Campbell, Harrington & Brear

December 21st, 2011
Posted By: Allan Pettit

For Rick Smith, York, PA’s leading realtor, a genuine smile and warm handshake are his trademarks. Rick has provided his clients with the highest level of personalized service for over 30 years, relying heavily on face-to-face interactions to build his business.

But to continue being the area’s most successful Realtor, Rick had to become the area’s most progressive Realtor, too.

So we suggested that Rick and his team develop a phone app as part of their marketing strategy.

What is an app?

Apps act as mobile websites for the ever-changing landscape of smartphones. Typically, an app is developed to be downloaded onto mobile devices. The cool thing about apps is they make it easy for your target audience to immediately discover your new services and promotions. Plus, apps can be changed or updated quickly and easily. Apps also build brand loyalty, which is especially important in this digital age.

In addition to serving as a quick portal to your products or services, apps can also play a key role in promotional launches or B-to-B customer service.

Bottom line: With apps, immediate customer interaction is just a tap away.

About The Rick Smith App

We proposed something that would deliver a real market service, while driving leads to the Rick Smith Team and providing user data in real time.

The result is a branded app that feeds local and national MLS listings to a prospective home buyer’s cell phone and provides multiple search capabilities.

For every property that a home buyer is interested in, a phone call or email can be sent directly from the app to the Rick Smith Team, whether it is a Rick Smith listing or not.

Consumers want instant gratification, and marketers want to connect with those consumers at their peak moments of need or interest. This app provides both, and by positioning Rick as the first agent in York County to come out with an app, we reinforced the Rick Smith Team’s brand as the leader in the marketplace.

To support the launch of the app, we created newspaper ads and a digital billboard announcing the app to the marketplace.

The app has resulted in hundreds of searches leading to increased phone and email activity for the Rick Smith Team.

To try the app yourself, text RST3 to 87778, or visit www.ricksmithteam.com and click on the Download App icon.

A well thought-out app might be able to help you better serve your customers while better defining your brand. To discuss whether an app is appropriate for your business, email Angela Wenner, director of new business development, or call her at (717) 846-2947.

Filed in CHB Posts, CHBlog, The Know-How Exchange - 0 comments

August 9th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

Now we are down to the final chapter … if “advertising” in the phone directories is not the way to go what should you do?

Here are the steps to a better advertising approach while spending your companies money more effectively and efficiently.

1. Drop all of your phonebook directory advertising.  All of it.
2. Do not enter into the phone directory company’s new on-line services.
3. Take your existing directory commitment budget and put it all on red in Vegas.  Just kidding.
4. Take your existing directory commitment budget and develop a strategic new media plan of your own that includes a well thought out website, a social media component, e-blast marketing, and support it with a strong SEO program and possibly an SEM program.
5. It must start with a strategic plan first.
6. It must be supported by a strong SEO commitment.
7. Everything must be executed by well qualified, new media experts with at least five solid years of experience.  Find a good company, they are out there.  Try 717-846-2947.
8. If you can’t do it all in one year, build it over a number of years.  Website with SEO first.
9. Embrace your program and commit time to it.  It will pay off with business results much better than your yellow page advertising ever did.

The good news is by reassigning your phone directory dollars you can move into the new interactive media world without additional expense.

THE END.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: For the record.  Over the past thirty-four years or so, none of the companies who followed our recommendation to drop yellow page advertising ever went out of business.  Nor did they lose business.  They all survived and in many cases flourished because they put those phone directory promotional dollars into alternate media that really did advance their business.

Filed in CHB Posts, CHBlog, Say No to Yellow Page Ads, The Know-How Exchange - 0 comments

August 1st, 2011
Posted By: Allan Pettit

The York Builders Insurance Trust needed some marketing jiu-jitsu.

The Trust has been serving the insurance needs of York Builders Association members for nearly half a century. It seemed as if their marketing plan had been around about that long, too.

“Association members had been seeing and hearing the same message over several years,” says CH&B’s Director New Business Development Angela Wenner, herself an active member of the York Builders Association. “Members were either becoming bored with it or ignoring it altogether. We thought it was time they updated their look and message and joined the electronic age.”

At the center of our recommendation was our plan to rebuild an existing website on a new content-managed, SEO-friendly platform, allowing better search engine visibility. The content was also revised to more effectively sell the Trust and provide SEO advantages.

To drive traffic to the site, we crafted a 12-month advertising schedule around three fresh print ads and three new digital ads that are rotating throughout the year in various York Builders Association vehicles.

We also provided an email marketing package that includes a custom email sending tool, as well as an email template design that carries the new brand look. Combined with a user friendly list management component, the Trust can now create and send regular targeted messages that inform existing customers and/or prospects.

“What we have done for them is create discipline and consistency within an easy-to-use platform that allows them to manage their own marketing on a very small budget,” says Angela. “And they’ve embraced it whole-heartedly.”

