Resident Places Launches Facebook Coupon Reveal Tab for Apartments
For Immediate Release
Resident Places Launches Facebook Coupon Reveal Tab for Apartments
Philadelphia, PA January 9, 2013 – Resident Places has expanded its local coupon amenity program. We now offer participating communities a reveal tab for their community Facebook pages loaded with co-branded local coupons that can be printed and shared by their residents and prospects.
Resident Places (www.residentplaces.com) is pleased to announce the launching of our new Reveal Tab for Facebook that allows participating apartment communities to place hyper-local coupons on their Facebook page for their residents and prospects. The coupons are easily printed and shared directly for the social site of each individual community.
The Resident Places Coupon Reveal Tab will support the social activities of apartment communities by providing them with valued content that will generate more likes, more shares, referrals and recommendations, and increase visit frequency by their residents and prospects.
Resident Places President TJ Goulet stated, “We are very excited about the prospect of supporting our client’s endeavors to build a robust and active social network with their residents.” Goulet went on to say, “Coupons have both real and perceived value to residents and the cobranded printed coupon increases our client’s reach into their local neighborhoods. Resident Places is a win for residents, for local businesses and, most importantly, a win for the participating apartment communities.”
Coupons, deals and giveaways have the highest response rates and share rates on Facebook. An Exact Target Survey showed that the top two reasons Facebook users like a fan pages was to get discounts (40%) and freebies (36%). Wildfire Interactive reported that coupons had a 49% response rate and a 34% share rate among 10,000 Facebook campaigns surveyed.
Increasing Facebook “Likes” improves brand loyalty and referrals according to a survey by Syncapse.com. They surveyed 4,000 Facebook users for 20 top brands and found that Facebook Fans are 28% more likely to stick with a brand and 41% more likely to recommend a brand than non-fans.
About Resident Places
Resident Places is an amenity program for residential and mixed use properties that delivers property branded, hyper-local coupons. These neighborhood deals enhance current resident retention initiatives, while augmenting community outreach to local businesses. Every coupon printed through the property specific co-branded portal includes the name of the property and are shareable via social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The Resident Places call center handles all sales and service activities related to the coupons and target businesses that are in close proximity to each property ensuring that they represent the businesses most desired and used by residents.
Property Managers interested in offering Resident Places to their residents should contact Rob Remus at (484) 474-0590 or by email at rremus@residentplaces.com. Learn more at Property.residentplaces.com.
What Do Facebook Users Expect from Brands?
Facebook users have both positive and negative expectations when “liking” a brand
Companies are often on the hunt for more “likes” for their Facebook pages, hoping to get more brand advocates and social media fans. However only 42% of US Facebook users think marketers should interpret a “like” in that way.
This data comes from a June 2011 study from ExactTarget, “Subscribers, Fans and Followers: The Meaning of Like,” which found that 25% of US Facebook users disagree that marketers should interpret “like” to mean they are a fan or advocate of the company.
Facebook users themselves have some preconceived notions about what to expect when they “like” a company on the site, and among those who do not become brand fans, many are negative. More than half of users expect to be bombarded with messages or ads (54%), while 45% do not want to give companies access to profile information and 31% do not want to push content from a company into friends’ newsfeeds. These possibilities have prevented users from making brand connections on the social networking giant.
On the flip side, many US Facebook users also have certain expectations of perks they should get after following a company’s Facebook page.
The ExactTarget study found that 58% of US Facebook users expect to gain access to exclusive content, events or sales after “liking” a company, while 58% also expect to receive discounts or promotions. Additionally 47% expect to see updates about the company, person or organization they “liked” in their newsfeed, which bodes well for brands as they work to have their content always show up for their followers.
Additionally, younger consumers, ExactTarget found, have fewer expectations and generally “like” brands as a form of expression, not to get certain perks. Meanwhile, older consumers want something of value for “liking” a brand. By listening to what their target fanbase wants out of the Facebook relationship, marketers can get more interaction on their page and encourage more people to “like” rather than avoid brands on Facebook.
TJ Goulet has been a leader in sales and marketing for almost 20 years. His background includes both entrepreneurial endeavors and nationally recognized achievement with a Fortune 500 Company. He entered the local search and coupon industry in 2005, when he launched his first directory and coupon portal. TJ's expertise is in utilizing current technologies and marketing platforms to increase sales productivity across a broad range of products and services.
12 Essential Tools for the Content Marketer
One of the questions marketers get asked most often starts like this. “I think I get content marketing, but what kind of content works best?” The short answer is that there are at least twelve types of content you can utilize as part of any content marketing plan.
