Business Over Coffee

Biz Over Coffee Gets Personal

Zach — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:00:59 +0000

We (David, Austin, and I) have been at this blog for quite some time now. We knew coming in to it that we didn’t know what this would be or become. We’ve done blogs, a few podcasts, and even had some guest posts. We tried monthly topics, set schedules, and all sorts of methods for posting blogs.

What we attempted to do from the beginning was make sure that we weren’t just pumping out content. There is so much content that hits the web every day and if we were going to add to that we wanted it to be something truly unique and new. Although we were trying to bring our style, our experience, and our unique views to each topic and discussion, at times it just felt like we were doing what everyone else does.

What we ultimately decided was to take the site in a bit of a different direction. We will still be posting blogs, having guest posts, probably doing podcasts, etc. But instead of limiting ourselves to a schedule or a set topic, we wanted it to be more personal. By that, I mean more like a blog.

All of us have some very interesting things that we are taking part in, whether it be working for companies, running our own, starting our own, etc. Instead of talking about the things we know to be definitively true, we thought it would be much more interesting to write about our personal experiences (both success and failure). In doing this, it gives the reader a chance to learn along-side us and also offer input and ideas on how to do it better.

At the end of the day, we think it makes our content more useful to you and to us. We certainly have had our fair share of fantastic discussions so far on some of our content (and I’m sure we’ll still post similar content), but what you will hopefully be seeing soon are posts that are more open-ended, more experiential, and more true to who we are and what we are trying to accomplish.

In a sense, it’s the kind of things you would hear the three of us (and our guest authors) saying if you were overhearing a conversation we were having at a coffee shop… business over coffee, if you will.

Zach

Turning Sponsorships into Partnerships

Austin Spitzer — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:00:42 +0000

The hunt for sponsors is a year-around duty – there’s always eligible businesses and there’s always empty advertising space, tangible or intangible. What if we looked at these sponsorships as partnerships – where both parties were looking to increase revenue through an agreement.

Sponsorship: to sponsor something is to support an event, activity, person, or organization financially or through the provision of products or services. A sponsor is the individual or group that provides the support, similar to a benefactor.

Partnership: a cooperative relationship between people or groups who agree to share responsibility for achieving some specific goal; “effective language learning is a partnership between school, teacher and student”; “the action teams worked in partnership with the government”

If you look at the primary reasons that some sponsors don’t renew their contracts with athletic departments (for example), lack of ROI is going to be at the top of the list in most cases. Companies dish out 10-15 K hoping to gain a 5 percent rate of return on their investment. Here’s a little insight, sponsoring a halftime performance isn’t going to have people lining up at your door the next morning to buy insurance from you. It takes teamwork, creativity, and most of the time a little extra work from the party initially receiving the payment.

Now, I realize that there is a place for the $3000/year sponsorships where a banner will be hung from a railing and both parties involved are completely content. The sponsor chooses to pay the fee because they feel its their duty to have a presence at community events. I’m writing this more for the businesses that want to advertise at a sporting event for the sole purpose of seeing a drastic increase in revenue. Obviously the athletic department will receive revenue from the business for the advertising rights – but what if the athletic department went one step further? Encourage the sponsor to advertise the athletic department at their place of business, thus increasing attendance at games, which will allow more people to witness the advertising that they originally paid for.

For example, if McAlister’s Deli chooses to advertise with the ORU athletic department, why shouldn’t all McAlister’s employees be wearing ORU apparel on game days and running game day specials to increase pre-game traffic into the restaurant. So many businesses choose to buy advertising and then just hope and pray that sales shoot through the roof. Of course, this is just one example. It’s important to meet with your “partner” I find ways to make your sponsorship reach its maximum potential.

This aspect of advertising at athletic events should be called a partnership for 2 reasons: (1) The marketing staff should be active in offering advice and ideas to help build off of the marketing campaign that the business is already running. As the professional, help them devise plans to help “their dollar go further” while also increasing awareness of your department. (2) Chances are – your department needs some marketing help too! It’s not a bad idea to discount the price of the advertising if the “sponsor” agrees to advertise on their end. My suggestion is to have that partnership mentality with your sponsorships so that both parties are gaining that highly coveted “added value” to sweeten the deal on both ends. Be creative. After all, you’re in a marketing position. Spread your creative wings and stretch to get every last dollar out of the deal.

