Time 20:29

Once you see Microsoft commercials talk about the “Cloud” you know it’s ok to talk about the topic in mixed company. By mixed I mean other than the geek set. Author Phil Simon surely makes enabling technologies easy to understand and more importantly practical for business decision makers. In his book The New Small, Simon makes the case for using what he called The Five Enablers

• Cloud Computing
• Software as a service (SaaS)
• Free and open source software (FOSS)
• Mobility
• Social networks

These enablers allow business to participate in trends that are fast becoming essential to complete and to satisfy the new social consumer.

1. Flexibility and agility
2. Collaboration
3. Content creation and choice
4. Experimentation and acceptable risk
5. The social customer
6. The war for talent

In this podcast we discuss how law firms, restaurants, dental practices, and many other businesses are abandoning the idea of office infrastructure for the inexpensive enabling technologies available. For example, I created this text in Google Docs, posted on a Word Press blog, and you are playing the audio on this page with a free open source audio player. All I need is to be smart about asking the questions that you, the listener, want to ask.

That’s a major theme of Simon’s The New Small, businesses lean of staff and sharp of mind, can focus on their core value while reducing costs and expanding their reach with enabling technologies which include the social tactics and networks most appropriate for that business.

This is the first of a two part conversation. In this podcast you’ll hear how business is saving money and increasing ways to make their customer feel beyond satisfied.

The New Small is full of examples of free or low cost enabling technologies that businesses are using to be successful. Let’s start a list of the New Small technologies by Marketing Edge listeners in Google Docs and you can add to it.

I feared that I was naive. I gave up a bit on social media being anything more than a cheap marketing tool. I didn’t think this way, years ago I wrote a piece about social media being more a movement than a market . The message in that piece is that social media has much more potential than pushing multi-level marketing efforts so your friends can get 50% off teeth whitening.

The potential that keeps me going is the idea of cultures learning more about each other. Not necessarily a means to push western views, but a way to better understand other humans. With this desire to learn about other members of our species, perhaps will result in a better society. Communication is a cornerstone of freedom.

Here’s a video I did a couple of years ago with Robert Scoble and Gina Bianchini. What do you think, is freedom social?

Time 25:03

Groupon is getting plenty of press regarding their growth, currently valued at $4.75 billion, or Groupon’s current round of funding raising, $950 million, or turning down a $6 billion offer from Google.

Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason will tell you, and Charlie Rose in a recent interview, that those numbers are possible because of the company’s laser like focus on their customer’s experience. Groupon gives a stage to local businesses who offer daily deals of 50% or more. Reading the deal of the day Groupon email is now as much a routine for some as reading the daily newspaper for others. (That’s ironic) Mason, who started Groupon in November 2008 is passionate about individuals discovering something new about their city, and if they can share that experience with others, even better.

In late December, I interviewed Julie Mossler, a spokesperson with Groupon, about the benefits to businesses that use the group buying, deep discounting, pay for performance service. Groupon works like this. Businesses offer Groupon users significant discounts, for example a $50 dinner for two is offered at $25. The deal is on only when an agreed upon minimum number of people purchase the offer. Win – Win right? business gets people through the door at some minimum price point or else there is no cash expense by the business. It is a pay for performance advertising model.

Learn How Groupon Works! from The Point on Vimeo.

Groupon features a deal a day in an email to their local subscribers, in addition they have other deals on their local city websites. They recently started a self-service option for merchants and professional service providers. The key criteria for businesses considering Group are in the answers to these four questions:

1. 1) Are you attempting to gain new customers for repeat business?
2. 2) Are you attempting to gain customers who will more than likely purchase additional items during the Groupon redemption visit?
3. 3) Are you reallocating advertising dollars toward the Groupon program?
4. 4) How will you convert Groupon subscribers to your customers?

While you may see many restaurants, hotels, and spas, Groupon clearly is a model that can be beneficial for many types of businesses. It’s a question of creativity and thinking through the buying behaviors and advertising models to determine whether Groupon is a good fit for your product or service.

