Buy a beer share, invest in a local brewery

Buy a beer share, invest in a local brewery 

Big Alice Brewing is located in an old Bible warehouse in Queens, N.Y.; the bottles are all hand-corked with hemp ties.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

"Community-supported beer" doesn't just mean buying a pint at your local watering hole. For a growing number of upstart breweries, it's how they're getting their operations off the ground.

Queens' Big Alice Brewing -- located in an old Bible warehouse near the water -- opened its doors in June and is selling beer shares as a way to finance the brewery. Inspired by the concept of community-supported agriculture, in which people buy directly from farmers, CSB subscribers pay $200 and receive two large bottles of beer each month for six months

Other breweries use different price points, time frames and methods of delivery, but the concept is the same: Buyers commit to a certain amount of beer for a certain amount of time, and the brewery gets guaranteed cash up front. Combined with more traditional methods of financing, it's an attractive way to solicit investment -- and get locals involved with the brewery.

Big Alice's three cofounders initially invested about $35,000 to buy the equipment and convert the space, which they began work on in August 2012. They started brewing in January, and five months later had 20 batches of beer. The brewery used its first round of beer shares -- which started in July and runs through December -- to finance much of the raw materials like grain, yeast, bottles and corks.

Related: Small craft breweries hit it big

With flavors like salted caramel, purple potato trippel, and chamomile ale, subscribers were promised 12 different beers over the course of their share. Two-thirds of the first 90 shares went to friends and family and the remaining 30 were snapped up on the first day they were offered to the public.

At Seattle's NW Peaks, Kevin Klein offers mountainBeers subscribers a 64-oz. growler for about $11 a month. The model provided roughly $10,000 in the first few months -- enough for supplies, rent and some additional equipment -- and also allowed NW Peaks to "brew to the number of subscribers," Klein said. "We could make sure that we had enough beer and enough product instead of killing ourselves to make more when we didn't need it."

Chicago's Begyle Brewing started distributing kegs to local bars in October 2012, but the brewery's goal was always to sell directly to customers. They used "every facet of financing" to get off the ground, according to cofounder Kevin Cary. Investments from the three owners, friends and family, bank loans -- even a Kickstarter campaign to buy a specialized growler filler.

With the $18,000 raised from Kickstarter, they hope to have the retail space up and running by mid-November. Once the space is operational, they'll launch their CSB, offering a certain number of growler fills a month for subscribers.

"If we have 200 members all paying at once, that's a nice cash infusion," said Cary. "If we can handle more than 200 members, we can leverage that to secure a bank loan or another piece of equipment that will help us grow the brewery."

Related: Jim Koch: Samuel Adams' beer revolutionary

That's how Big Alice sees its beer share program. Cofounder Scott Berger said they are already looking to expand their brewing system, which would offer 21 times the capacity they currently have. They'll need more investment and capital to actually buy the equipment, but he says they can use the next round of shares to buy the raw materials -- which will run about $5,000 per brew day, or $20,000 a month.

Currently, the beer shares make up two-thirds of their sales (they sell the remaining bottles to the public on Friday evenings. But they plan to sell to local bars and restaurants, as well as specialty beer shops, with the expansion. They also hope that two of the founders (who are the brewers) will eventually be able to start to work at Big Alice full-time.

But even as they grow, all three breweries plan to continue with the community-supported financing.

"It's a way for our members to be a part of our growth," said Begyle's Cary. "It makes you part of the team in a way and you get to be there and watch the brewery grow." 

The Day that SEO Died (Sort of)

The Day that SEO Died (Sort of) - 'Net Features - Website Magazine

Search engine optimization professionals awoke yesterday morning to news that Google went "all in" on its initiatives to encrypt search data. Today, 100 percent of the referrer data on search queries from organic traffic is not provided. Folks, this is the day that SEO (as you know it) died…but that’s OK because you’re going to start thinking differently.

Google has effectively and virtually handcuffed the entire digital marketing community by encrypting search data. When Internet professionals like you don’t have access to keyword search data, they won’t know what drives traffic to their sites and they certainly won’t be able to understand what strategic or tactical SEO efforts they make are resulting in conversions. Whether the intent is to drive you to AdWords or not, the main source of data for many enterprises has simply vanished overnight. It gets worse. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Or is there? 

Keyword data samples from Yahoo and Bing are too low, and the data provided by Google within Webmaster tools doesn’t currently have page correlation much less conversion correlation. But that doesn’t mean that savvy search engine optimization professionals (and SEO platform providers - ahem) aren’t going to try. While one shortcut to getting this data back is to head on over to AdWords, there is a lot more work necessary to understand organic performance in the future for those that don’t go this route in this new reality. But it’s not the end of the Web world.

