Marketing your message in a tight economy

In this kind of economy, marketing efforts may be one of the first areas to feel the effects of budget tightening and cost trimming. But slimmer spending can be an opportunity to explore less expensive, more effective methods for getting your message out. You can keep the marketing momentum going with a few creative approaches to communication.

Let your expertise speak for itself

You’ve spent years and dollars advertising, strategizing, marketing, and building a brand. Now’s the time to let your expertise and knowledge communicate your value. Trade and industry publications are often seeking useful, fresh content from experienced professionals. There is usually little to no cost (other than your time) involved in having articles published in newsletters, weblogs, magazines, and other print and online media. What better way to give your firm a voice? Translate your proficiency into written words and you have the ability to speak directly to your target audience, not only reinforcing your brand and highlighting your firm’s capabilities but also creating goodwill among your client base by offering helpful information and advice.

Many publications provide submission guidelines online. Become familiar with their needs for article length, topics of relevance, and tone before presenting your work for publication. If the guidelines are not posted, you can contact the editor directly to discuss guidelines and submission for publication. Industry blogs may be open for commentary; add your voice and promote your firm to a highly targeted audience.

You can also speak directly to your audience (literally) by seeking out speaking engagements. Conferences, trade shows, seminars, and webcasts provide an excellent forum for you to demonstrate leadership in your industry. Additionally, engaging your audience in person can provide an opportunity to build face-to-face rapport and thus strong relationships with clients and prospects. Search for potential positions as a panelist, openings for keynote speakers, and even opportunities to lead, assist, or answer questions for seminar attendees. Keep in mind that speaking engagements may be booked far in advance, so start your search early.

Package your public relations

Press releases and other traditional PR can be a significant supplement to your marketing strategy. But in this oversaturated media environment, you can give your campaigns greater impact with a little thoughtful packaging. Consider adding a multimedia element to your PR messages. Introduce product launches, announce sales events, and update the press on your company’s activities with more than just text. Photographs, videos, soundbites, and links to online resources make your message more powerful. Create interactive news releases and the press may find your PR more newsworthy.

Capture market share with case studies

Word-of-mouth is one of the most effective means by which businesses gain clientele. People tend to trust those who offer up recommendations based purely on satisfying experiences. While getting the word out person-to-person may not be viable, case studies can achieve a similar effect. People enjoy sharing good fortune; if you have satisfied clients, chances are they would be pleased to talk about their experience with your firm for a case study. And both clients and potential clients appreciate hearing objective feedback from others. It reaffirms that a decision to hire your firm is a sound decision. Use your best case studies as marketing materials or feature them on your website.

Make time to be social

We’ve come a long way since the days of rotary phones and hand-written missives. The ways that people share information have changed. The latest trend to hit the collective communication consciousness is social media. Think about the wonders of YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Include these and similar avenues of communication in your strategy to reach the new generation of web-savvy consumers. Gaining familiarity with blogs, social networking, and instant message technology can extend the scope of your marketing in virtually unlimited ways.

In this slower economy, you can keep your company moving forward. Expand your marketing tool box to include a few new strategies and innovative communication ideas. You’ll find you can create a healthy buzz about your firm without an accompanying sting to your budget.

Do you live in the Portland Metropolitan area and ride TriMet? Have you ever missed your stop because you were busy viewing the inside part of your eyelids, reading a great story, or watching the drama unfold in the back seat? Fear not, here at Shepherd Interactive we are developing an application for mobile devices that will notify you when your stop is upon you, using the built in GPS device found in modern phones. Better still, the app will be free to download and distribute. Why? We ride TriMet ourselves and know how frustrating missing a stop can be, we like to give back, and it gives us a great excuse for developing cool new apps. Stay tuned for more to come on this must have download!

Developing applications on mobile devices presents both challenges and opportunities. Mobile devices have constrained screen sizes, less computational performance, and lack the keyboard and mouse inputs that desktop applications take for granted. But at the same time, mobile devices tend to feature unique advantages not present (or not utilized) on desktop machines:

• pinpoint geolocation
• input via touch-screen and accelerometer
• camera
• vibrating alerts

These features make mobile devices much more interactive and in-touch with their surroundings, both in terms of their human interface and their physical location. A perfect port from desktop to mobile is not a realistic goal, nor should it be since the paradigms are so different. The differences between desktop applications and mobile applications mean that designing a mobile application requires much more than simply resizing it to fit on a smaller screen; it requires a substantial design shift.  The shift ensures that the application fits within the mobile environment by fully utilizing its unique features and that it does not rely on missing aspects of the desktop environment.

The challenge of building mobile applications, however, is more than just designing the application to take advantage of the mobile environment. The more difficult problem is the abundance of mobile platforms which each provide their own unique way of implementing applications. In the past, developing a public transit mobile application would mean writing the same application several times, once each for iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile devices. This, however, is beginning to change thanks to PhoneGap, a cross platform mobile framework.

The Web has changed the way that we develop applications. No longer do we have to target PCs or Macs for application development; now we write a web application according to established open standards and our application will work across all platforms. Write once, run everywhere. This same reality is now coming to mobile devices. Furthermore, not only does PhoneGap mean that a mobile application will be interoperable across mobile devices, but the technology behind the mobile application is the same technology in your desktop’s web browser. This means that components written for your website can also be immediately included in your mobile application. This reduces development time and eases maintenance since there is only one standards-based technology stack.

To understand the benefits of mobile devices refer to the Cardiology team at the University of Southern California (USC) who began using BlackBerry smartphones to improve medical communications and to have access to patients’ clinical information on-demand at their bedside. The benefits of mobile devices became very obvious soon after the program started. As a direct result of having access to medical database applications and search engines at their fingertips, physicians were able to efficiently manage the treatment of their patients, providing better quality healthcare. Mobile business application usage and implementation has been skyrocketing in recent months.

But what about other companies and markets? Mobile ROI calculations depend on scale and scope of each individual implementation and they can be tricky. However, in the current economic downturn, it is no surprise that CFOs are increasing requirements on their IT staff to develop quantitative ROI models as part of their business case for mobile projects and initiatives.

Shepherd Interactive understands the importance of developing mobile applications to support business needs and to do so efficiently in a cost-conscious economy. If you’re planning a new mobile project or just thinking about how you could leverage mobile devises effectively, think of Shepherd Interactive and contact us to find out more.