Gaming in the Marketing World

Implementing game-centric design techniques into a marketing campaign is proven to work if incorporated fittingly. Gamification allows brands to deeply engage with its users within an entertaining platform — building participation and trust.

McDonald’s recently ran a mobile ad for a word scramble game that incorporated dollar menu items. In addition to learning about the dollar menu items while playing, users can also find the nearest McDonald’s location. The ad for the game was promoted on popular iPhone apps.

The ad encouraged users to test their McDonald’s knowledge; “You make smart choices every day. Like thinking before you speak and buying the McDouble. Show off your smarts at McDonald’s.” After unscrambling a word, users can share their score on Facebook, which facilitates spreading the word about the McDouble promotion. Users can also browse the dollar menu to see the different items with a picture and description.

What worked about this game? McDonald’s challenged people by asking them to test their knowledge. Not only were people playing the game, they were also learning about products. By capturing people’s attention with this amusing game, consumers were inadvertently thinking about the products. When the consumer later thinks about grabbing a bite to eat, McDonald’s is top of mind.

McDonald’s Moving Mobile Series

McDonald’s — one of my very favorite brands — is dominating mobile marketing and leveraging the power of cutting edge location-based services (LBS) technology. And, while doing so, they are also respecting and harnessing the great power of consumer preference.

Mobile marketing is the latest technology that businesses of all sizes should take advantage of.  McDonald’s has undoubtedly picked up on this. They have created a 360-degree mobile strategy that has a solid following base.

Their mobile strategy includes mobile advertising, a mobile website, a mobile app, gamification, and augmented reality. Throughout the course of this week I thought it would be fun to discuss these five factors that make McDonald’s mobile strategy so victorious, as well as include tips on how your business can do the same.

Chapter 1: Mobile Website and Application

On the McDonald’s mobile website, consumers can learn the nutrition of all menu items, look at job openings and find a McDonald’s nearby. This restaurant finder, when selected, will navigate you turn-by-turn, to the closet restaurant. This tool was great on our recent trip to Maine!

McDonald’s has looked at the main consumers they are serving, people who want FAST food (aka busy consumers), and has made a mobile website that is uncomplicated and incredibly easy for busy people to use. By using LBS, McDonald’s is able to drive in-restaurant traffic, and ultimately, increase sales.

The mobile app has the same features that the site does. It can be downloaded easily on iPhone and Android smartphones. My guess is that since eight million people have already downloaded this new app, consumers are finding it pretty effortless and beneficial.

McDonald’s is gaining incredible insight from the users who download this app. Classic paper coupons are hard to track, but linking a coupon from a mobile device provides practical information businesses can use to understand the habits and preferences of their customers. In return, McDonald’s develops highly personalized promotions that market specific menu items and restaurant locations at preferred times of the day for that customer and sends it right to their phone. The customer is more likely to redeem the coupon because of its personalization. This could never be achieved through plastic membership cards.


Some still view mobile as just a smaller version of the web and overlook the benefits of being able to walk around, while online, with a device that can pinpoint where you are.

Businesses should start thinking about utilizing a mobile app or creating a mobile friendly website now — because by 2014, mobile search is expected to far surpass desktop search.

Don’t let your business get left in the dust, embrace mobile technology!

Making Bed Bugs Our Business

It seems as though the last couple of years we have been hearing a lot of chatter about bed bugs.  One would think this something that would be of concern for an exterminator, but in fact many people have been making bed bugs their business.  Dogs are now being employed to sniff them out, lawyers hired to hold landlord accountable, doctors are staying informed to learn about signs and risks of these pesky insects and now even we have made bed bugs our business!

BBG&G is a full-service advertising agency servicing business from various industries.  As we do with any new client, we immediately dove right into the research phase so that we could learn everything there was to know about bed bugs.  I’ll be the first to admit, there were times that my skin started to crawl just by reading about them.  Through this learning process, I was definitely glad to know that there are resources like Discovery Dogs, which can be used to leverage the upper hand against these nuisances.

Not So Fun Facts That Will Make You Itch

New York City ranked first place in the nation for the city most infected with bed bugs in recent years, according to the world’s largest pest control company. But 2012 has Philadelphia topping the list, while New York City gladly takes third place thanks to certified bed bug sniffing dogs like Daisy, Midas, and Tater from Discovery Dogs.

Bed bugs are parasites that typically live in beds and furniture, preferring to feed on human blood. They have made a comeback this past decade due, in part, to the increase in world travel and globalization. As bed bugs are nocturnal, victims are bitten while asleep — often unaware. Depending on your skin’s sensitivity to the bites, some infestations may go unnoticed. Bed bugs are notoriously difficult to detect and many people find them horrifying, but they do not carry disease and actually pose less of a threat than mosquitoes. 

The Good News

Our client, Discovery Dogs was founded in 2009, when owner Lee Browning Jr. noticed that effective detection services and education were lacking, while bed bug infestations were becoming more prevalent. Still today, the general public’s knowledge on bed bug breeding habits, hiding places, their detection, and methods of extermination needs improvement.  Discovery Dogs has made it their mission to educate and empower homeowners, property managers, and anyone needing to identify and manage the presence of bed bugs. Their team handles the screening and detection process quickly and discretely. If a plan for extermination is required, it can be implemented immediately.

