Marketing – general

Motivational Pix – UPDATE

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We've now completed 23 inspirational quotes "mini posters" which will be posted every Monday (except Labor Day, September 1st) at 10 AM Eastern time.  We hope you find them both visually interesting and mentally stimulating.  Please feel free to share them, even print them out as pictures and tack them on your wall for inspiration.

We're working on even more of them, and may release the whole pack in one ZIP file at some point.  We encourage you to post any comments you may have.  Thanks for keeping up with them, and with Agile'.

Motivational Pix

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We currently have the next 9 weeks of motivational quote pix in the bag.  We'll be putting more of them together soon.  We've got enough to last at least through the summer.

Watch for the newest pic with quote to be posted at 10 AM Eastern every Monday.  We hope you find them motivational and inspirational, and that they help you on your road to success!

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I’m Here To Kick Your Butt

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lazy_dudeI had someone contact me recently who wanted some help.  He wanted to figure out how get get from where his company was at to "the next level, dollar-wise."

"Okay.  I need to know what your current dollar volume is by year and by month, your current marketing and sales goals, and where you want your sales to be on a yearly level."

"That information is proprietary.  I don't know if I can give that to you."

I get it.  We've been conditioned that money is what we're all after, but to talk about it is a dirty thing, like sex or food.  Or maybe. . .

"You don't know, do you?  I mean, what your company's income is.  So you don't know where you want it to be.  You just know you want it higher."

"I'm sure I've got the figures some where.  How 'bout I call you back when I find them?"  You don't have to guess – he hasn't called me back.

If someone called you and asked for directions, what would you want to know?  First question – where are you now?  Second question – where do you want to go?

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Facebook Pages For Business

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We have a detailed article on using Facebook Pages to promote restaurants.  Hopefully it will see the light of day in a publication soon.  How did we come to write this article?

Well, Agile' has two restaurants as clients, and we set up and maintain their Facebook pages (along with maintaining their web sites).  As a result of that, we picked up a restaurant review site, CNYDining.com, as a client a few years back.  It languished for some time, but recently we renewed it's lease on life.

Friday night, we used FB's "Promotion" utility to get the name of the site out there.  Technically, what we were hunting for was "Likes" on the CNYDining Facebook Page.  As a by-product, we were hoping people would travel through to the actual web site.  We did this with the smallest of budgets – $5 per day.

Results: In less than 48 hours, we were well over 50 likes for the page, and the statistics for the main site show a steady increase in the number of visitors, which confirms that they've been coming through from the FB Page.  Miniscule numbers, right?  We also launched a Twitter account for them, and the first tweet just went live around midnight.

Our next step is to put together a give-away keyed to FB Page "Likes."  We're looking at a couple 2-for-1 dining coupon books.  Total cost (with shipping to the winners) should be around $50.  I'm planning to reach 250 likes that way.  And to get more, we'll do what I've been advocating all my clients do: ASK.  Ask them to suggest the site and the Page to their friends.

Use High Quality Gimmees

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I'm against the use of gimmees (freebies, give-aways, junk, etc) in trade show booths.  If you don't start doing it, you'll never have to stop.  Just like smoking cigarettes.  Both can be bad for your health.

I've had a dozen conversations like this one, but it serves as a good example.  I'd had a booth at several B2B trade shows where I was near the same printing company.  During this one, they were giving away pads that looked like melon slices.  At the top was printed "Honeydew List."  They had stacks of other pads out on display, but this was the most popular by far.  People were coming by and literally taking away half a dozen at a time, without asking or even being talked to by the booth staff.  Word was getting around, apparently, as I heard people coming up the aisle saying, "Those honeydew lists are around here someplace."  By the middle of the afternoon, those pads were all gone.

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JPEG Mini – Put Your Pix On a Diet

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When I shoot stills either for my clients of for myself, I shoot in RAW format.  That way, I can manipulate the base image and have it look any way I want it.

But once I finalize the picture(s), I usually output them in JPG format.  Most of the printers I deal with require that format, and if the pics are for web display, the best format is either JPG or PNG.  And though JPGs are a lot smaller than RAW images, if you shoot and store enough of them, they can take up a significant amount of space.

Which is where JPEG Mini comes in.  It basically strips away all non-essential information from the file, and just leaves the image behind.  How good is it?  How about routinely reducing your pictures to one quarter of their size?  Or maybe even smaller!

I'm not getting anything out of this.  I just think the program is an excellent product, and if you shoot a lot of pix, you'll probably wind up seeing the benefits of using it.

There are two (really, 3) versions of the software.  There's the personal version, which handles smaller files as a stand-alone program.  A free version of this software does up to 20 pix in one day.  If you pay for it, it's only $20.  The professional version of the software crunches pix up to 8 times faster (which can be a help if you've got hundreds – maybe even thousands – of pix to squash), and works in stand-alone mode and also works as a plug-in for Adobe Lightroom 5 and above. That version is just under $150.   JPEG Mini is available in both Windows and Mac flavors.