Mobile Marketing (Original post by The Mobile Marketer)

Orange County advertising firms are constantly researching the most effective campaigns. In today’s economy, it makes financial sense to reach out to the largest amount of consumers in a cost effective manner. As an OC business, have you considered mobile marketing?

The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) mobile council has produced a list of the top 10 things it believes markets absolutely have to know about mobile advertising at the moment. It follows research from the IAB and PriceWaterhouseCoopers that mobile advertising is set to become part of the mainstream marketing mix over the next two years.

10. Consumers like Mobile! The Orange Exposure study shows 70% of mobile media users find innovative ad formats appealing. In an ad funded games trial 89% said they liked or were neutral to advertisements appearing on the Orange World portal and 88% said they were happy to be exposed to advertising in exchange for free or discounted content. Alex Kozloff, media research manager, Orange.

Stepping outside of a business viewpoint for a moment and becoming a consumer who receives text messages from businesses advertising their specials, I love receiving the mobile messages. I don’t have to hunt down specials while sitting at my desk. I can be engaging in my daily life. As a busy professional, I have found this to be a personal plus. How about you? Are you using mobile marketing for you business or product. Please leave a comment and let us know your thoughts.

Today, Orange County Advertiser welcomes guest blogger, Adam Zepeda from the High Five Agency.

It’s safe to say that most businesses today have a website that lets their prospective customers come to for reference, general information, products, shopping, leisure and more. It’s also likely that from having a website for your business you’ve come across the phrase Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the process of multiple jobs, the accumulation of ethical strategies that help to influence the outcome of search queries.

Having a website is great, but what good is a website that can’t be found. It may seem crazy to hear but not every site out there on the web is a blog or has content that is updated frequently. Many business websites are relatively static and only change when adding new product or a new service is being offered.

The problem with this kind of website is that Google begins to realize that you have not been updating pages or content thus making the realization and assumption that you may not care for your site or deem it as important as other websites being updated regularly for similar keywords. The websites that get updated regularly tend to be blog sites leaving your static business website to drown in search from opinion lead blog sites.

So how do you get your website updates indexed in Google quickly? Google Reader is a great way to get your website crawled by Google more frequently by simply including a feed url from your static website into the subscription box. This subscription requires Google to return to your site in search of updates. How often should you expect Google to come back to your site? If using Google Reader, your site will generally be visited every 24 hours by Google, in some cases more.

It’s important to know that Google Reader should not be a single determining factor in your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy but more of a means to assist your SEO and draw in some potential movement to help achieve a better ranking in the Google search.

Adam Zepeda
http://theh5agency.com

Welcome Express welcomes Guest Blogger, Mitch Devine.
Mitch creates marketing messages for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Some of his main categories of experience include automotive, fast food, health care, insurance, real estate, technology and utilities.
Mitch writes words to fit innumerable commercial media formats including Web sites, email, print, collateral, radio (including voice-overs), TV, interactive multimedia, direct mail, outdoor, and point of purchase. Everything from gas pump videos to bar coasters.

If you’ve got something to sell, Mitch can help you say it well. (Rhyming optional.)

Your brand name is usually the first impression customers will have.

Names carry a lot of connotations for various reasons, mostly because of the actions of previous people who had those same names. Notice how not many people name their kids Judas, Ahab or Adolph anymore.

When you hear the name Medusa, what comes to mind first?

Chances are, if you’re familiar with the Medusa of Greek mythology, you don’t think of beautiful hair. More likely, you think of snakes for hair. That’s why it was odd to see a hair salon named Medusa while driving around the other day.

According to myth, Medusa was a monster, one of three sister-creatures called Gorgons, who lived on a remote island. Medusa had snakes for hair and was so hideous that anyone who looked directly at her would literally turn to stone. Ovid’s version of the tale says she was a beautiful maiden until she offended the goddess Athena, who transformed her into the monster. Either way, she’s known as the ugliest thing in all of mythology. (But now fugly is the new pretty, so maybe the name makes sense for a salon.)

Medusa was beheaded by the Greek hero Perseus, who looked at the Gorgon’s reflection in his shield to avoid being turned to stone. Perseus then used the head as a weapon before giving it to the goddess Athena, who affixed it to her shield.

So why name a hair salon after Medusa?

Granted, I’m not exactly the target audience for the hair extensions or coloring offered by Medusa, so I called the salon to find out. Unfortunately, the person who answered didn’t really know. She thought it had something to do with being near the sea. (I learned Greek mythology in fourth grade; evidently it’s no longer part of public school curriculum.)

This Medusa Salon in Huntington Beach isn’t part of a chain or franchise, but it’s not the only hair salon using the name. There are quite a few other Medusa hair salons scattered around the country. This is not meant to knock any of them. I’m sure they’re all quite capable stylists who do beautiful work.

How to get a head in business.

Just speculating here, but maybe the rationale is that you come in with unruly snake-like hair that gets tamed by the time you leave. (As long as you don’t leave without your head.)

I suppose it’s only an odd name for a beauty salon if you’re a big Greek mythology buff or Clash of the Titans nerd like me who knows the backstory.

Obviously, first impressions are important. But in the case of the Medusa Salon, playing against type by using a memorable name can also help you stand apart.

Ultimately, the name and image of your brand comes from more than just history or past associations. It’s built gradually over time through the cumulative results of your interactions with customers.

By the way, Nike was also a Greek goddess, the personification of victory, but that connotation is no longer as well-known as the footwear/apparel company.

What’s your take?

Take a look at Mitch’s other fascinating posts at http://lovehateadvertising.wordpress.com/

Orange County Advertiser welcomes a guest blogger today -
Greg Reed from Globalbizz – Australia

The Diamond Emporium is one of the largest jewelry chains in my area. They got to be that way in the very competitive jewelry business because of how they built their business.

While most retail outlets lead with ‘price style’ advertising (you know the type – Diamond ring was $1995 now just $995), the Diamond Emporium advertised FREE diamond grading classes at their outlets. Now instead of advertising specials for Valentine’s Day, they didn’t advertise at all.

People could attend a showroom and be taught how to select a diamond, grade it and when they needed to buy a diamond they could recognize value; no matter where they bought it. This ingenius ‘education’ program saved the company a fortune in advertising. While their competitiors spent hundreds of thousands of dollars marketing the latest price reduction,

Diamond Emporium were opening new outlets. Brilliant isn’t it. They became the hunted instead of hunting for customers.

A local car dealer also did something similar with their WOW (Women on Wheels) program. They showed women how to change a tire, check the oil and put water into the wipers all around a fashion parade and nibblies in their workshop. When it came time to buy a new car, guess where most of these women bought from. Yes you guessed it.

So how do you become the hunted in your business?

Plumbers – hold handyman hint nights on keeping your drains clean

Real Estate – how to get more money when you sell nights or property investment seminars

Pizza shop – how to make a pizza dough or the perfect tomato base

Hairdressers – how to change your style in 10 minutes

Beauticians – classes that create a younger looking you

Give it a go. Your competitors will hate you for it but your bank manager will love you.

By Greg Reed
Globalbizz Australia