Required Reading: New Tablet Report from Morgan Stanley

You’ve no doubt heard of white papers, but here is a blue paper (link opens PDF) from Morgan Stanley called “Tablet Demand and Disruption: Mobile Users Come of Age.” (It certainly will make anyone involved in the printing industry blue.) There is a ton of great info—tablet PCs are displacing not only print applications, but also PC usage. One is tempted to be somewhat skeptical and contrarian to projections this bullish, but we don’t find their forecasts outlandish in the slightest.

To wit, the cover story from the recent issue of Information Week that shows how tablets are marching into all sorts of business, “from garbage trucks to cruise ships.”

Debate: Does Social Media Deliver Results for Small Businesses?

This story from the February 13, 2012  Wall Street Journal caught our attention!

The Fingers Have Walked Away

Pity the poor Yellow Pages. Once the go-to place to which fingers went a-walking to find phone numbers and addresses, now a much-maligned slab of irrelevance, as evidenced by this photo which has been making the rounds virally. 

As we point out in "Does a Plumber Need a Web Site?", marketing is no longer about simply putting an ad or a listing in the phone book and wait for the fingers to come to you. Now, it's about using a diverse combination of old and new media channels. 

Getting Business in the Real World #1

“Does a Plumber Need a Web Site?” features “case studies” of hypothetical businesses, but is anyone in the real world pursuing any of the initiatives we write about in the book? Yes.

In the book, one of our case studies is the fictional Jim’s Gym. But there is a fitness center in Saratoga Springs, NY, that is heavily promoting itself via social media. High Rock Sports & Fitness opened in January 2011 (full disclosure: Richard R. has been a member since April; he found it, by the way, via his Yelp! iPhone app) and has been actively involved in social media, in addition to more traditional advertising. The gym heavily uses Facebook to network members and share information. New members are welcomed to the community via Facebook updates, and other related information is shared as well.

The center has also begin availing itself of Foursquare, a location app that lets users find nearby businesses, check in, make recommendations, add comments, etc. (Facebook has similar functionality, as does Yelp!) There is a Merchant Platform whereby businesses can offer specials and other deals via Foursquare. HRSF, for example, offers a free recovery shake after every 10 check-ins.

Foursquare itself sends e-mail notifications when certain check-in milestones have been reached.

Probably not the best recommendation, but there it is.

Location services are evolving quickly and as more and more people are using mobile smartphones to find products, services, and other businesses, they are availing themselves of all these apps. They may not be taking full advantage of all the features available, but basic familiarity is increasing. As a recent eMarketer article pointed out,

While many mobile users have taken advantage of their device’s ability to connect location with useful information, such as maps, directions or recommendations, comparatively few ever caught on to the check-in trend. Pew Internet & American Life Project found in May that while 58% of smartphone users had used some kind of location-based service on their phone, just 12% had checked in somewhere.

As more businesses start offering deals via check-ins, I would expect the number of “checker-ins” to increase. These services will continue to evolve. Stay tuned.

"Does a Plumber Need as Web Site?"

Now available via Lulu.com, the evolution of Getting Business. Retooled and rethought, with three new hypothetical case studies, "Does a Plumber Need a Web Site?": Mad Dentists, Harried Haircutters, and Other Edgy Entrepreneurs Offer Promotion Strategies for Small and Mid-Size Businesses is designed to help businesses of all types brainstorm marketing and promotion ideas using the full gamut of communication channels available--especially new and emerging channels.

The official blurb:

"Does a plumber need a Web site?" was the question someone asked Dr. Joe Webb, and thus launched an unconventional business book, written with "co-conspirator" Richard Romano, about a handful of interesting characters facing small business sales and marketing challenges. None of the case studies are real, but the business situations and challenges they illustrate are faced by entrepreneurs every day. This entertaining walk through business media is designed to stimulate ideas and provoke thoughts about how to engage customers and prospects. Whether you're a plumber, a haircutter, a B2B manufacturer, a restaurant owner, a B2B services provider, a doctor, a health club owner, or any other entrepreneur or provider of marketing services to small business, this book will get you chuckling—and seriously thinking about new ways of promoting a business.

