Customer Acquisition vs. Customer Retention

- Over a 5 year period businesses my lose as many as 1/2 of their customers over a 5 year period
- Acquiring a new customer can cost 6 to 7 times more than retaining an existing customer.
- Businesses who boosted customer retention rates by as little as 5% saw increases in their profits ranging from 5% to a whopping 95%

Ok, so that’s a bit of a leading question, but whilst we all know what our answers should be, it’s tempting to focus all of our time and money on acquiring new customers rather than looking after the ones we have. Acquiring new customers satisfies our need to get onto the next thing, it seems exciting and new. But does it make good business sense?
The short answer is no. It can cost you up to six or seven times more to gain business from a new customer than it does from an existing one according to Flowtown. The same blog highlights that you can increase your profits by up to 95 per cent just by improving your customer retention rates by five per cent. That sounds pretty optimistic to me, but even an increase of 20-30 per cent in profits wouldn’t be a bad thing for most businesses.
Your loyal customers will spend more money with you, they cost you less to gain repeat business from, and they’re probably more loyal and less sensitive to price than new customers. So, if retaining the customers you have makes good business sense, then why don’t many businesses put their existing customers at the heart of their marketing strategy?
In the small business world, it’s easy to think that it might be a lack of strategy. Many business owners don’t have a strategy or a marketing plan and will often lurch from advertising to leaflet drops to manic social networking without taking a considered or planned approach. Perhaps that’s a very unfair way of looking at things, but I do believe that without a strategy to retain customers you leave yourself open to losing customers unnecessarily.
That said, big businesses aren’t immune to failing to retain their customers effectively. Talk to anyone renewing their insurance and you’ll wonder whether the insurance companies have even heard of the concept of customer retention. I know that it’s always cheaper for my family to apply to our existing insurance company as a new customer, than it is for us to just renew. How unbelievably inefficient for us all!
Large and small businesses could do well to think more carefully about customer retention. In this age of comprehensive spending reviews and increased efficiency, frankly we could all do with whatever help we can get in leveraging more business from our valuable customer bases. What strategies do you use in your business?

Half Time Show (Super Bowl 2012)

Marketing: Ads, Trends and much more...

Twitter Rolls Out Expanded Brand Pages for More Companies

Twitter has started rolling out its enhanced brand pages to more advertisers.
The social networking site — which announced in December that it would be introducing Facebook-style brand pages for companies to customize and highlight content — has extended the platform to National Public Radio, NBC News, Volkswagen, The Huffington Post, Al Jazeera, Anobii and others, the company told Mashable.

“Enhanced profile pages will continue to roll out to advertising partners, as well as other select partners, charities, media organizations and individuals,” Twitter said in a statement.
The latest brands are the first to get the design since it was made available to certain partners when it launched. Included among the first 21 brands invited to test out the new platform were HP, Intel, Coca Cola, Dell, Disney, JetBlue, Nike and Paramount Pictures.
Although brands with enhanced profile pages will have access to uploading banners and promoting tweets at the top of their Twitter timeline, it’s up to account owners to use and make the most of the functionality.
Some companies are already making the most of their brand pages. In fact, launch partners HP and Intel hosted the first-ever live stream of a concert on Twitter with electronic music master Tiësto during the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in January.
“HP came to us with the idea and we couldn’t be more excited to hear how the company and Intel will be using their Twitter brand pages to reach out to the public and become destination sites,” said Rob Pietsch, Twitter’s director of West Coast sales. “It’s a first for us, and we expect in the future that more companies will integrate streaming video into their pages.”
Twitter’s expanded brand pages are expected to change the way fans interact with businesses on the site.

