About Open D
If you had told me three years ago, when I started writing
my business app, that the marketing campaign was going to be just as hard as
writing the app, I would not have believed you.
I naively thought a few press releases, some CPC ads, and a
series of social media postings was all that was needed to get the word out and
have my app viewed by many.
But the reality is, with all the marketing noise out there,
you really have to focus your efforts on the specific vertical markets your
products or services address. If you do not “target” your marketing efforts,
you will likely spend a lot of money and return minimal results.
So how to target a marketing
campaign? Start with the old school off-line efforts.
Find the tradeshows, BIAs, community groups or programs that
offer you a concentrated audience of perspective buyers to present to.
My next event will be the eSAX Entrepreneur Networking Event
taking place on Jan. 6th in Ottawa. I will have a sponsorship booth
in the marketplace.
This event is a perfect example. eSAX offers me a
concentrated group of business start-ups and entrepreneurs looking to increase
their number of return customers. Exactly what my app offers organizations!
As always prepare signage and collaterals to support the
event. Have a look at what I’ve prepared for the Jan. 6th event
here.
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| Attendee Swag Bag stuffer |
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| Hand out to drive attendees to booth |
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| Door Prize Gift Certificate |
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| Booth Banner Signage |
Secondly is your on-line efforts. Start by identifying your
related vertical markets, the job titles for the decision makers in those markets,
and what needs your products or services address.
If you are fortunate like me, the vertical markets are many.
So let’s start with just a couple of random examples... boutiques and fitness.
Boutique owners and fitness instructors constantly need to
increase their client numbers, and encourage repeat customers. Begin by
creating individual landing pages that will appeal to each. I’ve created http://boutique.opend.me and http://fitness.opend.me. Each offers imagery
familiar to the visitors and offers messaging that address their needs. They
are direct and to the point, quickly presenting the benefits offered by my
product. Be sure to include a link to your main site where the visitor can
learn more if necessary they prefer.
Seek out discussion forums that relate to your vertical
markets and contribute to those forums. Be careful not to just “sell” within
the forums as this will likely get you banned. Instead try to add value to the
discussion and work a link to your landing page into the discussion. Just being
part of the discussion gives you the opportunity to learn about your market and
refine your approach, so don’t abuse it.
Next, create a variety of CPC ads within social media sites
such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ where you can use the on-board audience
criteria to narrow who see’s your various ads. In my case I selected variations
of “store manager” and “fitness professional” as the respective job title
options.
Be sure to create a few ads for each landing page you created,
use different messaging in each to see which performs the best. Pick your CPC
bids carefully. You don’t want to be at the top of the list as this will result
in clicks by people less likely to convert to customers and waste your valuable
budget.
So using this method I set my CPC bids from $.20 to $2.75 for
the various sites and launched my campaigns. 48 hours later I was able to see
which ads were getting more or less impressions, which had the higher click
through rates, and ultimately which converted visitors into sign-ups
It’s been less than a week and the sign-ups are starting to
trickle in. Nice to see it working.
Expanding and refining this targeted marketing strategy is
going to be the order of the day for the foreseeable future. More vertical
markets. More landing pages. More ads and forum postings.
In closing I would like to offer my insights to fellow
entrepreneurs as I move forward launching Open D Community Builder. Perhaps it
will help you in your business development.
If you would like to be kept up to date on the progress of
this “hours old” targeted marketing campaign and what I learn as I go, please join me through my site and select the “Modern Marketing” subject of interest.
All the best everyone.
Ross