The printed book is is available on Lulu's e-store and, for those who crave instant gratification, a Kindle version is available via Amazon. 

Getting Business Media Chart

In Getting Business, we discuss the following media chart at length. The matrix lists all the various and sundry push, pull, and participative media channels available for businesses and marketers. We also group them by online and offline—you'll notice that there is some repetition, as some channels can be push, pull, or even participative depending upon the specific application (examples abound in the book).  

We also supply this chart as a way for "marketing services providers" to begin conversations with prospective clients about their marketing needs, and what elements a campaign might require.  

Foreword is Forewarned...

Roy Grossman, founding partner of MSP Digital Marketing, penned a Foreword for Getting Business, which we reproduce below. It provides an excellent lead-in to the basic thrust of the book.

Foreword: Making the Leap

When we started MSP Digital Marketing in 2007, we realized that a paradigm shift in how marketers are reaching their target audiences was well under way, and we began to build a business that would help them deliver their message in a variety of digital formats.

I’m an industry veteran who has never been afraid to change with the times. I started out in a small family run print shop, and in the 1980s, merged with another printer called Press of Acolish, which eventually became part of Sandy Alexander. I stayed with Sandy Alexander until 2007. At that time, I was keenly aware, as we all were, of what was going on in the industry and of the surge in digital media and the rapid technological advancements in that area. I thought to myself, “Well, I’m in my mid-50s, there’s time to do one more great thing and why not go for it?” And I decided to make an entrepreneurial leap and see what happens.

That entrepreneurial leap led to the formation of MSP Digital Marketing which, as our Web site (www.mspdigital.com) says, “is a privately held organization building a unique national network of world-class marketing solutions providers.” We use a variety of cross-media applications to develop and execute highly targeted marketing communications, content aggregation, and on-demand distribution of customized content for a variety of business segments including the educational, non-profit, healthcare, financial, and retail sectors.

Our first move in this direction was not to build an entirely new company from the ground up, but to strategically acquire a pre-existing company that had some of the skills and technologies we required. A good candidate was Hudson, MA’s TecDoc Digital, which we acquired and which serves as the foundation of MSP’s network. We continue to actively search for other partners to add to the network.

One of our objectives is not to necessarily be in the digital output business, but to be more a digital communications partner with our clients. What we want to do is help them understand what their strategies are, what their communications objectives are, and be a significant part of executing those strategies. Our goal is to have the correct arsenal of output channels so that we can help our clients communicate their message properly.

The concept of migrating from a traditional print “supplier” to an innovative “services partner” is both necessary and achievable. I speak from personal experience, as MSP Digital Marketing is about making that transition. Printers in today’s environment need to recognize that, even if they haven’t actively done anything yet to change their business model, they actually already have the most valuable asset to do so—their relationship with their customer.

As a result, we followed the advice of Dr. Joe and Richard’s previous book Disrupting the Future: go where the customers are. As an example, we did not go Graph Expo 2011 but on those dates we instead exhibited at the Association of Donor Relations Professionals (ADRP) annual conference in New Orleans. They are a university fundraising organization, and we provide a lot of targeted direct response (multichannel) to that segment. So we are going where our customers are. We have actually been doing so all year and the results have been terrific.

In this current book, Dr. Joe and Richard explain how to take the customer relationship and expand it to a new level. Getting Business is a must read for printers that are looking to take their current business and leverage it into a profitable multichannel business model. Following Dr. Joe and Richard’s advice is not only imperative, but vital for future success.

Printers and printing industry professionals can make the leap. It just requires a certain amount of fearlessness and good old-fashioned entrepreneurial spirit.

Roy Grossman, Founding Partner, MSP Digital Marketing