Pinterest has recently captured the attention of the masses, and the social media site is definitely gaining traction; it is now the seventh most popular social network, and keeps growing daily, so it’s vital to think about all that it has to offer in the means of social media. It’s important to consider the marketing potential Pinterest has. A popular image you post (which will link back to your business’s website) could theoretically get repinned on hundreds, or even thousands, of different users’ boards!
Using Pinterest For Your Business?
Make sure your business makes sense with what Pinterest offers. You might be surprised at how many businesses can benefit from Pinterest.
Use other social networks like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram to direct more users to your Pinterest boards.
Make sure you use Pinterest to feature all the different things your business can offer users.
Follow popular names to build more awareness around your company.
Spend a consistent amount of time on Pinterest so that stronger connections can be built.
Keep your board clean, don’t pin too many different things onto it. Each board should have a clear theme.
Users like to see boards that relay a lot of concise information, so promote your product as well as others.
What Not To Do On Pinterest?
Don’t spam your product out.
There is such a thing as too much promotion for your product. Keep it regular, but not constant.
Don’t pin too much onto one board, make separate boards so you can keep them clean and easy to look at.
Keep in mind Pinterest is all about images, so steer away from pinning too much text.
Be consistent with the network.
The goal of Pinterest is to focus on consumer goods and products, which makes it an opportune social network for marketers to gain more clients and more attention, so don’t miss out! Not sure how to get started? Contact us now!
Should your dealership have a spokesperson? There are many factors to consider before answering this question. The spokesperson is the forefront of your company, and will represent your company to the public. Your chosen celebrity will most likely garner lots of publicity for your company, but the catch is that it might not always be good publicity. Simply put, there is a chance the face of your company could be embroiled in a public scandal.
Of course, most people emphatically believe that they would never hire a spokesperson with a questionable reputation, and would never hier someone they believe would garner negative publicity. The problem here is that you can’t see the future. You never know what could happen. Even the spokesperson with the most polished reputation could fall from grace for any reason, at any time. For unlimited examples of this, simply pick up this week’s celebrity gossip magazines. The public is liable to turn on America’s sweethearts unexpectedly, for a host of reasons. By no means will you automatically have problems if you enlist a spokesperson for your company, but it is a possibility that must be considered. You should also consider what actions will your company take should something of that nature transpire.
Additionally, it has become much more common for “celebrities” to endorse specific agendas. This can range from political candidates and platforms to personal causes like pet adoption or diabetes prevention. In this election year, many celebrities are endorsing a presidential candidate. You should ensure that your spokesperson doesn’t alienate a portion of your customer base and prevent you from making sales to certain demographics. From a political standpoint, many people believe a business should never endorse a campaign. Politics are for individuals to consider, not for a business to analyze.
Many of these potential problems that arise when hiring a spokesperson seem like they are only applicable to A-list, national celebrities, but that’s not always so. Every city has local influencers within the community, such as newscasters and radio DJs that could be enlisted to represent your brand publicly. Just because they aren’t easily recognized doesn’t mean their negative actions won’t make the news.
Overall, there are pros and cons to having a celebrity spokesperson. It is essential to have a public face associated with your brand, but it doesn’t always have to be a local influencer. The most important thing is to endorse your company through the dealership itself. Use your team to help promote you as a company. After all, they are truly the people who represent your company, as they are the most hands on with customers.
An abandoned Facebook page is truly a sad site. A page that has gone months without posts, no photos in site, and reviews and comments that have not been responded to is enough to depress any social media user. (user can be replaced with a different word..guru, junkie, fan, expert?)
Now, studies show that a poor Facebook page is more than just an eyesore. A recent market research study concluded that a full 50% of consumers value a brand’s Facebook page more than their website.