About the Author

Kyle Krajenka is a recent graduate of Oral Roberts University (’11) and a young professional at the beginning of his career in the sports industry. He currently does marketing/game entertainment for the WNBA’s Tulsa Shock and manages social media accounts for the ORU Athletic Department (Twitter & Facebook). He can be reached on his Twitter or LinkedIn accounts or at kylekrajenka@gmail.com

Find a Need and Fill it, and…

Austin Spitzer — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 14:00:11 +0000

If I’ve learned anything about marketing and how it fits into business, it’s that you must first find a need that is not being met, then fill that need, sell the heck out of the product or service, and make a killing off of it. But there is one thing missing from this formula – having a product that is profitable. This is exactly what Pandora‘s problem is. This past week they had their IPO, which ended up being somewhat of a disappointment, especially when compared to LinkedIn who’s stock price doubled on it’s first day on the market. (Pandora opened at $16, shot up then back down to its eventual close at $17.42, while its second day closed at $13.26.

And things only get worse when talking about Internet based companies. For example, Groupon and Facebook have both shown interest in an IPO, which could push out other, weaker tech companies. And this is not good news for Pandora, whose biggest weakness is monetizing their service. For example, the two main revenue streams are ads and membership fees that eliminate ads. But the membership fees only make up 14.5% of their revenues, and that’s a problem since advertisers haven’t put their full trust in Internet based advertising.

This brings us back to our original topic. Yes filling a need is crucial to success (look at the great depression which was partially created and fueled by overproduction of unwanted and unaffordable products). Pandora has met a need, but if they are going to be successful going forward (and receive my investment in their stock) they need to find ways to bring in more revenues from more avenues. It will be interesting to see what they do.

-Austin

One Year Later and @NewEgg is Still Winning

Zach — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 15:00:51 +0000

Every now and again, you see a business who is absolutely killing it. You watch as the momentum carries them into an enormous amount of success. They slowly go from David fighting against Goliath, to winning, to becoming Goliath themselves. This is a story of David becoming Goliath… and then forgetting where he came from.

David v. Goliath (who once was David)

As I was growing up, Best Buy was unquestionably a place you would beg to be dropped off while your mom visited the nearest clothing outlet or mall, as was often the case. You would spend hours walking through an endless display of mystical, amazing, and ‘necessary’ technology. Best Buy was one of these fabulous success stories eventually rising to the top of the consumer electronics industry (and for many good reasons).

They were, without a doubt, at the top of their class.

However, as I came of age there was a David in the making. By the time I was at college in 2006, there was this cool website where you could order some of that mystical technology you had put your hands on in middle school and dreamed of owning growing up… but there was a conflict of interests.

When you were younger, you always pictured yourself buying that laptop, that external hard drive, and that flash drive from Best Buy.

So naturally, you head to Best Buy. As you arrive you are greeted by some pretty un-helpful employees. You ask about the famous price match that you used to use as the reason for coming to Best Buy instead of say, Circuit City. They ask which store you found a better price, was it Circuit City? Target? Wal-Mart?

You respond, ‘Newegg has them for $50 less. That exact product.’ The employee looks back at you oddly… I wrote about this story in February of 2010 and pointed to the fact that if something didn’t change, companies like NewEgg and Amazon were certainly going to win that race (the original blog found here).

Like I said in the previous blog, I had mad respect for Best Buy growing up. I fully expected them to figure it out and make adjustments to be competitive with online companies. Well, a recent event has forever forced me to give up hope on Best Buy and officially claim NewEgg king. Best Buy clearly doesn’t get ‘it’ and on so many levels.

The New(Egg) King

If you don’t know about the fiasco involving Best Buy issuing a cease and desist to NewEgg… well you should. NewEgg made a pretty hilarious commercial, featured below:

First off, that is a pretty classic commercial. Secondly, it is of note that in marketing it is a general fact that as long as you are not the top dog in an industry or category, poking fun at the leader is an acceptable practice.

