Mike McDermott, President - Bash Foo

Miami County Chambers of Commerce Small Business Council

Business Advancement Seminar Series

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The 12th Annual Dayton AleFest is kicking off this Saturday at Carillon Historical Park. Bash Foo and Get Social! Radio got their hands on two tickets to give away.
Following the link at the bottom of this page to enter to win. Tickets for Dayton AleFest are on sale now to Friday for $35/each and $40 on Saturday.
The promoter is expecting about 4,500 ale-lovers to descend on Carillon Park this Saturday to celebrate AleFest.
Want more details? Visit their website at http://daytonbeerweek.com or http://alefest.com/dayton.htm

he theme song of the 1975 TV sitcom, The Jefferson’s was entitled, “Moving On Up”. The catchy tune sung by Ja’net Du Bois described how an African American family raised themselves out of poverty, and moved into an expensive high-rise. Bash Foo will be venturing a move in a slightly different direction.

The Move

This Monday morning, my company Bash Foo will be “Moving On Down” to Tipp City’s downtown business district, adding ourselves to the collection of antique outlets, independent restaurants and unique toy and gift shoppes.

Why Move?

Those familiar with the marketing techniques of Bash Foo quickly recognize how our focus is on hyper-local advertising. Our peers used to question these advertising motives, but now that Google has strengthened their local-focus search results the importance of strong local advertising and web design techniques should not be discounted. Moving to the local nexus of commerce in Tipp City just made sense.

Our New Location

View Larger Map

Our office is now conveniently located at 135 E. Main St. Suite 203 in the Tower Office Supply building (across from Tony’s Bada Bing). Our office hours will be from 8-5PM M-F and weekend by appointment. This week we will be lighting up the East end of the Downtown with FREE Wi-Fi Internet access for our guests as well as curious pedestrians near our location.

What to Expect

More work getting done, more relationships created and a stronger overall portfolio of services. Sound interesting? Hit me up later on in the week once the paint has dried to chat about how Bash Foo could help your small business.

If you have participated in Facebook for any length of time, you have been exposed to “Friend Farmers”.

No, not those annoying people who post their Farmville updates to your wall, a friend farmer is someone who seeks to be friends with all of your friends for purposes of either to market their products or services to you, or they are simply curious and want to snoop into your collection of friends.  Is the correct approach to then remove them from your friend list?

Friend to All Manner of Beast

Friends and friendships are vital to social networking site such as Facebook, without them you simply would not be linked up, ‘in the know’ nor have anything to read and distract you from getting anything worthwhile done during the day. The Art of managing your social networks includes that beguiling spell where you simply “friend” every person who has ever occupied space and time with you. You meet someone at the farmers market for the first time, and you rush home to add them to your social network (or even worse, do it right in front of them on your mobile device). If you are a confident and grounded person you won’t have any use for that additional random person as you have already fostered years of real-life investment in your friendships. The message that the social neophyte sends to their new electronic acquaintance, ”It doesn’t take much for someone to be my friend”.

Fair-Weather Friends

This lowered barrier of entry to your social circle also allows for the creation of masses of “fair-weather” friends who only want something when They are in need, and are rarely happy unless you are unhappy. Also in this category of social media friend can be found the “Desperate Business Owner” who doesn’t have enough work to keep themselves busy during the day, so they surf for friends to farm from their acquaintanceship with others. Their Primary Goal is not to be your friend or to build an existing relationship (from nothing), but to have you visit their retail store or restaurant and buy their wares. They NEED you to be their friend so they can stay in business. They are rarely happy unless you are felt to be left wanting without them. “Your day won’t be complete without buying my stuff”

Beware

You should beware the next time you accept a friend request from a random person via Facebook. Their intentions may not be the best for you. On top of them trying to shill wares to you, they may want to pry into your box of friends and hit them up as well. This usually precipitates a private message from your friend that says “Hey… Do you know this guy, he looks creepy but Facebook said he was your friend”. My personal guidance on the subject, if you find a friend farmer on Facebook, delete and block them and let them know why you are killing the social media connection or they will continue to try to friend you. Their friend following will be large, it will swell due to the number of people who don’t preen their social media nests, or those who have very low self-esteem and are desperate for a crackpot in their life who will immediately trounce on their harvested friendships with wild abandon.

billbeagle.com

When Former City Councilman, Bill Beagle first decided to run for State Senate in Ohio’s 5th district, one of the first calls made was to Bash Foo. He realized that while his desire to serve was personal, his candidacy must be made highly public. His first thoughts were not of yard-signs or press releases in the local paper.. It was his social media presence. How would he be able to position his campaign for success?