This study, which can be viewed here, http://mashable.com/2012/09/24/facebook-brand-page-value/, presented a full look at how a brand’s Facebook presence is viewed and valued. For example, 87% of people like brands on Facebook, and the number one motivation to do so is to take advantage of promotions, discounts, and giveaways. Equally important are the reasons why people choose to unlike brands, the number one being that the brand posted too frequently.
How can your dealership use this information to your advantage? First of all, make sure your Facebook page is well attended. Create a dynamic selection of postings, but don’t post too frequently. Make sure you give users an incentive to like your page. That can be by posting coupons for free services or gifts. For example, post a coupon for a discount on an oil change. Or, offer a coupon that will give users a free gift if they test drive a certain car. You can also run contests and award winners with a prize to increase interaction.
Of course, you’ll want to avoid posting too frequently. Don’t post more than 2 or 3 times per day, and space out your posts to reach customers who log onto Facebook at different times during the day. Always make sure your content is important, relevant, and varied.
While it’s essential to brand management to have a quality Facebook page, don’t abandon your website in the process. Keep in mind that 50% of consumers place more value on a brand’s Facebook page, so that means the other 50% will judge you according to your website.
Does maintaining an online presence seem overwhelming? We’re up to the task. Contact us for help.
Close your eyes and think of a store or another place you have visited that had a unique or pleasant smell. Keep your eyes closed and imagine that smell. Can you recall more detail about your experience? Do you remember specific details about the time you experienced the smell? How did you feel emotionally?
Those of you who know me also know I travel often for business, and I enjoy shopping for new pocket squares. On a recent trip to Miami, I visited the Hugo Boss store, and when entering the store, it hit me. I realized every Boss store has the same smell from Paris, France, to Hilton Head, S.C., to Buffalo, N.Y., to Miami. I just assumed it was the cologne they offer, so I continued to browse and started to think how the same aroma gave me the feeling of familiarity with my surroundings and put me at ease. I was then off to my hotel, and when I entered the doors to the Sofitel, it hit me again. The smell was was not the same as the Boss store, but was the same scent as other Sofitels I have stayed at in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Chicago.
I then remembered reading something many years ago about scent marketing, but it was more about the use of scent marketing and oxygen in casinos to keep people gambling longer. I knew there was something more to it, and I started to think of the many chain stores I had visited over the years; the chains would always have the same store layout and furnishings, but a select few would also have the same music and aroma.
This is also known as multi-sensory branding, and it’s an influential marketing tool that can build powerful brand recognition quickly.
How Smells Affect Us
There is a strong connection between smell, mood and emotion. The emotion center of the brain is closely connected to the amygdale and hippocampus, which influence memory, mood and behavior. Think of the smell of chocolate chip cookies and how that affects you. Chocolate chip cookies are a smell that the Hampton Inn uses to make you feel like you have arrived at home. Some boutique hotels use relaxing lavender to calm the senses. There are many businesses using multi-sensory marketing (e.g., Jimmy Choo, Sofitel Hotels, Samsung and even GM when they processed a smell called “Nuance” into the leather of all new Cadillacs).
Double Your Sales
Studies have shown different aromas can increase spending habits of an individual by double, but the studies also showed you can’t just spray some perfume and expect sales to increase. In fact, sales could decrease with the wrong aroma present, so you’d better seek out an aroma marketing company to determine what affects a purchase decision.
Branding Your Dealership Through Smell
Brand recognition by using an aroma in a showroom can create an impression with a shopper and can in fact create an emotional connection. What if you were to utilize that same aroma in a specific and specialized direct mail campaign for lease renews or increased-service-penetration mailers? An emotional connection could be triggered by the aroma of the direct mail piece and remind the individual of the happy day they drove away in that new car, with that new-car smell. Maybe the cliché “smells like a new car” is worth more than we give it credit for. Think of the possibilities of building your dealership’s brand with sight, sound, touch, taste and aroma.
