Author Archives: Rich Brooks

How Social Media Saved the Saco Drive-In

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Ry RussellThe Saco Drive-In was at risk of going out of business. New movies were being released in digital format, requiring a nearly $100,000 investment in a digital projector.

However, Honda’s Project Drive-In was going to provide the needed projectors to five drive-ins around the country. Ry Russell, one of the owners of the Saco Drive-In went to work, leveraging social media to get the word out.

Hear how he used social media to save New England’s oldest drive-in in this episode of The Marketing Agents Podcast.

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Big Ideas:

  • To save the Saco Drive-In, Ry needed to win a popularity contest by leveraging social media.
  • Honda was donating 5 digital projectors to drive-ins across country with contest.
  • The Saco Drive-In had 19,000 fans on Facebook, but the competition could pull from a bigger population compared to Saco, Maine.
  • In 4 weeks, the drive-in added 8,000 fans. The also alerted people through a regular dose of reminder posts, calls to votes, and asked people to just share the message to save New England’s oldest drive-in.
  • Ry also gave away free drive-in schwag, and added 250-500 shares per post. Each post reached 35-85k people!
  • To build up the fan base and list quickly, Ry spent $20-$40 on promoted posts on Facebook. Those promoted posts showed up in fans’ news feeds. It’s critical to get into the news feed, and spending money to get there was required.
  • When thinking of ads, promote your message and think of the Facebook news feed. It’s easy for fans to click “like” or share message. The drive-in asked people to share and contribute to “making history.” Shares skyrocketed because of this approach.
  • Many Facebook users see promotions as just part of regular news feed without standing out or being pushy.
  • Ry had to make it easy for people to access info for campaign. Got new website up and running and drove traffic with social media chatter. Had a sales page that encouraged a “partner” status for fans. They also mixed online with offline strategies.
  • Every marketing strategy should build commitment and open dialogue with fans/customer base.

Juicy Links:

Rich Brooks
I Want to Hear Your Success Story!

How Content Marketing Gives You an Unfair Advantage

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Joe PulizziWe’re constantly competing for our ideal customers’ attention, so the idea of marketing less to sell more might seem, well, crazy.

It may seem even more crazy, coming from content marketing evangelist, Joe Pulizzi. After all, his entire business is built on the idea of creating content.

He runs the Content Marketing Institute. He is the founder of Content Marketing World, the largest content marketing event on the planet. The first two books he co-authored were called “Get Content Get Customers” and “Managing Content Marketing.” He followed that up with his newest book, “Epic Content Marketing.” 

He even has a tattoo of content marketing somewhere on his body.*

So if you’ve got a question on content, it’s best to start with Joe. Which is why I asked him to join us on this week’s episode of The Marketing Agents Podcast.

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Big Ideas:

  • Create an emotional connection with your customers. Do this by creating compelling, relevant content that helps them solve a problem or live a better life.
  • Sell more by marketing less. Most marketing info is about “us” as a business. Instead, create a content strategy that starts with the customer and their problem that needs solving.
  • Think like a publisher and less like a business. Instead of constantly pitching yourself, position yourself as the go-to resource for your customer.
  • Find and focus on your niche. Talk to your customers to find out what their problems are. Narrow your focus on your audience. Who are they? Focus on one persona. Use Google Trends to go small with your niche. The more in-depth and niche-focused you are, the faster you will grow and reach your audience.
  • Create a marketing mission statement. 93% of businesses do content marketing, but few have a strategy. Who are you talking to? What are you going to deliver? Everything has to be useful. What is the outcome for your audience? Understanding this helps you focus on your customer and creating better content.
  • Own your content platform. Don’t put all your content on a platform you down own (Facebook, for example.) Own your own database. Blogs are great for a subscription strategy approach. Use social channels to distribute content.
  • Use SEO for market research. Use 50 top keywords and compare to customer pain points. Incorporate these words into your posts and topics. Search for expertise if you don’t have it.
  • Consider mobile. Your content must be digestible on mobile devices. Make sure it’s readable. 
  • Don’t have time? Make it. If you don’t put attention on content marketing, opportunities will pass you by. Consistent, compelling content is very important to your success. It warrants your time. Content marketing done right has a long shelf life.
  • Don’t produce too much content. Focus on a channel or niche that you can truly be great at. Start with a simple strategy and move forward from that. 
  • Outsource as necessary. Don’t have the inhouse talent to create compelling stories? Look at industry trade magazines and look for freelance journalists and writers. Turn content into a compelling story with editorial pros. 

 Juicy Links:

Rich Brooks
Content Marketer

* Totally not true.

Real Life Success Stories: David Pride of “I Love Christmas”

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David A. PrideHow do you build a community on Facebook? 

In a new feature on The Marketing Agents Podcast, we’re gathering “real life” success stories from some of our listeners. (And non-listeners, too; we’re not going to discriminate.)

The idea came about when my friend David Pride approached me at a Social Media Breakfast here in Maine to share with me some success he had building a community around his Facebook page for I Love Christmas.

I don’t know about you, but I get very inspired by hearing about other people’s success using search, social or mobile marketing to reach their audience, engage their fans and generate more leads and revenue. (Makes me think I can do it, too!)

By the way, if you’ve got your own success story about how YOU used search, social or mobile to help accomplish your business goals, we’d love to hear it.

Head on over to our Success Stories form and let us know your story. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the next success story we feature on The Marketing Agents Podcast!

