These 4 Billion-Dollar Companies Are Leaving the Competition In the Dust…

The customer is always right, right? Well, it all depends on what kind of experience customers have with your brand. Their experience will not only dictate how often they’ll complain, but how successful your company will be. Think of some of the biggest new brands – ones like Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon. All started within 15-20 years, but all have seen incredible success. Want to know why? Because they spent a lot of time and money making the customer experience the best it can be.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the free cheat sheet of tactics big brands use to create a personal experience, and software to do it on a budget.

Recently, taking the customer experience to the next level is possible through personalizing the content. It’s been an important cornerstone of successful marketing for some time now.

Think back to how this got done before the web. Companies were talking to customers, giving them surveys to try and find out as much as they could about them.

These days companies have a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips, and are embracing data to make it work for them. This article will explore how four companies (Amazon, Netflix, Google, and Best Buy) adapted over the past five years to see amazing growth, largely because of personalization.

 

Google

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

This company needs no introduction, and I bet you can already start to connect the dots on how they’ve managed to leverage personalization to great success. First, we need to take a step back and understand how Google makes its money. 89% of it comes from ad revenues, so for all intents and purposes, we’re only going to focus on that. So the question is, how do they leverage personalization to see the 66-billion-dollar revenue they pulled in last year.

 

Personalized Search

Google works best as a profile-based service, which means that to get the most out of it, you’ll need to sign into an account. From Gmail to YouTube, Google accounts work with a lot of services that people use regularly. Sure, you can still use it without signing in, but that is where the real personalization begins. This first point is pretty obvious. Depending on what you search for, and what your browsing history is, Google will serve you different sites.

Despite this fact, most people still don’t mind using it. By knowing what you’re searching for, they can offer products they think you’ll want to see. Yes, they are skewing the data. If you want a completely unbiased web search, consider using something like duckduckgo.com. Google is banking on a complex algorithm that takes sites you’ve visited and continues to show similar ones. If they know the type of sites you enjoy, why not show you more of the same?

 

Personalized Ads

This takes the first point to the next level and is made obviously clear after searching for a specific topic that you wouldn’t usually search. As an interesting experiment to illustrate this, I changed up my searches for a week. I love cars and do a lot of car-related searches. Understandably, most of my ads (when ad blocker was turned off) were for car-related products. I tried searching for something completely unrelated to cars: bird watching. Google noticed and then started showing me tranquil ads for bird watching equipment. Anyone can run this experiment, and it’s interesting to see how your search affects everything around you.

Though this may come off as creepy to some, it makes sense. If I am genuinely interested in all this bird watching stuff, maybe a company is offering a sale on those killer binoculars that I was looking for; so, I’ll click an ad, Google will get paid, and I’ll have some nice binoculars. Thanks, Google!

 

Personalized Videos

This last example is the natural progression from search and ad personalization. Since Google owns YouTube, it’s already happening. Depending on what you usually watch, it will curate your content to show you related videos.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the free cheat sheet of tactics big brands use to create a personal experience, and software to do it on a budget.

Though most, or all, of us, hate video ads, they know it’s a numbers game. Sure, you may close an ad every time, but 1 in 100 people might click it, and 1 in 1,000 might go on to buy the product. With these ads being served to millions of people every day, there is a lot of money to be made.

Google has mastered personalization to try and give you what you’re looking for before you even look, and the numbers speak for themselves. If this approach weren’t working, they wouldn’t be doing it.

Next, let’s look at everyone’s favorite streaming site: Netflix.

 

Netflix

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

“Netflix and chill,” may be a popular saying, but they are not chill about their dedication to providing you with shows you want to watch. Unlike Google, Netflix doesn’t make their money through ads, but through subscriptions, so their main focus is retention and keeping existing customers happy. They do this by filtering through their sea of available content to give you only what you want to watch.

Let’s look at how they’ve managed to leverage personalization to create a unique experience for all of their 81.5 million subscribers.

 

Recommendations

The “Recommended Shows” sections of Netflix aren’t new. In fact, they were working on improving their recommendation algorithm when they were still mailing out DVDs. Way back in 2006, they announced a $1 million prize to any team who could help improve their recommendation algorithm by just 10%. It’s clear they’re serious about constantly improving recommendations, and things have only gotten better for them since they made the jump to streaming in 2007.

