Posts Tagged ‘Revenue Models’

Social Media ROI: Bloomtastic.com & LinkedIn

For the last five years, Heather and Jayson Waits have owned and operated Bloomtastic Florist in Columbus Ohio.  The couple sells their products at a retail location through special event services like weddings and funerals, and via their eCommerce site.  Jayson is also an avid network marketer who Blogs at his Go MLM Biz Blog.  Capturing their share of the market in Columbus is always a challenge against competitors  like Flowerama, Columbus Florist and Desantis Florist all battling for customer dollars. But Heather and Jayson are sharp competitors.  Aside from building and optimizing their own eCommerce site as well as doing their own local directory submissions, the couple is  using social networks to drive paying customers to their business. See for yourself: This is the letter Heather used to reach out to a targeted group of 500 male LinkedIn users living in or around the Columbus Ohio area. Heather’s message hit a home run.  Here’s why: The approach was brief, respectful and readable – less than 10 seconds. It references the common group connection between her and the end recipient. It directly explains why the timing of her message is relevant. Rather than pushing her products, the message makes an exclusive offer to the group. The message provides a unique LinkedIn promotion code for order tracking and to apply the discount.  The code also gave Heather and Jayson the ability to track phone and walking orders. Heather completes the conversion process with a strong call to action and a link to her eCommerce site. ROI 871 unique visits on bloomtastic.com week of Valentines Day 2009. 59 site visitors came from Twitter.com. 44 site visitors came from LinkedIn.com. Overall 6% increase in sales from Valentines Day 2008 while industry sales were down 20% due to the holiday falling on a Saturday. [...]

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Chasing Change – Entreprenuers and The New Web

Right now, I have about 30 subscribers and I’m grateful for every one of you. In the grand scheme of things, Chasing Change is not a widely read blog just yet – and that’s OK. Truth be told, it’s taken me some time to figure out what my niche really is. So here’s my niche. Going forward, I’ll be focusing the laser on tow things that are very important to me and are hopefully interesting and helpful to you: Entrepreneurs. I live in Columbus, OH where entrepreneurs are driving change. In 2008, Forbes published a list of the Top 10 Up and Coming Tech Cities. While this was mostly in medical technology and driven by Battelle Memorial Institute’s contributions to the market place, Columbus topped the list at number one. With available resources like TechColumbus and the Ohio TechAngels working to create an environment and culture that helps entrepreneurs bring their ideas to reality. I’ll be the one tapping into that scene, bringing video interviews with the best and brightest members of Columbus’s innovators. You’ll also see case studies on how business owners are leveraging new web technology to drive results to their door. The New Web. Just my opinion – but terms like social media and web 2.0 are going out of style. They no longer work because they are too limiting in terms of their description of how the Internet has changed in recent years. I like New Web as a term because it’s all encompassing – it’s a reflection of how the web is viewed as a result of people being able to connect with people AND information. That said, ‘ll talk about things like how Search is changing because of platforms like Twitter and blogs. I’ll talk about social networking strategies and ideas for how we [...]

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Nailing the Revenue Model: Jott.com

Last week featured a web start up that failed in figuring out how to make money by offering there service. That’s both sad and common. So to be positive this week, lets look at a company that seems to have nailed the money part of the start up game. Months ago I wrote about Jott, a service that provides a platform which enabled users’ to dictate message via there cell phones, have those messages transcribed to text and then delivered to them via email and SMS. I became a beta tester around February. For me, Jott made good on it’s promises and provided a valuable service that saved significant time and helped me prevent things from slipping through the cracks. Over a few weeks, I found I was averaging between five and seven Jotts a day, using it for both personal reminders and work ‘to do’s‘. Essentially, using Jott provided much more than just easy and efficient reminders – it gave me piece of mind that I wouldn’t miss anything important. Make Money: Keep your Customers Around late August to early September, Jott came out of Beta and continued to offer a free version of the platform supported by an ad network, but expanded to offer two additional tiers of service with full capabilities. I’ll admit, when the switch was made I was not a happy camper. As a beta tester, I had been use to the full platform of services including individual emails, the ability to set text and email reminders days out, and access to bolt on modules to link Jott with other applications. In the switch, I was bumped back to the bare bones and felt that I, as an early adopter, should have been “grandfathered in” on the full platform. To Jott’s defense, I did receive [...]

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