The Cutting Edge of Online Marketing

On Saturday, I once again was a member of the Lucky Dog BBQ Team as we held a Resident Appreciation Day at the Arrowhead Ranch MHC in Campbellsville, KY. My friend Brad Simmons, purveyor of the best barbeque in Kentucky was on-site at around 3AM to get things rolling. We served Pulled Pork, Beef Brisket, Smoked Chicken, Polish Sausages, Wicked Beans and Cole Slaw to a crowd of around 50.

Chow line at Arrowhead Ranch Resident Apprciation Day.

There was a bounce house for the kids, games for adults and a drawing for prizes ranging from sports equipment to Wal-Mart gift certificates to a brand new bicycle for one winner. Every kid in attendance received a certificate for free ice cream from Baskin-Robbins.

Resident collects drawing prize. The bicycle was the grand prize.

This is the third annual Resident Appreciation Day and they seem to enjoy them more and more. Everybody had a great time Several residents were heard to say “This is one of the reasons I’ll be here until the day I die.”

The Big Bertha BBQ machine fed the masses at Arrowhead Ranch Resident Appreciation Day in Campbellsville, KY

If you’re not doing this type of promotion in your communities, I have to ask “Why not?” The goodwill and resident loyalty such events engender is well worth the expense. Start planning yours now.

I live in Danville, Kentucky – a town of about 15,000 that has been named “one of America’s Best Small Towns.” As charming as our little town is, every so often a trip to the “big city” is in order. What this has to do with manufactured, or any factory-built housing will become apparent. This past Sunday was my wife’s birthday. We decided to go for dinner at Sutton’s Italian Restaurant in Lexington, KY. Sutton’s is a client of mine (we did their website) and this was their new location. I really like to keep up with what my client’s are doing as having knowledge of their operations helps me do a better job of marketing for them.

We ordered some wine, recommended by owner Gordon Lewis, a locally produced Merlot from Jean Farris Wineries. Notice how the locally-sourced product was the one recommended. It was a very good wine, the best Merlot I have ever had – and I’m NOT a big Merlot fan normally.

So far, so good. It’s the next succession of events that I wanted to point out. We ordered an appetizer. One of our favorites in Italian restaurants is calamari with marinara sauce, so we decided to go for that. Well, the calamari was super! It mixed in was a special treat. Banana peppers (peperoncini) which had been sliced into rings like the calamari and fried along with them. Exceptional.

So I took out my iPhone and photographed our half-finished plate and posted it on Facebook. Within minutes, a friend who didn’t know of the restaurant’s new location asked me where they were.

He’ll be checking out the new location shortly with his entire family. Now, my question is… how much benefit will Sutton’s receive from a picture, a caption and about a minute that it took me to post it to Facebook? Five people will eat there as a direct result. How many more read the post, now know the new location and will find their way there over the next few weeks?

And what’s it worth if they like it, return and tell their friends?

Even if the restaurant has no idea where those customers originated, they benefit from that small bit of social networking. It happens that Sutton’s has a Facebook page of their own, so those reading my post can easily find them on Facebook. And or course, their Facebook page has a link to their website.

So round and round it goes, a small ripple in the pond of information creates a much larger result. Sutton’s pays their employees who then spend the money in the local economy and the additive value of a dollar spent adds to Lexington’s GDP.

More ripples in our various ponds are what will get the economy moving again on a local, national and global basis. It’s not hard. Go make a ripple today, even a small one. It will will multiply as the circle widens.

And don’t forget to post every new thing your business does on your website, your blog, your Facebook page, your LinkedIn status and tweet it on Twitter to boot. Have a new home on your lot or in your community? Install a new home? Performed some community service? Hire a new sales person, customer service rep or installer. Each of those is a small stone causing a small ripple that grows and grows and…

Why are so many things broken? In a hilarious talk from the 2006 Gel conference, Seth Godin gives a tour of things poorly designed, the 7 reasons why they are that way, and how to fix them.

Seth Godin is an entrepreneur and blogger who thinks about the marketing of ideas in the digital age. His newest interest: the tribes we lead.

Whether you’re at work or at home, if you’ve experienced slow Internet connections and “domain not found” errors or would like to exercise a bit of control over what your children are seeing on the Internet, you should have a look at OpenDNS.

