Startup Toovio offers “Minority Report”-type ad service for retailers
Big Brother has the capability to watch – and respond to – your every spending move. That’s the premise behind Toovio, a startup that has created technology to help retailers and other consumer-facing companies market personalized offers to their customers in real time.
Think of the scene in the film “Minority Report”, when Tom Cruise’s character is walking through a mall while his eyes are getting scanned and he is being bombarded by a slew of personalized 3D ads.
“We call it offer orchestration,” said Toovio’s CEO Josh Smith, 31, of the capabilities that allow companies to communicate custom offers over a range of channels that include checkout, website, kiosk and customer-service call centers.
“We have visibility into their (customers’) previous behavior,” he said. “There’s learning, based on whatever interaction is happening, and we’re getting smarter – hopefully driving revenue.”
Toovio, which already has a number of small to mid-sized companies in the U.S. and Europe using its technology, will next month test a service that takes advantage of mobile apps that consumers download on their smart phones.
The company, working with a hardware provider, will partner with retailers to position communication devices throughout their stores. The devices detect when a customer is approaching by way of the phone’s GPS and serve up a deal.
“As the consumer enters the field of vision of the device…it can message them,” said Smith, whose venture employs 15 in Tampa, Florida, and is targeting small to mid-sized companies. “It can actually be a dialogue, a full-blown Q&A, it could be HTML scripting, images, video. The content is very robust and it’s interactive.
10 marketing lessons for early stage tech startups
– Mark Suster is a former serial entrepreneur and a partner at Los Angeles-based venture capital firm GRP Partners. This article originally appeared on Suster’s blog “Both Sides of the Table”. The views expressed are his own. –
I made every textbook mistake at my first startup, which is why I believe I was much more effective at my second one. I have adopted the motto “good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment.” We need to learn from doing, by trial and error.
If I can help you avoid some of my first-time mistakes it would be a victory. The following are some lessons I learned about early-stage startup marketing. Because market is such a broad topic, I’m restricting these lessons to PR marketing (as opposed SEO, SEM, product marketing, etc.).
1. Where Stealth is Good – There’s a lot of discussions on the Web about whether startups should be stealthy before they launch or not. The truth is there isn’t a “right” answer for your company. You need some guidelines to make decisions. My general rule is that it’s good to be stealth in the early days while you’re building your product and testing your market. Stealth does not mean constipated, paranoid and totally untrusting of others. It does mean not telling more people your future plans than is necessary. It means avoiding drinking too much at cocktail parties with other tech people and bragging about your plans. It means not over-sharing your deal with VCs or other investors.
The truth is that we work in a very small, tight-knit industry and news and plans spread fast. In the early days you don’t really want three extra teams hearing your ideas and gearing up to compete before you feel you’ve got a solid head start. Most people totally advise against stealth. They think that only by being open and testing your ideas in an open marketplace can you be successful. Be careful about this advice.
Also be careful about VCs. Most ones that I know have very high ethical standards, so I’m not concerned about that. But once a VC has heard your idea he can’t “un-think” it. And these ideas have ways of seeping into board discussions with portfolio companies as in, “have you ever thought about trying A, B or C?” It’s mostly unintentional, but tacit knowledge about ideas spreads quickly amongst the chattering elite.
I actually like finding entrepreneurs who are more circumspect, less braggadocios and generally more planned about their actions.
Great article; the only thing I would add is the luck – or lack thereof – in finding the right funders when the time is right. When my company was in need of funding (still early-stage) we found a facilitator (eSolve Capital; http://esocap.com) that were able to provide us with excellent conditions
GroupPrice targets small business with daily deals
Price and value is what led Chris Gafoor to purchase a press release distribution plan from GroupPrice.
“It gives you more bang for your buck,” said the president and CEO of Miami-based BluStar Media Inc, who paid $39 for a GroupPrice deal that he estimated would have cost $200 elsewhere. The deal guaranteed Gafoor’s company a minimum of 5,000 views of its press release in 30 days.
GroupPrice is a business-to-business version of the group-buying trend that offers deals specifically for Internet-based small businesses. Van Jepson, CEO of the Redwood City, California-based firm, got the idea for the business when he ran a previous Web company.
“I was trying to grow the type of online services that were offered to our members, but I didn’t have enough resources,” he said. “So I had to reach out to outside suppliers, local service suppliers and office suppliers to find solutions. I realized that this was a problem that all Internet-centric companies have.”
Jepson initially funded the website with $30,000 before attracting five investors. GroupPrice subsequently attracted $285,000 of funding. The startup closed its first seed investment last July.
GroupPrice publically launched in January and targets online companies with up to 25 employees. Jepson said there are five million such companies in the U.S. and one million such merchants.
There are so many sites for b2b group buying and many of them following the footsteps of Groupon. I would like to add that http://www.huddlebuy.co.uk is another such site that provides exclusive group deals for small businesses in UK. The world of marketing is ever evolving and this venture is another stepping stone especially for SMEs that could not avail such deals that were earlier available only for large enterprises.