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

Compared to a DVD watch list, instantly streaming content gave them a lot more data about people’s viewing habits. While they only had a list to work with in the past, now they can see what shows you watch, how much of each show you watch, what time you watch, and a lot more. This knowledge about your viewing habits helps them keep you engaged by ensuring you always have something new to watch.

 

Multiple Devices

Once Netflix made the jump to streaming, it opened up a whole new platform to reach new potential users. The thing is, not everyone’s the same, and different people prefer to watch movies or TV on different media. Netflix quickly understood this dilemma and saw the potential to have their service on different platforms. Rather than just being available through their site on a PC, they opened it up to Roku, Xbox, Apple TV and many others.

Netflix has one thing down: they are available to personalize content wherever and however their customers want it. From laptops, to phones, and even gaming consoles, Netflix is available wherever you want to use it.

 

Breaking The 4th Wall

The last piece of personalization that helps Netflix deliver a seamless customer experience is by now bringing recommendations right to your inbox. They knew people spent a lot of time just browsing for something to new watch, so now they help out by emailing suggestions directly to you. By using all of the data from your account, if a new show or movie that they think you’ll like comes out, they’ll let you know. You can even add it to your list from your phone!

Delivering useful content and recommendations is the type of omni channel personalization that has separated Netflix from the competition. They’re able to deliver a seamless experience from start to finish.

 

Amazon

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

You may have heard of this company. They used to sell books online, but are now the largest marketplace in the world, and are a perfect e-commerce example for how personalization helped them dominate the marketplace. As an e-commerce site, they make their money by selling products, and make even more money by recommending other items.

The motivation for recommendation is getting you to purchase more items. As the web grew, and more data points became available about their users, they were able to track more and more information, and make appropriate recommendations.

 

Frequently Bought Together

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

If you’ve ever used Amazon, you’ve seen this section, and it’s an ingenious piece of personalization. These recommendations are not serendipitous or a fluke. They are cold and calculated. Fortune describes it pretty well:

The company reported a 29% sales increase to $12.83 billion during its second fiscal quarter, up from $9.9 billion during the same time last year. A lot of that growth arguably has to do with the way Amazon has integrated recommendations into nearly every part of the purchasing process from product discovery to checkout.

Not only does this work, but they have multiple areas, each offering different suggestions: frequently bought together, customers who bought this item also bought, sponsored products relating to this item, and what other items do customers buy after viewing this item.

Those are four other suggestions to upsell and get you to buy more products. It’s no wonder why Amazon is the leader in the marketplace. This alone shows their understanding and value of customer data.

 

Follow Up Emails

If you’re running an e-commerce business, then you know that it’s a fact that a certain percentage of people will abandon their carts before purchasing. It doesn’t mean that they hate your brand or don’t want the product; life is complicated, and lots of things are vying for our attention.

With nearly 44% of cart abandonment emails being opened, a good percentage of those result in sales. This kind of personalization and customer experience isn’t hard to achieve, and any e-commerce business should be doing it. All it takes is a simple email with the items they left in the cart to try and rekindle the relationship and emotion felt in the first place.

 

Amazon Dash

This last product of Amazon’s takes personalization from the digital into the real world. If you’ve been following along, then you understand that people like to interact with brands on their terms, and that repeat business is key for a successful brand.

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

Amazon took their one-click checkout feature and made it into a real button. They realized that certain people would buy the same staples like Tide, Gatorade, or razors, so they made it even easier for you to buy them with one touch. Going from multiple steps to one press of a button is the next step in personalization and takes the customer experience to the next level. I’m excited to see what else they have up their sleeves.

Exclusive Bonus: Download the free cheat sheet of tactics big brands use to create a personal experience, and software to do it on a budget.

What Do Google, Netflix, Amazon, And Best Buy Have In Common NectarOM Omnichannel Personalization

Not mentioned in the title, but equally as interesting is Best Buy, and they’re the last example of how a brick-and-mortar company can also adapt to the online data revolution and go toe-to-toe with the best of them. Worldwide, they have a 22% hold in the electronics market and are trying to close the gap with Amazon. To do so, they’re implementing similar tactics as Amazon and capitalizing on the shift to personalization.

 

Catching Up With The Rest

If you’ve bought something at Best Buy recently, you’ll notice that they too are sending recommendation emails. If you bought an Xbox and they have your email address, you might get emails suggesting new game titles you might like.