Tuenti Lanza Tuenti Ads

Tuenti, la red social española más importante, ha dado un gran paso en su objetivo de facilitar que todo tipo de anunciante se pueda beneficiar del potencial publicitario de la plataforma al lanzar una nueva solución que permitirá a cualquier usuario comprar compañas segmentadas localmente y que sigue el modelo de precios CPM (Coste por Mil Impresiones). Tuenti Ads abre el camino a importantes innovaciones en el área publicitaria de la compañía, enmarcándose en la estrategia comercial de 2012.Se trata de un formato poco intrusivo, que se integra únicamente en las páginas de fotos, y se le denomina flotante ya que acompaña al usuario en la navegación. La contratación de dicho formato es, como todo producto que lanza la red social, sencilla y escalable.

El proceso consta de 5 pasos

Creación del anuncio. El anunciante puede escoger entre publicitar un espacio ya existente en Tuenti o una página externa. Deberá escoger un título con un máximo de 25 caracteres y una descripción de 60, y una imagen de 50x50 pixeles.

Elección del target. Basada en la hipersegmentación, que permite al anunciante definir su público objetivo en función de variables geográficas (por provincia o por ciudad), demográficas (sexo y edad) y sociales (estado, estado sentimental e idioma). Al seleccionar las variables deseadas, se podrá conocer el número de usuarios susceptibles de ser impactados.

Definición del presupuesto. Al tratarse de un formato con un modelo de precios CPM, el anunciante puede establecer a priori el presupuesto para la acción, y ser consciente en todo momento de las impresiones que se está comprando. En esta pestaña, además, se podrán introducir los datos de facturación si fuera necesario

Formalización del pago. En este paso el anunciante tendrá que insertar la información de su tarjeta de crédito o débito. Una vez haga click en “Pagar y continuar”, el importe quedará congelado en la tarjeta hasta que se revise y apruebe el anuncio.

Revisión del anuncio. En dos días laborales el equipo de Tuenti aprobará el anuncio. Esta medida se toma para evitar anuncios con contenido poco apropiado y asegurar la correcta segmentación. Una vez aprobado, se cargará el importe total en la tarjeta del anunciante.

En palabras de Alejandro Vázquez-Guillén, la incorporación del AdServer a la oferta comercial de Tuenti “es un paso importantísimo en nuestra estrategia de acercar nuestra plataforma al mercado local. Desde que incorporamos espacios como Tuenti Sitios o Tuenti Páginas, nos dimos cuenta del potencial que tiene el mercado long tail, y de las posibilidades de nuestra plataforma en convertirse en el punto de encuentro entre pequeños anunciantes y su público objetivo”.

25 ads for Smart People

Nos encanta la Publicidad. Sobre todos aquellos anuncios ingenioso que activan nuestras neuronas y nos hacen pensar para encontrar su sentido. Anuncios que transmiten su mensaje de forma inteligente y siempre de forma creativa.

We love ads. Even more when the ads are so smart that activate our brains and make us think to find its meaning. Ads that convey your message in an intelligent and creatively.

Como prueba de ello, hemos recogido una estupenda selección de ingeniosos y divertidos anuncios publicitarios para 'gente inteligente'. 25 anuncios con los que despertar nuestro razonamiento y nuestra lógica para descubrir su mensaje, y que seguro no te dejarán indiferente. No te los pierdas!

As proof, I have collected a great selection of clever and funny commercials for "smart people". 25 Ads that arouse our reasoning and logic to discover its message, and surely will not leave your indifferent. Do not miss them!

Apps para dispositivos móviles: Case

“Apps para dispositivos móviles: casos de estudio”, un libro que recorre con profesionalidad y singularidad las aplicaciones móviles más exitosas y logradas del momento.

"Apps for mobile devices: case studies", a book that goes with professionalism and unique mobile of the most successful and accomplished applications so far.

