Marketing Tips & Tools

Happy Marketing to you all,

It’s another beautiful, cloudy, room-temperature January afternoon here on the East Bay. A special shout-out to our clients and fans in Richmond, Pinole, Hercules, Berkeley, El Cerrito, Albany, and Martinez!

This week our Marketing Tips topic from Lightning Rod Solutions is about choosing your mobile app builder and service.

The fastest growing space in marketing is in the mobile arena. I think most of us have acknowledged this fact by now. Unfortunately, with booming markets come a flood of swindlers, nincompoops, and hacks. With most new technologies, the pool of street-level service providers are comprised of a ratio something like this: 30% of them are out to screw you, they don’t care whether your product works or if it helps your business; another 30% want to do what they promise, but have no clue how to really do it. . . plus, they’re so clueless that they don’t even realize they don’t know what they’re doing; another 30% are technically proficient, but don’t know the first thing about your business or how to make the technology work for you.

The final 10% of the pool — those are the Lightning Rod Solutions -type producers of the world. They know what they’re doing, they care about your business enterprise to conduct the research and and the legwork to build the professional product and service that performs and gets results. We are hard to find, my friend!

This week an associate of mine, soon to become a client, it seems, came to me with a problem. The App she spent over $2,000 to have built simply doesn’t work! Half of the tabs go to Page Not Found or to blank content, the QR Codes needed to distribute the App were pointing off into blank cyberspace. . . and don’t get me started on the hack-job on the graphics! yuck! –it’s like the designer used PowerPoint or something.

Anyhow, now my associate, soon to be a client, is trying to either

1) get the app issues fixed pronto, or
2) get her money back.

The 2nd option, we can imagine, is likely going to be a tall order to fill. People that produce shoddy work, in my experience, seldom keep their coffers full enough to handle a customer refund.

The first option, though: Fix the issues pronto! is also not being handled. At all. It’s amazing that some people call themselves businesspeople they way they treat their clients.

Anyhow, the point of the story is: do your homework before jumping into bed with a new App builder. Everyone is full of promises, so you need to check the reputation and the work product of anyone promising to make you a ‘killer new mobile app’.

Your Mobile App Designer Checklist:

1) Make sure the app will work,

2) Be aesthetically beautiful, and

3) make sure it will be useful and interesting to your customer base!

4) Check the reputation of your designer,

5) Test-drive his/her/their work product -at least a couple of examples – before committing.

For your reference, here are two mobile apps designed by Lightning Rod Solutions that are good examples of our work:

(search on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, in Google Play for Android devices, or scan the QR Code below)

Go Richmond!

PSB App for Pear Street Bistro:

If you would like to discuss the true potential of a mobile app for your business, we encourage you to shop around! But only if you include Lightning Rod Solutions as one of your options.

Our focus is on integrating new tools into your existing marketing strategy, to leverage innovation to enhance your marketing efforts. . . efficiently and effectively.

Yes, we are experts at producing content and tools! But we are strategic marketers first, and we only build the tools you actually need!

Call today for a free consultation. 510-367-1685. or email LRSolutions@comcast.net

All the best,

Kevin Pacotti,

Chief Marketing Genius,

Lightning Rod Solutions

Remember how simple marketing was in the 2oth Century?

(nope, us neither, but roll with us on this for a minute…)

If you were a small local business you likley advertised in the paper.

If you were a merchandise dealer, you spent a little bit of money on a commercial and a whole hell of a lot of money on airtime. . . We’re talkin’ tens of thousands of dollars a month, quite often, to splatter your 1 minute video to a mostly random audience which most likely was running out of the room to get a snack or take a bathroom break.

Nearly every business relied on word of mouth and reputation.

Fortunately, they mostly still do.

But now a newspaper ad is usually a whimsical suggestion, a bit of folly, really, unless you are the grocery store or the auto dealership.

And television — well, your preciously expensive TV ad-time is zipped right past on the DVR like yesterday’s news. And that’s because television commercials sort of are yesterday’s news. They will always have some value and place in media, but the television’s marketing power over the population is waning profusely, and advertising prices are slow to adapt to this reduced value. Today we witness the fusion of all media into one delivery system. The end-user cares not of the origin or the pathway, only of the content itself. Blurred is the line between one medium and the next.

Yet we do understand some concrete realities:

People actively seek content related to the stuff that interests them the most.

Businesses succeed in online marketing by providing the video content that’s found to be most interesting to its target demographic.

Videos last forever on the web, so production and editing are the only costs of producing and releasing a dynamic, professional presentation of your products, services, and value proposition.

Business owners therefore can divert marketing dollars to direct highly targeted web & email marketing campaigns at the most valuable target market segments, creating an efficient and effective video distribution strategy to an actively engaged audience with a high probability of conversion.

Videos can easily be embedded, shared, Tweeted, Woofed, etc . . . so today’s business owners can saturate social media markets with high quality content easily.

Did we mention videos are forever? Well, hear it twice! When you produce a video for your product, idea, or service, keep in mind that everyone who sees it will think that’s exactly who, what, where, how, and why you are. The production is a one-time cost, and first impressions last forever. So do it once, and do it right, and your media production will enhance your brand image and bring you customers for years to come.

(Here’s where we are supposed to put the sales pitch, because Lightning Rod Solutions brings together talented producers and technicians to create video content for virtually any decent purpose. But instead we’ll just show you a sample, and ask that you call and check in on us from time to time: 510-367-1685)

Lightning Rod Solutions: Strategic Marketing Services

Web Development, Multimedia Production, Clickable Video, Advertising, Publicity, Public Relations

Bad APP-les: Avoiding the Mobile Scam

Happy Marketing to you all,

Go Richmond!

PSB App for Pear Street Bistro:

Videos are Forever

Remember how simple marketing was in the 2oth Century?

Yet we do understand some concrete realities: