Local Marketing and Media

Dogs in the Balihoo office? You bet!

Wednesday, September 1, 2010 by Kallen Hayes

The Balihoo office is a pretty productive place. Our employees are hard-working, enthusiastic, energetic, and extremely passionate about revolutionizing local store marketing. We work really well together and collaborate with a level of team spirit and cohesion rivaled by (maybe) only a few other groups.

AND... our mascot, 'Scout', is a dog.

Is this some crazy coincidence? I don't think so. And neither does the author of Manager's Best Friend, an article that appeared in The Economist last month. The article suggests, based on research done by Central Michigan University, that the presence of canine friends in the office space can improve teamwork and encourage team allegiance. Participants in the study who had a dog to "slobber and pounce on them" gave better feedback about their group members in the studied areas of trust, team cohesion and intimacy.

I'm glad Balihoo culture encourages canine companionship. We have a dog photo cork board, our meeting rooms are named after employee's dogs, Scout paraphernalia is all over the place, and we're always quick to hand-out one of our beloved Scout stuffed toys.

Just recently, our VP of Marketing, Shane Vaughan, got a new yellow lab puppy named Dexter. Much to everyone's excitement, he's been paying weekly visits to our office. Other notable past canine visitors include Wrigley, Max and Bronco.

It doesn't take scientific evidence to convince me that a canine companion can lift anyone's mood and therefore, at the least, create a more enjoyable work environment (although I might argue that bringing a puppy into an area occupied by females will most likely temporarily decrease productivity). But, productivity aside, we can all agree that enjoyable environments make for happier people, and I'm confident that happy Balihoo employees make for happy local marketing software customers!

Want to Grow Your Sales? Then Empower Your Channel

Tuesday, August 31, 2010 by Chris Keller

You’ve heard it a thousand times: Empower Your Channel to Grow Sales.

Sounds good, right?

Problem is that empowering your channel has always meant hiring more sales people who struggle to control the loose ends. It turns out that implementing channel marketing automation technology is a cost effective approach that will provide a tangible return on investment.

Reality

A recent call with a prospect illustrates the situation. Half of this prospect’s sales come from Group A, a handful of large, national B2C buyers with thousands of local stores. The other half of sales come from Group B, consisting of thousands of local and regional distributors with 1-5 locations. Logically, this marketer focuses the majority of his resources on the handful of big buyers who drive sales quotas.

The irony, while Group A does drive tremendous volume, and total sales, their fixation on price drives profit out of each transaction, resulting in commoditized products. In stark contrast, Group B tends to be very loyal, strong brand advocates, and more profitable (considering the very small amount spent on them currently). So the prospect neglects Group B.

Sadly, this is an all too common problem. Gerald Murray, Research Manager with IDC, recently released a study of channel marketing for large IT companies stating that, on average the IT company participants in his study have 19,000 inactive partners. Beyond IT, the problem pervades other industry sectors.

Solution

How then can the prospect cost effectively drive sales through the more profitable Group B? It turns out that hiring more people is not the solution. The increased human capital costs would outweigh the subsequent sales increase. The opportunity then must lie in the use of technology.

Murray from IDC tends to agree, though his solution is to implement partner relationship management (PRM) tools, though I don’t think that fundamentally tackles the channel marketing problems. Instead, I think a local marketing automation (LMA) platform includes the full suite of tools to solve channel problems. Also based on technology, it focuses on empowering the local channel reseller, a distinct difference from PRM tools that focus on tools for a brand’s channel marketing/sales organizations.

The LMA solution is scalable, cost effective, and ultimately places emphasis on local store marketing execution, a movement that is much more than a trend. To understand this as a solution, one must consider the MARKETING problems a channel faces:

Marketing Materials - Access and ability to customize proven, professionally designed, and nationally branded creative assets.
Advertising Funds - Traditionally administered as a co-op marketing solution, national advertising dollars are a lifeline to the small marketing budgets of local channel resellers.
Strategy - Local channel resellers typically don’t have the training, experience, or attention to develop, implement and execute effective cross-medium local marketing.
Execution - Local marketing requires knowledge of effective branding across multiple mediums.

What do you think? Are these the problems your channel faces?

My New Strategy: Pair Up Prime Time TV Ads with Targeted Local Internet Ads

Friday, August 27, 2010 by Sam Martin

Simultaneously advertising on prime time TV and on internet sites may be a solid new strategy to touch consumers according to my analysis of The Nielsen Company's recently released 2010 Q1 Three Screen Report entitled, "What Consumers Watch: Technology Enhances the Video Experience."

The report provides information and data about households and their video viewing behaviors when using HDTV, timeshifting (DVR or OnDemand) devices, broadband internet, and smartphones. The findings are interesting for local advertising buyers for franchise marketing efforts, and they suggest a new strategy may be in order.

The report finds that DVR usage and penetration into homes has increased 14% to more than nine and a half hours per month. Interestingly, while DVR usage increases, the rate of commercial viewing during playback remains steady—good news for advertisers. According to the report, on average, "45% of commercials are viewed during [DVR] playback in Q1 2010 compared with 43% in Q1 2009."

Also interesting is that 58.7% of people are using TV and the internet simultaneously. This number astounds me and got the wheels turning. Perhaps, integrating a local internet marketing campaign along with a prime time TV schedule could be an effective way to target my audience and reach them where they are currently absorbing a majority of their advertisements. It may seem obvious, but paying attention to the data and placing advertising in multiple mediums where consumers are most receptive, in an integrated fashion, is a critical component to advertising success and is one of the Balihoo media team's strengths.

Whether you work in advertising or are on the other end as a consumer, I encourage you to check out the report.

Need Flowers? Call 1-800-Flowers. Need LSM? Call Balihoo.

Friday, August 27, 2010 by Alex Fascilla

The other night, I caught an episode of CBS's Undercover Boss, a show in which, if you haven't already heard (hopefully, you have, as your CEO could be lurking--perhaps even watching you now as you read this, posing as an interested temp as he scribbles a mental note, "This guy likes to read blogs when he should be working . . . fired!") features CEOs of Fortune 500 companies—never mind—I just explained the entire premise of the show.

Anyway, this particular episode trailed Chris McCann, the President and little brother of Jim McCann, the CEO of the largest floral and gift company in the world, 1-800-Flowers. [An aside: the best scenes came when Jim treats Chris like they're both 9 years old again, going so far as to almost blow Chris' cover in a stunt to embarrass him in front of people that technically work for him. Classic!]. The episode proceeds as most do. Boss finds some bad. Boss finds more good. Boss hands out promotions/gentle coaching. However, one particular scene made my "hey-Balihoo-could-own-that-if-given-the-chance" light bulb go off. Yes, I have that light bulb. Jealous?

Shortly after this scene was shot, Chris was almost fired by this lady! No joke!

The scene involves Chris visiting a franchise that recently went from locally-owned to a 1-800-Flowers branded florist shop. When the manager of this particular store was asked why the store was struggling, she stated simply, "people just don't understand we're the same shop, with a different name, especially since we aren't involved in local advertising." DING! Enter Balihoo. With Balihoo actively enabling breakthrough local store marketing, that store, and other 1-800-Flowers franchises just like it, would have been quickly outfitted with the tools neccessary to get their store performing optimally.

So, Mr. McCann (and others just like you) . . . can I get you our local marketing playbook?

Local Online Marketing Works - Take it from Groupon

Friday, August 27, 2010 by Betsie Richardson

Being in the business of local advertising, we at Balihoo are often asked by our small business owner clients about how to utilize local internet marketing. They hear buzz that their customers are overwhelmingly adopting online media. But the internet appears to our business owners as, well, the world wide web - rather daunting, and they don't know where to start.

Our retail store owners in particular spent much of their local marketing efforts in the past few decades hanging coupons on doors and running inserts in the local newspaper. This method simply doesn't cut it in today's fragmented consumer marketplace.

Online advertising is a great way to market on a tight budget and reach a targeted demographic. Google Paid Search (pay-per-click) and SEO efforts should be top on any local business marketer's list. Then consider what your local media outlets offer on their online properties.

Groupon's online display campaign in the NYTimes.com illustrates a great example of local targeting through online news sites. Admittedly, I was reading an article about Snooki, but my shame aside, Groupon's ad on "Boise's Best / Up to 90% Off / Get Today's Special" caught my eye, and I found myself adding to their click through rate. The special today happens to be laser hair removal at a high end spa in Boise. Well targeted at me - a young female professional reading the Fashion & Style section of the NYTimes.com.

Groupon is averaging 500,000 new subscribers a week. After they ran an $11 million promo for Gap, they gained 750,000 subscribers (see Advertising Age's article).

What to learn from Groupon's online marketing:

Identify your target demographic and only buy top-rated pages against that audience
Keep your message concise and easy to read (the less words the better)
Focus the message on the call-to-action
Leverage the measurability of online advertising - track your results closely and optimize as you see upward/downward trends

Are you a franchise owner looking for guidance with local store marketing? Check out Balihoo's white paper.