Bed bug sniffing may not be a career with much prestige, but at the end of the day, these canines’ posses a skill putting them in an elite category among their peers.  Canine inspection combines the skills of trained and certified dogs, with an experienced handler, to inspect suspect areas for potential bed bug infestation. A handler focuses on specific target areas for infestation, but will direct the canine to inspect all areas for varying degrees of time. These inspections are commonly conducted in hotels, hospitals, and other areas with community bedding and furniture such as dorm rooms, cruise ships, automobiles, and planes.

The training of the Discovery Dogs is identical to the training used for the detection of explosives and narcotics. While the accuracy rate of canine detection for bed bugs is very high, results are based on the handler’s ability as well as the ability of the dogs.

Tater may not be the first name that pops in your mind when you think of a super hero, but I am sure that there are plenty of New Yorkers that feel he has saved the day.

Why it Pays to Hire a Marketing Agency

OK, I know you’re not supposed to use a blog for sales purposes, and if you are a regular reader, you know that we usually never break this rule. 

But, I came across some research recently that, as I share with you, makes it so easy to segue into a sales pitch for BBG&G. So, if you’re not interested in a sales pitch, skip the last paragraph. But, don’t skip the main part of this blog, as it contains information that could prevent you from wasting your marketing dollars.

According to research done by Corporate Visions, and based on a poll of more than 440 b2b salespeople and marketers, findings show that: 

·      80% of Business-2-Business professionals say their marketing campaigns are ineffective. 

The reason given for the ineffective campaigns:

·      Lack of content that is relevant to customers

·      Copy isn’t provocative or engaging

·      Lack of alignment between sales and marketing

Overall, campaign messaging lacks customer focus. Are you focusing on your own company's products, features, and services, rather than focusing on your customers' wants and needs?

Boring content is ineffectual. Blogging, posting, and tweeting is intended for customer’s enjoyment. They want to get something useful out of it. Understanding your customers fully is vital. 

This is what BBG&G thrives at. Our inspired team creates bold messaging that challenges your prospect’s assumptions and creates urgency for change.  With us, you can be confident that your campaigns are grabbing the attention that they deserve. Call us today to chat about ways we can help you engage your customers! (845) 695-1880

How to Beat The Slowest Week In Online Retail Sales

The week of July 23^rd is the slowest week for online summer sales. In Will the Summer Sun make your Sales Shine or Fade Away blog, I talked about some tips for brick-and-mortar stores to help with the summer slump. For you online retailers, most of those tips are not going to work, so I am going to talk about measures you can take that will.

Shoppers will occasionally spend big bucks online throughout the summer; the key is to catch them at the right time. One simple factor that can help increase your revenue and help you focus your marketing efforts is considering what day of the week it is.

Fridays are the slowest when it comes to sales; the average dollar spent goes down by $6! People go away for the weekend and aren’t worried with spending the big bucks before they depart.  We have all rushed home from work on a Friday, quickly packed our bags and hit the road for vacation.  There is no room in that equation for online shopping! Don’t waste your efforts trying to reel customers in on these days.

When people get back from vacation they are thinking about the stuff they forgot to get over the weekend. Mondays account for buyers purchasing the most expensive items. The average dollar spent goes up by $4. This might also have to do with the ‘Monday Blues;’ shopping is seen as a ‘cure’. Wednesdays are the top sales days; meaning the overall total of purchases are higher.

Draw consumers in by adding sales incentives. For example, free shipping for orders of $100 or more on Mondays would help push consumers to make higher-value orders since they are already purchasing costly items. As an online retailer, online marketing is imperative- more than 50% of people with a social networking account check it daily. Take advantage of this by posting updates about new products, a special events and sales.

The Power of Pictures: Instagram and Facebook Camera

"A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words & Information Is The Currency Of The Internet" 

 

There has been a lot of fuss about Facebook’s newest application, Facebook Camera. Facebook Camera lets you rapidly pick one or more photos, apply filters, tag friends and locations, add a description and then post. It has fourteen different camera filters and is coincidentally very similar to what the application known as Instagram does. What is even stranger, Facebook recently acquired Instagram for one billion dollars.

Instagram has no revenue, but what it does have is 30 million users. That wasn’t the only upside to buying Instagram. Facebook so quickly spent one billion dollars because of user data. Instagram is far more targeted than Facebook. Facebook certainly knows how to target ads to its audience’s interests, but as we all know by now, Facebook users post any number of boring, self-interested or otherwise forgettable updates. Instagram photos are simpler and frequently brilliant, especially for brands. You can find out more of a user’s interest on Instagram. A food lover takes photos of dining out and fancy dishes, a skier takes pictures of the slopes and the resort. Facebook can optimize this data and create advertisements with even more of a focus.

Instagram Winning Tickets to Brooklyn Bowl

Another factor is that Facebook has had difficulty finding a way to keep up with mobile technology. Instagram really knows mobile. They do not have a website; it is just an application where you can follow people and see others photos by scrolling on there page. When you upload a photo, you can choose to share it via Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr as well. Instagram looks nice and simple and has an easy interface. The Facebook mobile app can really learn from this.

The beauty of Instagram, and Facebook Camera, is that people love photos. People go on Facebook to look at photos of friends, family, and things that interest them. Half of Facebook users comment on photos at least twice a week.

As a business, how does this affect you? Both applications will display photos on your Facebook Business Page. They might seem like competing apps, but except for minor differences in editing tools, they are essentially the same. It is up to you to choose how you want to interact with your fans. So choose one and use it! Photos get attention.