Filed in CHB Posts, CHBlog, The Know-How Exchange - 0 comments

July 19th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

Over a year ago, I wrote an article called Beware The Digital Age.  I felt there was so much material written about the good news side of new media – and there is a good side – that people needed to be made aware of the negative side and all the many hidden traps that accompany this new advertising medium.

The major warning I wrote was, “… they are dying industries.  Industries who have felt it coming for years but are now at the Pearly Gates.  For newspapers, the Yellow Pages, many printers, and some publishers, it’s over.  The big danger to you is they are quickly reinventing themselves and now marketing themselves as experts in fields they know nothing about.  Newspapers are web developers, web advertisers, your digital expert source.  Yellow Pages is selling SEO and SEM services.   Even printers are entering the SEO, SEM business.  Desperate industries do desperate things.  They know nothing about these things.  Avoid being a victim in their decline.” Continue reading “Part IV: Resist! Don’t Be Assimilated into the NEW On-line Directory Companies’ Programs.” »

Filed in CHB Posts, CHBlog, Say No to Yellow Page Ads, The Know-How Exchange - 0 comments

July 18th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

When New York Wire Company spun off its consumer insect screening line last year, it also sold the New York Wire brand name and its unicorn logo.

The company was now free to specialize in its true competencies: the design and production of engineered industrial open mesh and light wire material for a strong group of core customers – as well as for a yet-unknown, untapped universe of potential customers.

Continue reading “Making Marketing Mesh for a Re-Wired Company” »

Filed in CHB Posts, CHBlog, The Know-How Exchange - 0 comments

July 5th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

Okay, so I am now assuming that you, after reading the first two blog posts, believe paying out your hard earned cash for yellow directory advertising is a total waste. If you don’t believe that, you need to reread the first two installments on this topic or go back to reading about unicorns and their rainbow poo.

Yellow directory advertising is over. Permanently.

So what’s a person to do? Simple, next time, tell your yellow directory rep you are out all together.

Now, I know you are probably thinking: “Okay it’s over for phone directories, but I will just slash the budget by 50% or 75% or 90% this year.” Kinda ease your way out of yellow advertising.

Continue reading “Part III: Saying Goodbye Is Never Easy … What Do You Mean I Can’t Cut Back?” »

Filed in CHB Posts, CHBlog, Say No to Yellow Page Ads, The Know-How Exchange - 0 comments

June 29th, 2011
Posted By: Allan Pettit

Word of mouth is a relative concept. For instance, who makes a more compelling argument for your hair product, me or Beyoncé?

Here’s a better example. During my 23 years as part of a committee that plans the York County Special Olympics Celebrity Golf Classic, a lot of people have said a lot of nice things about the tournament.

But never has someone like Johnny Holliday praised the event before the entire Mid-Atlantic Region during a live broadcast of a Washington Nationals baseball game. At least not until this year. Continue reading “When It Comes to PR, Sometimes You Just Get Lucky” »

Filed in CHB Posts, CHBlog, The Know-How Exchange - 0 comments

June 27th, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

In today’s sales marketing and promotion world, your company’s website is your brand’s mothership, the living, pulsating heart of what is, hopefully, a contemporary media strategy.

Your blog; email blasts; social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In; phone apps; PURLs; QR codes; whatever … are just a few of the many new media tools that when working together will shape your brand, while directing traffic to your website.  It is the interaction and linkage of these multimedia components that creates the SEO octane that lifts your company closer to the top of Page One on search engines, which strengthens your brand, enhances your image, increases sales, grows revenue …

That’s just a tiny slice of the new media market today.  In many ways, the market is so brand new and so difficult to understand due to its constant evolution that few people have any real knowledge about it, much less a real understanding of how these new tools can help build their business. Continue reading “CH&B Interactive Media Seminars: Simplifying and Clarifying New Media” »

Filed in CHB Posts, CHBlog, Self Promotion, The Know-How Exchange - 0 comments

June 21st, 2011
Posted By: Mel Campbell, Jr.

There was a time in a world long, long ago when yellow telephone directories may have had reason to exist.  That day is way gone.

Back then, if you were a local retailer, all your advertising dollars were in the Yellow Pages except for some local media advertising that directed consumers to your Yellow Pages ads…and, well, that may have worked 40-plus years ago.  It won’t work in today’s world.

Let’s get one thing straight from the beginning:  The phone directories are directories and nothing more.  Period.  No matter what sweet talk the sales rep fed you, they have never been an advertising vehicle.  They are, first and foremost, a book people go to for phone numbers. People do not do their “shopping” in the phonebook as their reps would like you to believe.  It is a book that lays there until someone picks it up to look up a phone number and then calls it.  And that habit has totally changed.

The medium of choice now is on-line phone number searching on Google, Yahoo or Bing.

Continue reading “Part II: The Case for Leaving Yellow Page Advertising.” »

Filed in CHB Posts, CHBlog, Say No to Yellow Page Ads, The Know-How Exchange - 0 comments

keep looking »