Channel Marketing Software - Microsites/Dealer Locator Example

Thursday, August 26, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

Balihoo has recently launched a fantastic new function within our local marketing automation software - Microsites. One of the key use-models of this functionality is for product manufacturers who sell their products through a set of regionally distributed

dealers (channel). These manufacturers are using microsite functionality to be the landing pages on the back-end of the dealer-locator section of their websites. Let me demonstrate:

I'm interested in buying a new motorcyle, from Brand X. My first step is that I'll research the product online (which research proves) . First, I'm going to go the website of the manufacturer. Once I explore all of the options and determine what I'm going to buy, I'm ready to purchase it locally (this even has an acronym - ROBO - research online, buy offline). I punch my zip code into their dealer locator, and up pops the 5 dealers in my immediate area. Naturally, since I'm on the web, I'm happy to see that they all have websites. As I click into the dealer that is closest to me, I'm directed to their website, which represents several motorcycle brands, and in fact the Yamaha is on sale on their front page. Brand X has given me the info, the research and directed me to a dealer - however, because they lost control of that customer, they also lost the sale to Yamaha.

Let's contrast that experience with a motorcycle brand that is doing it right - Honda. (note - Honda is not a customer of ours, but they're doing a great job!). See the video below for the exact Honda experience:

Want to see how this could impact your brand? Hit us up for a live demonstration, we would be more than happy to show you!

1 vs. 100: Marketing in the Face of Constrained Demand

Wednesday, August 25, 2010 by Zac Monahan

In 2008, the 100 Thing Challenge created quite a stir on the web, motivating people to own fewer material possessions and cap that ownership at 100 personal items. While Dave Bruno’s challenge lasted for a finite period, some analysts think recession fueled decreases in consumer spending may represent a permanent trend in consumer behavior.

When considered along with the 100 Thing Challenge, the idea of a permanent decreasing in spending leads to a challenging thought experiment for marketers: what if your advertising not only had to generate interest from consumers but also had to motivate them to displace another possession prior to acquiring your product?

The thought begs a number of questions:

How does your marketing emphasize the value your brand provides?
Would severely constrained demand change your approach to demonstrating this value?
If yes, would that approach be different in Albuquerque, New Mexico compared to Augusta, Maine?
How would you coordinate your efforts in different geographic areas across multiple mediums?

At Balihoo, we believe that knowledge and know-how to adapt marketing to local markets probably already exists within your Brand’s organization. Rather, what most brands are missing are the tools to execute locally. Balihoo’s local marketing software simplifies and automates your local marketing strategy, enabling national brands to collaborate with franchisees and affiliates to drive demand and appeal to local buyers with local needs. Specifically for national brands, Balihoo provides tools to streamline funds allocation and administrative oversight of Co-op Advertising programs. Take a look at our White Papers to see how our software can help both your franchisees, and affiliates to drive sales with creative and targeted campaigns tailored to the local level.

The "Why" to Building an Inc 500 Company

Tuesday, August 24, 2010 by Pete Gombert

I am proud to announce that today, Balihoo was named to the Inc. 500 list and recognized as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States. While the recognition is personally gratifying and causes me to spontaneously grin every once in a while, credit goes to the long list of Balihooers who are just as committed as I am to "revolutionize local marketing."

Now, to those who may say that is an esoteric or intangible goal, I respond that it has become a very substantial idea that has fundamentally driven our culture, our hiring, our product road map, and our sales/marketing efforts.

At Balihoo, on a quarterly basis, I provide a "State of the Pound" update to all employees. It is an important opportunity to highlight individual/group successes and business challenges. It is also an opportunity for me to be reflective and remind Balihooers about the big picture shared vision. In this last "State of the Pound," I shared with Balihooers a TED talk given by Simon Sinek.

In an eloquent way, Simon's Golden Circle model codifies the approach that separates successful companies and individuals from the mediocre. Simon's 20-minute presentation gives reason to the directional "gut" feelings I have had about the Balihoo opportunity since opening its doors. Succinctly stated, Balihoo exists to make local marketers successful.

Give the video a watch. Consider the "why" that drives your behavior, and if you believe as we do that there is a better way to market your business locally, let's talk about how our Balihoo marketing platform can help you communicate your "why" through valuable local marketing.

5 Steps: Creating an Effective Referral Marketing Program

Monday, August 23, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

If you own a local business or are a local product distributor, you likely know how powerful customer referrals can be to your bottom line. While most business owners recognize this opportunity, many mistakenly leave Referral Marketing out of their annual local marketing strategy.