Si Alexander Graham Bell o Antonio Meucci levantasen cabeza no podrían creerse la importancia que ha cobrado el teléfono en nuestras vidas. Existen ya alrededor de 5.000.000.000 de usuarios y teléfonos móviles en activo, sí, son muchos ceros y eso tan solo en dos décadas.
Desde su invención en 1871 el teléfono ha pasado por muchas fases y todo ello con una rapidez vertiginosa. En 1980 aparecen los teléfonos móviles y la demanda pública empieza a ser grandiosa, ya en el 2000 la adopción del teléfono móvil era masiva. Fue en 2007 cuando apareció la tecnología móvil que dará sentido a este libro: los smartphones y el iPhone. A partir de allí el mundo de las aplicaciones móviles estará en constante desarrollo.

El libro “Apps para dispositivos móviles: casos de estudio” nos muestra una selección de aplicaciones móviles que según algunos especialistas en la materia, como Joe Wee Chilingo, han cambiado y cambiarán la vida de millones de personas. Joe Wee Chillingo ha publicado una amplia variedad de apps exitosas en la App Store de Apple, como los juegos Angry Birds y Cut the Rope. Desde diciembre de 2010 la aplicación Angry Birds ha sido descargada más de 75 millones de veces.

El libro se divide en cinco secciones: Games, M-Commerce, Promotional, Social y Utilities. Cada una de las secciones corre a cargo de un especialista en la materia y cubre desde apps, páginas web para telefonía móvil hasta proyectos móviles “promocionales”. Además de citas de personajes ilustres como Steve Jobs, incluye datos, estadísticas e hipervínculos que enlazan con vídeos de demostración. Todo un lujo para ponerse al día sobre lo último en telefonía móvil. Aquí va un enlace a los proyectos que aparecen en el libro.

Experiencia de compra con Smartphone

Casi el 55% de los usuarios de smartphones utiliza sus móviles mientras hace sus compras. Mientras, la mayoría de las tiendas no están siendo capaces de ver la oportunidad que el uso de estos dispositivos dentro de sus establecimientos puede tener en la experiencia de los consumidores en tienda, llegando a él en el punto de contacto más fuerte.

Por muchos avances digitales que haya, es cierto que los establecimientos físicos siempre seguirán siendo eso, un lugar físico. Pero los hábitos digitales de los consumidores también deben integrarse en los hábitos de los vendedores. Esto significa que los vendedores tienen que llevar al consumidor de compras, ir de su mano, con un nivel de interacción enorme dentro de la tienda, y comunicándose con los consumidores a través de su dispositivo móvil. Las oportunidades para enriquecer la experiencia de compra, tanto para vendedores como para compradores, son casi infinitas.

Hay países que están siendo pioneros en esto que os cuento. Esta claro que por ahora tan sólo es una experiencia piloto, que se está llevando a cabo en un supermercado Shanghai Lotus utilizando tecnología de SK Telecom para crear “carritos inteligentes”.

Al llegar al supermercado y tomar tu carrito, sincronizas tu smartphone con la tablet del carrito y vas realizando tu compra. Gracias a un sistema de posicionamiento te permite saber donde está cada producto y mostrarte información y ofertas según donde estés.

Las tabletas están revolucionando nuestro mundo, llevando los ordenadores a lugares antes impensables. Uno de ellos son los carritos de supermercado, esos objetos infernales con voluntad propia y que en vez de manejarlos tú, te llevan adonde ellos quieren. Pues ahora en China, a pesar de que las ruedas siguen siendo igual de infames, llevan tablets incorporados para mostrarte información y descuentos mientras haces tus compras.

El sistema funciona de la siguiente manera: a través de una aplicación para tu smartphone, puedes visitar virtualmente el supermercado, obteniendo la infromación de los productos, los descuentos y cupones disponibles y permitiéndote hacer la lista de la compra.

Luego al llegar al supermercado sincronizas tu smartphone con la tablet del carrito y vas realizando tu compra. Gracias a un sistema de posicionamiento te permite saber donde está cada producto y mostrarte información y ofertas según donde estés.

Además lleva la cuenta de las cosas que has comprado y lo que te queda por comprar, y al final antes de pagar te dice el coste total y los puntos que ganarías.