Best Buy issued a cease and desist to NewEgg after this commercial was met with much On Air and Internet success. What happens next is something that is probably going to be the stuff of social media legend. Instead of ignoring it or hiding it or actually removing the commercial, NewEgg posted the cease and desist documentation to their Facebook Fan Page! How crazy is that! They also posted their response to their Facebook and Twitter.

Between the two posts (of both documentations on Facebook), there were over 2,000 comments and 3400 ‘likes’ on Facebook. Not only that, but the views on the YouTube commercial spiked, were imbedded in blogs like this, and the whole story covered here and in like places. This is viral in about as many ways as is possible and this is only talking about Facebook. I saw countless people tweeting and retweeting this stuff.

So What?

There is no reason, at all, that Best Buy should be losing to NewEgg. Their brand was so deeply ingrained in my brain that I literally went to their store to ask for the price match before I would even consider buying from NewEgg. They had me, my money, my word of mouth, and my loyalty… and they squandered it.

They use their social media channels to blast you with sales, deals, and new products. All the while, NewEgg is using theirs to actually interact and connect with their followers.

But so what? Why do they care about my business or my loyalty? Don’t they have 3 million fans to NewEgg’s 600 thousand? Don’t they make more money than NewEgg?

Certainly, they do. But the game is changing and NewEgg understands the new rules. In fact, they are creating them.

Best Buy’s bottom line might look good right now, but we’ll see who still stands in 5 years. My bet’s on NewEgg. It’s a shame they are private, or I know what shares I would be buying… My money would gladly rest in the laurels of David.

Zach

P.S. NewEgg got a little crazy after those two postings. To further the ‘Geek On’ marketing campaign as featured in the video ad above, they gave away 5,000 shirts with the Geek On logo on it (also seen above). The first 5,000 customers to order it from their store got it absolutely free. At the same time, if you head over to the Best Buy fan page you can catch the online only, one day sale of that Flip Mino I bought from NewEgg last year…

Dear Sophie

Zach — Thu, 05 May 2011 15:00:11 +0000

Google is a company that has rarely advertised. I’ll never forget the first Google commercial I saw, which was the one aired during the Super Bowl a few years back (found here). I was sitting at my computer after the Chicago Bulls game had ended and all of the sudden a commercial came on. Not the best ad ever, but fantastic nonetheless.

Have a great Cinco de Mayo,

Zach

Win a Free Book

Zach — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:00:22 +0000

In our second podcast (Leadership) we had the privilege of interviewing David Burkus. David is the leading force behind The LeaderLab, a community of resources dedicated to the advancement of leadership theory. The LeaderLab recently put out an excellent resource The Portable Guide to Leading Organizations. We were actually able to get our hands on a few signed copies of the book and we are going to be giving two of them away in the next week.

All you have to do for a chance to win this book for free is click the ‘tweet’ button to the left of any of our blog posts or Retweet any of our tweets that link to a blog of ours. The only stipulation is that you have to follow us on twitter @BizOverCoffee.

We have already had several people enter and will be announcing the winners later this week. If you haven’t entered yet, go find your favorite blog that we have posted and hit the tweet button! Thanks in advance for following and supporting our efforts.

Zach

Do Facebook Ads Work?

Zach — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:00:33 +0000

I’ve recently been playing with Facebook ads and the response I’ve seen is actually impressive. I ran two distinct ads for my gaming blog:

1. An ad about an upcoming convention we are hosting that showed up to current fans

2. An ad geared towards people who don’t yet play our games, but are friends with current fans

After a week or so, I had received 5 text messages from various friends saying something along the lines of,

“Hey, I just saw a Facebook ad for your site. It was legit.”

Facebook ads is actually pretty fantastic as far as targeting goes. You can get pretty specific about who is going to be seeing your ads. My only concern was whether or not people would actually see the ads on Facebook.