Mix it up: Trends and fads in email marketing
– Melanie Attia is the product marketing manager for Campaigner email marketing. The views expressed are her own. –
In business, there are fads and there are trends. While fads help pay the bills in the short-term, a good small business understands the longer-term viability of its products and services that will be for sale in the seasons to come.
The same holds true for marketing. It’s essential for growth and these days marketing trends continue to shift from offline to online programs.
According to the “2010 Lead Generation Optimization Key Trends Analysis” from CSO Insights, budgets for direct mail declined 29 percent, while 54 percent of businesses increased budgets for email marketing.
Campaigner, an email marketing company that works with small businesses, recently surveyed its customers and found similar results. Thirty-three percent responded they were going to continue with their email programs in 2011 and 61 percent responded that plans were underway to increase the use of email in their marketing efforts.
That said, there are trends small businesses should consider when devising best practices for their email programs. In addition, there are fads that are fun tactics to add some flavor to individual email marketing campaigns.
GO MOBILE
There’s no doubt that email marketing works. In addition to the traditional email marketing (mass email) one should look at another marketing opportunity and that is the emails we all send from our corporate email addresses every day. I represent a company that has developed a solution for just those emails and thus this post.
The basic idea behind wrapmail is to utilize the facts that all businesses have websites and employees that send emails every day. These emails can become complete marketing tools and help promote, brand, sell and cross-sell in addition to drive traffic to the website and conduct research. Wrapmail is available for free at http://www.wrapmail.com
Can social media make your company smarter?
You’ve started a fan page for your company on Facebook. You’ve attracted a few followers on Twitter. You’ve got a presence on Foursquare, and you’ve started offering deals to customers through Groupon. Seems you’ve got that whole social media thing figured out.
Or do you? While social media presents, first and foremost, a cheap marketing and advertising option to help businesses generate leads and drive up revenue, some experts insist it’s about more than just setting up a few profiles and then moving on.
“Social technologies are to me holistic technologies, a lot like PCs or the Internet,” said Scott Klososky, a social media business consultant who’s releasing three new books on the subject this year. “I tell clients that they need to be using social tools as much internally as they do externally, as much to cut costs as they do to drive revenue.”
Klososky, whose clients range from managers at Fortune 500 companies to entrepreneurs, encourages businesses to integrate different social technology tools into their day-to-day operations in a couple of different ways.
‘RAISING THE IQ’
One method Klososky suggests to managers is encouraging employees to build personalized “rivers of information” that push specialized, real-time information about their industry or expertise to them by way of social technology tools such as RSS readers, Twitter and Digg. A fairly simple idea one might argue, but a practice that many companies underestimate, said Klososky.
“That’s raising the IQ of the organization. That’s one of the big things that costs nothing, but is reaping huge rewards,” he said.
4 tips for marketing to millennials
Wine expert Gary Vaynerchuk rose to celebrity status through non-traditional marketing, making a name for himself and his family’s New Jersey wine business on the Internet through his popular video blog, Wine Library TV.
A frequent speaker on brand building in the age of social media, Vaynerchuk is the recent author of “The Thank You Economy”, which addresses the way consumers are interacting in an increasingly transparent marketplace.
Here are his top-of-mind tips for marketing to the millennial generation.
1. Listen and don’t talk. That’s the biggest problem for everybody, especially with this demographic.
2. Understand that they inherently want to explore as many things as possible. Way too many people think that this generation is simple. Their DNA has shown me that they are far more exploratory than any other generation.
3. You’ve got to be able to tell your story quickly and the story has got to be relevant. Way too many people in the wine business want to come out and talk about how many barrels they use or what the terroir is. There is nobody in the millennial generation that gives a crap. They would much rather know about the name of the dog that runs around in the vineyard. That’s much more personal.
4. People want to put the millennials in a square peg. Don’t fight the market. I think (marketers) are really struggling with that. They don’t like the transparency. They don’t like that there are so many places you have to talk to them. They don’t like the fact that they can’t control the message. They don’t like it, but you know what, it’s the way it is.
How to market your company with 5 simple videos
– Jon Hyatt is a 22-year-old producer/director based out of Boston, Massuchusetts. This article originally appeared on Under30CEO. The views expressed are his own. –
Regardless of what type of company you have, or what type of product you’re selling, there are always online videos that can be used to up your marketing and sales.
“Every company can affordably increase marketing and sales with the help of online videos,” said producer/director Jon Hyatt, who is most recently filmed a Boston-based reality show called “Making Moves“. “Nowadays more companies are starting to see the advantage to having online videos right on their website or Facebook pages.”
Now, of course each company would want certain style video(s) catered to what they sell or who they are, but there are certain style videos that can be used to help any company. Let’s take a look at Hyatt’s list of videos companies can use to raise marketing and or sales:
Commercial
Most companies, especially smaller ones think a commercial is too expensive for them. I mean, you first need to hire someone who will come in and do the commercial but then normally you’d need to buy up air time on all the local television networks and that all adds up. Now more and more companies are seeing the advantage of social media, and online presence. You can showcase your commercial right on your website, or even your Facebook page. If you don’t have a Facebook page yet, I suggest you get one.