Vamos, que convierte ir de compra en casi un videojuego. Aunque claro, uno empieza a pensar que si ya de por sí los carritos parecían tener vida propia, ahora a lo mejor estos carritos inteligentes terminan llevándote “sin querer” a partes del supermercado llenas de productos que no necesitas para que gastes sin control.

Where To Find Inspiration When The World Tells You To Give Up

Today, early in the morning, i have been checking Facebook (of course). I have seen a link on Felix Munoz (Comunication Manager at Coca Cola Company) wall about Where to find inspiration when the world tells you to give up. I found it really interesting and I have read this great article written by Kaihan Krippendorff.

I would like to share it with you and hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I am staring through a wall of fog at the vague contours of an empty runway. Airplanes should fill this scene, but they can’t land. At 1:55 p.m., my flight status should read “Departed” but still reads “On Time.” Nothing here seems to be working. I want to quit and tell the 100 people scheduled to show up at my workshop tomorrow morning to take the day off.
Surely you’ve felt the same before. You were launching a new product, leading a once-exciting project, or growing your business. Things started out fun and you made some initial progress. Then you hit a “dip,” as Seth Godin calls it. Your progress slows, your passion evaporates, and everywhere you look the signs seem to be saying “give up.”
Do you quit? How do you generate the energy to push on?
I recently came across a 40-year-old organization dedicated to tackling the issue. They do this because the tendency to quit is costing the United States dearly, potentially hurting our long-term competitiveness.
InventNow was founded 1973 as the National Inventors Hall of Fame to recognize great inventors in history. It has inducted 460 of history’s most significant inventors, like including Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and Wilson Greatbatch, inventor of the implantable pacemaker.
But the organization came to realize they were addressing the wrong end of the problem. The difficulty is not developing the inspiring vision--“I want to be like Steve Wozniak!”--but to keep young scientists from giving up along the way. So they refocused their efforts, as Jeffery Dollinger, InventNow’s president, explained to me. The U.S. is not producing enough students in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) who can develop new breakthrough technologies.
“To succeed you don’t need to be a rocket scientist; you have to have persistence, willpower,” Dollinger explained. So the organization switched its focus to providing “encouragement and inspiration.”
They launched a series of programs designed to inspire science students to persist. For example, 76,000 1st and 6th graders have passed through InventNow’s Camp Invention program.
Hundreds of more senior students stay on track thanks to InventNow’s Collegiate Inventors Competition, students like Julio D’Arcy, a senior graduate student in the chemistry department at UCLA. D’Arcy had been working on plastics that conduct electricity. He noticed a film form during an experiment and realized that if he could control the process that created it, he could create an environmentally friendly material with a huge breadth of industrial applications.
He was encouraged to apply for the InventNow competition, and the experience set him on a reinvigorated career path. “This competition added a whole new dimension for me because it validated the work I had done and it demonstrated to the scientific community it is useful,” D’Arcy told me. One key was the quality of the judges. The InventNow program pulls together a panel of some the most respected scientists in the world.
“[My work was] peer reviewed by people who are amazing. That made me feel like, wow, my work really matters,” D’Arcy said. He is now going to start a post-doctorate at MIT.
Now, we do not all have an InventNow resource to keep us motivated. What do we do when we need extra inspiration when the world seems to be telling us to give up?
I need an answer to that myself right now. So I talked to a few friends who have built big things and studied a few books. Here is my top-line summary:
Reconnect with “why.” Go back to your original vision and imagine having achieved your goal. Great warriors imagine victory and top athletes imagine winning before stepping onto the field, so why not you?
Know when to quit. We are taught from a young age to “never give up,” or in the words of Winston Churchill, “Never, never, never, never give up.” But great strategists know that great strategies are about making decisions. Look at everything on your plate and decide which things are honestly not worth the effort. This is not about deciding to quit your project but to pinpoint which parts of your project will give you the biggest bang for your effort.
Measure your runway. Do the math to figure out how much time you honestly have to get through the dip. Look at your cash, how much longer your partner will put up with your late nights, how much energy you really have. Calculate how many days, weeks, or months you want to give yourself.
Get tactical. Categorize your priorities into four buckets: wastes of time, tactics, winning moves, and crazy ideas. The winning moves tend to be the opportunities that will pay off in the long term. Since right now you are focused on pushing through today, it’s time to focus on the tactics. You are looking to advance in inches, not miles, so just do the work. Stop asking why (that’s step one) or whether (step two). Pick up the phone, write that proposal, or in my case, write this blog. Check out Steven Pressfield’s new book, Do the Work.
The fog here is clearing, planes are landing again, and the waiting room is starting to empty. This actually works! Give it shot.