The Groupon site is a good resource for merchants to learn about this category of online marketing. I recommend Groupon’s web-based ROI calculator to help project estimated returns, costs, and repeat business potential. There are likely more detailed spreadsheets available as you engage with a Groupon representative to do deeper calculations that will help refine your costs and potential revenue the Groupon program may generate.

As a small business you should claim a presence on Groupon Stores, a new feature of Groupon’s page that allows businesses to essentially self-serve a Groupon offer even though they will not be the featured deal of the day.

2011 will see rapid change in business marketing. A strategy session on the long term impact on your business of Groupon and the general concept of social network buying and marketing may be a good use of resources.

We’ll have more coverage on this topic and feature other network buying platforms. Please suggest some that you have used or think are newsworthy.

Marketing Edge Listeners Win!

Ann McGinn is the winner of Julio Ojeda-Zapata’s book Ipad Means Business. Congratulations Ann and thanks to all the Marketing Edge listeners who submitted their name for the drawing. Stay tuned for our next book drawing and good luck.

Don’t you hate it when rollover ads on websites become an “in your face” mosquito that’s hard to shake? It’s the kind of thing that can reflect poorly on the advertiser, rather than the media property. Take a look at this web page on Seeking Alpha. As I completed a comment I had to log-in, you can see that log in screen under the Charles Schwab ad. But the rollover advertisement is right on top of the log-in field. What’s worse every time I tried to close the ad it expanded. What you are looking at is as small as the Charles Schwab ad will get.

My initial frustration was directed toward Schwab, but really that was misguided, the cause and remedy to the problem lies with the web developer of Seeking Alpha I suspect. Sure this is a minor event, but it’s a detail that can be either overlooked by advertisers and media properties or intentionally designed as a mischievous way to get your attention.

Time 24:50

St. Paul Pioneer Press technology reporter Julio Ojeda-Zapata triangulates social media, news services, and a robust personal network as he researches story ideas and articles. Ojeda-Zapata, author of the new book iPad Means Business, is a prolific writer who considers Twitter as an oracle of information. Admittedly, the rule of thumb is a critical mass of followers in a certain topic area in order to use Twitter as a resource, but usually Ojeda-Zapata can throw out a question to his 12,000 plus followers and be pointed in the right direction.

The Society for New Communications Research released a survey earlier this year about how journalists use social media, for example 49% of media surveyed use Twitter in the context of their reporting. In conjunction with the somewhat random nature of Twitter, Ojeda-Zapata also uses services such as ProfNet, a paid service provided by PR Newswire, and Help a Reporter Out (HARO). These services allow reporters to cast out queries for resources on a topic they are considering for a story. I’d also suggest that journalists in addition to proactively using these services also consume information about what others are doing which may give them ideas for stories.

Doing a quick search on www.tweepz.com for reporter in the Twitter profile bio and English as a language returns nearly 9,000 individuals. Some of the notables on this list are Jenna Wortham, tech writer with the New York Times and Chuck Todd, political reporter and analyst for NBC and MSNBC.

I’ve been in PR for more than 20 years. Here’s my take on how communicators can benefit from social tactics.

1. Get on Twitter and follow all of the journalists in your areas of interest
2. Create Twitter lists public or private for those topic areas
3. Create a RSS feed for related hashtags of those topics
4. Participate in Twitter chats related to your topic areas of journalism such as #journchat started by @PRsarahevans or #hcmkt for healthcare marketing issues.
5. Blog relentlessly about topics your company has an interest in dominating. Reporters use search and blogging is part of successful SEO on topic areas.

iPad Means Business Drawing

Want a chance to win a copy of iPad Means Business? Comment on this page, Tweet out your thoughts about this podcast with a #mktedge hashtag, or just email me at marketingedge AT providentpartners DOT net. We’ll get your name in the drawing and give a food item to a St. Paul food shelter. We’ll draw a winner next week.

The merger of multi-level marketing, a buying cooperative and steep discounting is a successful mix for Groupon. In less than two years Groupon has 40 million global subscribers spread across 300 local markets. According to this Ad Age report What’s Next For Groupon, the Chicago-based company’s international growth by acquisition is a major reason for its rapid growth.