Perhaps you're thinking: "Referral Marketing - as a strategy? Referrals should be organic," which, in part, is correct. Referral marketing should be organic; however, if you aren't providing your satisfied customers with the tools and an incentive to share their experience(s) with their social networks (via referral marketing tactics), you're missing out on a huge opportunity.

At the end of the day, nobody talks about businesses that allow themselves to be forgotten. In order to get a significant amount of referrals, you need to ensure that you've made it EASY for customers to refer you. To do this, you need a referral marketing plan.

To get started, follow these steps:

1. Consider the companies that you've referred. Why did you refer them?

Taking a minute to consider the companies that you've referred will help you to identify some tactics or methods that can help kickoff your referral brainstorming process. Once you've identified several referral marketing masters, consider what seems to 'work' for them.

Example: My gym has practically mastered the art of referrals. They continually run members-only promotions that encourage members to bring friends and family into the gym (free training, free gym bag, discounted month, discounted Smoothies, free body analysis, etc.). As such, I've referred several neighbors and family members. So, If you have a membership-based business, take note!

2. Identify Your Target Referrer
Not all of your customers are going to be your best referral candidates. Carefully consider who among your most satisfied customers are your target referrers. Once you have that person identified, think about what makes him/her happy with your service. What do they find valueable? You want to make sure that the value(s) and benefits(s) that they will be sharing align with your referral marketing goals.

3. Create Your Custom Referral Plan
Ultimately, everyone likes to get a deal. Offering a discount, free item, unique promotion, etc. is often the best way to prompt referrals. Most satisfied customers will be more than happy to recommend your business - especially if you're offering them an incentive to do so. To ensure that your plan gets off to a successful start, make sure that all of your employees are onboard.

NOTE: As a rule of thumb, industry experts suggest waiting until the transaction (i.e. cash register exchange) is complete before asking for referrals.

4. Elicit the Correct Information
Using a referral form or card will help you capture the information you're after AND will encourage referrals. Consider creating a personalized form or card of some sort (that offers a discount/free item to BOTH the referrer and the referree). Following the business transaction, send/provide these referral cards to your satisfied customers.

5. Keep Track - and Keep in Touch!
Don't worry if a number of your referral candidates don't immediately recommend your business. Depending on your business, the referral process might take longer (i.e. car dealerships). Make sure you have your referral contacts' info on file and keep in touch with them by sending quarterly letters or newsletters.

Example: The car dealership that I bought my last car from sent me a personalized tin filled with cookies around the holiday season. I've sent them two referrals and won't forget them anytime soon (i.e. - Send more cookies, please!).

At Balihoo, our media planning strategy team provides many of our clients' local business owners with integrated marketing plans. The different types of referral programs that I have seen this team come up with is remarkable. To continue exploring the art of customer referral programs check out this Entreprenuer blog post. Or to learn more about building a breakthrough local store marketing plan, check out this free white paper.

Let Us Organize Your Skittles

Friday, August 20, 2010 by Paul Price

Imagine a big jar filled with Skittles. The Skittles are randomly distributed throughout the jar; a jumbled mishmash of red, green, yellow, purple and orange. The jar is on a machine that shakes it vigorously. Now, imagine that this shaking action is captured on a video and played in reverse.

There is no way that you can tell the video is being played in reverse. When the video is played backward, the candies bounce just as they would when played forward. You have no way to know if the video is playing forward or in reverse.

Now, record a new video in your mind. This time, start with a jar where the Skittles are arranged in colored layers. Moving from the bottom to the top, you have red, green, yellow, purple and finally a orange layer. As the machine shakes the jar, the candies bounce and collide until they are again randomly distributed.

In this video, you can easily distinguish a forward playing recording from one that plays in reverse. This experiment illustrates the effect of entropy known as the arrow of time. The basic principle of this model is that without the help of an external exertion of energy, a system tends to become less ordered over time. Interestingly, this is the only physical property that seems to define the flow of time from past to future.

I got to thinking about this principle as I was mowing, weeding and maintaining my yard yesterday afternoon. Everything in life follows this principle: yards, cars, homes, computer systems, roads and even business strategies including your local advertising strategy. It will slowly fall apart and become less effective over time if you don't continually test, measure and refine it. For example, if local internet marketing was not a part of your strategy a few years ago, it may not have hurt your sales. But, today, if you aren't investing in local internet marketing, then you are almost certainly losing opportunities.