[Image: Flickr user Pedro Figueiredo]

How To Build Your Brand On YouTube

In a one-minute video on YouTube, well-known life-hacker Timothy Ferriss describes how to get the shell off a hard-boiled egg without all that annoying peeling.
More than 3 million people have watched the famous author describe how adding baking soda to your boiling water, tapping the shell off both tips, and then blowing through the ends will help to keep your egg in perfect form.
Ferriss is just one of many entrepreneurs who discovered early on that using video is an excellent way to build one's expert brand. In other words, if you're running a small business and have a limited budget, park yourself in front of a camera and produce one short video a day to push out into your various social media channels.
Although the egg how-to is a few years old, I've always used it as the perfect example of a well-branded clip showcasing Ferriss as a life-hacker kind of guy.



Here's what he does right: For starters, it's an ideal length. Businesses, of all sizes, often post YouTube videos that are several minutes long. Not only does this take more time and effort, these long clips are watched and shared less often than shorter videos. I recently asked a friend who works in a senior role at Facebook for insight about the average length of the most-shared videos on the world's largest social network. He replied that the most popular videos are a firm 60 seconds long.
Knowing that your videos should be short and sweet should take away some of the pressure of producing expert content for YouTube.
The next hurdle is to determine the type of content. When drafting a social media strategy for a small independent tea shop, for example, I advised the owner to create a daily tea tip. This would either be a featured new tea and its heath benefits or a how-to clip explaining perfect brewing methods. Whatever your business, if you're passionate about what you do, you have expert advice that is useful to your audience. Run a small accounting firm? Post video updates explaining how to save money. Looking to build more awareness for your real estate business? Build out a series of videos that focus on home-buying questions and answers.
Once you've set your video length and determined your content goals, commit to a regular schedule. To truly build your brand, posting once a week is not enough (that's what everyone else is doing, so you need to do more). Just take a look back at Gary Vaynerchuk's humble beginnings online. His well-known hustle led him to produce his popular wine podcast on a daily basis. To date, there are still few people who have commit to such a rigourous YouTube schedule. However, Vaynerchuk stuck to these releases for five long years, leading the entrepreneur to a multi-book deal and many other business successes.
With a 5-video work week plan, all that's left to do is to focus on the technical set-up. Once you customize a YouTube channel with your look and feel, it's time to think about distribution. Make sure you post your videos on a regular basis to all your social networks (also, add a digital bug to your videos that includes your URL or business name so they videos are branded when they're embedded).
Also, put some effort into participating in the YouTube community. Spend a few minutes each day watching other expert videos and leaving comments for the creators. Speaking of comments, yours should be moderated to ensure your channel maintains a professional presence. You will also need to invest in a camera and a mic (audio is key, so don't rely on your in-camera microphone). Fortunately, you can buy all the equipment you need for less than a thousand dollars (if you don't have lights, just remember to face a window or turn towards a light in the room so you're not backlit).
If you're looking for even more YouTube inspiration, think back to a little company called Blendtec. After uploading dozens of "Will It Blend" videos, staring in 2006, retail sales of their high-end blenders increased by over 700 percent.
Not bad for an investment of just a few hundred dollars, founder's time, and a free video platform.

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com

Toyota Creatures

http://www.totoyacreatures.com/