In this case, the focus is on content that can extend your brand’s reach, beyond your website or blog. There’s no single type that works best for all companies. In fact, diversification and having a portfolio of content you can pull from is key. Here are the twelve types of content to focus on, and how they can be used.
1. Video and Motion Graphics
Yes, video belongs in your content plan, but not for the reasons you think. Don’t create a video with the intent that it will “go viral.” Instead, recommend to your clients that they use video to create awareness. No other medium engenders emotion the way video does.
Consider the video above — it’s motion graphics — from a Palo Alto-based startup called WealthFront. Here the company’s objective was to attract a world-class designer to its team. This video did not go viral but it did get seen by almost everyone in the target market — designers in the Bay Area.
2. Webinars
Tired of webinars? Everyone is. Still, our company recently fielded a webinar that had 1,500 people sign up to learn more about grammar. That’s right. Grammar. This webinar wasn’t the usual talking heads. Instead, it was Scott Abel (who blogs as The Content Wrangler) and Val Swisher (CEO of Content Rules) with the Grammar Girl herself, Mignon Fogarty.
The lesson is to make the webinar appealing by focusing on the types of problems your prospects are facing that your product or service can solve. Don’t go it alone. Instead, reach out to your favorite blogger or pundit and ask them to act as the MC, with your brand acting as the sponsor. And remember, no one ever bought anything because you bored them to death.
3. Infographics
Infographics are, well, graphics. If you make yours compelling, it will get picked up and showcased on sites like Cool Infographics or Good. This sounds great until you realize that everyone is sharing links that reference back to a site that is not yours.
This is why you should always post your infographic with embed code. Don’t know how to create embed code? Here’s a blog post that can help.
4. Q&As
This is content that goes up on a Q&A site like Quora or the answers section of LinkedIn. The content here isn’t very sexy, and it may not be all that findable in a search engine like Google. Still, we like this type of content a lot, mostly because we know that people who post questions here tend be further along in the buying process.
When answering questions make sure you actually post an answer to the question. People get irritated when you try to sell them on “your stuff” prematurely. So don’t. Be helpful, pay it forward, and make it apparent where your product or solution addresses their needs. Got a great example of a dialogue that worked for you and one that backfired? Share it.
5. Case Studies
You are going to need multiple case studies, sometimes called success stories. Ideally, you’ll serve up these case studies in a way that allows your potential customer to see or experience their problem being solved through your product or service. Case studies can be content you position in the media or on your own website.
Focus on making the case studies easy to find based on the problems your buyer is likely to face. If finding them proves difficult for a potential customer, then it can be a waste of time for both parties. Consider this case study on “best design” from Sun Power. This is one of four case studies. Presumably each case study was designed to speak to a specific benefit. But when we did a search on “best design solar panel” or “best designed solar panel” Sun Power did not show up on page one of the search results. Studies show that 60 to 70% of buyers aren’t going to get any farther than page one. This is a lost opportunity.
Case studies work throughout the buying process but especially during the early stages when the buyer is still trying to define their problem and the products and solutions that can solve them. Make search engine optimization a priority when it comes to case studies.
6. E-books | White Papers
White papers, now known as the more visual e-book, can make sense both early and late in the customer buying cycle. Early on, the buyer is looking to get educated about the category and how your product or service can solve their problem. Later the buyer is comparing your product or service to others on his or her short list. Either way, it makes sense to make a related e-book available only after your prospect has filled out some kind of form on your site.
7. Podcasts
Podcasts are relatively easy to create and are easy for people to watch or listen to on iTunes. When creating a podcast, target buyers later in the buying process who are eager to go in-depth on your product or service. Podcasts are particularly good at delivering the back story of your product or service. The one above is an example from Etsy called Handmade Portraits.
8. Reviews
The best reviews are objective and come from people who are seen as either similar to the buyer, someone who has expertise that the buyer values, or someone the buyer trusts. Think Walter Mitty (the favorite everyman), Walter Kohn (the Nobel-winning chemist), or Walter Mossberg ( a reporter at The Wall Street Journal).
If you can’t get reviews from one or more of the “Walters” then go for “wisdom of crowds” approach. Get a lot of reviews, and try to make most of them positive.
Reviews can also be used on your own site. For example, place excerpts from the best reviews on landing pages because testing shows that this placement lifts response by as much as a full percentage point.
If you have a longer review, such as an analyst report, handle it the same way you’d handle an e-book or white paper. Put the review behind a form and make the download something you can leverage to generate leads.
9. Presentations
Business-to-business buyers and consumers who are making a considered purchase will troll the web looking for information to aid them in the buying process. Presentations help buyers get the right information about your products and services.
