-quality look that viewers will have confidence purchasing from. The playful typefaces also give way to the idea that the brand is “by the people, for the people.” It makes the viewers see that they are “authentic,” which also adds to the natural aspect of the ingredients. The branding included the logo, product labels, business cards, letterheads, envelopes and the website itself.

Along with the re-branding of the site, we are working on developing the website as an e-commerce site. With their growing customer base, SOS Chefs needed a way for people to purchase their products online to cater to all of their needs. Van West Media understands the necessary requirements of an e-commerce site with an easily editable backend for the store products and services as well as an easily navigable website for the customers. The SOS Chefs e-commerce website will also consist of important SEO keywords throughout so that products can easily be searched for from search engines as well. This gives customers the ability to find the products they need from SOS Chefs even when they aren’t on the site itself.

The launch of SOS Chefs is going to be a proud one for Van West Media as the impeccable branding and e-commerce will greatly impact the business. We can’t wait to see all of the advantages we made for SOS Chefs come to life as their store grows both on and off the web with out help.

For more information on how we can help you with branding, e-commerce or any of your digital marketing needs, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We would love to help your business grow as well.

Marketing with your Wikipedia Profile

October 7, 2013

“If it’s not on Wikipedia, then it doesn’t exist!” Many people believe this because Wikipedia has more traffic than Twitter, LinkedIn and almost all other forms of social media. When people use search engines like Google and Bing, about 60% of the results on the first page come from Wikipedia. This makes it viable to participate in the Wikipedia network for your business if you really want to make a presence to readers on the web.

Since Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, the contents within their database must be supported by valid sources. Therefore when your company is on Wikipedia, your credibility for your readers will increase as well as your visibility. What adds to this credibility are the Wikipedia eligibility requirements with many policies and guidelines for their encyclopedic content. As the largest website reference source, Wikipedia understands the necessity of having accurate information that viewers can depend on when researching things on the web.

Although other social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn connect many companies with their audience, some information that is given may be skewed in their favor or just false. This gives viewers a disadvantage as they trust the business and can be screwed over in the end. Wikipedia is constantly watched by experts and false information is removed almost immediately. Most articles on Wikipedia are results from hundreds of edits submitted by many contributors over time. With a Wikipedia article for your business, there is no doubt that what you present to your audience is incorrect and your credibility will be greatly increased and lead you to a better relationship with the people.

“Gotta-Open-This-Email” Subject Lines

October 3, 2013

In digital marketing, there is a lot of competition and judgments are quickly made. You need to have a great impression for people to participate in what you have to offer, especially when it comes to emails. Email marketing starts with the subject line. It’s what the people see, regardless of whether or not they even want to. The emails fall into their inbox and the subject lines are what makes them decide to open them or not. Here are some tips to help you:

 

1. Keep it simple. 50 characters or less is all you need to convince people that you are good enough. You don’t want to give them too much. Give them a taste of what you have so that they have reason to open the email to find out more.

2. Be honest with your offers. If you offer something in your subject line and then the offer changes when they open the e-mail or reach out to you, your credentials go down the drain. You want to show your credibility and deliver what you said you would. If you don’t, the spam folder is where the rest of your emails will end up.

3. Give them some action. If you use terms that give a time restraint, people will feel like they will miss out if they don’t jump on this opportunity. Engagement will definitely increase with “limited time offers” but action verbs in general will make people react. Terms like “Take,” “Order,” Sign up” or “Register” tell your viewers what you want from them with the information you are providing. By leading the way, more people will know what to do from your email.

4. Personalize it. If you just have a bland and mundane subject line, people will look past your offer because it’s boring or may seem irrelevant. Make your subject line interesting so that people will be like “Wow, that sounds cool” and click it. If you use an uninteresting choice of words, your email will come across as boring and you won’t reach your potential click-through rates.

Email marketing is tricky but can be successful if you do it right. You know that subject lines are inevitably seen because how else will people know what that email is about. People check their emails daily, giving you a chance to capture their interest daily. Make the perfect subject line so that you will get the clicks you want from your potential customers.

Don’t fall behind in your marketing and let us help you with your email marketing needs!

Multi-Screen Marketing Advantages

October 2, 2013

When was the last time you were able to concentrate on one device? Think about it. Even when you were practically having a heart attack while watching the Breaking Bad finale, you were on your smartphone tweeting or on your laptop creating some intriguing social media status about it.

Multi-screen Marketing by Google

We live in a generation that is easily distracted, which makes it harder for businesses to market towards. Therefore, we need to attract customers from all angles including all the screens they are using. By marketing through smart phones and tablets, the likelihood of a customer purchasing your product or services increases greatly.

A recent Multi-Screen Marketer report found that from those who were surveyed with just a television and computer, 52% report that it’s somewhat or very likely that they’re using another device while watching television. With each screen added to the mix, that percentage rises: 60% of smartphone users (three screens) and 65% of tablet owners (four screens) say that multi-device use is the norm while watching TV.

‘Meshing’ is the concurrent use of digital channels in relation to what you are watching on television while media ‘stacking’ is the use of digital channels for a different purpose in conjunction with TV viewing. It’s important to analyze this to see how you can affect your potential customers while marketing to them. It lets you know if it’s necessary to place ads that relate to what your viewer is watching or not. Sometimes leading them astray to your product or service, which has nothing to do with what they are currently partaking in, is the best bet to get their attention.

‘Meshing’ is very common amongst 16-24 year olds. Studies show that 32% of 16-24 year olds compared to 17% of adults aged over 25 are more than twice as likely to partake in social network during a TV programme, whether through their mobile device or on their computers. This is because this generation is very technology oriented and is also connected like no other. Marketeers need to take advantage of this and jump into the fold of advertising from every device possible to have the biggest reach.

Responsive design for websites and ads from all different sources make the biggest difference in this day and age. People are looking at so many different outlets through a variety of devices. If you don’t adjust to the marketing opportunities from this, you are missing out on so much potential.