The Customer Factory

Are Daily Deals a Good Idea for My Business?

Daily Deal sites can be a very powerful marketing medium for some businesses.

They can also be an utter disaster if the merchant hasn’t fully thought through his strategy and tactics for handling the rush and converting the maximum number of one-time customers into long-term clients; sources of ongoing repeat and referral business.

This video gives a fascinating insight into the experiences of three business owners.

Site Built for Fred’s Best by The Customer Factory Includes Mobile Optimized Landing Page

Fred’s Best Windows, Doors & Siding is a Vienna, Virginia-based home improvement company. When the firm commissioned The Customer Factory to build their new web site, they were looking for three things:

1. An attractive online brochure for their company
2. The ability to show their work online
3. A mechanism for generating new leads from the Internet

Well, they got all those things and a great deal more.

The site presents the company as the professional organization that it is and features their three primary lines of work: window replacement; door replacement including front doors, garage doors and French doors, and vinyl siding installation.

There is also a Recent Projects section where Fred can show examples of real projects they are completing every day in the area.

And finally, every page on the site encourages the visitor to ask Fred their most compelling home improvement question to get free advice from an expert.

This lead generation functionality has resulted in many thousands of dollars in sales.

One unexpected benefit Fred received by working with The Customer Factory was the mobile-optimized landing page which is presented to visitors who have come to the web site via their smart phone.

The mobile-optimized page presents the company’s name, tag line, logo and two prominent buttons Call Us and Directions which allow mobile prospective clients to connect with the company instantly from anywhere.

This mobile home page displays correctly on both iPhones and Android devices and is included at no extra charge with every web site The Customer Factory builds.

The Customer Factory Creates Mobile SMS Text Campaign for Jake’s Cigar Bar & Lounge

Bars and restaurants benefit in a variety of ways by engaging with their customers on their mobile phones. In this case Jake’s Cigar Bar & Lounge wanted to gather their customers’ mobile numbers in order to send them special offers and announce upcoming events via text message.

Unlike email marketing, where an average of under 20% of messages are opened over the course of 7-10 days, over 90% of text messages on average are opened within 30 minutes of receipt.

Using table tents, POS signage and Facebook posts, Jake’s is offering their clients a variety of incentives to become a member of Jake’s Mobile VIP Club. Customers simply text a short string of text like JAKES to 72727 for instant membership and their special offer.

Current sign-up incentives include $5 off the cocktail of your choice and bring a friend and get two cocktails for the price of one.

The back office functionality provided to Jake’s by The Customer Factory allows them to collect each customer’s mobile number and even segregate them into interest groups based upon what text string they typed in.

Then Jake’s sends out broadcast texts 2-3 month, notifying their Mobile VIPs of upcoming events and special Mobile-Only promotions on their wide variety of upscale liquors and cigars.

In addition to providing all the technology infrastructure to support this campaign, The Customer Factory also trained Jake’s management and staff in how to use and promote the program – and provided all the marketing collateral support including table tents, fliers and signage, creating a turn-key campaign that Jake’s could implement instantly.

How Free Can Mean Profitable in the Mobile Marketplace

Have you ever wondered why Google has put so much time, money and promotional effort into Android, the smart phone operating system that they give away for free?

Unlike Apple with its iPhone, Google doesn’t sell smart phone hardware, though they will, once their Motorola purchase closes. There is no way they can profit directly from the sale of Android-powered phones. So what’s all the fuss about?

The fuss has to do with the unique relationship we humans have with our smart phones. We love them. We interact with them constantly, texting, surfing, mailing, playing, paying, watching, listening and, occasionally, calling. When we’re not slobbering all over them we’re sure to always keep them close at hand – even when we’re asleep.

From a marketer’s perspective there has never been a medium like the smart phone to communicate your messages over.

Google wants you to have an Android phone so that you will connect all of your Google contacts, Gmail, Google+ friends and any other Google solution you use regularly. Once all of those connections have been made in your most treasured possession, Google has you right where they want you. They also now know where you are and a little bit about what you’re up to.

Combined with what they know about your search and surfing history, they are better able to deliver just the ads and offers you are most likely to respond to. That means more money for them and their advertisers.

So how does all this relate to you and your business? In short you need to follow Google’s lead and get on the mobile bandwagon.

The Mobile Marketplace
Your target market is on mobile. Some day in the next 3-6 months more Internet traffic will travel over mobile networks than over tethered ones. I could quote stat after stat about the rise of the mobile marketplace but just take my word for it: if you’re not accessible via mobile today you’re falling behind and if you’re still not there tomorrow you will be invisible.

Mobile offers you opportunities to connect and communicate with your target market in ways that have never been available before. You need to start learning all about it and creating promotional messages for your company that can easily be accessed and consumed via mobile.

For starters, there is over a 90% chance that your web site looks like crap on a smart phone. You need to get that fixed. Now.

Beyond that, having a mobile-optimized video brochure for your company is an absolute home run. It’s the equivalent of a 2:00 television commercial delivered directly to the nose of only the people most likely to buy from you, which they can watch whenever and as often as they like – and forward seamlessly to as many friends as they want.