Even if you are executing a successful local pay-per-click campaign today, it is almost guaranteed to be less successful in the future if you don't continually test, measure and refine your approach. The same goes for all other mediums, strategies, tactics and local marketing ideas. You have to stay up-to-date on the new tools and techniques or your competitors who do keep up will leave you behind.

As a national brand, local affiliate, reseller or independent small business owner, you have a lot to worry about, and probably don't have time to get into the nuts and bolts of fighting local advertising entropy. That is where Balihoo comes in. We do that work for you; from ad builder software to email campaign automation, microsites and local media buying. Click here to take a look at some of our whitepapers and case studies. If you are a franchisee or product reseller, then direct your national brands to Balihoo, so that we can help them and you to get your skittles (aka: local store marketing strategy) to look more like this:

Moe's Southwest Grill Nailed It!

Thursday, August 19, 2010 by Brian King

I was recently catching up on some light reading at FastCasual.com, a site devoted to insights for innovative restaurants, when I stumbled upon an article that made so much rationale sense in a world that can sometimes be so irrationale.

The article, Moe's invests in local-store marketing strategy, is in reference to Moe's Southwest Grill's recent corporate initiative to increase local marketing efforts by adding a grassroots element to the franchisee's bag of available tools for franchise marketing.

Below are two favorite quotes from the article, and my thoughts on them:

1. "Local-store marketing has always been a part of what we do and we have always provided a kit to our franchise partners, but not many of our franchisees are comfortable leaving their four walls." - Right on! So many franchises want to focus on local advertising and marketing, but neglect to provide quality tools to the franchisees that truly enable them to act as effective local marketers. Ahem. . .better take a peek at Balihoo's Local Marketing Automation solution.

2. "It allows the franchisee. . .to totally control his or her territory, and they're less reliant on corporate staff or the franchisor to do the marketing for them." - FINALLY! While their effort is primarily focused on grassroots marketing, at least they are working to put tools in place so that local marketing isn't something that is only discussed during executive brainstorming sessions, but rather something that is actively done at a local level to drive demand generation.

Kudos to the team at Moe's. Now my recommendation to them: Call us, because we all know that grassroots marketing is just one component of the numerous marketing activities that should take place at the local level. We can help you with the rest!

Five Signs that ‘Local Marketing’ is Much More Than a Trend

Thursday, August 19, 2010 by Chris Keller

In the last few years, Balihoo has served a growing list of national brand clients. The attention that has been given to our ‘local marketing automation’ platform has caused me to reflect on five signs that ‘Local Marketing’ is much more than a trend:

‘Local Marketing’ Search Volume is Dramatically Growing—As a search term, ‘Local Marketing’ started growing in 2008 and has exploded in the last year, according to Google trends. Variations of this term have seen a similar explosion in growth. Balihoo coined the term ‘local marketing automation’ and owns that space as evidenced by it owning the top three Google search results.
Analysts' Increased Attention—Analysts like Forrester and BIA/Kelsey are giving increased attention to local marketing, local search and now ‘hyperlocal’ media trends.
1. A recent Forrester “Distributed Marketing” report illustrates the ‘local marketing’ challenges. It was music to my ears and I was glad to see Balihoo was included as a vendor solution, although sad that Forrester didn’t give more attention to define the integrated approach Balihoo employs to combine ad building, co-op management and execution across all mediums. That approach is how we are changing the rules of the game. Seriously, a 30-minute demonstration will prove my point.
2. A review of BIA/Kelsey blog posts illustrates the growing interest in local, hyperlocal and geo-targeting topics.
Steady Saturation of Mobile—the ubiquitous adoption of mobile phones has changed how brands can “connect” with consumers.
1. Texting was slow to take off, but according to CTIA, the Wireless Industry Association, in ’09, 152B SMS text messages were sent monthly, up from 9.8B in 2005.
2. According to the Pew Research, adult cell phone ownership has gone from 65% to 83% between ’04 and ’09 and 93% of 18-29 year-old adults and 75% of 12-17 year-old teens have cell phones.
3. Smartphones and mobile devices--with the launch and adoption of the iPad and Kindle platforms-- are fueling a revolution in mobile computing.
Meteoric Adoption of social platforms and geo-location tools—Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter’s meteoric rise along with other evolving geo-location based tools like Yelp, Foursquare, and Groupon are changing the way consumers consume and share information. It presents huge opportunities and challenges for marketers.
Increased Acquisition/IPO Activity—The last few months have resulted in some interesting acquisition/IPO activity that affects local marketers including IBM’s announcement to acquire Unica, and ReachLocal’s $54 Million IPO. Other activity includes Yelp’s Rejection of Google’s $500 Million offer, Google’s subsequent launch of Google Places, and Facebook's announcement today of its geo-location solution, Facebook's Places.