Of course, Best Buy stores benefit from the ability to offer instant gratification, but they also separate themselves from other online retailers by offering store-exclusive content. That means if you preorder a game at Best Buy, you’ll get exclusive access to limited-edition content, not available to anyone else. With prices being pretty consistent for video games, offering the bonus of additional content is an interesting approach to helping close the gap with online retailers.

 

Price Match

Around 70% of Best Buy’s inventory is available cheaper elsewhere online (Amazon, eBay), so how do they still manage to compete? To combat this, they’ve implemented a pretty liberal price-match policy for brick-and-mortar as well as online retailers. This policy is a pretty bold statement and makes a strong case for those who prefer to buy all of their electronics at once to do it all at Best Buy. If online retailers can’t compete with price, then they’ll have to get creative to compete with Best Buy moving forward.

Personal Contact

Though brick-and-mortar can seem like an excessive overhead in our digital society, Best Buy uses it to leverage their “blue shirt” experts and staff, who give a real personal touch. This is something an online store just can’t do on the same level. Sure, they could have a pop-up live chat window, but it just can’t replace actual face-to-face, human contact. Their staff is well versed in what they’re selling (sometimes that’s because they are actually employees of the brands they are recommending, instead of being Best Buy employees), and can usually understand your concerns and make real-time recommendations.

Though large businesses are generally not known for their speed in implementing change, all of these companies have done a great job of using data to their advantage to keep things personal for their customers and deliver an amazing overall experience. And as far as it looks, the customers have returned the favor by staying loyal to them and purchasing time after time.

 

 

 

Marketers know mobile marketing is a critical component of any marketing strategy. Consumers cannot live without their smartphone and mobile device’s have become an integral part of consumer’s daily life.

 

Despite knowing the inherent impact of mobile, many brands are struggling to create and implement an effective mobile strategy. Yesterday’s American Marketing Association (AMA) meeting helped marketers better understand how to outsmart the smartphone and optimize their mobile marketing strategy.

 

Experts Scott Talbott from Verve Mobile, John Nosal from Advice Local, Abhi Vyas from Dex Media, and Bryon Morrison from NectarOM, sat down and shared how your brand can outsmart the smartphone.

 

Dallas AMA Mobile Marketing Panel

 

Here are a few highlights from the panel discussion.

 

Consider the Omni Channel Experience  

In addition to the 40 or so apps on your phone you also have the option to do email, send SMS, browse the web, post on social media, and receive push notifications. Smartphones have put 6 channels into one device along with more than 100 sensors, making it more important for marketers to think about the omni channel experience the device creates. Traditionally brands have siloed channels, creating a disconnected experience for the customer. Mobile is forcing marketers to break down silos and unify their efforts. Bryon Morrison suggested the consumer needs to be the center of the customer journey, not the channels. He continued, “If you understand the individual and their motivations then the mobile device is the most important marketing tool, because it packages all the channels in one device along with movement.

 

Target the Right Person at the Right Place and at the Right Time with the Right Message

From a location perspective mobile unlocks an interesting opportunity for marketers: location based marketing.  Customers are starting to expect brands to tailor content to their location, and are more likely to convert when content is customized to their location. Brands leading with location by utilizing location based advertising or managing their local presence will be more likely to convert mobile customers.  John Nosal believed that brands who focus on the mobile experience will win more customers.

 

61% of smartphone users are more likely to buy from mobile sites and apps that customize information to their location.”

 

Get in the Game

When asked who is doing a great job in mobile, Morrison replied, “The ones in the game that are testing and failing fast.” He cited specific examples of early innovators that are now experiencing great success with mobile – eBay and their multi-app strategy were the first to post a billion in mobile sales; Walgreens gets 6x more revenue from customers that download their app; Walmart attained a 2% increase in conversions by shaving 4.3 seconds off their page download time.

Nosal responded that Starbucks was a leader in the mobile experience citing the ability to order and pay for coffee through their app.  He also mentioned grocery stores like Tom Thumb (parent company, Albertsons) are leading the way, mentioning ability to build grocery lists through scanning barcodes with the app and use of push notifications to notify consumers of deals.

 

Know the Metrics that Matter

Don’t get caught up in the funnel metrics.  Keep it simple and make sure that your KPIs link to mobile moments that matter like conversions and sales. Scott Talbott gave an example of automobile marketers getting too caught up in desktop web funnel metrics while missing out on the opportunity to reach prospects while they are physically standing on a dealership lot. Morrison also shared an example of a client that spent an immense amount of energy on app optimization, as opposed to growing their SMS channel which was delivering in-store mobile coupon conversions between 25%-45%.