Bio Video
5 marketing tips to grow your business in 2011
– Stephanie Chandler is the author of “LEAP! 101 Ways to Grow Your Business”. She is also a business advisor to Project REV – a small business marketing lab by Deluxe Corp. The views expressed here are her own. –
As the year comes to a close, now is the time to assess business performance for the previous year while you develop plans for a successful 2011. Because marketing is so essential to business growth, the following are some strategies to help you get a strong start for the new year.
1. Give your website a makeover
Like a house that needs periodic maintenance and improvements, your website should improve and change over time. Take a close look at your site and make a plan to refresh or add content, upgrade site design, or improve the experience for site visitors. Your website can be the first introduction potential customers have to your business so it’s important that it makes the right impression.
2. Commit to blogging
Blogging is one of the most powerful tools available to small businesses. It allows you to connect with your audience, attract new customers, and improve search engine rankings organically. For best results build a schedule that includes blogging at least two to three times per week. Also, share new posts with your social networks for maximum content marketing value. Most importantly, be patient as you build your audience. It takes time to build momentum with blogging, but with consistent effort the benefits will inevitably follow.
3. Hang out with smart people
Great article Stephanie. I take very serious the point that you made regarding website makeover. I recently change the design of my website and it seem to be doing much better. Thanks alot for the great insight.
Isa Adams
http://bit.ly/eTxp3a
Lessons from The Old Spice Man
– Craig Reiss is the former Editor-in-Chief of Adweek, Brandweek and Mediaweek, among more than 200 other magazines and Websites. He currently owns Reiss Media, an Internet marketing firm. This story originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com –
This week we saw two days that shook the viral marketing world. Old Spice, a long-neglected – if not forgotten – Procter & Gamble brand unleashed a social media blitz that may have changed the rules of social network marketing.
At first glance, an entrepreneur may dismiss the Old Spice phenomenon as an oddity of riches, something only a marketing behemoth like P&G could exploit. But when we dissect its marketing principles and practices, it becomes not only entirely applicable to the small business owner, but an essential (and low-cost) opportunity as well. Let’s take a look inside.
For P&G, it began with a Super Bowl ad last February that introduced its brand character, the Old Spice Man. Played by shirtless baritone Isaiah Mustafa, a handsome, former NFL wide receiver with a polished comedic sense of timing and washboard abs, the Old Spice Man promised women he was “the man your man could smell like,” even if no man could ever be as truly manly as The Old Spice Man.
The original Super Bowl commercial was created by legendary ad agency Wieden + Kennedy, which is best known (before this) for its Nike, Honda and ESPN SportsCenter commercials. It has been viewed on YouTube more than 13 million times.
Five months later, Wieden posted a simple message on Old Spice’s Facebook and Twitter page: “Today could be just like the other 364 days you log into Twitter, or maybe the Old Spice Man shows up @Old Spice.” And show up he did.
I think one of the key issues is that the ad talked to women. “Ladies, does your man look like me?” I don’t think women choose deodorant for their men. It also degrades their man in the process, “your man can’t look like me, but he can smell like me.”
Despite the social media popularity, a campaign that spoke to men (a la Axe) would have been more effective in increasing sales.
Pedro Sostre, CEO
WebLift.com
Let’s work together to boost entrepreneurialism
By Michael Gaiss
Michael Gaiss is a Senior Vice President at venture capital firm Highland Capital Partners. The opinions expressed here are his own.
More than ever, entrepreneurship will continue to play an instrumental role as geographic regions and small businesses contend with today’s rocky business landscape. While the entrepreneurial fire may be well lit, there are opportunities to better coordinate and amplify it into a raging inferno.
Marketing can help this along by playing a key role in nurturing innovation and entrepreneurship. For regions looking to weather the downturn, help small businesses get off the ground and improve their positioning in the long-term, here are a few tips to consider:
1) Connect and enable the next generation of entrepreneurs. Much can be learned from those who have already done it. Barriers preventing the next generation from connecting with the existing entrepreneur community, as well as each other, need to be removed. Gatherings and one-on-one mentoring can be orchestrated to bring entrepreneurs of all stages together to better enable the free flow of ideas and advice. The challenge is to leverage existing institutions such as associations, universities, venture and angel networks, and relevant service providers to get these off the ground, while encouraging the organic emergence of new networking & mentoring platforms over time. As entrepreneurship evolves, what started as forums for sharing insight and advice matures into a vibrant and proven support ecosystem that entrepreneurs can rely on to help get their startups off the ground.
Michael is absolutely correct on connecting and enabling the next generation of entrepreneurs. Colleges and universities are a great place to do that through programs usually established through a Center for Entrepreneurship. Many of those programs are involved with mentoring students who have wonderful ideas and are full of passion; they just need the help from folks who have been through it before. It’s just an entrepreneurship form of pay it forward.
