MonsantoBlog - eMarketing

Fashion Industry Marketing and Web Design

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:13:00 -0400

While attending an event last night with the FashionHP organization (website coming soon) here in Dallas, I was pleasantly surprised to discover how overwhelmingly open the models were. When discussing design work or other web work with actors, I seem to come across a basic need to put head-shots and reels online... and that is about the extent of the demand. Fashion models (at least in this case) seem to have a much wider interest in art, design, social media, and collaborative ideas. I wonder if the Model Mayhem-type sites are just working so well in this industry that photo and video storage is just sort of old news, but it was refreshing nonetheless. Tech note: Like many other talent industries, the need for better e-mail marketing, networking, contact management, etc. offering is never filled. Also, models are all essentially micro/small-business owners in one stage of development or another. Their needs for marketing coaches, business guidance, and administrative automation is very much like the traditional business sector -- maybe with a smaller budget. But then again, the models seem very open to collaborative services which might involvement several independents or non-traditional mediums. The conversation I had was certainly more open than closed to ideas that work. The other nice aspect of the fashion space is that their events are well sponsored. Liquid budgets are available, if only in smallish chunks, from liquor, car, clothing, food, sports, and other youth-focused companies. This makes obvious sense on the surface (models make a real pretty event in the foreground or the background :), but from a marketing standpoint there is a consumer audience through and through in nearly every aspect of output from the fashion industry. I would have never noticed the relevance without spending some good social time with these talented people. Thanks FashionHP... you will see me more often.

Social Networking - Phase II: Twitter-dux

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:42:00 -0400

When your chiropractor and your local coffee shop have both begun using Twitter and Facebook, I'm not sure what to think. I guess Facebook makes sense since the chick on the news is using it. Twitter, though, just makes me a bit sad, because I had it in my own head that it would be this haven in the social networking -verse which somehow stayed dry from all the corporate rain. But if the small biz guys are using it (and I'm hearing it all abuzz in the business networking groups), we can certainly expect Twitter to go mainstream in no time as well. I just don't wanna see social networking go the way of the Yellow Pages in 1/10th the time. The ability to be a "Fan" of my coffee shop on Facebook at least seems to have some promise in terms of separating my personal relationships and my business ones (who might otherwise use Facebook for junk mail). Maybe Twitter will find a way to sub-class itself as well.

Business Cards, Bulletin Boards, and the Micro-business

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:09:00 -0400

This is not an eMarketing topic. It is a traditional marketing topic. It just seemed so niche, especially as coffee shops have become so prevalent in our communities that I thought I would include my notes.

I have been forming some theories on the strategies around using bulletin boards for local marketing. Small businesses are my target audience. Small businesses often use bulletin boards in coffee shops and restaurants and small stores, etc. Therefore, I am attempting to use bulletin boards to network with those businesses.

My initial thinking was that the bulletin boards would speak to the consumer who might see the bulletin board. This would have rendered my participation useless. But this myth has been debunked after a few conversations with business owners and independents whose cards I retrieved. The micro-business especially (like me) is interested in this medium. In fact, the basic demographics of the shop where the bulletin board is found seems to speak some generalized information about the smaller business owners themselves.

I haven't figured out how it would apply to my goals, but I found an interesting article on bulletin board anthropology. I am out to discover if this applies at all to a larger metroplex and its suburbs individually.

I will also be posting some loose statistics on successes or failures from different business card designs. Logos and/or print that can be seen from 6-8 feet away, colors and the type of person that calls, etc.

Have you googled yourself lately? (Webbing your web)

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:36:00 -0400

It should go without saying, but the more sites that link to your site, the more web of your own you create and the more hits you might drive to your site.

Have you googled yourself lately? The evolution of social networking and the spidering of those indexes has made a lot of people less anonymous than they thought they were. Additionally, if you are trying not to be anonymous and want traffic to say, your website... you might want to take notice of all the places you have signed into and decided to leave a blank profile.

Just because I only joined LinkedIn to connect with that one manager that might give me a good reference (for example) doesn't mean that my LinkedIn profile might not be ranked higher than my own site for many searches that should find me.

Remember to put your website URL in your social network profiles. Then you might want to link to your profiles from your own site to complete the round trip. Google likey!

Tifosity takes advantage of the "false" Real Estate market in Dallas, TX

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:05:00 -0400

Since I am moving to Seattle, WA this next year, I have become more interested in the broader real estate market and the implications it has on my future $$. It seems that Dallas has felt a much softer impact from the housing depression of recent months than many markets... I call it a "false" market. Texas in general has a much lower inventory cost for houses than both the east and west coast cities. I have seen so many people lately come from San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, etc. who were able to sell there houses - sometimes at a loss - and get more house for the remaining money than they had originally. Add that to Texas not having a state tax and Dallas being like second in the nation for number of corporate headquarters. This has given us a steady influx of residents to the state even while the housing market has declined. Tools like Tifosity's MLS search has also been taking off as the traditional human real estate agent is not always contacted before the newer eAgent model is given a chance. I'll talk a lot more about lead capture as time goes by, but http://www.tifosity.com is a good example of how it works.

eMarketing: The micro-business needs to speak out more!

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:08:00 -0400

We all know the internet is a powerful tool. Do we? Or are we suspicious?

Overheard: So and so made a ton of money... and it all started with a simple blog!

Thoughts: Did that really happen? Was it luck? They must've just had the right product. My concept is not so unique. The market is flooded with people like me. How will people find me. The internet won't give me those results.

Aren't these the same fears that every business owner has in REAL life outside the internet? I think so.

The World Wide Web is not a fake place. It is not magical. It is not imaginary. The content out there is sitting in physical files on physical storage devices in physical offices run by ordinary people. It is not trickery that gets your business identified on the internet. It is action. Action you are probably already taking offline if you have had any success.

The micro-business and the small business alike almost always finds success due to its personal reach, community ties, and the ability to give customers something that large cluttered scary corporate towers do not do so well. They speak. They do business when picking up their dry cleaning and talking to the person behind the counter. Also at the local diner, coffee shop, print shop, supply store, etc. The small business has a voice which is much more obvious, usually because it comes from people who are highly available without communication constraints.

The Web allows... no... feeds off of this type of communication and openness. Search engines, fellow surfers, and every kind of information source on the web knows its life depends on the most accessible and relevant data available. Small and Large businesses are equalized on the web in this manner. One voice is not any louder than the other. Unless someone is not talking. We must speak to the Web, and it will listen, because it must.

This category [eMarketing] will stay most relevant to the small business, though I will certainly spout off about many broader topics as they seem relevant. E-mail campaigning, lead capture, quick eStrategy tips will be just a few common themes... and of course my own voice :)