So what does this all mean for national brands?

First, it means every national brand needs to have a local marketing strategy. What is yours?

Second, as stated in the Forrester research, local marketing is very difficult. That is where Balihoo comes in--pardon the quick plug. We have the best tools available for ad-creation, asset management, co-op advertising administration, media planning, microsite creation, and execution across all mediums including social. In addition, Balihoo has an incredible CEO, management team, and board of directors that understand Balihoo's opportunity to revolutionize local marketing.

Pete Gombert said it almost as good as Bob Dylan sang it, that Times They Are a Changin' and all signs indicate that 'Local Marketing' is much more than a trend. It may be a revolution.

The Times They Are a-Changin'

Wednesday, August 18, 2010 by Pete Gombert

One of the things that I regularly address with clients and potential clients is the phenomal pace of change in local marketing, and that dealing with these rapid shifts is extremely challenging as a local marketer.

As an illustration of these rapid shifts, Beloit College in Wisconsin publishes an annual Mindset List. This list is intended to give its faculty a reality check to ensure that they are communicating in a fashion that is commensurate with the way incoming students communicate.
Read through the list and as you do, imagine yourself as a local marketer in a college town trying to reach the freshman class. Are you going to use:

Newspaper - Nope. They don't read it.
Radio - Nope. They don't listen to it.
TV - Nope. It is too expensive for the few channels that students watch.
Online displays - That has to be a good fit, right? Well maybe, but if you are too intrusive or disruptive to their online experience, they will be gone in a flash.
Email - That is the ticket, right? Everyone uses e-mail, right? Nope. Try again. E-mail is "too slow" for this generation.

The reality is that the best way to reach these students is to use the evolving mediums that have only been around for months or at most a few years:

Social Media - Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp
SMS Text
Mobile Apps

So how many local marketers know how to execute well over these new and emerging media channels? Based on my experience, not many.

That is where a local marketing automation solution like Balihoo can make all the difference. We take the pain out of staying up-to-speed on these technologies. We then identify the best channels to be utilizing according to your target and then execute your campaigns.

Contact Us or Download a White-paper to learn more

Dental Implants - How Much is Quality of Life Worth to You?

Monday, August 16, 2010 by Betsie Richardson

Working on the local consumer advertising side of the dental implant industry, I understand the barrier of finding financially qualified leads. This procedure is still young, and consumers are simply uneducated on the cost parameters. Once they see the high out-of-pocket cost, they have to ask themselves how much they would pay to smile proudly again, eat apples and steak, speak confidently, and eliminate the stigma of dentures going in the sock drawer at night. What is the price tag on quality of life?

The New York Times posted a good article on this topic on July 29 - read it here.

As Lesley Alderman writes in this story, insurance typically only covers up to $1,500. When a single implant procedure runs $3,000 minimum and full-arch implants start at $20,000, you can imagine the sticker shock experience for a consumer who just wants to eat steak again.

Based on our experience, the best prospect-to-patient conversion rates in dental implant marketing happen as a result of public education seminars and our local media buying experts have given clients great results by recommending advertising in newspapers. It turns out to be a key medium for the target of this specific marketing campaign with these demographics (female in house, 55+, household income of $75,000+).

We worked with a dental implant center in Boise that ran their third public education seminar last night. They had 21 attendees, of whom 17 had missing teeth (the other 4 were supportive spouses). Not bad for two hours of the surgeons' evening! These were These attendees scheduled personal consultations on the spot, and when they walk into their appointments, they will have a solid understanding of the benefits and costs of available procedures.

If you are interested to learn how Balihoo's dental marketing arm can provide local marketing ideas to benefit your business, contact us: www.dentalmarketing.balihoo.com.

The ABCs to Know Your Audience

Friday, August 13, 2010 by Tiffany Schrenk

Recently, I have had multiple, similar conversations with Balihoo clients about the importance of identifying target consumers..

Establishing a target audience is one of the most important aspects of a successful local marketing campaign. Without this, advertisers cannot accurately identify likes, dislikes, and habits of potential consumers which are critical to the success of the overall integrated strategy and marketing plan across multiple mediums.

Unfortunately, more often than not, those who manage local advertising make a mistake assuming that their target audience consists of individuals just like them. As a case in point—based on a recent situation I had to correct—most females older than 35 are not listening to sports radio during their morning commute.