Not your Ordinary Campaign Site

Rounded corners, flashy navigation bar, gradients and transparencies are the hallmark of this campaign website. Bill’s key needs are highlighted in the page headlines, and urgent calls to action are peppered within each page. The site is staged for rapid growth as the campaign continues to build momentum.

Social Media.. Everywhere

The social media components are available all around the Web 2.0 site, however more importantly they are integrated into his Facebook page, Twitter and even his YouTube channel. Supporters of the candidate will use interactive forms to register for signs, volunteering and contributions. Campaign funds are calculated and shared on the site, demonstrating the power of the socially enabled political campaign website.

Visit Bill Beagle’s Senate Campaign web site for Ohio’s 5th District

Bambergerlaw.com

Local attorney Mark Bamberger approached me one afternoon in January and asked me if I had ever used social media for a law firm. As in all things, businesses consume aspects of marketing at different times, and at different velocities. The legal profession, with all of it’s business-savvy has not exactly been an early or interested advocate of Social Media. I explained to Mark how we were going to set out to change that!

Search Optimization using Content, Content, Content

bambergerlaw.com

Observing that attorney websites lack descriptions of practice areas and examples of their casework, this left me with tons of “undiscovered country” to experiment. I infused Mark’s site with color, active content and practice areas by category and tags. The content is keyword rich but very readable. I did not execute any over the top internal tagging or pop-outs and slide-downs that would obviously take away from the site’s requirement for professionalism. The site’s rich content has delivered many approving nods from both Mark and his peers.

Integrated Social Media

Mark’s site allows content readers to directly Tweet, Facebook or Digg his articles without leaving the page. Mark also embraces the use of Twitter each day on his BlackBerry which replicates his content updates right to the homepage! Mark doesn’t have to be a web designer to share news about his practice on his website, all he does is chunk out 140 character news and updates to share with visitors to his site. Mark also has an appreciation to the video content of his site and is raring to go to create a whole series of videos that highlight casework, practice areas and the ways that the attorneys of The Mark Bamberger Company, LLC can help others.

So yesterday I was again asked to defend this statement which sort of goes against all that is holy in the world of sales and advertising.
Unless you are selling a product or service that is entirely unique, and you have no competition in the market, your message of how great your product or service is will always be overshadowed by those that are Kings of Delivery.

Kings of Delivery

Kings of Delivery

Those that are able to identify the medium from which their products or services will be best sold from, inherently win the day regardless of their marketing budget. These entrepreneurs my friends are called Kings of Delivery. YOU want to be a King of Delivery too. These sultans of selectivity have determined which medium to advertise in, whether it be a particular newspaper, TV commercial, radio or Internet advertisement. They have also ensured that their medium is not compromised by the competition. They do this by going hyper-local. If you decide that you get your best return on investment from newspaper advertising for instance, and your competition is also advertising there, you should move your ads from the large market metro publication to the small market publications in the City or Township. While the royal advertising net may be smaller, these rulers of the rational find a greater return on their marketing investment here. This move to hyper-local advertising is not something new, just something protected by those who wield it’s power.

Awesome Results

Have you ever tried to figure out how wide-market advertising works? Spending large sums of cash to reach tens of thousands of consumers and then returning fractional results many times not equaling the initial advertising  investment. The pain you feel comes from two things folks. Not Knowing.. and Cash Investment. Smaller market advertising allows you to take the pain from your advertising efforts providing you with measurable results (that allow you to KNOW) and smaller marketing budgets (reducing the size of your cash investments) You’ll be able to then sleep soundly at night knowing that your advertisements are working, and that you can make payroll next month. So how do you accomplish Awesome Results? Well you have to play the field. Catering to smaller networks of consumers allows you to recognize the results of your advertising efforts however your business may rely on quantity of sales to move the needle forward. That’s when you start to involve “multi-modal” advertising. **Yes, another new word from Bash Foo.

