People are starting businesses everyday based on this collective buying market niche that Groupon carved out a couple years ago.  Even with all the new competitors entering the market, there is still a lot of opportunity.  Look at it this way…Startbucks did not put independent coffee shops out of business, they helped them increase their business.  If you can put a twist on what Starbucks does to make your community coffee shop stand out, you can easily compete with them.  Just like with Groupon…if you can get creative in your approach, there is a way to carve out a niche, within a niche.

I get a ton of  Daily Deal and Collective Buying website-related traffic due to a blog post I wrote over a year ago on the “Collective Buying” website concept that Groupon created.   Groupon has spawned many knock-off websites and the industry as a whole is exploding.  Are you interested in building a “Collective Buying Website?”  If so, my team and I can help you.  We built a Daily Deal website in Europe called, “UbuyWithMe.com.”  We’ve also worked on site architecture for another collective buying site, so we have the framework in place to build a daily deal type site affordably and quickly.   Each client’s needs are different, but just to give you ballpark numbers, it will run between $15-$18k to build a site and 3 months to complete.

If you have any questions, or would like more information on building a collective buying or daily deal type website, drop us a line.

The mobile web market is on the verge of exploding and web marketing will be crucial to the success of any restaurateur.  As a restaurant owner, you need to make sure you’re on all the local directories, i.e. Google Maps/Places, Yelp, Yahoo local, AOL Local, SuperPages, Citysearch, Local.com, etc.  Best part is…getting your listing on all of these local directories is free!

From a users perspective, here are some of my favorite “local” mobile apps.  Yelp.com, Google Maps and Where.

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Consumers are adopting web-enabled mobile devices at a very rapid rate—as a business owner or marketer, this needs to be on your radar if it isn’t already.  Here is some food-for-thought:

2010 Mobile Statistics provided by Nielsen

• There are 223m mobile phone users in the US 18% are Smartphones
• 26% have the web/data package, up 33% since 2008
• Currently only 7% of mobile device owners viewed video on their phones
• In Q-3 of ‘09 over 25% of all mobile devices sold were Smartphones, 2010 it is predicted to be 40-50%.
• Looking ahead to mid-2011 it is estimated there will be 150m Smartphones in use in the US. 120m will be web-enabled.
• Video viewership will surge from 5m now, to 120m
• Texting has gone from 75b in 2008 to 1 trillion in 2009.

There is no question that mobile connectivity is big and is going to continue to grow at a rapid rate.  If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, it’s vital that you consider mobile-web development tactics.

If you have questions or need help developing a web-enabled mobile app, please contact Shubic Web Design.

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1. Google Sky – If you’ve ever wanted to know what star or planet you’re looking at, this is a killer app and one of the best I’ve seen in the category.  Point your phone anywhere in the sky and with your present GPS coordinates, it will show you exactly what you’re looking at.
2. KeyRing - Tired of carrying a bunch of loyalty cards around?  Well, no more, with KeyRing you can accept as many as you like.  Just scan the bar code and it’s in your phone.  When you go to a particular store, all you have to do is bring up the app and they can scan your bar code from your phone.
3. ShopSavvy – If you’re in a store and just about to buy something, but not sure if it’s a good price…just scan the UPC code and ShopSavvy will search area stores and online sites to let ya know.
4. Shazam – How many times are you listening to the radio and you wonder who the heck is singing that tune?  Just turn on the Shazam app and let it listen to the song for a few seconds and it will tell you.  Shazam will even find the song online for you to purchase if you like.
5. Movies – If you like movies as much as I do, this is a pretty cool app.  Again, with the GPS cordinates you just select a movie you’re interested in seeing and it will pull up theaters near you and give you current play times.
6. Talk To Me – If you travel to foreign countries and don’t speak the language…not to worry.  All you have to do is launch TalkToMe and speak in English what you need to say, then it translates it into German, Spanish, French, Italian, etc.  Pretty cool stuff.
7. Goggles – This is such a killer app, it is however in its infancy, but the future is bright for this technology.  Basically, you can surf the web/get info by taking a picture of something, i.e. a storefront, landmark, book, artwork, etc. Check out this video for more info, it’s really worth it!
8. Loopt - Discover the world around you is their tag-line. Find out what friends are near you, get coupons for places nearby, check-in service and much more.  It’s a social compass.
9. Evernote -  Lets you capture your ideas, experiences, and inspirations as they happen, wherever you find yourself.
10. TaskKiller – The downside to Android’s multi-tasking is that sometimes apps can become bandwidth hogs, or bring your phone down with them when they crash. Few apps provide a direct, easy “Quit” option and sometimes you can’t get to the app to close it.  TaskKiller is a free app-killing utility that works from its standard icon.

Line2 is a VOIP app for the iPhone and iPod Touch that enables you to use your phone via wi-fi verses your cell service provider.  The best part…it’s absolutely free for unlimited use (provided that you have a solid wi-fi connection).  I should note, the app itself is not free, it costs $14.95 per month.  Not cheap, but depending on your usage, it’s possible to use a less expensive plan with your wireless provider.  You can also use Line2 with a 3G network if you don’t have wi-fi access, but the provider says that wi-fi works best—I would predict that once 4G is rolled out, this will not be the case.

