Posts Tagged ‘Pure Driven’

3 Free, Devastatingly Effective Ways To Market A Business

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

How many of you do work for free?
Only a dolt would work for free, right?

Only someone without experience would give away his or her time. Yeah, that’s often what I hear, and there’s certainly some truth to it.
If you charge $50 for your services today, and $100 tomorrow, obviously customers are going to be scratching their heads, still picturing you as only worth $50 an hour.

But at PureDriven, we thrive on what I would call inbound marketing, the act of pulling people toward your business because you’re giving away a lot of good stuff for free. In fact, we’ve gotten the kind of free media attention for ourselves and our clients many companies only dream of (New York Times Page 1, for example) exactly because of our techniques.

So, you say, what is it that we’re doing so dang well?

1. We do a lot of things for free, not knowing whether they’ll ever pay off for us.

For example, tomorrow we’re speaking at a local event we helped launch called Social Media Breakfast Twin Ports. We’re offering it for free, and those in attendance will be treated to nearly the same amount of advice we normally charge for. The biggest difference is that the content isn’t tailored to their business, but we give them the tools and show them the steps for them to take. You’d think people would walk away and use the information, and never call us. Normally, the opposite happens. People want to do business with people they know. So doing a presentation often ultimately means more people get to know about PureDriven, see our expertise, and want to work with us.

2. We’re ambitious, and don’t always wait for guaranteed money upfront.

We were asked to take on the Google Initiative, because of our CEO’s history in Internet technology, but also because I think we were willing to do significant work for free, with no idea whether at the end of the day the project would be deemed a success, or whether money would come in to help pay us. Had we waited on the sidelines, the opportunity (and thousands of dollars in free publicity it brought) would have gone to a different firm. In addition, the effort also gave us an open door to businesses throughout this city. Dozens of meetings with leaders in our area occurred directly from our work on the Google project. Our accountant probably didn’t like the project much, but we were paid in ways that will continue benefiting the company for years – perhaps even decades – to come.

Below is a slide show by an independent firm in Michigan, which showcased how successful our efforts online were.

Measuring Share of Voice Around Google Fiber

3. We use Facebook and Twitter to build relationships.

We’ve been on local and national shows and podcasts, because of relationships that started out on Twitter. I often tell people that you don’t “sell” yourself on Twitter. Twitter connects you with people you would have never normally met. So that has also led to significant exposure, along with guest posting on other blogs, and our Facebook page, which people often click through to our website from.

So I’d encourage you to look at how you can give away your services or products for free, in the hopes of a much bigger, better return down the road.

What sort of free advertising has worked for your business? The comments are yours. I’m listening.

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Posted in Google Twin Ports, Inbound Marketing | View Comments

Google Twin Ports Conference Call Replay Available Here

Friday, May 28th, 2010

We had a nice turnout for our live audio sessions, but realized many people weren’t able to join us. So here’s the session in its entirety.

Google Twin Ports Conference Call

If you want to download the conference call, click on this link .

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Hear about the Behind the Scenes of Attracting Google to Duluth

Monday, May 17th, 2010

This is the ninth installment in a series titled, How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times, explaining how PureDriven helped vault the Google Twin Ports initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed fiber network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.

Lesson 9: Hear How We Brought Google to Duluth

Instead of reading another blog post, I thought you might enjoy hearing some of our advice. While we’ll be launching a new podcast in June, today I wanted to point you to a podcast where I was the featured guest earlier today. The podcast itself deals with job transitions, but the host asked me a handful of questions about PureDriven and specifically our success with the Google project. So for those of you who are more listeners than readers, listen to Your Story, at Coach Radio.

So Remember: I talked a lot in this broadcast about giving to others without knowing what direct benefit you’ll ultimately reap. Both getting into social media as a career, and the Google project paid off handsomely for myself, and PureDriven, but there was no way of knowing how or even if we were going to benefit, at the start. So next time you want to turn down a potential opportunity, examine it for potential long-term benefits, not solely on whether you’ll earn a paycheck from it next week.

To read the first post in this series, visit “Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times”

To read the second, visit “In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage”

To read the third, visit “When Running Big Projects, Simple Tools Work Best”

To read the fourth, visit “Steer – Don’t Order – Volunteers For Best Results”

To read the fifth, visit “My Mistake Was Not Viewing E-mail as Critical”

To read the sixth, visit “If You Can’t Be Yourself, Be Someone Else”

To read the seventh, visit “ A Google Fiber Tip: Connect, Don’t Chastise Competitors ”

To read the eighth, visit “ Google Needs To Know You Exist, So Tag Correctly“

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A Google Fiber Tip: Connect, Don’t Chastise Competitors

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Google Fiber Twin Ports

This is the seventh installment in a series titled, How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times, explaining how PureDriven helped vault the Google Twin Ports initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed fiber network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.

Lesson 7: Connect With, Don’t Chastise Competitors
Handshake

Photo Credit: AndyRob

With more than 1,000 competitors, the Google Twin Ports Fiber Initiative had a lot of reason to worry. Not only were we competing against most other communities in America our size, we were also up against big cities with far more resources and money than we had. This post isn’t about why we eventually rose to the top online based on this Share of Voice Report, or landing on Page 1 of the New York Times. I’ve already covered those two topics. What I wanted to focus on here, is the attitude we had throughout the campaign, that I believe really helped us stay focused on our goals, which helped us catapult ourselves to national prominence.

We didn’t care a whole lot about the rest of the country. Sure, we paid attention to what everyone else did, and incorporated ideas we thought worked extremely well, like the idea Grand Rapids had of having everyone post their confirmation codes, after explaining to Google why they ought to build their network that that particular community.