We typically recommend that you set up a channel on Slideshare to house the presentations you are doing at trade shows and other industry events. By doing this, you are leveraging the Slideshare community, which at 60 million uniques, will drive additional traffic to your website. Slideshare does a great job of optimizing the content it houses for organic search.
10. Apps & Tools
Apps and tools are often used early in the buying process when the buyer is not yet aware they have a problem. A great example of this can be found at WealthFront. The WealthFront tool is for people working at startup companies who have just gone public and need to diversify out of their company’s stock. The idea is to bring people to the tool so as to acquaint them with the need to diversify out of their own company’s stock.
Notice how WealthFront is pretty low-key when presenting its service as the solution to the buyer’s problem. This is intentional. If you are too commercial at this stage of your relationship with the prospect you risk turning them off.
11. Curated Content
When you think curated content you probably think sites like Pinterest. While curated content could fit almost anywhere in the buying process, a site like Pinterest specifically works well early on to create awareness. This is especially true for products or services with a visual component and with a strong appeal to Pinterest’s primarily female demographic.
12. Email Newsletters
Does anyone read email newsletters anymore? Is this still a valid form of content? Yes and yes. Email newsletters can be very good at generating more leads, but there are some rules. Do email regularly, so as to develop your readership. The minimum frequency should be once a month. That’s how you keep most customers and prospects interested and aware of your presence. Also, make sure your design your newsletter so it is easy to skim with click-through links that direct people back to long-form content on your website.
A newsletter works to keep you top of mind with prospects and existing customers throughout the buying cycle and even afterwards. That’ when you want to turn customers into advocates and evangelists for your brand. To measure results, you are going to need some kind of analytics software.
via 12 Essential Tools for the Content Marketer
TJ Goulet has been a leader in sales and marketing for almost 20 years. His background includes both entrepreneurial endeavors and nationally recognized achievement with a Fortune 500 Company. He entered the local search and coupon industry in 2005, when he launched his first directory and coupon portal. TJ's expertise is in utilizing current technologies and marketing platforms to increase sales productivity across a broad range of products and services.
How to Develop Customer Evangelists
When you have evangelists for your product or service, you have the best possible kind of customer. Your evangelists are passionate, loyal, and thrilled to recommend you. They are communicators — when it matters. They are your public defenders when times are difficult. Evangelists are also forgiving. They assume your mistakes are honest. They believe you have their best interests at heart. Best of all, evangelists are hyper-repeat customers.
If you agree with the above then you’ll probably agree with the following. No matter what business you are in – large or small, product or service, public or private – you should be doing everything humanly possible to develop these kinds of customers.
With a critical mass of evangelists, you can succeed in unimaginable ways. Companies like Apple andAmazon are proof of this. Netflix also enjoys evangelists (Remember how evangelists are forgiving? If they weren’t, Netflix would be out of business). So, if you want to develop the kind of evangelists that stick by your side through thick and thin, here are three critical steps.
Customer Insights
First, you must develop deep insights about your buyers. This is the single most important activity you can undertake to create powerful marketing. Start by conducting qualitative interviews with your customers, prospective customers, and even your competitions’ customers. You want to know what they think, what they want, and how they use your product or service.
This activity is so critical because your most effective messaging comes from your market. If you do this right, your will gather language that you know resonates strongly with your customers because it comes from your customers.
Sure, Steve Jobs famously said it’s not the customers’ job to know what they want. He could say that because he had an unparalleled instinct about what customers want. Everybody else — us included — needs to be talking to customers, asking them strategic questions to uncover the most effective messaging.
Amazon enjoys uncommon access to customers’ feedback via its consumer reviews. And Netflix certainly has received its share of customer feedback over the last year. To the company’s credit, it has actually listened when it abandoned its terrible idea of spinning off Qwikster. However, the company could have avoided every one of its mistakes over the past year by simply talking to its customers. That Netflix was surprised by the consumer outcry that followed its actions is nothing short of negligence. There is no excuse for not knowing exactly how customers will react to something you are about to do. To find out, all you have to do is ask.
Emotional Marketing Language
Once you have customer insights, you use them to develop simple, emotional, lifestyle-oriented marketing language. No matter what you do, you are in the life-improvement business. If your work is in the business-to-business space, your language must focus on how you improve the condition of your clients. Not technical specifications. Not features. Just simple, salient statements.
For example, you do not make Airplay wireless speakers, rather, you bring beautiful music into people’s homes and hearts without wires.
You are not a social media marketer. You make your clients’ dreams come true by dramatically increasing their sales.