In general, this ABC approach provides a good starting point for identifying target audiences. It is a simple model with some good succinct advice and is a great exercise for local advertisers developing a local marketing strategy.

A - Audience - Define the characteristics of your target audience. You can't serve everyone and so you must weigh specific characterizations with generalities. You are often better to lean toward specifics.
B - Behavior - What actions do you want that target audience to take now and over time.
C - Conversion - How will you turn that prospect into a customer. Consider the paths from their position to your product and leverage people, processes technology to influence your target to become a customer.

Common sense should be your measuring stick in all local advertising and local media buying practices.

Facebook or Email? Where does your target consumer turn first?

Thursday, August 12, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

"What is the first thing you do online on a typical day?"

ExactTarget posed this question during a recent research project developed to provide insight into how consumers interact with brands online.

The study concluded with some interesting findings, including:

42% of U.S. internet users use Facebook daily (69% of which are FANS of one or more companies on Facebook)
88% of U.S internet users use email everyday (95% use it at least monthly)
93% of U.S internet users are subscribers (i.e. they have opted-in to receive permission-based emails)
58% of online consumers check their email first
11% start their day by checking Facebook

Looking deeper, it turns out that how and where internet users start their online day can reveal a lot about how they typically interact with brands online - and what they ultimately want from those online interactions.

TO SUMMARIZE:

Facebook-first consumers:

Tend to share more information online
Prefer that brands maintain a solid distinction between how they communicate via email vs. Facebook
Engage with brands for entertainment or to be 'in-the-know' regarding brands' activities
Tend to be younger - 43% of high school aged teens begin their day on Facebook (compared to 22% who start with email)

Email-first consumers:

Tend to more task-oriented online
Are more readily engaged through the use of deals, promotions or new product announcements
Less interested in providing feedback to brands on their products and services without an incentive to do so
Tend to be older

So what does this mean to you? Well, several things:

Skilled Coordination:  Marketers need to coordinate their Facebook and email strategies to ensure that they're maximizing their communication with their target audience.

Messaging and Communication Balance:  Brands need to carefully balance their tone, engagement level and message to deliver their target audience with the savings, information, entertainment, deals etc. that appeal to them.

Both are "Keepers":  With 93% of online consumers 'subscribers' and 38% 'Likers' of brands on Facebook, both email and Facebook are powerful tools for connecting your brand to your target consumer.

Ultimately, national brands' (and their dealers, distributors and affiliates) have local advertising needs that could greatly benefit from carefully planned and researched integrated marketing plans. Balihoo's local marketing automation and services solution (which includes Facebook and email - as well as TV, Direct Mail, POP, Radio, Display, Outdoor, Newspaper, Magazine, etc.) AND co-op functionality AND a professional media team can streamline the efforts of virtually any local business owner, product distributor, dealer, etc.

Optimizing your facebook and email effort is just the tip of the iceberg! Explore the possibilities by scheduling a demo today!

Beersbee: Power Tools and Local Marketing

Friday, August 6, 2010 by Chuck Mitten

At our company campout last weekend, I was introduced to a great new game called Beersbee. It's a combination drinking/skill game that's pretty simple, and a ton of fun. IMO, it's a great addition to any backyard barbeque.

Inspired, I was walking through Lowe's the other day in search of some PVC pipe to build my own Beersbee kit, and I just couldn't resist the pull of the power tools section. You don't really need power tools to make a Beersbee kit. I just dig tools (pun intended). They help you do stuff. And when you have exactly the right tool for a job, it's an awesome thing. The right tool makes you powerful. Smart. Efficient. Productive. Confident. You get the job done quickly, and done right.

I was in the process of admiring a table saw that I know I can't fit in my garage when I realized: Balihoo really provides power tools for local marketing automation. And a lot of the brand builders that I talk to on a daily basis are closer to hacking things out of stone (from a marketing perspective) than they are to using power tools.

The cool thing is that when they see how easy Balihoo makes ad building (across all media types), co-op management and local media buying and marketing execution, they get that same feeling I quietly enjoy at my local hardware store: Zen. Appreciation of the artful match of purpose and capability.

Balihoo: Top quality power tools for Brand Builders. Give me a call, post a comment or drop me a line. I'd love the opportunity to show them to you.

And if you want to know what it means to trust your power tools, check out this amazing video.

The User Experience Journey

Friday, August 6, 2010 by Kevin Donaldson

Software user-experience development is a journey. It's a lot like the journey of life - ideally you continue to grow and learn along this journey, and in the case of user experience, our objective is to make our users feel like marketing super hero's when using our software.