I know most of the time I don’t notice them, but I was curious who would see them. After getting the response I did from friends, it was pretty obvious that a fair number of people were seeing the ads. For those unfamiliar with Facebook Ads, there are three major sections when setting up an ad:

1. Design Your Ad

This section is pretty straightforward. You can see it here:

You can see that it gives a preview of your ad at the bottom. Don’t be afraid to tweak this until you are happy. In fact, I would recommend creating multiple campaigns and seeing what happens. Testing out images and wording can both affect the number of people who see and click your ad.

2. Targeting

For me, this is actually the most useful part. What is crazy is that regardless if you actually do a Facebook ad or not, this could be an amazing tool. As an example, I narrowed down this sample ad to:

- Males
- Ages 22-32
- Live in the U.S. and in Tulsa, Oklahoma
- And who have ‘Marketing’ listed as an interest on their profile

It estimates that the reach of my ad will be around 1,100 people (this box is shown to the right of the screen). Regardless of your topic, this could really be great for preliminary research on starting a business. You can get a feel for who is out there that you could potentially tap into and who you can market to once you actually do launch. The first time I used this tool I was playing with it for a few hours.

You can see the top part of #2 here:

3. Campaigns, Pricing and Scheduling

If you don’t know how Internet ads work, you can either pay per click or per impression. For most small businesses, I would highly recommend per click. IF you pay per click, viewers have to actually click on the ad before it does anything. If you pay per impression, your ad could appear on a page and even if they don’t see it you have to pay.

You can set up a time frame, daily budget, and bid price in this section. These are standard features for online advertising and are really nice to have. They also have a recommended bid. This is based on the competing ads and how many times they think your ad needs to show up to get clicked to hit your budget. Obviously something you can play with, but overall it’s a pretty good system.

The Results

My gaming blog has spent a little over $30 in advertising in the past month and if nothing else it was worth the text messages from my friends. Being serious, I’m still not sure the exact impact it had. We have gained 20 or so fans in that time, but how much was related to the ad I’m not sure.

I really think local businesses are going to be able to use this in interesting ways. The ability to market to just the friends of your fans is a big deal. I think online businesses and blogs can certainly use it as well, but it’s just a different form. If you haven’t experimented with this tool yet, I recommend heading over to the Facebook ads section and checking it out. Like I said previously, the targeting section is worth looking at if nothing else.

If you have had any experience with Facebook ads I’d love to hear about it. It’s a relatively new platform, so I’d be interested in stories of successes and failures on Facebook. And as always, questions or thoughts are more than welcome.

Zach

Tweeting Sharks

davidgraddy — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:42:36 +0000

Last year I wrote about how @HeySendaBall made a brilliant move by appearing on Shark Tank to try to get money for their company. If you don’t know what Shark Tank or who @HeySendaBall is check out my blog here. Today, I return to the subject of Shark Tank.

On Saturday, Robert Herjavec (one of the Sharks) tweeted that Friday’s ratings for the show improved by 25%. That is a very significant increase in ratings. When I read his tweet I instantly knew why the show had the rating increase. You see this season something the Sharks started doing was tweeting live during the show. So, as a fan of the show I can interact with the Sharks. This is brilliant, because it gives me a reason to watch the show on Friday when it airs instead of waiting to record it on DVR or to watch it online the next day.

I found the show last year, but never knew when it aired, so I just would search on hulu to find it. I was very nervous the show was not going to come back this year, because I figured the ratings were low due to the fact that it wasn’t very well publicized. After waiting and hoping it would return, I found out it did, yet again it started without my knowledge. I started watching the second week, as I watched I tweeted about things going on. As I tweeted a good friend of mine started tweeting at me about the show and we talked about the show. The next week I found out the Sharks were tweeting live with the hash tag #sharktank.

Not many shows I know of have pulled off the live tweeting aspect as well as Shark Tank. The brilliance of social media is to figure out how to use it in your favor. The Sharks realized that they could create a buzz about the show if they took the time to interact with their fans. That in turn created a 25% increase in ratings!

How are you using social media to increase the amount of people that know about your company?

-David

P.S. If you are interested in watching Shark Tank it airs on Friday nights at 8/7c on ABC.