Here’s what will likely happen. SEOs still have access to page-level data and more importantly can understand the referral source for each page. That’s important information but it is only the first step to regaining some of the insights you had about the intent of your userbase yesterday (much less two years ago when keyword not provided wasn’t even a thing). SEOs will now need to combine the rank tracking data they receive from popular search engine optimization tools (more on that below) and the search visit data per page (provided by any analytics tool), and cross reference and correlate that information with any keyword data that’s available within Google Webmaster Tools (limited to 2,000 queries per day). Whew! That’s going to be a lot of work!

The result of efforts like these today, for many, will be a long list of pages that get search visits and are known as those that target specific search terms, which, of course, rank in the SERPs. All that data crunching is going to come at an immense cost in time – much to the pleasure, we can assume, of platforms that make it their business to solve these sorts of problems. What will happen over time is that website owners will again turn to SEO solutions as a means to develop and control/manage their SEO efforts. These are tools and platforms Website Magazine regularly features such as WebCEO or Moz, as well as the numerous companies on last year’s Master List of SEO Tools, which is almost ready for a new and improved 2013 version.

There is an even better way to handle this issue. Stop thinking about ranking entirely or which keywords cause which action on which page. Instead, focus on the user, their experience and the impact those customers make on your enterprise. That’s likely not going to be the answer you want to hear, but that’s what you’ll get from anyone talking about this topic today.

In the future, you’ll likely see even less data about your users (all in the name of privacy). But using marketing automation platforms connected with customer relationship databases and the robust big data capabilities of your SEO software solutions, will help all digital enterprises enter a truly new age, one where we’ll evolve from SEOs to brand advocates who are more concerned with ROI than placement on a search engine.

- See more at: http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2013/09/24/the-day-that-seo-died-sort-of.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter#sthash.tIONqNZI.dpuf

Pinterest Dominates Social Referrals, But Facebook Drives Higher Performance [Study]

Pinterest Dominates Social Referrals, But Facebook Drives Higher Performance [Study]

Publishers in women’s programming verticals such as food and recipes, home and garden, style and health and wellness have found a deep, high volume source of referral traffic from Pinterest.

A new study by Yieldbot, which sees over a 1.5 billion page views per month come through its publisher analytics platform, looks at the impact of social referral traffic on the advertising performance of women’s sites. The ad technology firm found that while Pinterest sends oodles of traffic, those visitors don’t click on ads at same rate as Facebook referrals.

The table below illustrates the overwhelming dominance of Pinterest among the top social networks referring traffic to women’s sites. The exception is on mobile where Facebook refers significantly more traffic than Pinterest. Twitter and Tumblr barely register.

Now, compare the volume of referral traffic by these social networks to the click-through rate (CTR) on ads from that traffic. Facebook — desktop and to a larger degree mobile — outperforms the other networks by far, while Pinterest lags well behind.

Publishers that monetize based on ad clicks may now be raising their eyebrows. As AdAgenotes in their coverage of the study, 66 percent of digital advertising is sold on a CPC or other performance-based metric according to the IAB. Whereas just 32 percent is sold on an impression basis.

What’s a publisher whose site is primarily monetized by ad clicks to do? Is Pinterest the revenue-driving dud it appears to be?

When I asked Yieldbot CEO Jonathan Mendez if Pinterest still drives more volume of ad clicks than Facebook despite the lower CTR, he replied, “From a volume perspective yes, orders of magnitude more clicks are from Pinterest than Facebook.”

So, yes, Facebook referrals drive a higher concentration of performance, but Pinterest still wins the volume game.

That said, social channels on the whole don’t perform as well as other channels in generating ad clicks — 36 percent below average. Mendez says that is due in part to the fact that the ads are not geared toward social referrers and sees opportunity in this area.

In particular, “publishers need to do a better job of generating volume on Facebook,” writes Mendez.

When asked by email whether Tumblr and Twitter’s poor showing is a reflection of low activity on these platforms by women’s sites or if referral performance is truly dismal, Mendez replied that publishers outside of news and entertainment haven’t figured out how to use Twitter and Tumblr to engage and drive traffic to their sites. He ads, “Don’t forget, many pubs spent the better part of the last few years focused on building apps and getting installs at the expense of inbound web marketing.”

80pc willing to exchange location data for relevant brand messages: report

80pc willing to exchange location data for relevant brand messages: report - Mobile Marketer - Research

September 24, 2013

Users want relevant messages in exchange for personal data

A new survey released today by mBlox and Millward Brown found that 80 percent of mobile users would share location data with brands in order to receive SMS or push messages.