 

Get to Know Your Customers   

Brands know it is important for them to understand their customer and Abhi Vyas mentioned 81% of them think they are doing a good job. However, only 37% of customers think their favorite retailer understands them. The panel agreed this was a function of marketing departments, as opposed to mobile marketing. As an example, Morrison mentioned that marketing departments are often set up to launch and manage channels which is time consuming and laborious. That creates silos and makes cross channel marketing a challenge.  If organizations focused on profiles and used a personalization platform then their ability to integrate a new channel would be much faster, easier and cost effective. That approach would also allow a brand to innovate faster which is currently being outpaced by consumer sophistication levels and expectations.

Talbott proposed one way companies could better market is by focusing on context, stating that “content is now secondary to context.” He also mentioned that mobile location matched against 1-to-1 knowledge of a customer is the best way a marketer can get to an understanding of intent.

 

If you are interested in learning how you can better deliver the right message, at the right time, to the right person let us know and schedule a demo to see the NectarSuite in action.

Omnichannel Today – Black Friday Edition

Happy Thanksgiving from NectarOM! As we gear up for the eCommerce holidays of Black Friday and Cyber Monday these are the latest news articles we’ve been paying attention to:

JC Penney’s Retail Reinvention

Unlike Nordstrom’s and Macy’s, JCP is on course to exceed holiday expectations during a season where eCommerce and digital platforms are taking away business from retail. The secret, as CEO Marvin Ellison puts it, is finding the balance between the “art” and “science” of retail. JC Penney is taking a completely different approach to their in-store experience, developing attractive new features such as store-within-a-store kiosks for both younger shoppers and the upcoming cohort Millennial-age parents. Next up for the department store? Focusing on the science side of things by making improvements to their eCommerce, supply chain, and data processing abilities.

Amazon’s ingenious scheme to undermine Black Friday

Black Friday and its younger sibling Cyber Monday are a major source of income for the retail industry every year. Since this last Friday, web giant Amazon has taken advantage of the holiday shopping fervor to entice customers with constantly updated deals and featured items, hoping to sway buyers that won’t miss the authentic “Black Friday Experience” of elbowing through crowded stores. That said, certain stores such as Best Buy and Target have responded to Amazon by making their in-store discounts apply to their eCommerce platforms as well.

Facebook Says Nearly One Third of Online Shopping Transactions Are On Mobile Devices

New data from Facebook suggests that its users are becoming much more comfortable with using mobile devices to shop and make purchases. The social media titan expects a 30% increase in the percentage of users who buy on mobile by the end of the fourth quarter. Facebook researchers also observed that about 45% of all shopping occasions involve mobile devices in some fashion, such as during product research that results in a purchase on a desktop.

Retail enters third phase of digital evolution: ‘Emotional’ eCommerce

A new article from the Financial Times discusses how modern shoppers expect brands to develop a relationship with them over social media and other digital platforms. The thought leaders interviewed point to the success of apps like Instagram, Etsy, and Olapic, who offer businesses the ability to showcase their “human side” to potential customers by using memes, shareable posts, and conversation starters to promote fan engagement over social media.

Other stuff we read this week:

How James Murdoch thinks the ad industry should innovate: ‘Empower the Consumer.’
Here’s how advertisers will be able to target TV viewers who see competitors’ ads
Goodbye privacy, hello ‘Alexa’: Amazon Echo, the home robot who hears it all
Volvo Wants to Use Microsoft’s Sci-Fi Glasses to Sell Cars

Check back next time for the latest developments in omnichannel! We’ll bring you news, facts, opinions, and infographics that will help you gain a broad perspective of the industry. Drop in, stick around, and subscribe to our newsletter – and who knows? You just might learn something.

The Omnichannel News Roundup: Week of November 2, 2015

Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading this week:

data analytics is a powerful tool but a disabling crutch

This week’s featured article: How understanding the limitations of Big Data analytics will actually help you make more informed decisions and become bolder innovators.

Target’s Halloween marketing campaign this year included a virtual haunted house and a Trick-or-Treating app.

Though personalization software can automatically give marketers a more complete picture of their customers, CMOs still play a crucial role in balancing the technology’s scale with its relevance. This article explores some of the questions businesses may encounter in their personalization journey – such as how to treat “dark” social data – and gives insight from a unique perspective.