You are not in the cloud business. You protect the precious, priceless memories of people’s lives.
This may sound like basic marketing 101, but take a look around. Is any technology company besides Apple and Amazon talking like this? Even public relations agencies and social media outlets, which are in the business of helping clients connect with customers in effective ways, tend to tout their process and technique.
Here’s the bottom line: most customers don’t care about the steps you take to improve their life. All they want know is how you’ll improve it. So, tell them!
Proper Platforms
Finally, you must communicate this effective messaging on the proper platforms. Here is a list of good ones and forgotten ones:
- 1. A long list of your customers. Names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses.
- 2. A long list of your competitions’ customers. If you have good lists you can communicate directly with that market.
- 3. Powerful relationships with earned media resources: bloggers, writers, editors, producers, etc.
- 4. Social media.
- 5. Your product package. It’s generally an overlooked opportunity to communicate to potential customers how you can improve their lives.
- 6. Your product manual is generally useless. Product manuals should be filled with success stories: how various features and uses of your product or service has improved the lives of real people.
There are many more, but the above list is a good place to start. Once you develop evangelists, you must work hard to simply maintain them. In fact, you must continue to innovate your products and your marketing just to maintain your position of success. Need proof? Research in Motion used to have evangelists. So did Best Buy.
If you stop aggressively doing the things that made you successful, the world will pass you by in three seconds. It’s not difficult to create evangelists — you simply have to do the work that most businesses do not do: gather qualitative insights from your market; use simple, emotional language; and communicate it from the right platforms. Do that, and your competition will be an easy crowd to stand out among.
via How to Develop Customer Evangelists
TJ Goulet has been a leader in sales and marketing for almost 20 years. His background includes both entrepreneurial endeavors and nationally recognized achievement with a Fortune 500 Company. He entered the local search and coupon industry in 2005, when he launched his first directory and coupon portal. TJ's expertise is in utilizing current technologies and marketing platforms to increase sales productivity across a broad range of products and services.
Facebook to Marketers, It’s Time for a Click to Action | TechCrunch
You Like me…you really Like me. Wait. Maybe you don’t really Like me after all. According to our Facebook engagement metrics, only 1% of you actually react when we post. So, to keep the numbers up, our team posts more often, asks questions, runs polls, curates content, introduces more and more contests, and asks for your help to submit your pics and videos as part of our “user-generated” content campaigns. We measure success by the Likes, comments, shares, the number of conversations, and reach. While the Likes are rising, we’re starting to recognize the pattern…I guess we never really defined why you should “Like” us beyond the initial click. We just took for granted that a Like equated to an opt-in.
This general scenario is more common than you may think. That’s all about to change however. Marketers must now rethink their Facebook strategy to define click paths and results. As Josh Constine recently reported, Facebook is now giving advertisers access to its API to improve post-click actions. In his post, Constine walks through a series of various scenarios for brands, developers and also local businesses to take advantage of the new Ads API. Here, we’ll talk more about how to start with strategy.
With the updated Ads API, advertisers must now think beyond the “Like.” Facebook’s Ads API will allow advertisers to present ads most likely to take specific post-click action such as content sharing, in-app purchases, Facebook Offers, among a list of other actions (see below). In the great pursuit of ROI, Facebook is also taking a lot of the guesswork out of ad campaign development and deployment to enhance desired performance. The new improvements give Facebook advertisers an unprecedented opportunity to connect with specific market segments based on intelligence to introduce more informed campaigns that trigger relevant clicks, conversions, and return.
What does “more informed” actually mean? Facebook is studying the behavior of its consumer population and as it does, it will provide deeper insights to brands seeking specific actions, such as those who are more likely to be a virtual good buyer, someone who actively shares content, who attends events, individuals who appreciate deals and offers. Over time, ads can be optimized for audiences based on this behavior as well. As such, brands must not only compete for attention and clicks, but also context and relevance based on behavior and preferences.
For brands and agencies, advertising based on keywords is no longer good enough. Now that you have a better shot at reaching the right people based on behavior, advertisers must now also become architects of experiences and outcomes.
Now advertisers can specifically optimize for…
1. People talking about this page
2. Page likes
3. Page post likes
4. Page post comments
5. Page post shares
6. @ mentions
7. Check-ins
8. Photo tags
9. Offers shared
10. Offers claimed
11. App installs
12. App used
13. Credit spend events (number of times someone uses credits in the app)
14. Credit spend amount (value of credits that were spent in the app)
15. Number of RSVPs
This is a click to action…
Designing campaigns now require brands and advertisers to think about the “click to action” they want to encourage. I refer to this as the A.R.T. of Engagement, where brands intentionally design campaigns to provoke relevant actions, reactions, and transactions. To take advantage of Facebook’s API, brands must now employ sophisticated advertising approaches that combine segment and contextual research, segment-specific strategies, app and channel development for each approach, UX, creative design, and real-time conversion metrics, review and optimization.
