twotwenty postcards

Having recently completed our twotwenty website and organised the Sayers Cupping Night, we set about delivering the message of twotwenty to a wider audience.

Our twotwenty marketing push is to position ourselves as the local web guys. The intention of our efforts are to say "hello" with the intention of being a long term fixture with in Leederville. Our plan... uber-slick postcards!

We had 1,000 of these matt finished, full colour postcards made up. They'll be sent out to businesses in Leederville within the coming weeks. We had 4 x 250 postcards made up, with four different faces in the series (Myles is shown above).

One great thing about going local and part of the reason we started marketing this way, is that...

1. We can keep a focused marketing effort.
2. We can keep costs down.

Keeping focus means we can try a couple of seemingly obvious tactics - just what a bunch of marketing n00bs need! Secondly, keeping costs down means we can experiment a little and make a few mistakes without breaking a sweat. Marketing fees split between all of us at twotwenty helps as well!

twotwenty goves live

Last week we pushed the twotwenty website live! Launch consisted of a haphazard series of announcements on Twitter which drew some attention thanks to the rotating mug shots.

Despite our amateurish cyber marketing attempts we were contacted by a company within a couple of days of launch with a request to quote.

The site is bare bones for the time being. We looked to run marketing campaigns prior to building the website but agreed that the lack of an online presence would be too detrimental to the execution of any marketing campaign, online or offline.

With our website now live, we have launched in to our first marketing campaign...

Sayers Cupping Night

We've organised a coffee tasting night for Tuesday, 13 April, with our good friends at Sayers Cafe , along with coffee beans courtesy of Five Senses Coffee

Our intention for the night is to simply interact with the coffee lovers and have a good time. Our belief is that by contributing to the culture and life of Leederville, we'll meet and interact with lots of interesting folks, some of whom we can hopefully help out with our services.

We plan on running more events soon so stay tuned!

Your elevator pitch

In the online world, people (should) spend hours tweaking copy on their site to make sure it is worded just right, because they want to make sure that every visitor has the best chance of converting. We all know that typos and bad grammar make our sites look bad — I've been wondering though, how many people have thought about their “intro copy” offline?

When you meet someone for the first time, you don't have very long to make an impression — the old adage, “first impressions last” is generally true. Inevitably, the question “So, What do you do?” will come up, and it is here that you have an AWESOME opportunity, but alas a lot of people seem to fail at this simple question. Many people will launch into a 12-minute monologue listing — in intricate detail — every service offering the can, have or will possibly provide. Other people will down-play what they do so much that you wonder about their very existence on this earth.

If you manage to not bore the pants of the person with the answer to the first question, they may very well ask you “Why would I use you?”. If you get to this point, it's very possible that this person is ACTUALLY interested in what you do, which is good, right? Yep — so why do so many people mess it up? It SHOULD be an easy question to answer, as it is the basis of your whole business, but for some reason it isn't.

Bearing in mind, I'm no expert in this, and these observations have only been distilled over a couple of events over a couple of weeks, here are my thoughts on what makes for a good introduction and elevator pitch:

1. Keep your intro short, to the point, but say it in a way where the person needs to ask a question. The intro I tend to use now is “I make websites”. Short, to the point, and people know what it means. Quite often they will ask a follow up question such as “Who have you worked for”, or “What sort of websites” which I may then have to think about.
2. Don't say “Because we are the best” (or similar) as your elevator pitch. You have no way to back it up, and it doesn't mean anything anyway. Also, playing Marketing term bingo helps no one. If I wanted to know that you create strategic partnerships, through synergy and goal oriented experience, then I'd… actually I wouldn't do anything, as that is all bullshit. Try to find one point of difference that you can justify. That isn't all that easy as it turns out, but once you crack it, you'll probably find that your business has a bit more direction. Currently, I tend to talk about the whole Collaborative office thing that I do, because it is different, it's a discussion point, and I can honestly say that I work with some really talented and driven people. Why is your elevator pitch?

How To Win Friends and Connect With People Online

I've been looking at the mainstream social networks these last couple of weeks and I've learned a thing or two. Most of my time has been spent on Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, forums, and good old email.

Here's a stack of concrete dot points on things I've learned about social networks and marketing online that you might be able to apply to your own work.

1. Social media still takes a lot of time and attention.
2. Social media is not a replacement for real life relationships.
3. Social media is a great way to find people you've lost touch with.
4. Leads can and do appear on Twitter, but with dubious time vs return ratio.
5. Relationships built on Twitter alone are not strong.
6. Twitter is good at reminding people who you are and what you do.
7. Geography matters on Twitter.
8. Contributing and following LinkedIn groups is a good way to introduce yourself to new folks.
9. Not all groups are created equal on LinkedIn. Be prepared to try out a bunch.
10. SEO aside, comment on blogs with active communities or authors that are worth building relationships with.
11. Forums are typically quite tight knit so winning trust can take time.
12. Contributing to forums can generate some interest, but be prepared to spend seemingly unjustifiable amounts of time helping out.
13. Forget about emailing a cold lead.
14. Trolling social media can be very distracting and counter productive.
15. LinkedIn is a good way to hook up digitally with people who you've met, even ages ago. Pro tip: You can use this URL when you're logged in to LinkedIn to mine for long last contacts. Just keep hitting refresh.
16. Always respect the relationship and remember that there's a real life person on the other end.

Dunbar's number

It looks like we aren't the only ones experimenting with relationships online: Can You Beat Dunbar's Number?

Even though they are looking at friends in general, networking with people is very similar to maintaining relationships, so the theory should still apply. Interestingly I follow 286 people on twitter (Very few of them are bots), although I'm not sure how many are still active. I reckon 150 would be a fair estimate. and have about 150 phone in my phone memory.

What is also interesting is the categorisation system that is derived towards the bottom of the post.

1. Connectors Those who will get the word out, and an extraordinary knack for linking people across many different domains in their networks.
2. Mavens An information specialist and expert in a given subject matter. Mavens accumulate, create and share knowledge freely, and might help others solve problems by telling them how they solved their own. Authors and business leaders might fall into this category.
3. Salesmen Persuaders and successful ambassadors. Opinion leaders, news leaders, and any celebrity/personality connections may fall into this bucket.

Connectors are the people you want to network with, they know lots of people and can raelly get your name out. Just remember to look after them too — ask them if there is anyone you know that they want to meet, or help them out in other ways. Mavens are good at giving advice, and are handy to know for other reasons — they are great for bounching ideas off. I'm not sure I like the label of Salesmen: Ambassadors sounds better. If you can get one of these to talk about your stuff then that is like the holy grail of network marketing.