It’s fast, free and easy to use. Takes minutes to set up on your computer or router.

Network Speed and Reliability

OpenDNS is the world’s largest and fastest-growing DNS service. With zero downtime ever, the service is trusted today by more than 15 million users around the world in businesses, at schools and in households.

Taking just a few minutes to change your network’s DNS settings will make your Internet overall faster and more reliable, freeing you of DNS-related outages.

Network Security

If you’re not yet using OpenDNS to secure your network and protect against phishing, malware, botnets and DNS vulnerabilities, take it from me – you should.

OpenDNS, chosen by Fortune 100 companies and more than 25,000 schools, provides comprehensive security services, including award-winning Anti-Phishing from PhishTank. In addition, OpenDNS is one of the only DNS services that was never susceptible to the largest and most threatening vulnerability ever discovered. Dan Kaminsky, the researcher credited with finding the flaw, personally recommends using OpenDNS.

In addition to Web and DNS security, OpenDNS provides comprehensive Web content filtering and detailed network stats that let you see what’s happening on your network.

Web content filtering

If you’re not yet using OpenDNS Web content filtering, take it from me – you should.

OpenDNS, chosen by Fortune 100 companies and more than 25,000 schools, provides the most efficient yet powerful Web content filtering available. The cloud-based service takes just minutes to set up and gives you 55 categories of Web content, all of which are constantly updated. On top of Web content filtering, OpenDNS provides anti-phishing and malware site protection.

It will also make your network faster and more reliable, and give you tools to easily see which Web sites are most visited on your network. If you see problem Web sites in your network stats, you can easily block them.

Parental Controls

Award-winning OpenDNS Parental Controls makes filtering Internet content a breeze. Simply choose your desired filtering level, from “High” to “Minimal,” and check a box. Your filtering preferences take effect in just minutes. Further customize your preferences by adding additional categories like “Social Networking,” “Hate” and “Gambling,” or individual Web sites like MySpace.com that are problematic or unsafe for your household.

OpenDNS will also make your network faster and more reliable, and give you tools to easily see which Web sites are most visited on your network. If you see problem Web sites in your network stats, you can easily block them.

Online marketing has made the job of identifying, contacting and staying in touch with leads a simple and easier process. Unfortunately, it has led some to believe in a “do it once, benefit forever” marketing mentality.

While some of your efforts in online marketing can be classified as “evergreen” (non-changing information giving you benefit for years to come), the day-to-day effort of building customer and prospect relationships requires some diligence.

Just as gathering a big pile of lumber, nails and other components on your factory floor requires more effort to turn it into a house, the building blocks of an online marketing campaign require ongoing effort to turn it into a working strategy.

Components of an online marketing campaign:

• Website
• Blog
• Social Networking
• Static Content
• Dynamic (Fresh) Content
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Analytics
• Press Releases
• News Feeds
• Marketing
• Web Design
• Craigslist
• Online Listings Sites

We’ll work our way through this list in later posts, but this time I’d like to draw our attention to the first item – the website.

I know from experience that some of you still don’t have a website. But there’s a better than even chance that if you don’t yet have one, you are probably not bothering to read this blog …or this ezine for that matter.

I’ve drawn this analogy before, but your website is like the foundation of one of our homes. It isn’t optional. Without it, your marketing efforts, both online and offline are structurally defective and it danger of collapse.

If your website hasn’t been updated, it is much like the home that was set and forgotten. Deferred maintenance is now taking it’s toll and it won’t be long before parts of it are endangered from internal rot and invasion by enemies from without.

The technology to make updating your website an easier and less costly task are readily available. Your web design team should know how to make it possible for you to update parts of your website yourself. If they don’t, we do. So give up the dependency of that old school adversarial relationship and give us a call.

By the way, we just scratched at items 4 & 5 on the list as well.

By all indications, 2011 could be a very good year for manufactured housing if we are willing to do what it takes. In an Industry Voices post last week, Thayer Long of MHI aid out some objectives for 2011. Giving them the support they need to see those objectives through could be the start of something big.

But don’t neglect the basics. Make sure your marketing foundation (your website) is up to the job at hand. If it’s not feeding you leads and providing a way of keeping in friendly contact with those leads from the very beginning of the sales process through to the post-sale customer service, sit down with a professional and bring it up to par.

2011 is just around the corner. Where will you be?