Archive for Mara
What first attracted to me to Four51 was the imagery behind the company name. 451 degrees is the temperature at which paper burns; a literary reference from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. I had read the book in college and was intrigued to learn more about the company who based its ideology on making the procurement process paperless.
I just want to be average
If we were constantly using average as our benchmark for success:
A successful man would make $43,317/yr, weigh 191 pounds and not have a college degree.
A successful woman would make $33,075/yr, weigh 164 pounds and not have a college degree.
I don’t know about you, but average is not something I strive for. I try to set loftier goals for myself…
Popularity: 40%
Business Practices: Who’s your best customer?
This seems like a simple question and most of our companies have a database full of figures that could tell us within seconds who spent the most money with our company last year, last month, or even last week.
But who pumped the most amount of revenue into your business last year is often not your best customer. This customer might have cost you in other ways. We all know who this customer is: the one who always has a custom order, the one who spends more time on the phone with your support team than they do working, the one who has the same billing question every month.
So how can you calculate the value your customers bring to your business?
Popularity: 31%
Social Media: What will my boss think? Who cares!
You can’t care if you want your corporate blog to stay fresh, relevant and, most importantly, read by customers and prospects. Corporate blogs already have the boring stigma attached to them. That stigma presents a challenge to all of us corporate bloggers! (Challenge welcome and accepted, bring it on!) If we want readers, we need to try even harder to earn them and break out of the failing corporate blog stereotype.
Popularity: 38%
Marketing: Is the latest always the greatest?
When looking for the most up-to-date and fresh marketing techniques, I like to think we all have a go-to source for information.
I usually consult my RSS reader which keeps the list I have built containing the sites and blogs I think supply me with me with the most valuable and accurate information on a regular basis. If I heard about a new trend somewhere and wanted to learn more about it, odds are I will type it into my Google Reader and see what it returns so that I can read some off-the-cuff evaluations from what I consider to be trusted opinions.
Recently though, I was thinking that the most cutting-edge marketing techniques are probably being employed in the race for the president. Our presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, have full-time teams devoted solely to the task of getting their names and messages out into the masses. Isn’t this in essence what every marketer is trying to do for her own business? So what are some of the elements of the marketing mix that our candidates for president are employing in their campaigns?
The traditional: the campaign slogan. It bring us back to the building blocks of defining the message we will bring to our target audience. It begs the question: How can I consolidate my entire offering into a five to seven word sentence that people will remember and associate with my product; or, in the case of the election, with my ability to lead the country. Salon.com provides an interesting rubric that personifies the brand equal of each of the candidates.
The trends: social media. Anyone who is part of a social networking community has invariably noticed the presence of a presidential candidate on their site of choice. Most notably for me has been the blatant endorsements on sites such as Facebook, where Barack Obama’s page boasts over a million supporters and John McCain’s page has just under 200,000. Now, these numbers could be an indicator of many factors: the candidate’s ability to leverage the social networking site, the demographics of the users on the site, the amount of time spent pursuing social networking as a viable tool for getting the candidates message out, and so on. Either way, it is just another method in the marketing mix that our presidential candidates are employing to win our votes. We are the judges of whether or not it is working.
In the battle of new vs. old marketing techniques, we will have to wait to see who wins this battle. One thing is for sure, there is no shortage of information on the refutation of old techniques and, conversely, the endorsement of new strategies. For more information on the subject, I strongly recommend the writings of David Meerman Scott, author of many marketing and PR thought leadership books and articles.
Mara
Popularity: 12%
Industry News: Social media for everyone
The indirect goods industry is constantly referred to as one that is stubborn and resistant to change. I say this particularly in reference to their adoption of new technology. Case in point is the medium most of our customers are most comfortable using: the telephone. For a long time, when our customers had a problem, we wanted nothing more than for them to pick up the phone and call us.
Recently, however, Four51 has created a number of online tools (Discover Four51, Forum Four51, Access Four51…this very blog!) to enable customers to find quick answers to questions and interact with each other. In almost all cases, customers are getting their inquiries answered quicker than a traditional support telephone line could have ever accommodated and the results have been fantastic!
At Four51, we often walk the line of being on the edge of the technology trends and leaving our customers and prospects feeling confused and abandoned by our adoption of new technology. But as a forward-looking technology company, we know that it is important to push our customers and prospects in ways that will help their business grow and remain profitable.
Four51 is just about a decade old now and benefits from a well-balanced group of young employees who are consistently bringing fresh ideas to the table. In the marketing department alone we have been aggressively pursuing Search Engine Optimization, blogging and executing multimedia campaigns to help drive our presence out into the market.
The PSDA (Print Services & Distribution Association) has jumped on the technology bandwagon with us and is helping to educate the industry as a whole on the value of new technologies. The PSDA has created membership groups on LinkedIn, a site for professionals to grow their connections to business partners, clients and employees. They also have a site called Print University where members can go to get educational materials about the industry, read about sales and CSR training, and even download a podcast series to listen to at their convenience
Lately, the PSDA has helped to push the technology front even further by creating Print Junkie, a new social networking site for the printing industry. At printjunkie.net, members have free access to blogs, forums, news, events, tutorials, videos and photos all pertaining to the print industry. The site already boasts 200+ junkies!
