Google’s New Program Aims to Get Local Businesses Online

Google is trying to get local businesses in 30,000 cities worldwide online via a new program called "Let's Put Our Cities on the Map."
The initiative was designed to encourage small businesses, consumers, and local organizations to help complete a local business listing on Google. According to Google's own research, consumers are 38 percent more likely to visit and 29 percent more likely to consider purchasing from businesses with complete listings. However, not enough companies have set up a local business listing on a search engine, Google says.
The program provides each city with a custom website where local businesses can find how they appear on Google Maps and in search results. Take, New York City for example, where the owner of Ost Cafe can see what listing information they have missed on Maps.


Google will also provide local business owners with a step-by-step guide for getting online with Google My Business, and a free website and domain name for one year with Google's partner Startlogic.
Consumers can participate in the program by creating postcards to support their favorite local businesses, and further sharing the postcards on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. However, such sharing will not help local businesses rank higher in Google search results.
"Sharing the postcards won't make businesses appear higher in search, but will hopefully spur them to verify and start managing their business listing," a Google spokesperson tells Search Engine Watch.
The search giant has also partnered with local organizations like chambers of commerce and small business development centers to offer Google My Business workshops, where local businesses can learn to how to control the information listed about them on Google Search and Maps.
Are you ready to get your favorite local businesses online?
Homepage image via Shutterstock.

Facebook Launches App Analytics

Facebook Launches App Analytics At F8 Developers Conference

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 18:38:13 +0000

One of the many announcements coming out of Facebook’s F8 conference for developers today is Facebook Analytics for Apps, a free service that Facebook says can help developers in several ways.
The analytics tool is available today for apps that are logging App Events, which Facebook says is 87 percent of the top-grossing apps in the U.S. Developers that aren’t doing that but want to start can head over to Facebook’s developer documentation to get started.
From Facebook’s announcement, here’s an overview of what Analytics for Apps offers:

Cross-Device
People now use multiple devices to interact with businesses across apps and websites, and Facebook Analytics for Apps can help developers and marketers understand their traffic across these devices, which in turn can help them improve performance.
Segments
You can look at segments, or groups of people who have certain characteristics, like women or people using Android phones. You can then look at metrics for these groups to see how they use your app differently than the overall population.
Cohorts
You can now also look at cohorts, or groups of people who took a set of actions in your app. Then you can review specific metrics for that group, like what percentage of them launched your app, completed a registration, or made a purchase.
Funnels
Creating funnels lets you look at how people move through a series of steps in your app, like a purchase flow. This can help you see where people drop off, which can help you figure out where to devote resources to improving performance.
Improving your advertising
Facebook Analytics for Apps can help developers understand and improve the ads they’re already running, and figure out how to run better ads in the future. Analytics helps you measure the lifetime value of your Facebook ads, and re-engage people who have dropped off using re-marketing.

Facebook Analytics for Apps is accessible at facebook.com/analytics, a dashboard with access to all of a developers’ apps.
For more news from today’s F8 keynote, see our live blog coverage. And we’ll be sharing more news today and tomorrow on our F8 conference topic page.

Vodka Brand Creates Mobile App To Program Personalized LED Messages On Bottles

Last week, a chocolate bar brand launched a QR code-based mobile app that allows people to add personalized messages of love on their candy bars. This week, a vodka brand is upping the game with LED and Bluetooth technology.
Medea Vodka, which has had manually programmable LED strips on its bottles since 2010, has introduced a mobile app that uses Bluetooth to assign personalized messages to LED strips on vodka bottles. The company will showcase this technology at the upcoming Nightclub & Bar Convention & Trade Show in Las Vegas later this month and introduce the bottles in June.
Here’s a look at the original, non-Bluetooth LED bottles in action:
The new LED bottles will use Apple’s iBeacon technology and an app to enable a smartphone to wirelessly set and display scrolling messages. The Medea App, not yet available in either the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, will be able to determine what bottles are in the area without having to connect or find every Bluetooth-enabled device. The app will keep tabs on which bottles are around and available to be registered.
Once a person registers a particular bottle using the app, that bottle — and the ability to post messages to the bottle — can be accessed by anyone who the initial registrant chooses to invite. Anyone with access to a bottle can also share their messages to Facebook, Twitter and email. Since users reportedly must register to program their bottle’s message, the app may be a source of useful customer data for Medea.
The bottles are pre-programmed with six phrases including, “Happy Birthday,” “Congratulations” and “Thank you,” which scroll across the LED label.
Medea is promoting the new bottles and app on Facebook and Twitter:

Yes, it’s true. We’ll be rolling out a #bluetooth #app that enables #mobile users to program customized messages to…
Posted by Medea Vodka on Monday, March 23, 2015

Did you see our #bluetooth #app news on @CNBC? http://t.co/yIe7oSNM7G. This will be unveiled at #ncbshow2015 @NightclubBar next week!
— MedeaVodka (@MedeaVodka) March 23, 2015

Build Your Brand Authority

How Copywriting Can Build Your Brand Authority

Wed, 25 Mar 2015 14:00:00 +0000
When you're recognized as a brand authority, you become the go-to business for products or services in your industry; you can be more selective with clients, and you can charge higher rates that reflect your expertise.
When we hear "brand authority," we usually think about PR, online and offline marketing, public speaking, writing books, being interviewed... In all that, giving thought to what you say is undoubtedly important, but it's often how you say it that establishes your true credibility as a brand authority.
By following these four steps, you'll discover just how effective your copywriting can be in building your brand authority.
1. Be consistent in your tone of voice
All companies have a certain tone of voice. You hear it in their marketing materials, blog posts, YouTube videos, and social media posts. The way a company "talks" can determine whether anyone wants to do business with it, and that's why businesses must get tone of voice right—and keep it consistent.

Consistency in tone of voice breeds familiarity, which in turn creates trust and, finally, brand authority. Here are three tips to ensure you keep your brand's tone of voice consistent:

1. Define it. How do you want to portray your voice to your audience? Are you a serious blue chip company laser-focused on delivering results? Or are you a fresh new startup looking to shake up your industry?
2. Own it. Once you know how you want your brand to sound, take ownership of it by using that tone in all of your marketing materials.
3. Encourage it. Create a style guide and distribute it to all your writers and editors so that everyone follows the same guidelines. Also provide it to agencies doing work for you and anyone who wants to guest-post on your blog.

2. Make it emotional
Most people think they decide with whom to do business based on reason and logic. Although rational thought does have bearing on our decisions, our emotions ultimately get their way.
Our emotional responses to a piece of writing have more influence on our decisions than the actual content of the writing itself, research suggests. In fact, in print advertising, we're twice as likely to buy from a brand that appeals to our emotions than one that doesn't at all.
The following three steps can help ensure you make the most of emotion in your copywriting to establish your brand authority:

1. Use emotional triggers. Tug at your customers' heart strings by appealing to their strongest emotions and tapping into their needs and desires. Some of our strongest emotions are value, trust, fear, guilt, competition, belonging, and pleasure.
2. Use intriguing headlines. Every successful advert, article, blog post, and email begins with a strong headline. Think about what words will encourage your audience to read on and into the body of your copy.
3. Include a call to action. Having built up all that emotion, you'll want to direct your customers to fulfill a specific action you want them to take, whether that's making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter.

3. Keep it conversational
Building your brand authority involves a certain professionalism, but that doesn't mean your copy needs to be full of longwinded sentences and obscure words. If you want to stand out from the crowd, your copy needs to speak to people in a way they can relate to.
When crafting your copy, write as you would talk to a friend—directly—and focused on the main points of your message. You can keep your copywriting conversational by following these three tips:

1. Read your copy out loud. Hearing your voice speaking your copy can help you recognize any shortcomings, including incorrect tone of voice or confusing structure.
2. Use short sentences. The shorter the sentence, the more readable the copy. If you can say it in one sentence, why use three?
3. One idea at a time. Keeping each point you want to make within one paragraph helps deliver your messages more clearly and makes your copy more digestible.

4. Make it look easy
Think about how the most successful brands portray themselves to the public. Do they make a point of constantly telling you how hard they work at becoming a trusted company?
The most successful brands make it look effortless. Undoubtedly a lot of effort goes in behind the scenes, but the audience sees only the finished product, presented in a seemingly effortless way.
If your branding comes across as forced, too sales-like, or overcomplicated, you'll find it difficult to attract the kind of customer loyalty that authority brands have. The following three actions can help you make your copywriting look easy:

1. Use bullet points and numbered lists. Breaking down your copy into small, digestible chunks is a surefire way to simplify your brand message. People are automatically drawn to copy that stands out on a page.
2. Start with a strong opening line. Use the first line in your copy to make a bold statement that shows your readers you know what you're talking about.
3. End with a summary. Gathering the most important pieces of information at the end of your copy can help strengthen your content. It also gives people an opportunity to reflect on what they've just read.

* * *
Although following all these copywriting tips will certainly improve your brand authority, bear in mind that sounding unique often what sets a brand apart from the competition. And if that means breaking some of these copywriting "rules," then so be it.