SMS Marketing
Perhaps the stealth missile of the Mobile Marketplace is SMS or Text Message Marketing. Incentivizing prospects to text a keyword (like FREEFOOD) to a shortcode (like 72727) allows you to gather their telephone numbers, segment them into special interest groups, and then send them infrequent, short promotional messages related to that special interest going forward. I will devote an entire article to this concept soon but let me give you a couple of quick stats to support the power of this medium. Average broadcast email open rates are less than 20% over the course of 7-10 days. Average text open rates exceed 90% and generally occur in less than 30 minutes.

Why do you think American Idol has been using this technique for over 10 years?

Let me return to the bottom line: You need to get on the Mobile Marketing bandwagon sooner rather than later. Start learning and getting comfortable with the whole concept now so you’ll be prepared to act as soon as possible.

Give us a call at 703-348-7390 with any questions on how to implement a Mobile Marketing strategy for your company.

Web Sites Are Now Free For Virginia Businesses

If you still don’t have web site for your Virginia-based business, today is your lucky day.

Google and a variety of government agencies and trade groups have partnered to give you a free web site, free domain name and one year’s free site hosting.

According to Google…

“Virginia Get Your Business Online is a Google-led program dedicated to driving economic growth by providing Virginia businesses the tools and resources to get online and succeed.”

While it is true that getting more businesses on the web should help overall economic activity, Google’s motives are not entirely altruistic. The benefit to them is getting more AdWords advertisers onto their system.

Whatever their motives, this is a good deal for every local company that has been meaning to get their company on the web for years.

Every business owner can benefit from a strong set of sales skills but very few have them.

In this workshop I combine my 30+ years as an entrepreneur and sales professional to teach business owners how to think, act and close like a professional salesperson.

Drawing from lessons outlined in my 2004 book, The Greatest Job You Never Thought Of, I explain how, in spite of my many years as the owner of a successful business, I never really learned what sales was all about until I was forced to succeed as a commission-only salesman for a home improvement company.

That company provided extensive sales training and showed me how a sales-focused organization operates. They also gave me the opportunity to earn as much as $20,000 per month if I was willing to work for it.

In this workshop I dispel some myths and communicate some truths about sales while also sharing real, actionable information that any business owner can use to increase their company’s sales almost immediately.

I first presented this workshop yesterday at Connect113 in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, where it was very well received. If you’d like to have me present it to your business group, please give me a call at 703-348-7390.

Consulting Firm Helps Professional Services Firms Grow and Prosper

I recently had the opportunity to interview Peter Baldwin of MarketForce Strategies on Radio Free Enterprise.

We spoke about a wide variety of things including how he helps professional services firms ranging from lawyers and accountants to graphic artists grow and prosper using some basic blocking and tackling techniques they may have lost sight of as they were running their businesses.

Perhaps the most important thing MarketForce Strategies does is help owners and partners to delineate their own personal goals and make sure that their business is supporting those goals instead of interfering with them.

Give a listen and see what you think of what Peter has to say.

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Is It Time For Your Home-Based Business To Run Away From Home?

In this excerpt from Radio Free Enterprise you’ll hear from Billy Winburn, Co-Founder of Connect113, a coworking facility in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia.

Billy and I discuss a wide range of topics that should be of interest to any home-based business owner who’s feeling a little cramped by trying to run a home and a business out of the same building. Not only are your kids, pets and spouse driving you crazy with their constant interruptions, you’re also driving them crazy by working so hard to ignore them.

You probably think you can’t afford something like Connect113, but when you look at what you’re already spending everyday and all the benefits you’ll get, you’ll begin to wonder why you haven’t done something like this sooner.

Give a listen and see what you think.

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Don’t have Flash? Download the mp3 of this interview by clicking on this link.

I have been posting video programming on the web since long before You Tube was a gleam in Google’s eye. Why? Because I believe that moving pictures and sound represent the very best way to tell a story.

When You Tube came on the scene they changed the entire game by offering free hosting, removing the question of what file format to post or what download speed to optimize for, and offering the ability for anyone to embed a video on their site without either having to produce it, post it or host it.

If you never had to deal with any of those issues in the pre-You Tube era you don’t understand what a revolution and a revelation You Tube was. Today, from a small business marketing standpoint, the wonder of You Tube is how many people watch it.

The video below describes how one inventor has used You Tube to sell over one million units of his tongue brush. That’s right; tongue brush.

If You Tube can help him sell a million tongue brushes, what might it do for you? Give me a call. I have some ideas for you.

Sinclair Engineering Company in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida Engages The Customer Factory To Create Web Presence

This professional engineering company has been in business since 1989 but only recently decide to present themselves on the web through a web site design and deployed by The Customer Factory.

Built using the WordPress platform and the Small Biz Theme from Expand2Web for maximum search engine optimization, the site has a built-in blogging capability and describes the four categories of engineering services that Sinclair Engineering Company offers:

1. Residential – for homeowners and residential real estate investors
2. Commercial – for current or prospective owners of or investors in office buildings, warehouses or shopping centers
3. Governmental – for state, local and federal owners and managers of properties of all kinds
4. Forensic – for the legal and insurance professions

Especially interesting is Sinclair’s Forensic Engineering services where they examine a property that has been damaged by storm, fire or accident and determine if there were any existent underlying design or construction flaws and what will be required to repair or rebuild the structure and bring back up to code.

As with every site they build, The Customer Factory installed Google Analytics tracking code on the Sinclair site and also created a mobile-optimized site designed for easy viewing and interaction via smart phones such as iPhones and Android phones.

To visit the new Sinclair Engineering Company web site, click the graphic above or this link.