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Big Ideas:

  • Pick a subject you’re passionate about. David loves Christmas, so creating regular content about the topic is easy for him.
  • Create a community. Engage your audience with ongoing, regular content and get them to like, commend on, and share that content.
  • Turbocharge your page with advertising. You don’t have to spend much; David spends about $75/month in Facebook ads and quickly grew to 2,300 fans. (When I checked today he was up to 3,337!) That’s some great ROI.
  • Ask your community what’s OK. Whether it was a newsletter or an Amazon affiliate program, David asked permission first.

Juicy Links:

Rich Brooks
What’s Your Success Story?

Pinterest for Business with Cynthia Sanchez

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Cynthia Sanchez: Pinterest for BusinessPinterest is the 2nd biggest driver of social traffic, and it’s users are more likely to buy and to spend more money per transaction.

Even if you’re not selling product from your website, Pinterest’s interests continue to expand, with plenty of service, marketing, and B2B companies joining the channel.

But maybe you’ve been hesitant to get involved. “Not another social media site,” you think. Or maybe you just don’t understand the landscape and how to get started. Or you feel that your business wouldn’t be a good fit for Pinterest because of your target audience.

In this week’s episode we have Cynthia Sanchez of Oh So Pinteresting who is going to share with us how any business can get started and build a following on Pinterest. She’s got some sound advice for beginners and some expert tips for those of you who are already making use of this powerful channel.

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Big Ideas:

  • No pinner is an island. Pin (share) other peoples images to become part of the bigger Pinterest community, which increases the chances they’ll pin your content. Lowe’s is a good example. They don’t pin Home Depot’s stuff, but do pin home projects from DIY bloggers.
  • Repinning raises your profile. When you repin, the original pinner gets an email, which helps promote your name and brand to them.
  • There’s no one size fits all on the time you need to invest. Don’t be too rigid on how much time each day should be included. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. Spread out your pins, don’t do pinning marathons. 
  • Create pinnable images. Use tall photos to get your content pinned more often. 300 wide, 450 tall works best for Cynthia. Even if you don’t want to be pinning yourself, creating pinnable images and adding a “pin this” button can help deliver more qualified traffic.
  • Search within Pinterest can help drive traffic. While you’re dealing with the stream similar to twitter, it also relies heavily on search. That means you should give your image file names keyword rich names (i.e., grilled-lobster.jpg and not IMG_4523.jpg.) Use hashtags and keywords in your description, too.
  • Pinterest can help with search, too. “Google and Pinterest are dating.” Pin boards can rank well in Google searches, so make sure you’re creating boards that focus on your core products and services that you want to rank well for.
  • Use Pinterest contests to build your list. New rules limit what you can do. Incentivize your contests with prizes that would only attract your target audience. (Not an iPad, for instance, which would attract everyone, not just your target audience.)
  • Be purposeful with your boards. You need to tie your boards into your business. Don’t just throw up a recipes board if it doesn’t fit with your brand.

Juicy Links:

  • Tailwind (formerly Pinly): Lots of great information on who’s pinning and sharing your content.
  • Canva: A simple graphic design tool for creating pinnable images.
  • PicMonkey: Online image editor for creating great, pinnable images.
  • Oh So Pinteresting: Cynthia’s blog & podcast about everything Pinterest!
  • Cynthia Pins: Cynthia’s boards on Pinterest.
  • The Marketing Agents’ Pins: Don’t make fun…we’re just getting started.
  • The Marketing Agents Podcast: Subscribe, rate & review. Please take a moment to let me know what we’re doing right and what we can do to improve. Thanks!

Rich Brooks
Amateur Pinner

Social Media Sales & ROI with Jason Falls

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Jason FallsPeople have said since the beginning of time that you can’t sell in social media, and you can’t measure your results.

Seriously, just check Egyptian hieroglyphics if you don’t believe me.

Thankfully, Jason Falls is here to blow up these and other myths with stone cold facts. In this episode, the always entertaining Mr. Falls talks about how you can sell in social media (in a way sure to upset the purists), as well as how you can measure your activities to accurately figure out your ROI (return on investment.)

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Big Ideas:

  • Stop believing the hype in social media. Just because there’s an infographic that says podcasting is hot, or the talking heads say Quora will save your business, there’s no reason to buy into it. Take a look at the real numbers, and see how it works in YOUR industry. What works in general may be inappropriate for your business, and vice versa.
  • Find where your audience hangs out. You can take the anecdotal route, asking customers as they come into your brick and mortar store: “hey, you guys on the Twitter?” Or take a more methodical approach, with short surveys to your current client base.
  • Plan to measure correctly. Determine what you want to measure and figure out how to quantify it. You can track the ROI of social media and web marketing activity if you assign a value to each lead.
  • You can sell in social media…as long as you hit the relevancy target. (The guy selling seat warmers through his personal Facebook profile.)
  • Social media works for B2B. After all, it’s not buildings selling to each other, it’s people. 

Juicy Links:

  • The Marketing Agents Podcast: Subscribe, rate & review. Please take a moment to let me know what we’re doing right and what we can do to improve. Thanks!
  • Over: The mobile app that allows you to quickly add cool text to images for your social media posts.
  • Jason Falls: Here’s Jason’s official site. Looking for a digital strategist? Keynote speaker? Start here.
  • Social Media Explorer: Jason’s agency blog. Great content, so be sure to check it out.

Jason Falls Showing Off Over

 

Jason showing the viewing audience (of which there is one) the Over app.

Rich Brooks
Social Media Consultant