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Illusion of PPC and E-Mail Success Impacts SMBs & Startups via @Curagami

Illusion of PPC and E-Mail Success Impacts SMBs & Startups via @Curagami | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it

Never Ending Battle Truth, Justice & American Way
Tough "Dog Days" of summer for "Super Hero" marketing tactics. Here is a list of the dead and dying tactics:

SMB Marketing Tactics Costing More, Getting Less:

* Yellow Pages (near death). 
* Print ads (near death).

* Val-u-pak coupons (near death).

* Coupons of any kind (losing relevance with smartphone users)..

* Groupons (blows brands up almost beyond repair).
* Email marketing (sick due to social / mobile web). 
* Social Media Marketing (sick and getting sicker fast). 
* Content Marketing.(content shock sick).

* Ecommerce (too many stores, same offerings).
* PPC (paying more to get less). 
* Retargeting (cat out of bag, so sick efficacy declining).
* Video Marketing (steep learning curve, expensive). 
* Viral Marketing (everyone has that cold now & hit or miss). 
* Cause Marketing (not as unique as once was & live or die with partner).

* Celebrity Marketing (expensive and live or die with branded celeb).

* SEO (don't even get us started, all but gone, baby, gone). 

Many of these "SMB" tactics are in a startup's launch plan too. Good luck with that. Startups have to double down on asynchronous tactics since their money is tight and they have little or no brand awareness yet.

Favorite startup asynchronous tactics of ours include:

* OPN (tap Other People's Networks).
* OPM (tap Other People's Money via crowdfunding).
* Crowdfunding.
* Friends-of-Friends marketing.
* Community (start handing of the keys to your content early).
* Partnerships.
* OPC (Other People's Content via content curation with attribution(.
* Video Marketing (learning curve and expense scares most away).
* Events.
* Training.
* Contests & Games.

That last bullet can be especially powerful for startups. Remember to create tools needed to empower advocates, contributors and Sherpas. Make it easy to help you by providing graphical tools, listening and curating content into a social space (curation is a form of social reward).  

 

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Triangle Startup Factory ACCEPTS CrowdFunde For Spring 2014 Class

Triangle Startup Factory ACCEPTS CrowdFunde For Spring 2014 Class | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it

CrowdFunde Accepted Triangle Startup (TSF) Factory
Thanks to friends who wrote cards and letters and thanks to the team at Triangle Startup Factory, our Durham, NC based startup incubator, who are willing to take a risk on CrowdFUnde as we smash content marketing and crowdfunding together to see what happens.

Our TSF session starts March 10th and we hope you will join us as we share this great startup adventure.

CrowdFunde
http://www.crowdfunde.com

Haiku Deck Pitch to TSF
http://shar.es/QFOzU


Triangle Startup Factory
http://thestartupfactory.co/


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Rescooped by Martin (Marty) Smith from Digital-News on Scoop.it today
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Google's Zero Moment Is The Ultimate Moment of Truth

Google's Zero Moment Is The Ultimate Moment of Truth | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it
In 2012, Google along with Jim Lecinski published a fantastic book that explored how digital customers made decisions in what Google refers to as "The Zero Moment of Truth."The ZMOT as it's (While slightly dense, this is a good read on digital...

Via Rami Kantari, Thomas Faltin
Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:

Very cool ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth). Too late to write much now, will fill in tomorrow. Marty

Great comment by @Marc Kneepkens on his Rescoop to his Competitive Edge feed:

Marc Kneepkens's insight:

The 'digital experience' is changing marketing. People still respond emotionally to an 'increasing' numer of stimuli. The art of getting a response must adapt to the new media. Every day new tools and new ways to reach the client appear.


Successful companies understand this. Companies such as Google, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, focus new ways of reaching out to the comsumers' not so new emotional respons. Reaching out has grown into a huge "new" phenomena called social media.


Playing our new social media games well and understanding them will mean success or failure.




Amanda Groover's curator insight, November 23, 2013 10:02 PM

The more we can understand how Google thinks, the more we learn about how to work with Google. It doesn't mean it always follow logic, but it does help you promote your brand!

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What Content To Create & Why: What's Your Curagami Score?

What Content To Create & Why: What's Your Curagami Score? | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it

Curagami Scores
We've tuned our Curgami engine to evaluate three website and brand CSFs (Critical Success Factor):

* Content.
* Community.
* Conversion.

The tool creates unique metrics such as Link Efficiency Indexes (LEI) to evaluate a website, close competitors and it establishes "best practice" averages viral content, sustainable community and asynchronous conversion ideas (not going up against a competitor's strength).

We started our journey to answer a simple question:

What content should a website create and why?

That simple question has soaked up six months of our lives and tens of thousands of our investors' cash. Good news is we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Will your website WIN armed with a Curgami Score Report?

Yes :). Marty & Team Curagami

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Creating Digital Marketing Ecosystems For Traffic & Money - Curatti.com

Creating Digital Marketing Ecosystems For Traffic & Money - Curatti.com | Startup Revolution | Scoop.it
Without revenue a small business is just a hobby.  So, how does a typical small business go about getting clients and revenue?
Martin (Marty) Smith's insight:

Without revenue a small business is just a hobby.

Typical small business marketing follows a path of diminishing returns. 

 

Great Curatti.com post by @CogentCoach Michael Nelson. Agree, " Without revenue a small business is just a hobby." Also agree, " Typical small business marketing follows a path of diminishing returns", but have a thought to add there. 

Michael discusses the diminishing returns of a reference network that slowly decays out (from previous employer). Diminish returns also applies to many things Small to Medium Sized Business do to "advertise" their business. 

All the networking, advertising and hand wringing a SMB does WITHOUT a viable website / blog is diminished by more than half. The ONLY way to assure what you did today GROWS is to create a "getting bigger everyday" online presence (period, full stop). 

Important to find marketing that produces the opposite of "diminishing returns', marketing where you get MORE back from less effort over time. Michael describes this well too:

This saturation and frequency of use make digital marketing a great option for marketing and building relationships with your prospects and clients.


"While digital marketing is a great option, it is a confusing milieu of platforms, services, tools, etc.  Rather than chasing about trying to do a bit of everything, it’s best to create a system and measure your results.  When you get comfortable, you can add a bit more or expand your reach with your system."

"Create a system" or as P&G taught me all those years ago, "Work your plan" is important. Here are some tips for that system:

* Do a core set of activities DAILY.

* Always reserve 20% (or so) of your time to test new ideas, tools, websites, and partners. 
* Reserve another 20% of your time to respond to and curate content from your previously shared content. 
* Follow people who help you (since it is an online Thank You Note) and follow people you can learn from. 
* Keep life and business in balance and don't get discouraged since it can take months or a year before content marketing begins to scale. 
* Don't worry about "breaking" anything. Internet marketing is like building sand castles on the beach and the tide is always about to come in. 
* Learn to SURF trends, don't try and wrestle them. 

Great post and YES you must build a viable, sustainable and growing Digital Marketing Ecosystem if you want to do anything these days. 
Marty 

 


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