A Marketer's View: An 11-Step Plan for Launching Your Startup

Disclaimer: the headline on this article promises you 11 steps to launch a startup. It does not promise you 11 easy steps or 11 simple steps or 11 anyone-could-do-it-before-breakfast-without-breaking-a-sweat steps.
Launching a startup is difficult—there's no way around that.
In the best of markets, 75% of venture-backed firms fail to deliver returns on their investments, according to 2012 research from Harvard Senior Lecturer Shikhar Ghosh.
Today, VC firms are debating whether that grim statistic might be exacerbated by a forthcoming tech bubble. Nevertheless, many entrepreneurs decide to launch companies every year.
If you're determined to join their ranks, here's what you need to know about how to launch your business so it lasts.
1. Make sure the service, product, or business you're launching is something you're passionate about and you're in it to win, no matter what. Don't start a business that you don't know much about and for which you aren't willing to learn more. It will never grow.
2. Partner up. Launching a company is a long journey (if things go well) that takes multiple skill sets. Few people can claim expertise in product development, operations, marketing, sales, and every other function you'll need in the early days of your business. That's why so many successful startups are founded by partners or teams. Just make sure you have defined roles and mutual respect from the beginning.
3. Articulate the vision and test-drive messages. Even if you plan to stay in stealth mode for a while, to boost your profile and set the stage for your eventual coming-out party you'll need to craft some messages and positions on industry trends. As you near launch, you'll also need to test-drive your value proposition and overall messaging with beta customers and industry analysts. If those messages aren't resonating with those audiences, you're not ready.
4. Build a strong team. Recruit the A players who can help you grow and ultimately launch. Identify speaking opportunities at local events or at conferences with high awareness, where you can talk about industry trends and catch the attention of attendees. Alternatively, get involved with a recruiter who knows your space and the prime candidates in it.
5. Set clear goals. Is the initial goal of your company launch to hire great talent to build your product? Is it to build up a customer base? Or are you most interested in getting venture capital? Figure it out, because the answer or answers will determine what you should do next.
6. Get all Goldilocks about your market timing. Too late is no good. Too early can be just as bad. If you enter the market before your prospects are ready, your company will flame out, and your future competitors will build their successes on the foundation of your failures. Make sure your market timing is just right, and keep an eye on where the competition is in its development.
7. Get your website ready for close scrutiny. It should be optimized for analytics, easy to navigate, and responsive to multiple devices. If your initial goal for the site is to build awareness rather than drive leads, you can feature minimal calls to action and keep things simple at the start.
8. Build up your content and marketing library. As you add content to your website, include basic information—such as product specs, sales contacts, and calls to action—as well as deep content to support lead conversion when that becomes a priority, including case studies (as soon as they're available), e-books, SlideShares, a healthy blog, and other assets.
9. Be sociable. Pick the three most relevant social media channels for your market, and craft a strategy for building your following on each. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other outlets can help you engage with influencers and prospects, amplify your content, and establish yourself as a reliable source of industry knowledge.
10. Craft a pitch. The value-driven message that explains why your company exists should be clear enough that your kids can understand it, and compelling enough that your VC contacts will want to hear more. Make sure you can explain your customers' greatest need and how you're going to solve it. Be ready to identify your competitors and explain why you'll have an edge over them. Finally, practice your pitch and perfect your presentation skills.
11. Build media, analyst, and customer relationships for third-party validation. Blasting out the news of your launch won't get you very far. Concentrate your resources on building relationships with early customers (who can vouch for you), analysts (who can explain how you'll fit into the market), and journalists (who can convey your story and viewpoints to target audiences.)
Launch day is the end of a long road and the beginning of another. To make sure your startup can thrive during the journey, you'll need to walk through those 11 steps first, and find the right resources to help you navigate the difficult terrain.
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Public Relations: Four 'Wow' Ways to Use It for Sales

"PR is an insanely valuable activity in early-stage companies," wrote venture capitalist Mark Suster on his popular blog for startups.
The problem is that most companies focused on growth are almost allergic to public relations: It takes a ton of time, it doesn't easily lend itself to metrics, and the people who work in PR are often big picture, strategic—or, if you'd rather, "fuzzy"—thinkers.
In other words, PR people don't fit easily into the world of the bootstrapped or venture-backed growth company.
Yet, founders and investors alike will acknowledge that a company's perceived lack of credibility is one of the silent killers of great sales opportunities: Big potential clients can circle and circle, but they are famously risk-averse. In this era of transparency, social proof, and infinite-pages-on-Forbes, a company that doesn't have great coverage or exposure is almost questionable—and that's enough to kill big deals.
Public relations and sales are perfect companions

Fortunately, with the right technology and tracking, public relations is the perfect support to a natural lead nurturing process. PR creates enough credibility so that you can...