But we didn’t spend our hours worried about resources other cities and companies had, nor felt like we needed to simply copy what everyone else did. We live by Lake Superior, so we used that in our wildly fabulous video, from which the world learned of our campaign.

Instead, we encouraged the cities who we thought were our biggest competition, by connecting with them through private messages, and even kicking around ideas for how we might be able to team up on public relations stunts to sell our cities collectively. We also did our best to credit companies by name with work they did for us, whenever we were being interviewed as well.

We also took opportunities to build on what other cities have tried. In response to Topeka renaming itself Google, we put out a spoof video renaming our kids Google and Googlette. You can see all those videos by visiting our YouTube channel.

We realized that over the long haul, you get so much further in life by linking arms and minds with others, instead of viewing everyone as a threat. Sure, we had our own secret sauce projects we didn’t share with the competition, but we knew worrying about what everyone else was doing would only cost us time and energy. The online and even offline marketplace may seem packed with competitors offering your services more cheaply than you can. But remember, you only need a small sliver of the overall pie to be successful. And the way to get a bigger piece of that pie is to encourage your competitors. Then they want to help and work with you. People aren’t genuinely thankful and helpful, which makes your effort really stick out. I know it sounds nutty, but view the online world as a friendly marketplace full of potential customers and other businesses you might partner with. In the long run, it will prove a much more fruitful venture than if you view everyone as a threat.

Don’t believe me? Jason Fried, of 37signals.com, wrote a great piece along the same lines, which you can read in the most recent INC. That particular column is exclusive to the magazine I believe, but if you click on the link, you can read other great stuff of his.

So Remember: Being helpful and kind to others can only help your business. Worrying and acting mean to competitors feels natural to many of us, but will ultimately lead to fewer sales.

To read the first post in this series, visit “Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times”

To read the second, visit “In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage”

To read the third, visit “When Running Big Projects, Simple Tools Work Best”

To read the fourth, visit “Steer – Don’t Order – Volunteers For Best Results”

To read the fifth, visit “My Mistake Was Not Viewing E-mail as Critical”

To read the sixth, visit “If You Can’t Be Yourself, Be Someone Else“

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Posted in Campaigns, Google Twin Ports | View Comments

A Google Fiber Tip: If You Can’t Be Yourself, Be Someone Else

Friday, May 7th, 2010

Google Fiber Twin Ports

This is the sixth installment in a series titled, How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times, explaining how PureDriven helped vault the Google Twin Ports initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed fiber network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.

Lesson 6: If you can’t be yourself, someone else, literally
Meet my good friend, Speedie Gigabit,
This little man was created by local designer Brian Barber, and it was possibly one of the most successful ideas of the campaign, which I initially balked at.

Luckily, PureDriven as a whole and the rest of the volunteers at Google Twin Ports loved the idea of the character. My main complaint was that it served as yet another project our staff didn’t have the time or resources to manage. In fact however, it turned out to be a fantastic way to rally our supports and speak to them on Facebook. Here’s why it worked so well for us, and you might want to consider having a mascot or single person represent your business online.

1. It gave our volunteers a unified voice online. Right now, if your business uses a Facebook Fan page that you are an administrator of, every time you make a comment, it’s like the company logo responding. If you’d rather respond as an individual, you have to remove your administrative privileges from the Fan Page, and then get someone to make you an administrator again, when you want to change the page in some way. Here’s an example of when I post something on our company’s Facebook page.

Even though I’d like the person to know who I am, responding as the page’s owner, makes the logo appear, where ideally, I’d like my face to be.

In some cases, an employee might also want to respond to a customer. But if he or she responds as an individual, an introduction explaining he or she works for the company would have to preface every comment.

But a mascot, or even one person creating a personal profile on behalf of the company, solves that dilemma.

Whether it’s a person or a mascot, the personal profile can respond to comments and take part in conversations, with a clear, singular voice, instead of multiple individuals respond to comments, or having the company’s logo appear by each answer.

But in the world of Facebook and sites like it, real pictures of real people are preferred. And people do business with people. So having a picture of a real person on Facebook and especially Twitter to represent you, is ideal.

Because our campaign was a regional effort, we went with the mascot. It provided a “person” yet didn’t identify the entire campaign around one real face, as would be best for solo-entrepreneurs and candidates for office.

On a Facebook Groups page there is no company logo issue, but you still want that unique person or logo people can latch on to. And even if you’re a private individual with your own business, having two private accounts – one as you, and one as your public persona – is often most effective on Facebook.

A friend of mine runs a new business called Sgt. Steve, for weight loss and coaching. His real name is Steve, but when he responds to a customer or potential customer, he uses a separate Sgt. Steve account, to go along with the persona, and to keep people from wondering, “Is this someone named Steve, or THE Sgt. Steve?”

So how do you create a second private account?

All that’s required is a second e-mail address. If you don’t have one, just sign up for a free one at Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail.

So Remember: Having an additional private Facebook account to speak to customers either with a picture of a person or a mascot, can give your business or organization more of a voice online, and it’s more personal than a logo talking to a customer.

To read the first post in this series, visit “Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times”

To read the second, visit “In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage”

To read the third, visit “When Running Big Projects, Simple Tools Work Best”

To read the fourth, visit “Steer – Don’t Order – Volunteers For Best Results”

To read the fifth, visit “My Mistake Was Not Viewing E-mail as Critical“

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Posted in Blogging for Business, Campaigns, FanPage, Google Twin Ports | View Comments