Learn more about this new app by watching the video below. Or, by reading this article published by the NY Times yesterday. (Interestingly, the Line2 website was down most of the day yesterday, I assume it was from the resent surge in interest for their product due to the article)

Quick Intro to Line2 for iPhone from Toren Ajk on Vimeo.

The adoption curve goes like this:

• Innovators – Bold people who pull change.
• Early Adopters – Respected leaders who try out new ideas.
• Early Majority – Thoughtful people who are careful, but accepting of change more quickly than the average.
• Late Majority – Skeptical people who will only use new ideas or products once they’re being used by the majority.
• Laggards – Traditional people who are critical of new ideas and will only adopt if forced to by the majority.

More than half fall into the last two categories, they are the ones whose businesses will be left behind in the new economy, there are new rules to marketing and PR and unless you begin to change and adopt at a faster pace, your competitor(s) will crush you.

It’s easy to think that social media will be a fade, but that’s what people thought of all the other technologies listed above…all of which were game-changers at the time.  The web is different than other traditional mediums in that it’s also a technology; therefore it’s ever-changing.

Because of the lagging economy, many businesses are not increasing marketing budgets, but rather reallocating resources.  According to Forester Research, 61% of businesses are shifting budgets away from traditional marketing to interactive, 75% will come at the expense of Direct Mail (40%) and Newspapers (35%).  In the same Forester study the majority of the budget shift is going toward social media and online videos, followed by SEO.

Interactive marketing spending has, and continues to increase dramatically.  In 2005 the marketing percent spent was 8% at $11B, 2009 was 12% at $25.6B and by 2014 it is predicted to be 21% at $55B.  Of those numbers social media accounted for only $716M in 2009, but is expected to rise to $3.11B by 2014, a 442% increase. Mobile Marketing, which is also expected to rise dramatically, was $391m in 2009, expected to be $1.3B by 2014.

By 2014 over one-fifth of all marketing dollars will be invested in interactive initiatives…that’s amazing for a medium that just hit “late majority” status merely a decade ago (in Feb. 2000 10m domains had been sold, by Sep. 2000 over 20m).  If you would like a copy of the comprehensive Forrester report in which I pulled this data from, please e-mail me.

I recently attended a Social Media panel discussion hosted by: AZIMA on how to integrate social media into your marketing plan—here were a couple of my take-aways…

• Have a narrative
• Don’t chase tactics before figuring out a strategy
• Create a company policy
• Scale resources
• Address integration challenges
• Create success metrics

Here is a good video on Social Media ROI, however I do object to one thing they allude to…nothing is “free,” while many of the mediums themselves are, labor isn’t.

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My buddy then asked me how I would describe Web 2.0…I said, “It’s a lot more difficult to define, however I saw it as the departure from a static informational WWW to a dynamic one.”  In other words, a website went from being informational to being a full blown communications tool.  That may be over simplified, but I’m sure you get the point.  Not only has development dramatically evolved, but Websites now communicate/touch a company’s prospects in myriad ways.

Web 2.0 connected people in a virtual way; Web 3.0 will bring them back together physically. Web 3.0 will be a marketer’s paradise.  Lots more on the subject coming soon.

If you have a restaurant, entertainment, tourism or service type business, there are a lot of new “Deal” type websites popping up on the scene.  Some of these sites that have been able to attract a good following can help you generate instant sales and buzz for your business.

GROUPON is just one of many collective buying, or daily deal websites popping up.

Take the most popular one, GROUPON, they offer up a deal-of-the-day (one for each major city) in which users are required to purchase that day in order to secure the deal. Some of these new sites are just trying to be glorified coupon sites, however what Groupon does is focus on just one business per day by offering an extraordinary deal—they can achieve this by guaranteeing the merchant that “x” number of sales will be made.  If the users don’t gravitate toward a deal and “x” number are not sold, then the deal is off.

Some Merchants may feel that giving a 50% discount is too tough on the bottom line, but what they need to consider is that this type of promotion is not a hit on sales, but rather a marketing investment.  In addition to exposing your business to a great number of people, the ones that purchase are now future customers.

In addition to GROUPON, here are some other similar type sites… BuyWithMe.com, DoozyofaDeal.com, ChitTownDeals.com, UBuyWithMe.com,  TheDealMap, Living Social, Tippr, DealsGoRound.com, TownFav.com,  LocalTwist and DealStork.com

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Xmarks is not all that new and actually used to be called “Foxmarks” as it used to only work with FireFox.  With the expanded usage, Foxmarks changed to Xmarks.  The Wall Street Journal did a nice piece with video earlier in 2009 when the company was still “Foxmarks.”  I just synced all of my computers and browsers…worked great.  Let me know how it works for you.

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