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I am going to just throw out a few different marketing queries I have received to this blog and then reply as quickly as I can with marketing ideas. All of these are terms people have searched and found their way to my blog. I can’t promise that they found what they were looking for, although I hope they did. Just in case, here are my different marketing ideas for a variety of different areas.

Marketing an apartment building

Give away an iPhone to each unit with a sign out front saying so.

Blog Marketing Ideas

Build or join a blog network, provide something valuable for free.

Beer Marketing Techniques

Give it away and sell the cups

Drive-thru coffee marketing ideas

Make a fast lane for $1 refills. Better yet, make it automatic with an RFID reader so people can get refills anytime day or night.

Food bank Marketing Ideas

Electronic billboards in highly trafficked areas with a thermometer style display showing food levels.

Gas station marketing ideas

Bring back full-service at no extra cost.

Grocery store marketing strategies

http://www.stservicemovie.com/

Halloween marketing ideas real estate

Turn the listed homes into haunted houses.

Marketing strategies for newspapers

Create a new Onion.com or go 100% digital with lots of features like mobile, email and RSS.

Movie theater marketing ideas

Convert the movie theater into a restaurant and don’t charge extra for the movie.

We have all seen those great word of mouth campaigns that pay off huge for the creator of whatever was being talked about. The latest of these was The Dark Knight starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger.

Everyone knows the cast was loaded with amazing actors but due to the untimely death of one of them, the film received a tremendous amount of publicity. The turn of events that took place shot the movie to a huge opening that will remain on the top 10 list for a very long time.

Advertising budget spent on a better product

I mention Dyson on here from time to time because I feel it went the route of product innovation vs. mass advertisement. Dyson’s sell themselves. It’s true. People are completely convinced paying a couple hundred dollars more for a Dyson is money well spent, even the people who only vacuum once a month. What is the cost break down per use at that rate I wonder?

Sacha Baron Cohen up to it again

Every time Sacha Baron Cohen starts a new project, we hear about it. He goes on crazy antics that get him thrown out of stadiums, pulls one over on celebrities, gets sued by college kids, you name it. The fact that his name is in the news only enables more and more people to learn about his upcoming projects.

Lines at Apple stores nationwide

We have all seen the news on the day or night before the launch of a new Apple product with lines that wrap around the block. Everyone gets so excited they can hardly wait one extra day to beat the madness or not be one of the first to own their shiny new ______.

Giving your product legs to walk with

The key is the ability to give your product or service legs to walk with. Some great ways to enable word of mouth to spread is to give people something to talk about. Tie your product in with a charity event or organization. Have an impromptu contest around some special occasion whether it’s a holiday or an internal celebration. Perhaps, allow a specialized coupon to leak to others. Remember when Starbucks offered friends and family of employees a free coffee and everyone forwarded the email on to everyone else in the world? I am sure it was all planned. Be creative and have fun, make people smile, think and share their experiences.

And start changing the way you go about marketing.

My girlfriend Lindsay of That Mutt: a dog blog also operates a local dog running business. The first thing we did in marketing her new business was to hang up fliers, run a newspaper ad and all the other types of traditional marketing.

What we are doing next is a little different. We had a flier designed that is short and sweet with just the minimal info on it. The plan next is to simply walk up and down the streets around the area we live and every time we hear a dog bark, leave a flier on their doorknob.

Here we are removing the mass media shotgun effect of marketing and going straight after the people we want to work with. Sounds simple enough, right? So by taking the same $100 we would spend on newspaper advertising, we are putting that to design and printing cost. The best part is it is much more direct marketing which should lead to much better conversions.

Sure enough, we could keep throwing money at marketing the traditional way including splurging on radio, TV, print, billboards, you name it. Or we can focus on the very specific results we want. We want people with dogs who work during the day to be our clients. Now we will only go after those people.

Recently I was at a meeting where we brought up textual healing and how written words are hard to interpret. The jest of the video is that it is hard to discern feelings, emotions and intent with text such as blogs, emails, IM and letters.

In all honesty, I think that the future for blogging is in video and audio. More than likely video will be surpassing audio over the next couple of years. Podcasts will soon be overtaken by videos as mp3 players and cell phones get smarter and smarter.

I also believe that at some point in the near future, videos will be able to be searched for content like text in regards to search engines. At that time, the online video revolution will explode. Soon, talking voices will be able to direct your attention to the best product on the store shelf with “real” life testimonials.

Although this seems a little far out right now, I do believe that given the right time and circumstances, it will transpire. I am going to start exploring the best possible ways to deliver a well rounded message in any format, including the use of all the above (text, audio, video). The reason being, I want to reach people where people are. If people are vlogging and watching YouTube on their cellphones, I want to show up as a result. I have a sneaking feeling the future in marketing is in that direction.

Now who’s coming with me? Who wants to experiment sooner rather than later? I figure we are only a couple technological revolutions away from seeing a world of information and marketing like we have never seen before.

Over the last month give or take I have been running a test for this blog to determine what kind of traffic and visitors I would receive if I put the least amount of effort into running my blog.

I did 11 posts over the past 30 days, just about averaging 1 post every 3 days for the non-math majors. Along with minimal posts, I quit buying Entrecard ads or promoting in any other way. I noticed a little down tick in traffic and comments as fewer posts are appearing but has been pretty consistent since, with about 330 unique visits per day and 600ish page views.

If you notice that little up tick towards the end of the chart, that was a result of my last post with the help of a Wordpress plugin called Auto Social Poster (not an affiliate link). What you can do is have you post submitted to various different bookmarking sites at the time of posting. The plugin isn’t free, but I would highly recommend it if you are running a Wordpress Blog.

I found that instead of posting and promoting, I can focus more on posting and know that promotion is being done. I will now run another experiment here to determine whether posting daily versus every three days with the aid of ASP will result in more traffic. I will continue to not buy any ads on Entrecard in order to preserve the experiment. Instead, I will be giving away all of the credits I accumulate to this month’s the top commenter (horse race can be viewed to the right the side bar —-> ).

On one more note, I have begun to use a mailing list. The purpose of the list is to provide only marketing ideas and marketing strategies to subscribers. I will not spam you or try to sell you anything. It is simply for the people serious in receiving free marketing ideas and using them anyway you see fit. To subscribe, fill in your email to the right sidebar and hit submit.