As partners in crime, the PSDA is helping Four51 change the way customers interact with us and with each other. We all hope to see a dramatic shift in our customers’ resistance to adopting these new technologies as they realize the added value they bring to their businesses and their own customers.
Mara
Popularity: 13%
Marketing: Search-in-search to the rescue
I think that most of us are of the mindset that Google is king of the internet. So when we think about Google making it even easier and faster to find the information we need, we get pretty excited about it.
When I visit a website for the first time, I usually find myself looking for some very specific information. For instance, if I visit the Applebee’s website, I might be looking for the menu or for the nearest location. I want that website to clearly point me right to the information I need without much effort on my part. In the case of something like a restaurant, this is usually an easy task.
But in the industry of print, promotional products, office supplies, and e-commerce, this can sometimes be a more difficult endeavor. Pointing our prospects and customers to exactly the information they need can sometimes be an arduous task, especially when a particular website contains an innumerable amount of pages of information. What alleviates this burden slightly is a search box contained within our websites where visitors can narrow their query within the contents of that singular site and find information that is more tailored to their inquiry. What can alleviate it even more is what Google rolled out in March of this year.
Google calls it the search-within-search feature. The tool enables users to stay on Google when visiting some larger big box type sites (read the NY Times article for an expanded listing) and use the Google search bar to crawl the content on that individual site. So now, when you type NASA into Google, a secondary search box appears below the NASA listing on the Google results page. The idea behind the secondary search box is to bring users directly to the page on the NASA site that they are looking for. So if you are looking for information on if people will be able to travel to Mars, all you would need to do is type that refined search into the secondary search box and voila, you are presented with an in-site listing of pages on NASA’s site that refer directly to your inquiry.
This feature is the future of internet searching. Imagine a customer/prospect typing your company name into Google and then using a secondary search box where they can type in exactly what product they are looking for. Through the magic of Google, the user no longer has to navigate the sophisticated architecture of your website, they will be taken directly to a listing of what pages that product appears on within your site and can visit the pages that directly answer their inquiries.
This translates into less frustration trying to finding the products and answers visitors to our sites are looking for. As Google continues to enable our customers/prospects with tools that make it easier to find us and what we offer, all we have to do is sit back and reap the benefits. Thanks Google, you are the king!
Mara
Popularity: 6%
Four51 News: We are PCI Compliant
I think it’s safe to say that most of us have shopped online before–whether it’s that one dollar transaction to download an mp3 or bigger ticket items, like purchasing electronics– online ordering is as much a part of our culture as hamburgers and Tom Petty.
Since Four51 is an e-commerce company, I consider myself especially in tune with the way credit cards are processed over the web. Worrying about the security of my information is often the last thing on my mind when I proceed to checkout on popular sites such as Amazon or eBay, but what about smaller merchants? Are we more apprehensive to make purchases on sites that do not proudly display their security statement? I would argue yes.
That is why Four51 would like to take a minute to re-assure you that regardless of your role as a seller, supplier, or buyer exchanging payment card information on the Four51 network, ALL transactions across Four51 have been validated as secure by a third party auditor. In other words, Four51 is Payment Card Industry Compliant. You can see us listed on Visa’s site of PCI compliant merchants.
What this means for you is that when you’re buying on Four51, you’re buying on a secure platform. The $239 million dollars consumers lost in cyber fraud in 2007 is of no concern to you when entering your payment card information on our network.
What it could also mean if you’re a seller is that you have a new marketing tool to bring into the mix when prospecting. Odds are you’ve already had inquiries from your customers in the financial, healthcare and insurance industry about payment card security. Answer them with confidence and proudly state you run all your commerce through a PCI-certified merchant.
Being PCI compliant and providing a safe, secure e-commerce environment for our users and their customers wasn’t just a switch we flipped- it is an ongoing, arduous process, but giving our customers a secure place to do business is the most important thing we can do.
Mara
(Looking for more information? Check out the News page of the website.)
Popularity: 8%
Four51 News: Introducing Forum Four51!
Because your success with the Four51 application is important to us, we’ve created Forum Four51, a tool to help you enhance your experience with the Four51 platform. Forum Four51 provides you with an online resource to share tips, tricks, ideas, balanced critiques and experiences with other Four51 customers in a message board format.
I’m sure you’ve wondered how other Four51 customers leverage the Four51 application and with Forum Four51 you now have an easy way to find out. You can tap into the creativity of thousands of users, talk print industry news, and gain tools to help drive growth for your business.
Register at the Forum Four51 site, accept the usage guidelines, and begin posting!
Mara
Please note that Forum Four51 will NOT replace support and is not intended as a support resource. It is meant to initiate open discussions between Four51 customers. Although Forum Four51 will be monitored by support, the only way to guarantee an inquiry will be answered by Four51 support is to submit a question via Access Four51.
We look forward to seeing you on Forum Four51!
Popularity: 6%