PepsiCo exec Brad Jakeman went off on advertisers, criticizing them for unoriginality, outdated ways of thinking based on the dying TV model, and for an overabundance of “white straight males.”

We also enjoyed these pieces:

8 Personalization Trends that are Reinventing the Buyers Journey.

MIT’s latest big data system could one day replace human beings

Facebook will notify you if it thinks your account is being hacked by the NSA

The Internet’s Dark Ages

Brand, James Brand: The shifting home media market and the necessity of product placement for big-budget blockbusters.

Over the past decade, faster computers and widespread access to high speed internet have made omnichannel access possible in a way that we’ve never seen before in human history. But despite all of the hype we give to mobile and social channels, the humble email is still one of the most effective and reliable channels for marketers to speak with their customers. Here are a few reasons why.

1) Email is your passport to the rest of the Internet.

Especially for younger generations, email has supplanted direct mail by being faster, cheaper to produce, and more accessible on the go. So by that logic, you would think that mobile and social channels should replace email, right?

Well, not really. The thing about email is that it’s an indispensible “passport” to the Internet. Customers need one to pay for things, subscribe to services, and sign up for websites – social media sites still require one, and so do their apps. Email’s still here, and according to The Direct Marketing Association, has an ROI of about $39 for every $1 spent.

2) Email isn’t just about advertising: it’s about getting information.

Email metrics are more sophisticated than ever, meaning that in addition to being a cost-effective way to market new services and products to your customers, your emails can be a source of valuable information about your brand, market, and channels.

Using an email tracker like Nectar Clickstream can give you a huge amount of actionable data. You can learn when customers are more receptive to emails, what kind of marketing they respond to, and which channels (PC, laptop, mobile? Other?) they’re more likely to use to access your brand.

3) Email is a bridge between new channels.

Continuing from that last point: old-school digital marketers cut their teeth on email by using it as a means of direct advertising.

In the Omnichannel Era, it’s equally as important for email to be used to continue the conversation that customers have with your brand on other channels, such as through your app, ecommerce website, or storefront.

 

Change“Personalizing” doesn’t have to mean becoming a customer’s best friend: it’s just about being there at the right place at the right time. For some people, you have to understand that there’s just no appropriate time for direct advertising ever – instead, you’ll have to be more creative with what content you deliver, making sure that its context and timing will be received well by the customer.

Though the field of digital marketing is more sophisticated than it did ten years ago, email is still a legitimate, high-ROI tool for advertisers looking to connect with their customers. Make no mistake: though technology will continue to change the face of branding, the creativity, ingenuity, and adaptability required by great marketers will never go out of style.

Mobile Personalization

Let’s face it: the majority of us have played Flappy Bird at least once.

It was such a simple yet so frustratingly difficult that it became extremely addicting. In fact, it was so addictive that creator Dong Nguyen yanked the game out of the app store for good, according to a Forbes Interview. Nguyen has also stated the game has caused him undue stress, which we can attribute to the numerous death threats and personal attacks. Nguyen tweeted in response to the game “I can call ‘Flappy Bird’ a success of mine.  But it also ruined my simple life.  So now I hate it”
The truly spectacular part of this whole ordeal is that even though the app was said to have been generating $50,000 in revenue a day from mobile ads alone, Nguyen decided to take if off the market anyway.
We have learned 3 things from the yanking of the game:

(1) Creating an immensely popular game app can have adverse reactions on the developer’s sanity

(2) Some game developers do have souls and aren’t just in this for the money.

(3) Mobile ad spending was outrageously high on this game.

Flappy Bird has been available in the App Store since May of 2013. It was not overly popular until January of this year when it became the most downloaded app in the store for that month with over 50 million downloads. Advertisers saw the potential in the amount of “eyeballs” in this free app and coordinated with Nguyen to insert and sponsor ads into the game for millions to see. Nguyen admitted that he was making around $50,000 per day in ad revenue alone.

 

There are two key insights marketers can glean from looking at an ultra-successful game like Flappy Birds:

Mobile Personalization

(1) Mobile ad spending is increasing and should be an area marketers should invest in. In fact, Gartner estimates that mobile ad spending will reach $18 billion in 2014, a 37% increase from 2013’s $13.1 billion mobile ad spend.
 