1. Encourage starter customers to grow into enterprise customers
2. Reassure existing investors with social traction
3. Attract new investors for your next round
4. Build your qualified site traffic and Alexa score all at once

Here are four simple ways you can use public relations to enhance your sales—and track it.
1. Build qualified traffic through social media
Share the great coverage you've achieved: Highlight it in your newsletter (if you have one), on your LinkedIn and other social media pages, and in a running news feed on your website. Make it apparent that your industry is in love with you.
Here's what you'll get:

• More credibility (hard to measure)
• Lots more awareness (hard to measure)
• Attaboys from investors
• 10-20% boosts in qualified Web traffic (watch the inbound social link traffic to see it happen)

Here's how you do it:

1. Follow the journalists you want to cover you.
2. Read their work and reshare it with insightful comments, always providing appropriate attribution. Depending on your needs and profile, use a right-sized social media tool to make this easier, such as HootSuite, Radian6, Buffer, or (one of my favorites) Attentive.ly.
3. When they cover you, send the piece to your prospects and your customers, put it in your website, share it, and thank them.
4. Repeat.

2. Make lead generation events do double duty
There's nothing like having people who already trust you in the room—learning to trust you more and sharing that with others. That's why event marketing is ranked by B2B marketers year after year as their "go-to" sales tactic, according to the MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute annual study.
Your marketing team already executes trendy client development events, now consider inviting trade journalists, local journalists, and promising bloggers to come meet sources and learn the trends, too. You may even jump for a ticket for a writer who really gets your field and your company.
Here's what you'll get:

• Top-notch coverage of your event
• Better relationships with journalists—priceless over the long haul
• Inbound prospects from links in the articles (trackable!)
• Bonus points from clients and investors who see that you are the go-to company in your industry

Here's how you do it:

1. Go back to that list of journalists, and have your CEO invite them to participate on a press pass, all expenses paid.
2. Assign one person on your team, or from your agency, to help the journalists connect. See whether they can do briefings with a key client or two as well as a couple of your inside thought leaders.
3. Make sure they get a company backgrounder, possibly case study notes prewritten, and bios, ahead of the event.
4. Provide a quiet private room for the journalists to work with lots of power, coffee, and raging-fast Internet.

3. Hijack the smartest minds in your industry
What, you haven't written your book yet? Of course not! Growth stage companies are too busy for major campaigns like book writing. The next best thing is to develop a mutually beneficial alliance with a leading author or two in your field.
Authors are looking for ways to promote their books—and you'd like to reach their audience, too. Combing forces is one way to do both. Creating a webinar on a topic of interest both to the author and to you creates content that is twice as interesting. Moreover, the author's network enlarges the distribution footprint.
Here's how you do it:

1. Read books in your industry (you're already doing that, right?).
2. Pick three authors who speak to you or your team.
3. Reach out to them on their author website or LinkedIn, inviting them to speak with you about a webinar series. Ask whether they would be open to promoting the series to their own fans (you'll want to hear a "yes").
4. Offer to buy copies of their book for attendees, or for attendees who attend and ask questions. It's quid pro quo: This person needs to promote and sell books; make sure you help.
5. Mention your webinar series with the author when you are speaking with trade journalists.
6. List the author webinar in the trade calendars as an industry event.
7. Have one of your content developers write up the webinar with the author and your expert as a blog post or series of posts.

Here's what you get:

• Access to a new group of potential clients through the authors' distribution list
• Signups for your webinar consisting of people interested in the topic who are now on your nurture list
• More credibility

4. Put clients on commission
Few clients like to go on the record with a no-holds barred testimonial, so don't ask them for it. Instead, ask them to go on video with a short industry perspective at your next big tradeshow, where presumably you and the client will both attend.
Used properly on your website, these kinds of pieces showcase the kind of company you are by showcasing the quality of the company you keep. One example is the recent video by ENGAGE.cx, a CRM startup: Its video features thought leadership from a former VP of CRM at Oracle and at Intercontinental Hotels group.
Here's how you do it:

1. Look for clients who are building their personal reputation as thought leaders.
2. Ask whether they would provide a perspective on an issue that matters to you business and your prospective clients.
3. Provide 1-3 questions in advance for your client.
4. Send a video team to them. You'll find their perspective speaks for itself when they showcase their own strengths and insights.
5. Put the video on your website and develop a social media campaign around it.
6. Ask your client and your client's PR team to promote their point of view.
7. Send it to journalists and ask whether they'd like to interview your client and your internal expert on the topic.