As a marketing advisor to business Groupon is a conundrum for me. Groupon has significant benefits of reaching potentially new buyers in a specific location, the question is how to leverage the Groupon tactic with growing the most profitable customer base for each business. One restaurant client, a steakhouse in a midsize city, calculates that his break even point is if 10 percent of the estimated Groupon buyers return without a promotion.

Groupon’s shared revenue model of a 50% discount split with the restaurant where Groupon takes half of that amount. Its payment structure to its customer businesses is a 1/3 upon sale of the Groupon, a 1/3 increments at 30 days and the remaining third at 60 days from time of sale. A recent study by Rice University professor Utpal M. Dholakia questioned whether Groupon is worth the $6 billion offered by Google for the company whose annual revenue is more than $1 billion based on the price sensitive nature of Groupon users.

I’m looking to see how consumers use Groupon. I’ve focused on a popular restaurant in the Twin Cities which has a Groupon going on today. The restaurant is French Meadow Bakery and Cafe. As you can see in this graphic, as of about 8:20 Monday, December 13 there are 429 sold well over the minimum required to initiate the deal. UPDATE – in the half hour it took me to proof this post from the time I took the image, the number of buyers is up to 1,933!

I’m interested in reaching the people who purchased this Groupon to ask the questions in the survey below. Basically I’m interested in whether they have been to French Meadow before and whether they are purchasing this Groupon as a gift for someone else. Yes I understand it may be a stretch trying to reach them on this post, but let’s give it a try, I’ll use Twitter, Facebook and some other Twin Cities communities to get the word out. If you have ideas on how to reach them, put it in the comments section.

French Meadow Bakery and Cafe Groupon Buyers

If you purchased Groupon for French Meadow Bakery and Cafe in the Twin Cities, can you answer these two questions? Thanks

There are several articles on the issue of whether Groupon is a good fit for all small business. This New York Times piece for example I have several theories I’m working through on Groupon, one is from a simple dollars and cents standpoint, the other is from a conceptual perspective about whether Groupon’s concept is a way capitalist economics blends with social collective behavior.

Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Time 24:50

We interview St. Paul Pioneer Press technology writer Julio Ojeda Zapata, author of Ipad Means Business, to be released the week of December 13. This is a two part series, with this episode focused on how mobile computing is impacting industries such as health care, real estate, legal, and other small businesses.

Some examples of using the iPad in business applications include:

• patients completing online forms in the waiting area and not at a kiosk or a clipboard where interpreting handwriting can be a challenge
• Mobile video viewing of real estate properties and integrated with location based applications to improve the real estate buying experience
• Any field worker now has a more mobile, yes even stylish device for insurance claims, remote health care workers, service and repair technicians

And for the real business heavy weight,

• Edit and Create CAD drawings, or
• Access SAP data from your enterprise applications

Some will suggest this is a revolution, we believe it’s a natural evolution. Some contend the iPad is more a content consumption device than a content creation device. I believe it’s both, especially if you define completing a form as a type of content creation. I submit that in business a complete form field is content creation that advances some type of business process. To the end, the more convenient you make interacting with technology, the greater the chances of expediting a business workflow.

A word on behalf of non-Apple consumers of the world, mobile computing “Tablet Size” is not limited to devices that begin with the letter i. The android platform has the Galaxy Tab among several others on the market or soon to be available.

Point being for marketers is this –

1. Size does not matter – the screen size of tablets and smartphones are less of an issue.
2. Bandwidth is getting larger for mobile users - Speedy networks 4G is just about in place and WiFi will abound so long as people will consume coffee while accessing the web.
3. Price matters and is dropping - When comparing the iPad against a laptop or comparing the tablet market across the products in that emerging category, price is extremely competitive. Will this put powerful computing in the hands of more people?

These data points should lead a marketer to conclude the distribution of the message is now a minor issue. The format of the message should not be predicated upon who can access it. There is critical mass is virtually every platform, format, stationary or mobile, across the street or around the world.