It’s more than Likes or forcing people through Like-gated apps or campaigns. Now it’s about performance and conversion science where…
1) Contextually relevant content appears in front of qualified and desirable audiences that…
2) Triggers a defined, useful action that…
3) Leads to optimized click paths that result in material content or activity, which then…
4) Motivates conversions to preferred outcomes and…
5) Delivers a more integrated, consistent, and efficient experience.
To engage more effectively through Facebook’s social advertising platform requires that all strategies and campaigns commence with a stated purpose. I believe that the best way to outline these scenarios is to begin with the end in mind and work backwards from there. By starting with the end in mind, the ability to research desired behavior and who to reach as a result becomes incredibly clear…and also inspiring.
The dimensions of engagement you’ll need to define are 1) what are you trying to accomplish, 2) what the experience looks/feels like, 3) what benefits you’ll offer and what they mean to the people you’re trying to reach, 4) the desirable outcomes you wish to measure, 5) How people feel as a result of the A.R.T. experiences you evoke, and 6) What the experience will look like in the most prominent channels of your connected customers.
This is why you’re now an architect of experiences and outcomes. It takes vision. It takes design. It takes measurement and optimization. The A.R.T. of Engagement is realized through a Social Experience Framework that starts with intentions and ends with resulting sentiment…not just the outcome.
There’s an old saying, “it’s not the gift that counts, it’s the thought behind it.” The same is true for social advertising, marketing and well, business overall. Intentions count for everything. Therefore your intentions must be realized as experiences where technology serves as the enabler to creatively and contextually engage to create experiences that meet or exceed expectations and ultimately inspire desirable outcomes.
Facebook to Marketers, It’s Time for a Click to Action | TechCrunch.
TJ Goulet has been a leader in sales and marketing for almost 20 years. His background includes both entrepreneurial endeavors and nationally recognized achievement with a Fortune 500 Company. He entered the local search and coupon industry in 2005, when he launched his first directory and coupon portal. TJ's expertise is in utilizing current technologies and marketing platforms to increase sales productivity across a broad range of products and services.
A Positive Customer Experience Leads to Customer Loyalty
A happy customer is a loyal customer. You probably already know that, but did you know that 89% of consumers who had a negative experience with a company switched to a competitor? What that means is you can’t afford to make any mistakes when you’re dealing with customers online.
Look at this section from a new Monetate infographic:
These numbers show that the online customer experience is supremely important when it comes to shopper loyalty and word of mouth. Customers are now looking for the same kind of service they expect from an offline store and I believe that’s a new thing.
During the dawn of the online shopping era, we didn’t expect top notch service. Online was a novelty. It allowed us to shop at 3 am while wearing our pajamas and for that we gave up the niceties like personalized service and a selection of quality merchandise. Think about it. Remember when an online store was nothing more than a grid with a tiny picture, a short description and a buy button? You know, back when Amazon was just a bookstore and the orders were getting filled by a couple of people working in Jeff Bezos’ garage.
At that time, our expectations were low but not anymore. Now, customers expect timely answers to questions, competitive pricing, fast shipping, and all the information they need to make a decision in one place. That’s the minimum. If you want to impress a customer, you have to go beyond that. You need to make the shopping process more personal.
How do you do that? Start by making sure everything works as it should. Then look at loyalty bonuses for repeat shoppers or for customer referrals. Find ways to personalize email messages. Talk to your customers and listen to what they have to say. Could be that your sales would climb 10% if you carried red widgets instead of green widgets and all you had to do was ask.
Customers shouldn’t have to sacrifice anything, except a little exercise, when they choose to shop online instead of offline. Don’t make the decision hard for them. Make the online experience so simple and enjoyable that they don’t even think about getting in the car. Online isn’t the red-headed stepchild anymore. Online should be leading the way.
A Positive Customer Experience Leads to Customer Loyalty.
TJ Goulet has been a leader in sales and marketing for almost 20 years. His background includes both entrepreneurial endeavors and nationally recognized achievement with a Fortune 500 Company. He entered the local search and coupon industry in 2005, when he launched his first directory and coupon portal. TJ's expertise is in utilizing current technologies and marketing platforms to increase sales productivity across a broad range of products and services.
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