Here's what you get:

• Enormous credibility kudos
• Nice soundbites for investors about why companies are working with you
• Jealous competitors
• Substantial inbound lead traffic to see what experts say on an important trend (thanks to your social media outbound and your media pitching—and perhaps that of your client as well)

* * *
Your public relations efforts pay off even more powerfully when distributed through your sales and marketing process. There are many more ways to do this—once you get started sharing your credibility, it's addictive. Let me know how it's going for you.
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Five Ways Marketing Technology Will Transform Our Industry

Though 83% of B2B marketers say creating buyer-centric marketing is a priority, only 23% claim to be advanced in its implementation, according to research firm SiriusDecisions.
This discrepancy isn't surprising when you look at the technology landscape in which today's marketers operate.
 Nearly 2,000 marketing solutions that specialize in search, email, social, events, webinars, videos, and much more are now available. Marketers have defaulted to building marketing strategies around these channels-focused investments rather than buyer interests.
But priorities are shifting away from rigid channel-based tactics toward holistic strategies that deliver a consistent buyer experience across all devices and outlets, and allow for adaptation in the face of inevitable change.
How will marketing technology help push us toward that brighter future?

Here are five ways.
1. Integration will rule
Integration is the key to supporting real alignment across teams, getting visibility into all your content and campaigns, surfacing insights that are otherwise locked inside tools, and ensuring your buyer's journey is clear and consistent.
If your investments in marketing technology are going to succeed, those different apps and systems need to "talk to each other." And that's where integration is critical.

Rebecca Lieb, industry analyst at the Altimeter Group, refers to a future model called the "content marketing stack," which combines eight specific workflow solutions around content and social.

This stack will not only work with technologies currently on the market, Lieb says, but will also promote integrations with future tools.
"There can always be new technologies that emerge, technologies we haven't even thought of or conceived of at this point," Lieb says. "But there is an immediate need for all of these point solutions on the landscape to start talking to each other and start playing nice with each other."
By opening up their APIs, marketing "stacks" will allow new technologies to plug into their environments seamlessly.
2. Marketers will become technologists
As the technology landscape shifts toward integration, marketers will need to become more tech-savvy than ever.

Mayur Gupta, chief marketing technologist at Kimberly-Clark, calls the future marketer who is not only technically driven but also creatively driven "The Unicorn."
"The Unicorn is a modern marketer who is a technologist," Gupta says. "But she is also a storyteller, she is also a creative, she is also a copywriter."
The Unicorns will cut across silos—both internal and external—unifying the customer journey from awareness to sale through retention.
The result is a closely integrated department, regardless of function, that can plan and deliver marketing campaigns based on both analytical and creative decision-making.
3. Silos will shatter
Most marketing teams today depend on static documents circulated via email for feedback or a sea of disorganized Google documents. As a result, multiple versions and conflicting edits throw a wrench in efficiency, confusing stakeholders and stalling campaign launches. There are no visible tasks or next steps, and things get very messy very quickly.
Visibility is the cornerstone of a customer-centric marketing process. Future marketing teams will depend on agile, adaptable processes that hinge on real-time editing and collaboration on cloud-based platforms.
This integrated platform will grant organization-wide visibility across all functions, channels, and tools.
4. New executive roles will emerge
Great customer experiences are human-driven, not technology-driven. Companies need someone to hold the reins on internal marketing technology investments, organizing and prioritizing them to deliver a rewarding customer experience.

Some 70% of companies today already have a chief marketing technologist (CMT). Soon, it will be more like 90%.
Research firm Gartner defines CMTs as "familiar with marketing techniques as well as technologies. They need to understand how to use technology to define markets, attract, acquire, and retain customers."
Their main job, as Scott Brinker puts it, is to enable a holistic approach to marketing technology and help leadership recognize how new technologies can open up new opportunities across all teams.
Technically fluent storytellers, CMTs are the bridges between IT and marketing. They work closely with the CIO and the CMO to establish the technological blueprint that allows companies to serve their customers at the highest level.
5. Insights will surface
Future integrated marketing technology stacks will provide real insights into marketing performance, surfacing data previously locked in separate tools.
These platforms will provide far more than vanity metrics like unique views and shares. They'll integrate with social, CRM, marketing automation, and Web analytics tools to reveal results across all channels throughout the buyer's cycle. The results then give marketers insight into which content and messages speed up the pace to purchase.
This vision of marketing technology isn't only a figment of our imaginations. There are centralized platforms already adopting this model today.