The report based on the survey’s findings, "Engagement: What Consumers Really Think," reveals that while mobile users are open to receiving brand messaging, most said they would prefer to communicate with known or favorite brands. Respondents also indicated a preference for relevant communications.

“This study provides a proof point that mobile has the opportunity to enable marketers to better engage people on a global scale,” said Stacy Adams, vice president of marketing at mBlox, Sunnyvale, CA.

“To date, mobile has been a difficult entry point for marketers, because, as an industry, we took what didn’t work on the Web and moved it to mobile environments, such as standard Web-based banner ads that send users outside the app or mobile Web site and pre-roll video ads that force people to watch them, disrupting their user experience,” she said.

“Plus, when mobile applications were gaining traction, marketers put a great deal of time and budget into them without realizing how difficult it would be to keep the user engaged through them. But we expect that number to move in a more positive direction as marketers embrace push notifications, in-app messaging and SMS as ways to re-engage those who have downloaded mobile apps.”

Privacy concernsKey findings from the report include that 59 percent of global respondents prefer SMS and push campaigns over other forms of mobile marketing, including video advertising, banner or standard display ads and email.

When asked why they would share location data with a company, 47 percent would do so to receive relevant offers or discount coupons; 45 percent would do so to receive information they have requested; 36 percent would do so to help them solve customer service issues and 24 percent would do so to check-in or post on social networking sites.

“Marketers are so nervous about privacy concerns that they are reluctantly shying away from mobile marketing,” Ms. Adams said. “The survey findings reveal that they don’t have to be.

“According to Millward Brown Digital, 80 percent of global respondents, an overwhelming majority, would share location data with a company from whom they’ve downloaded an app in order to receive SMS or push messages.”

Underused tacticThe report also makes the point that while SMS messages are an effective mobile engagement tactic, many marketers are still underusing it, with only one in five marketers reportedly having sent an SMS message last year.

In contrast, 58 percent of global respondents say they would send a text message to a company to request more information and 54 percent would send a text to a company to enter a competition.

Mobile adoption continues to grow, with text messaging one of users’ favorite activities.

As mobile commerce also gains steam, marketers need to recognize that SMS provides a large global reach and can effectively be used to encourage purchases, per the report.

Another key finding is that 57 percent of global respondents and 60 percent of U.S. respondents find SMS and push messages more likely to persuade them to make a purchase than other forms of marketing on a mobile device, including advertising commercials or video advertising, banner or standard display advertising and email marketing messages.

Global reachAdditional key findings include that 68 percent of global respondents and 66 percent of U.S. respondents find SMS or push messages sent to them from a company to be valuable and 75 percent of global respondents and 75 percent of U.S. respondents are likely to read or engage with SMS and push marketing messages, such as location-triggered coupons, updates or deals relevant to the mobile apps downloaded.

The survey, which was conducted in July, includes responses from 1,572 mobile users who had downloaded an app in the past 12 month across the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

“SMS gives marketers access to a large global reach, and SMS and push marketing also better engages people in a way that is consistent with their preferences, adds value and persuades purchase intent more than other tactics," Ms. Adams said.  

“Marketers not engaging people around the world via SMS and push mobile marketing messages are missing a huge opportunity,” she said.

Final TakeChantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York 

Associate Editor Chantal Tode covers advertising, messaging, legal/privacy and database/CRM. Reach her at chantal@mobilemarketer.com.

Mobile now accounts for most online time in US

MediaPost Publications Most Digital Time Spent In Mobile 09/24/2013

Speaking at OMMA Mobile on Monday, Josh Chasin, chief research officer, comScore, began his talk by presenting data about how consumers are using their mobile devices. For starters, we’re up to 140 smartphones in the U.S., about half of all mobile phones.

There are 70 million tablet users -- it’s the fastest adopted technology since the cell phone. More than half (52%) of digital time spent is on a smartphone or tablet. Apps dominate, with 85% of time spent versus 15% in mobile Web.

There are 15 million mobile users whot access Web only via mobile; three-fifths of that group are women. As has been widely established, mobile phones are used throughout the day, PCs used mostly during the day, and tablets mostly in the evening.

Media time is not necessarily a zero sum game. Time spent on PCs is up a bit, while mobile and tablet time is up. How can time spent on all platforms rise? Multitasking.

Categories like sports and weather, however, have shifted more toward mobile devices from the desktop. The majority of Internet users are now accessing Web across both mobile and desktop.