More Google Greatness

Austin Spitzer — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:05:55 +0000

It is sometimes shocking to me things I discover by accident while surfing the web. Last year I read a book called Pull that warned me that sometime in the near future, a big chnage would happen in the way we access content, whether it be information, news, etc. And the company that takes advantage of this shift, and knows how to capitalize on it, will be winning. In his last post, Zach talked about what Google was doing and how it was going to revolutionize the way we search. Well, add this to the list…

This past week I was entertaining the idea of purchasing a new TV. I had done some reaseach on the internet for various brands and models. One model got me really excited so I did some deeper research. This is where the amazement took place. I copied the model number from the manufacturer’s site and pasted it in Google. I pressed enter and the top result looked a little different than usual. It was a slightly different entry with a picture of my friend and his twitter account with a link to it as well as the TV. This totally blew my mind. I was abviously signed into Twitter at the time (although I didn’t have the page up, my computer just remember my information) so google, in the matter of milliseconds searched through millions of tweets and found something my friend had said 4 months ago about that same TV. What a glorious thing to do.

The possibilities of uses with an integration such as this seem limitless. If another friend of mine has said something about a certain product, or movie, or heck, anything, I can just Google it, and Google with instantly tell me what they said. I know this is the beginning stage of this type of thing, but I expect this to get HUGE and fast. Google is on board with what Pull was discussing and I believe they are extremelly well aligned with the wants, needs, and demands of consumers in the market. I’m excited to see what happens as Google continues to take over the world.

Austin

Foursquare vs Facebook Places

davidgraddy — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:37:35 +0000

Being able to check-in at businesses is huge. Getting your customers to check-in on their mobile device is a great way to promote your business. It allows your customers to spread the word about your company a lot faster than traditional ways. As a small business owner myself, I have been looking into and playing around with location based social media to see how exactly I want to use it. If you want people to check-in you HAVE to give them a reason. So many companies aren’t taking advantage of this new product like they should.

If you have never heard of foursquare you should check it out, it’s an online “game” that encourages you to check-in at local businesses you visit. They have done a great job of making it entertaining and rewarding. The big kicker to foursquare is that they encourage businesses to get on board and offer “specials” for having people check-in. For example, if you check-in at certain Chili’s restaurants around here you get free chips and salsa, if you check-in with three friends you get your choice of a free appetizer. It’s pretty cool and has actually made me choose to go there over other restaurants that didn’t offer specials. As a business owner, I love the idea that I can get my customers to tell their friends about my business so easily. As I first started messing around with Foursquare, Zach asked why I don’t just use Facebook Places. So, I started looking into Facebook Places.

I like that Facebook Places exists and that I can use Facebook to promote my business, but they haven’t executed check-ins as well as Foursquare. You can set up your company on Facebook Places so that people can check-in to your company, but right now they are still rolling out their version of “deals”. Which means that in my city I can’t have my deals on Facebook. Granted I can still have people check-in on Facebook and give them a deal, but if they are near by and look at places close to them they won’t know that I offer a deal (on Foursquare you can see specials near by).

Something else that Foursquare has nailed that Facebook lacks, is customer service. I am huge on customer service and being able to talk with people from the company I am working with. When I claimed my company on Foursquare I was having a little issue because of my business being seasonal. So, I had to get in touch with their customer service, which was super helpful and got back to me in a very timely manner. Facebook on the other hand was very annoying to try to figure out. I already had a “page” for my business and then decided to add it as a place. Well, I couldn’t figure out how to turn the page into a place, so I had to make a whole new “places/page” for the company. I also had a little trouble trying to claim my location on Facebook, and when I tried to get customer service to help, there was none. Facebook has a help section on their website, but it is just recently asked questions and answers, none which were helpful to me. After a very annoying process I finally got my company on places, but I have to delete my old page so that people don’t get confused.

Overall I am much more impressed with Foursquare, because it seems they have thought out their process a lot better than Facebook did. Let’s be honest, Facebook saw how great of an idea this was so they added it to their site, but it’s not nearly as well thought out. Foursquare not only makes it fun to check-in, they have provided a great tool for businesses to spread the word about their company.

Does your company use location based social media? If so, what are some things you have done that work and that don’t work?

-David