Ethical Versus Non-ethical Marketing
The right aroma has proven it can create a brand identity and induce a sense of well-being, a good mood, a relaxed state of mind, and cause an individual to spend up to twice as much money. The question could come into play that scent marketing can be a form of manipulation. In other words, it is like a drug and can make a person react differently than they normally would.
So, I ask you, is this manipulation of consumers, or is it an ethical form of marketing that you would consider for your dealership?
Potratz, an award-winning advertising agency located in Downtown Schenectady, will be holding a ribbon cutting ceremony with the Chamber of Commerce on March 28, 2013, to celebrate the renovation of their newly acquired property. The ceremony will begin at 4 pm, and guests will be invited to tour the facility, and enjoy entertainment, wine and refreshments.
At the end of last month, Potratz held an open house to unveil the stunning renovation of the property at 31 Lafayette Street in Schenectady. Attendees witnessed the renovation that stayed true to the original architecture, while modernizing specific elements to bring it up to date, keeping it in the line with the company ethos: respect the traditional but constantly delve deeper into new technology.
After the ribbon cutting, attendees are invited to take a tour of the new locale. Upon entering they will see the first floor’s open floor plan sporting color-drenched walls, and facets original to building including a freight elevator and an oversized metal fire door, which was used to separate the pressroom from warehouse and office space. New additions include energy efficient lighting that mimics natural sunlight, two sound studios and a video studio.
“We’re really excited about this opportunity to work with the Chamber of Commerce to announce our completely renovated building. Schenectady County is a thriving area with the potential to achieve great things. The town and the county support small business and because of that, we have been able to grown and expand exponentially,” said Paul Potratz, COO and founder of Potratz.
Potratz Partners Advertising is a full-service automotive advertising agency specializing in digital marketing. The agency was founded in 2003 by Paul Potratz in Schenectady, NY and received a Dealer Satisfaction Award from Driving Sales for Search and Behavioral Marketing every year since the award’s inception. Paul has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, and CBS and has been a featured speaker for NADA, Driving Sales, Auto Dealer People, Dealer Elite, and Automotive Digital Marketing. You can see Paul every Tuesday on the Think Tank Tuesday series available on iTunes.
The CADEX East Conference announced that Paul Potratz, founder and COO of Potratz, will be a featured speaker when the conference meets on Friday, April 5, at the Casino Nova Scotia, in Halifax.
This is the second annual CADEX Spring Training event, and the speakers will be bringing industry-leading ideas on key topics to the Maritimes.
For more information on the 2013 CADEX East Conference, click here. For additional information on Potratz or to receive announcements of future speaking engagements, contact us now.
If you’re not yet familiar with the twitter hashtag #takemymoneyhbo, you ought to be. This hashtag has been utilized by a conglomerate of individuals who petitioned HBO to allow them to subscribe to HBO Go without having to subscribe to a cable TV provider. HBO Go is an app that allows you to stream the HBO programming of your choice to any digital device via the Internet or through a cell phone signal. The app is available for free to HBO subscribers. Adding HBO to your cable package usually costs $10-$15 a month. If HBO Go was available for this same monthly price, it would be a bargain compared to the roughly $100/month that most people pay for cable service.
This petition points to a possible transition of TV to an a la carte service rather than bundled together in expensive packages. After all, does anyone really watch all 300+ channels that come with premium cable packages? We may see a TV platform similar to iTunes in the future, where consumers can purchase individual songs rather than entire albums. It’s also likely that TV will follow in the footsteps of music providers like Pandora and Spotify, which will change how advertising will be disseminated. Audiences may be much more targeted and the potential for wasteful ad spending will be diminished. That being true, the explosion of digitally consumed media is making it possible for marketers to produce original programming and distribute it without the active support of a traditional media channels i.e. broadcast TV channels.