In terms of top sites, even publishers like Google and Yahoo are seeing a growing incremental audience from mobile. About 30% of Facebook’s audience is coming just from mobile. Ninety percent of U.S. mobile adults are going on Facebook

Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/209716/most-digital-time-spent-in-mobile.html#ixzz2fpI7CNDX

The Lifestyles of Affluent Influencers

The Lifestyles of Affluent Influencers

Some customers are more important than others, says iProspect [download page] in a new study covering “affluent influencers” – the 40% of affluent adults (more than $100,000 in household income) who define themselves as influencers. Knowing what activities these individuals regularly engage in can assist marketers in producing and placing their ads in a way that maximizes their ability to “influence the influencers.” So what does the affluent influencer’s lifestyle look like? Hint: Not much like the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

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The study examines the activities that affluent influencers regularly participate in, sorting them by generation. Interestingly, the most common activities are consistent across generations, with respondents most often enjoying relaxing at home, spending time with family, visiting family and friends, and shopping.

Those activities don’t seem to differ much from what the general consumer might enjoy participating in, and suggest that marketers avoid stereotypes (sipping martinis on a yacht?) when seeking to target these consumers.

More “niche” activities come to the fore when indexing the regular activities of affluent influencers against the affluent population sample as a whole.

For Millennial (aged 21-36) affluent influencers, the top indexing activities are:

• Going to nightclubs (index of 228);
• Going to bars (206); and
• Visiting stately/country homes (184).

For Gen X (aged 37-48) affluent influencers, the top indexing activities are:

• Visiting theme parks (242);
• Going to nightclubs (134); and
• Home improvement, day trips, and entertaining/hosting (each at 132).

For Baby Boomer (aged 40-66) affluent influencers, the top indexing activities are:

• Going to classical music concerts or opera (151);
• Visiting museums (150); and
• Going to exhibitions/galleries/museums (147).

What Activities are Affluent Influencers Passionate About?

The study also looks at the activities that respondents are most passionate about, with responses tending to follow their regular activities. For example, spending time with family and children is the top response across each generation, with relaxing at home and DIY also among the top 5 across generations.

Travel pops up as an activity that respondents are passionate about, though there appears to be a generational divide in this case. While Millennials count international travel as one of the top 5 activities they’re most passionate about, travel within the US makes the grade for both Gen Xers and Boomers.

Compared to the affluent population as a whole, Millennial affluent influencers are far more passionate about going to bars and nightclubs (each with an index of 256), while Gen Xers over-index most for entertaining and hosting (137) and going to the movie theater (131) and Baby Boomers for home improvements (150) and DIY (142).

Once again, it seems that what affluent influencers are passionate about probably doesn’t differ too much from the typical individuals, at least in that these activities are for the most part not restricted to individuals with oodles of money to spend (although perhaps they require some spare time). While there aren’t too many eyebrow-raisers in this portion of the survey, here’s an interesting one: Millennial affluent influencers are more than twice as likely as their affluent peers to be passionate about going to fast food restaurants. Go figure.

About the Data: The data is based on iProspect’s sister agency Carat’s proprietary Consumer Connection System (CCS), from which the researchers looked at the data associated with 4,855 affluent adult respondents (HHI of $100K+) and then looked specifically at the 40% who defined themselves as influencers.

4 ways Pinterest can help a B2B marketer | SmartBlogs SmartBlogs

4 ways Pinterest can help a B2B marketer | SmartBlogs SmartBlogs

As a B2B marketer, you might look at Pinterest with a curious eye. It is certainly a beautifully designed social network, laden with images and inspirational quotes typed in eye-catching fonts. You might browse through your personal profile envious of your B2C peers, asPinterest drives just as much, if not more revenue per clicks than Twitter and Facebook. As you sign off and get back to work you might longingly imagine the day when you can Pinterest in your B2B marketing.

Well I have good news, my fellow B2B colleagues — that day is today. Pinterest is breaking into the B2B marketing mix. At Constant Contact, a provider of online marketing solutions for small businesses, we recently passed the 17,000 follower mark on the platform. Pinterest is now an essential part of our website-traffic generation.

Here are four ways Pinterest can be effective for marketing your B2B brand:

Find prospective leads. Pinterest is growing at an incredible rate. Nielsen’s 2012 Social Media Report found that the platform had a 1,047% increase in unique desktop viewers and an 1,698% increase in mobile viewers in 2012, which will allow you to find new leads on a platform that your competitors may not be on yet.

Do you happen to have overseas markets you’re trying to crack? Well you’re in an even stronger position to succeed with Pinterest, as the platform has exploded in international popularity in recent months. In June, 45% of new users came from outside the U.S.