Multi-modal Advertising

Consider what the demographic of your key customer is.

Are they wealthy or poor? Where do they live? Where do they worship? Where are they buying groceries? Where do they go for fun? From there you need to extrapolate all of the various niche advertising opportunities are. The church bulletin? Pee-wee baseball jerseys? Sidewalk art? Bus stop billboards? Books of matches? The opportunities are endless and advertising in multiple modes (print, direct mail, lit, signs, etc.) focused on your key customer demographic helps to ensure that those you want seeing your advertising.. Do.

You also accomplish something else with this technique, you stop wasting your time, effort and resources on advertising to those who WON’T buy your product or service.

Consternation Free Advertising

Bash Foo really works to provide small businesses with “consternation free” advertising. We don’t want our clients investing in things that don’t have a remote chance of success. We even waive off those who request that sort of advertising tomfoolery. Only you know what is best for your company, while we know what sorts of marketing efforts will benefit your company. If you are advertising with us, and have anxiety or fear about the dollars you are investing in your marketing campaign, we are doing something wrong. Again, you are either not receiving measurable results, or your campaign expenses are larger than you desire. If you find  yourself in this scenario, give us a call to find out how you can invest in “consternation free” advertising and lose that worried look on your face. Call: 937-573-8535 for a free analysis.

Today I recalled an under-reported story out of Denver back in August of last year.

A 74 year old Denver woman regularly fed the brown bears that were drawn to her backyard from the adjacent forest. She sat out fish, yogurt and other “bear friendly” foods all while the City of Denver and the Wildlife, Fish and Game wardens made every attempt to stop the old woman from feeding the bears. The womans’ neighbors were incredibly upset with the idea of having huge bears roaming their backyards and searching their property for food as well. The woman received letters, injunctions and all manners of communications letting her know that the bears were dangerous and that she should cease feeding them immediately.

August 8th, 2009

The elderly woman was seen feeding hard-boiled eggs and yogurt to an injured bear cub when an adult bear came over to the cub to take it’s food. The old woman grabbed a broom from the porch and swatted the adult brown bear with it. “She didn’t have a chance in hell,” said Connie Barnes, her neighbor of 5 years who never went outside after dark without a spotlight, her husband and his BB gun.

Game officials had to put down two bears that day which had become so dependent over time on the old woman’s “kindness” and “generosity”.

The moral of the story

Well, beyond the natural affirmations of where we are on nature’s food chain, the story of the old woman who cared so much about bears to offer herself (and and eventually some of them) in sacrifice should not go unnoticed or unremarked. Sometimes we do something that we believe to be so very honorable and generous that we blindly forget about the worldly order of things (regulations, laws and such) as well as the natural order of things (bears can eat humans). Officials at the scene were quick to use the tragic event as a teachable moment to those that understate and undervalue the rules and regulations that we have put in place to guide our actions. While we may live in a world where cynics pluck at all laws and regulations as bad things that hold us back from our true and rightful nirvana… Many of our laws only exist to protect us from ourselves and to guard against tragic events.

A Litmus Test

Does the Law provide for the common good, protecting freedoms and liberties while guarding ourselves from danger?

A Socialist country only uses the former statement “Provide for the common good” to provide justification for its laws.

A Democratic country ensures that “individual rights and freedoms” are not trampled in the pursuit of that “common good”;

and a Marxist/Communist country ensures that those rights and liberties granted from the second statement have the appropriate caveats of “guarding us from danger”.

While many of my ultra-Conservative friends will argue that a Democratic country like the United States can be ran strictly by Constitutional core values, without the legislative and regulatory controls in place to “guard us from danger” there would be a great many more Americans eaten each day. The rub is in how many degrees we allow ourselves to be self governed.

What seems to now be an every month occurrence, I have something to say about Municipalities and Cities using Social Media to inform, educate and interact.