Balihoo's local marketing automation platform is considered to be one of the best in the industry, however we're always looking for ways to improve it. Not only do we continually add new functionality designed to benefit affiliates' with local store marketing needs - but we consistently strive to ensure that the product that we're currently offering continues to evolve and surpass our end-users expectations. A current enhancement that we're working through is in our cross-medium ad builder process and the user transition from the creative template library into the ad-building and ordering process.

In the first image below you will see our current creative details UI that was released earlier this year. This screen is a 'jumping off' point for building an ad and then taking an action with it. While this iteration was well received over the previous release, we knew there would still be plenty of room for growth. However one of the best ways to evolve a product is through real user activity!

Since the time it was deployed we've been gathering feedback through conversion analytics, support calls, training demos and 3rd party usability tests to look for mis-steps in the user experience. Below is an in-progress version of our next iteration. There are some minor tweaks we still want to make but overall this new concept tested well prior to development and we are now in the process of building and deploying this to our customers in the next two weeks. If you look at both screens you'll notice a number of changes including:

Increased use of thumbnail images over pure text
Clear link between the version you are looking against the assets you have stored
Available actions are all available in one place (as your eye scans to the right (always above the fold))
Clear focus toward action (i.e. conversion) on the page
Clear differentiation between the master template and versions the user has customized

This is just the tip of a much broader initiative as we work to further simplify the local marketing execution process. We're excited to be continually moving forward to better serve our customer base. Stay tuned for more peeks into this process over the next few months!

The Local Advertising Monster

Wednesday, August 4, 2010 by Brian King

I'm a big Seth Godin fan. I've read numerous books by him and I tend to follow his blog fairly closely. Last week he had a great posting about facing a monster head-on. The simple blog read as such:

Every monster has a big shadow

That's what makes it a monster.

In fact, when you look the monster in the eye, when you calmly and carefully inspect the actual monster, you discover that he's not so bad after all. It's just the shadow that's scary.

When in doubt, ignore the shadow.

This short and simple blog is a great analogy for those launching a local advertising campaign for the first time. I see so many small businesses afraid to take the necessary step forward to implement targeted local advertising because they are scared of the daunting task that lay ahead. Well, I've got good news! Balihoo's local marketing automation platform is designed to help your distributors, affiliates and franchisees "ignore the shadow" and face the monster head on to achieve long-term sustained business growth through strategic local marketing and advertising.

Find out how Balihoo's innovative local marketing automation solution can help your organization take on the monster!

Local Internet Marketing: Ready for Back-to-School?

Wednesday, August 4, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

As a local business owner or distributor with local advertising needs, you’re probably more than a little familiar with circulars (i.e. those advertising inserts that are always falling out of your newspaper). If you've used circular advertising in the past, you've probably wondered how many of your own ads are falling out of the papers - only to go unseen by your target consumer...

What if your circular was digitally buzzing around the internet's most popular social networks and landing in front of your local customers?

Today, with the newspaper industry struggling to attract ad dollars and our society's flat-out addiction to the internet, it's fitting that new circular-specific applications are hitting social networks. ShopLocal just launched (yesterday) a new set of applications that enable retailers with local advertising needs to add circulars and ads to Facebook pages (already being implemented by JCPenny, Office Depot, CVS, etc.). In addition, on Monday Microsft Advertising introduced a new localized interactive circulars experience (added to MSN Local Edition) that allows past and potential customers to "grab" savings as they need them.

Perfect timing considering a recent Burst Media survey indicates that the internet will be a key shopping tool for back-to-school shoppers. With just under half (48.9%) of survey takers reporting that they'll go online to research a product/service for the school year and 47.1% of them acknowledging that they're influenced by online ads geared toward the back-to-school season - it's a pivotal time to make sure that your products/services are easy to find online (assuming your target audience falls in this bucket).

While ShopLocal and Microsoft's new tools are currently being utilized primarily by retailers, there is no reason that such functionality couldn't and shouldn't also be provided to a brand's distributors and resellers and/or to a chain's franchisees. While we wait for this application to appear....(*glances hopefully at the Balihoo product/development team (who have already developed some awesome social networking functionality)*) you can get ready by getting your Facebook page setup and connecting with your past or potential local customers.

Broadcast your current sale to local customers! Offer a unique discount to Fans! Just get involved with your local customers online by providing them with value (savings, information, entertainment, etc.) - you won't be sorry!