(2) Free games are one of the best platforms for mobile ads because they gain users rapidly due to the lack of barriers in downloading the game and the repetitive nature of playing the game. Advertising spend on mobile games will increase to $894 million in 2015, up from $87 in 2010. That’s ten times the amount spent in 2010.
 
With the death of Flappy Bird, it has become apparent that a popular game such as Flappy Bird can play a strategic role in a marketing plan. Marketers should be aware of the trends in ad spending and recognize that mobile ad spending can no longer be ignored.

 

 

Don Draper of Mad Men works on Madison Avenue
Don Draper of Mad Men works on Madison Avenue (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In honor of the Mad Men Season 6 premier this weekend, we’d like to take this moment to take a walk down Marketing Memory Lane, From mass marketing to demographic segmentation to customer segmentation to personalization. And now with Nectar, hyper-personalization.

Before the era now inextricably linked with Don Draper, all consumers received the same products, the same messages and the same ads, in the same medium(s). As Henry Ford once famously said, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”

Then came those famous Ad Men (and yes, they were mostly men) of Madison Avenue. They realized that men and women actually hear, read and remember things differently.  So these Mad Men placed “male-oriented” products, like aftershave, in sports magazines or the sports section of the newspaper.  Products “for women” were advertised on TV during the middle of the day, thus the term “soap” opera, a tip of the hat to sponsor Procter & Gamble and their detergents.  This demographic segmentation became more and more specific as time passed, differentiating marketing for marrieds vs singles, high income vs low, urban vs suburban, black vs white, and so on.

As companies began to gather more and more data on their customers and computers became increasingly powerful, smart businesses realized there was an even better way to market.  Customers could be grouped into similar segments and marketed to according to their similarities.  After all, not all women are created equal.  Some of us like brand names. Some of us refuse to buy anything without a coupon.  And some of us try to shop as infrequently as possible–hard to believe, but we exist! The hypothesis was that If brands could speak to each segment in a way that resonated with that segment, customers would buy more. And they did! Segmentation not only improved customer loyalty, it also reduced the cost of doing business.

With the advent of the internet and the wealth of data it provides, targeting has become increasingly defined.  Savvy companies track not only customer purchases, but what customers are looking at when they are on the brand’s site.  Some even combine internal digital data with bricks & mortar data. All this data allows businesses to relate to their customers more effectively.  This 0ersonalization is the precursor to hyper-personalization.

But what if a brand could speak to a customer on an individual level, aka hyper-personalization? That’s what Nectar’s proprietary software allows brands to do!  By combining all digital data available (purchases, online and email click behavior, CRM data, mobile, and so on) with social information, companies can now market to their customers in a 1:1 manner, yet do it at scale.

Today, we may go to the office in blue jeans rather than dapper suits, we may no longer be able to smoke wherever we please, we may not be able to have the 3-martini lunch anymore, but we can speak to our customers in a way that’s much more relevant for them: hyper-personalization.  Now, please excuse me, so I can go spend an hour with Don Draper. Cheers!

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Yesterday we were thrilled to be included in the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur round-up for ways to advertise your business under $100, and we got so inspired by the great ideas that we thought we would share a few with you! The best tactics for advertising your new business are those that will get your company noticed without having to spend thousands of dollars. Starting a business is no easy task, but with the right marketing, you can get in front of your ideal clientele and make every expenditure worth your while. Our number one idea for marketing is quick, inexpensive social media contests. Here are a few examples that we have used on our sites:

  • Twitter Contest: Simply have your readers and/or members re-tweet a message or mention your @company on Twitter, counting each tweet as a contest entry. You can include any other criteria you want, but the point is to get your company’s name out there as much as possible. After a week or so, choose a winner at random and reward them with a gift card or small prize, remembering to mention and thank them on Twitter! We did this contest successfully on BuyerHive.
  • Pinterest Contest: Pinterest is a great social media marketing tool and a great way for information and/or products from your company to circulate. For zuuzs and zuuzStyle, we custom-made an image and had people re-pin it as wells as products from our Pinterest boards, simultaneously entering a contest and promoting our sites!
  • Exchanging Links: Another method for social media marketing is to exchange links with similar blogs/websites. You can both promote each other’s giveaways, contests, events, and products and develop some cross-over in each other’s audiences. This is a great (free) way to get the word out about your business, as well as form lucrative partnerships in the industry!

Want more great marketing tips? Follow us on Twitter!

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