Interesting Online User Information I Came Across

Here are some interesting statistics I came across in the last few days:

From Burst! media survey posted in www.emarketer.com

• 3 out of 5 internet users say that the internet is their main source of information when researching products.
• As an internet user's income increased so did the probability that they shopped online.
• 4 out of 5 internet users say they plan to use the internet to research the gifts they will buy this Christmas.

From Yahoo!

• 43% of Internet users already search to find local products and services.

Wireless Oakland County - The Lucky 7

Who are the lucky 7?
Troy, Birmingham, Royal Oak, Madison Heights, Pontiac, Oak Park and Wixom.

Why are they the lucky 7?
These are the 7 cities that will be providing free wireless connections to their businesses, residents, and visitors by the end of year.

How will the lucky 7 affect small businesses?
Once free wireless is available to everyone on phones, PDAs, and laptops in these cities, the way people search for businesses is going to change. Once these cities go wireless it it going to become much easier for people to grab their phone or PDA and use Google's phone search to find a business than to open the yellow pages or get referrals. Need to order some flowers for a friend's birthday? Turn on your phone, type in "flower delivery rochester mi" see what comes up. Dial the number on your phone and place your order. Are you a businessman on the road, looking for someplace to take your clients to eat for lunch? Turn on the Palm, search for "Indian food Troy Mi" in google, get the number, call and make the reservation.

You get my point. People won't access multiple sources of information once they can search and implement their desires all on the same device.

Email Marketing

How relevant is your email marketing? Do you send emails every week / month / quarter without a second thought because that is the schedule? We need to remember that our email marketing should be event driven, not timeline driven. People want relevant emails, so if you really don't have anything going on this week, don't send a marketing message to your clients. Soon they will become numb to your messages. Send them messages when events or promotions require that you speak to them. Then when they see your message they will know that you are unwilling them with something of relevance. Some weeks it might be two times other times you may skip a week. Either way you want to make sure your customers equate your emails with information that they will find useful.

Why we should care how teenagers spend time online

40% of teens (14-17) who spend time online are active Blog readers, 20% create them. Why should we care about this? Because as small business owners these are going to be the people who in 5 years are going to be done with college and searching for our businesses. I was an intern at several different companies while in school, and you know what jobs I always got? Jobs like this "Hey, go find us a place to order some office supplies"; "We need to frame this picture for our office waiting room, go find a framing place and get it done"; "We need new office furniture, can you find a place to order it from and get them in here to talk to us"; "We need an document management system, can you do some research online and find something that will work for us" What do these requests and teenagers online have to do with each other? In 5 years, these teens are going to be the ones researching these things for companies and we better have an online presence and strategy to reach these people with our businesses. Are we developing pod casts for our customers? Advertising on the Blogs that they visit? Sponsoring the right websites and content?

Books on Tape...Online

Very Cool! Just came across this website www.audible.com

You can subscribe to their service for $20 per month and download 2 audio books each month.

Very tempting...very very tempting

Weekly Circulars for Online News Readers

The New York Times reported yesterday that Gannett is rolling out a new marketing tool that will allow companies to place banner ads on newspaper websites owned by them allowing users to click on a banner ad and see a virtual version of the weekly circular that usually comes in the print version of the paper. They have signed up 10 of the nations top 50 advertisers.

I for one, think this is a great idea. I really like to look through these advertisements each week, but since I don't have a paper subscription myself, I usually rely on my mom bringing me the advertisements each Sunday. I know that I can go to places like www.Meijer.com or www.Kohls.com and view these circulars online, but that takes a lot of effort and time that I don't have. If I were reading my news online (which is really the only way I get my news) and I was reading the Business section and a banner ad showed up for Office Depot's weekly circular I would be pretty prone to click on it to see what was on sale that week. This is just another way that the internet is becoming more localized. The article states that local internet advertising is expected to grow 26% this year. I wonder when this technology will be rolled out by people like Val-Pak and Save to use as a local online advertising tool for the smaller companies that use them for advertising. This seems to be the logical next step to me.