Branded content is gaining in popularity and consumers aren’t hostile to it, so long as it’s good. Brands like Nike, Virgin and American Express have all successfully built a following of their brand-led YouTube channels. One example of brand-created content was Pepsi’s live-streamed concert starring Nicki Minaj, which was available for viewing via twitter.com/pepsi and pepsi.com. Had Pepsi gone the traditional sponsorship route, it would have cost them several millions in ad spending. By producing, creating and digitally disseminating the content, they undoubtedly saved in overhead costs and penetrated their target market more effectively. This is all good news for advertisers.
Over the course of the next five years, the cost of advertising will be reduced as more specific modes for targeting emerge. The challenge is staying ahead of the digital wave, which is something we do best at Potratz.
The secret to using Facebook to successfully promote your business is simple. Get your fans involved! One easy way to engage your followers is to run a contest. Experts agree contests are one of the best ways to increase fan engagement. The logic behind it is simple; people love free stuff.
There are many types of contests you can run on your Facebook page. One successful type of engagement practice is weekly trivia. Pose a question to your followers. It doesn’t even have to be car related. It’s actually important to occasionally provide content that doesn’t focus on cars so that your followers see you as more than just a dealership. Variety provides personality. The person with the correct answer to your questions receives a prize. As a dealership you can offer various types of redeemable gifts to potential winners, ranging from service offers to brand related merchandise. The benefit of weekly trivia is that your page becomes exposed to more people than just those who currently like your page. Friends of fans are able to see when one of your fans posts on your trivia question. This is true for most posts on your page. With trivia, however, the likelihood of receiving a response is greater.
Another way to increase engagement on your page is by running a promotion or sweepstakes. It is recommended that you provide a larger prize to fans in these promotions because it requires more for them to participate.
There are two different ways you can create a promotion:
The person entering does simply fills out a short information form to enter and has a chance to win.
The person entering has to provide some form of additional information in order to enter. There are many different avenues you can take for these promotions. Examples include caption this photo, the photo with the most amount of likes win, and more. Before launching the competition, you’ll need to decide which promotion you’ll run, and then develop a strategy as to how it will work. Next, create a Facebook app for your promotion and launch!
The benefit with the promotion is that not only can it help increase engagement on your page; it can also increase your likes (depending if you set the application up right or not). In a correctly designed app, a person must “Like” your page to be eligible to win.
Facebook engagement is important because social media is important. It’s a huge part of an individual’s life and it is a main avenue to reach potential customers. Additionally, people who win something from a dealership are much more likely to visit them the next time they need their vehicle serviced or are in the market for a new one. Not sure how to increase your Facebook engagement? Contact us now because, we CAN help!
Pinterest has recently captured the attention of the masses, and the social media site is definitely gaining traction; it is now the seventh most popular social network, and keeps growing daily, so it’s vital to think about all that it has to offer in the means of social media. It’s important to consider the marketing potential Pinterest has. A popular image you post (which will link back to your business’s website) could theoretically get repinned on hundreds, or even thousands, of different users’ boards!
Using Pinterest For Your Business?
Make sure your business makes sense with what Pinterest offers. You might be surprised at how many businesses can benefit from Pinterest.
Use other social networks like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram to direct more users to your Pinterest boards.
Make sure you use Pinterest to feature all the different things your business can offer users.
Follow popular names to build more awareness around your company.
Spend a consistent amount of time on Pinterest so that stronger connections can be built.
Keep your board clean, don’t pin too many different things onto it. Each board should have a clear theme.
Users like to see boards that relay a lot of concise information, so promote your product as well as others.
What Not To Do On Pinterest?
Don’t spam your product out.
There is such a thing as too much promotion for your product. Keep it regular, but not constant.
Don’t pin too much onto one board, make separate boards so you can keep them clean and easy to look at.
Keep in mind Pinterest is all about images, so steer away from pinning too much text.
Be consistent with the network.
The goal of Pinterest is to focus on consumer goods and products, which makes it an opportune social network for marketers to gain more clients and more attention, so don’t miss out! Not sure how to get started? Contact us now!