This, I hope frees marketers to be innovative in the mobile arena. Just browsing the applications available on the ipad and android platforms will spark ideas for your clients and companies.

Time 28:27

This is the second part of a two part conversation with Bob Crawshaw on the topic of social media and tourism. Bob engages social media for the Australian War Memorial a museum and interactive center in Canberra Australia. Given the long travel for most tourists to get Down Under, social media is a critical part of tourism.

Crawshaw reflects a major crowdsourcing tourism campaign that tapped Australians’ love of country with the Nothing Like Australia campaign, compiling more than 29,000 submitted experiences about places that make Australia a great travel destination. There was also voting on the Nothing Like Australia experiences with a list of finalists and a winner.

Back to the Australia War Memorial and what makes that website and experience special. You’ll hear Crawshaw talk about the war diaries section of the website. The war diaries section contains documents, letters, and even orders to soldiers that gives you a window to the life a typical Australians serving in world wars.

The recommendations I have for using social media for tourism include the following:

• Keep it on a personal level
• Provide experiences that given insight into average lives
• Tap a crowd where possible

What resources do you consider when selecting a travel destination?

Time 18:17

No, I don’t mean social media war stories. Sometimes the social media world gets caught up in its own world of GAP logo changes and Old Spice YouTube ads to remember there are wars going on.

I mean real war stories and social media plays a role in sharing the realities of conflict. In part 1 of the Marketing Edge conversation with Bob Crawshaw, we talk about his role in marketing the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Australia. Bob is a long time listener of the Marketing Edge. When I heard about his work with Australia’s historical and living commemoration to its participation in defending freedom around the world, and his use of social media, I thought listeners would enjoy the conversation.

In this episode we highlight how the Australian War Memorial is using its own Flickr Commons photostream to share its thousands of images. I found that link on its website to be an interesting way to encourage others to use those images across the web. I have not see other sites with a specific link to the organization’s Flickr stream of non-copyrighted images.

This conversation also reinforced for me the power of still images, at least some still images. I was captivated by an image of a World War I solider whose identity is unknown so his image is called “handsome man”. I reminded me of the male equal of the famous National Geographic image of an Afghan girl.

I invite you to spend some time on the Australian War Memorial website. It’s a trip through freedom’s history of a country whose citizens have fought side by side with Americans in virtually all of its international conflict to this day. More importantly, the social digital presence of the Australian War Memorial is an opportunity for a country, one separated nearly as far as you can be from the United States, to share its stories of shared values; values for which men and women are willing to sacrifice.

How are you using or have seen Flickr used in an interesting way?

Yesterday I posted a piece on how mobile will be tested heavily this heaviest shopping day of the year. It will be tested by both consumers and retailers. Little did in know when I woke up this morning, I’d be proven correct on page one of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press in a article written by Allison Kaplan called “Shop, Text, and Tweet Til You Drop?

Kaplan highlights how Best Buy is trying Tweetaway program a contest at its Eden Prairie store for those that Tweet a image of themselves in front of that Best Buy location. The random winners will receive $50 or $100 gift cards. The article reports that managers are monitoring Twitter.

Another mobile app being used today is ShopKick, www.shopkick.com an app on iPhone and Android that is essentially the digital version of the S & H Green Stamps concept. I’m 51 years old, so I remember collecting and putting S & H Green Stamps in books with my mom for redeeming products. The ShopKick variation on the frequent shopper theme is for those who check-in to locations, scan a barcode, etc, they accumulate Kickbucks that can be redeemed for discounts at affiliated stores.

As one who advocates using many of these technologies, I can also say there are times when I feel like a rat in Skinner’s box. We are pushing envelope on interacting with companies and perhaps we’ll find the line for legitimate actions and just being jerked around.

Behavioral Scientist Fredrick Skinner demonstrated the ability to shape behavior given specific responses to a condition in his box, in the famous case the condition of a light being on or off. This work illustrated what’s called “operant conditioning” which is the rewarding of an act that approaches a new desired behavior. Something like checking into a store, getting a reward. Take a picture, getting a bigger reward. And so it goes, progress.

Happy Shopping.