Chapter 3 is just a brief update on the use of Social Media by my hometown, the City of Tipp City. I introduced them to using social media tools in September and they have been able to chart a course of communication and interaction with residents. Their facebook page allows them to share information with residents outside the circle of the webmaster. They are not waiting for an update to be made to their site, they are getting the word out quickly and effectively. Tipp City is also using their facebook page to share traffic and road closure information as well as the plowing/salting schedule during the winter months.

Most recently, the City of Tipp City requested that our local online news source TippNews DAILY publish a poll for residents to respond to. The poll was asking residents whether they wanted the City to change the logo that had been in place for several decades. 47 residents responded, mostly affirming the support by Tipp City residents in favor of the new logo. City Council now prepares to take into account the results of the poll (however unscientific it was) in their move to accept and endorse the new city image.

The Bottom-line

The City of Tipp City does not seek to create animosity with residents when they make decisions about their image (changing the logo), and they want to ensure that as many residents are aware of what is going on within the city limits that may impact them directly (traffic, roads, etc). So, the formula for success now appears to be:

Accepted Social Media resource (facebook, TippNews DAILY) + A Message to or Interaction with Residents = Meeting (or exceeding) Objectives for Communication by the City and Council

As more and more users jump on the Social media sites like facebook and TippNews DAILY, we will see them take a more commanding role in the lives of Residents who will now seek out and expect to be notified of these events.

The watermark for communication with Residents has moved, and Tipp City has moved with it.

Stick a fork in it. Direct mail is dead.

Small business clients that I call on are dead tired of spending $600-$800 on a postcard mailing to find only one or two end up back in their store. That equates to $100-$300 per lead. Ouch!

Many of them think that the people receiving their carefully constructed and colorful mailings just are not in the mood to listen to them, or buy. They could not be more wrong. The people that are receiving your letters or postcards will review them and make the following Decisions.

Consumer Decisions

1. Is this something I would buy? Probably the most important decision a consumer makes, and the quickest. A 20 year old will rarely receive a mailer from a hip-replacement firm and do anything but throw it away. Is your mailing list targeted or did you just buy it? Does your list include past customers? Have you validated that the list is not too old? (anything more than 24 months old is considered “ancient”)
2. Does the mailer (postcard/letter) include ‘calls to action’? Does the headline tell the consumer exactly what you want them to do, or how important it is to buy/call/visit soon?
3. Does the mailer provide me with a ‘Default-Out’? Say I don’t have the time or the desire to jump in my car or get on the phone with you right at the moment, but I am a willing consumer of your product/service and would like to have a ‘default-out’. Does the mailer provide a website address where they can claim their prize, or confirm their interest?
4. Does the packaging and wording ensure the mailer won’t hit the wastebasket? Paying a bit of attention to call-outs like “Free Prize” or “Limited Offer” or “Act Now” will help to ensure the viability of your communication. If there is an official looking code or key that you provide your customer, or a certificate that must be presented.. it is more likely to stick around and be returned.

Direct Mail is not Dead.. It is just ill.

I can’t tell you how many mailings I receive each week that don’t have a call to action, are poorly constructed, and fail to engage me directly. Most get tossed without the envelope being opened. Why? If you can’t tell me what you have to tell me in the few seconds I have your mailer in my hand… You are wasting my time. Time it seems is the disease that direct mail suffers from. The consumers of 2010 have a lack of attentiveness and a lack of time and cannot be bothered by lengthy and protracted communications. Give me something, give it to me now, make me want it….

The Math

OK, so say you are a small restaurant and send out post cards with a $2.00 off coupon on the back off of lunch. Say that you normally receive back 20 postcards. Now, if you provide them with a short link to your website, and tell them they can have access to $50 worth of coupons from your restaurant, you will not only receive back those 20 postcards, but also 20% more (4). You will also then receive 10 coupons from your website that are redeemed by interested customers for a total of 34. These are numbers based on average statistics provided by the Direct Mail Association. Even they know that you have to provide your customers with more than a piece of paper, you have to build momentum, provide additional options and opportunities and stoke public opinion of your establishment.

Conclusion

If you are glad that you didn’t chuck your mailing list, and if you are interested in harvesting qualified leads, sending out direct mail pieces that are delivered, read and returned to you, and providing your customers with a way to stay in touch with you and take advantage of opportunities via your Web Site, contact Mike today. mike@bashfoo.org