Increase customer engagement.Much of your current customer base is already on Pinterest already, and based on the astounding revenue per click numbers, they come to the platform expecting to want something.

Even if one of your clients is on Pinterest looking for a new shirt, having a presence while they are thinking of buying plays favorably to your goals. Ultimately, Pinterest is a great opportunity to connect with buyers when they are in a buying mood.

Drive traffic back to your website. Images are effective at increasing click-thrus and engagement — and Pinterest is an image-based platform. Put two and two together and you have an equation for success.

The great thing about Pinterest is that the platform has been designed to maximize interaction with images. You don’t have to worry about whether an image is placed and formatted appropriately, as you would in your e-mail campaigns or selling materials. Pinterest has already done the hard part for you.

Repurpose content from other sites and social networks. As a B2B marketer, you have access to a wealth of content — white papers, videos, webinars, photos from events, e-mail campaigns, etc. By using a little bit of creativity you will be able to find a host of ways to repurpose them on this new and popular network.

Most of the other content you are creating has visual aspects to it. PowerPoint and SlideShare presentations have background images. Webinars and white papers often have data charts. At Constant Contact, my team takes these visuals and makes them the main aspect of a new Pinterest pin. Doing so essentially kills two birds with one stone — you have easily createable Pinterest content with which you can take advantage of the platform, and you drive more views towards content you worked so hard to create.

The days of Pinterest being an effective tool for only retail and food brands are over, and its popularity is quickly spilling into the B2B sphere. Regardless of what you sell or offer, images remain a provocative way to tell a story, and Pinterest gives you a great chance to do so immediately.

Erica Ayotte is senior manager of social media at Constant Contact, where she develops and executes strategic social business and communications programs that drive brand awareness, affinity, and conversion. She has managed marketing communications programs at several B2B technology companies. Erica has a background in content development, marketing analytics and project management. She holds a B.A. in English from Colby College.

Pinterest Announces It Will Test Promoted Pins | Digital - Advertising Age

Pinterest Announces It Will Test Promoted Pins | Digital - Advertising Age

Pinterest's inevitable march toward an ad business now seems more imminent.

The social-bookmarking company announced today in a blog post bylined by CEO Ben Silbermannthat it plans to start testing promoted pins. The message was also emailed to Pinterest users. The company, however, didn't give a start date or divulge the names of the participating businesses.

The company did say it won't charge any of the initial testers, since the stated intent is to test the product. Their pins will show up in search results and category feeds that surface trending pins about topics like "health and fitness" and "home decor," but not in users' streams at this stage.

The post also took care to emphasize that ads will be "tasteful" and not disruptive to the site's user experience. In light of the high population of ex-Facebookers who work at Pinterest, the desire to make that point clear makes sense. However, Pinterest may be less vulnerable to the perception that it's become too commercial, since many of its users already visit the site with commercial intent, looking for wedding dresses or tablecloths they eventually intend to buy.

"I know some of you may be thinking, 'Oh great...here come the banner ads,'" Mr. Silbermann wrote. "But we're determined to not let that happen."

The announcement that Pinterest is developing ads may surprise some users but won't shock anyone who's kept an eye on the company's product and hiring moves. In May, it introduced "rich pins," which let brands automatically attach information like pricing and availability to content pinned from their sites and presumably make Pinterest an even more alluring marketing channel to retailers. And in June it hired John Yi to run partnerships with marketing developers; Mr. Yi had held a similar role at Facebook and worked closely with the companies that sell Facebook ads via its API.

Even without formal ad products, Pinterest has been popular with brands since it exploded in popularity in late 2011. Publishers, in particular, were among the first to rush to the service. Retailers are another avid category. J. Crew last month debuted its fall line on its Pinterest page before revealing the same line in printed catalogs. And Nordstrom is drawing attention to its most frequently pinned items in some stores by marking them with a "P" logo.

Pinterest currently doesn't generate any revenue, though it once tested affiliate links. It partnered with a company called Skimlinks, which identifies links to e-commerce sites with affiliate programs and then shares revenue passed on from completed purchases with the traffic referrers.

Colorado Businesses Volunteering in Flood’s Wake | Fox Small Business Center

Colorado Businesses Volunteering in Flood’s Wake | Fox Small Business Center

A week of record-breaking torrential rains and flooding has left eight dead in Colorado, and destroyed more than 1,500 homes in the state.

On top of that, an additional 1,600 homes were damaged, says Micki Trost, public information officer for the Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, and search-and-rescue efforts continue in wake of the mountain-pounding floods.

Remodeling contractor Ty Melton of Melton Design Build says his business in Boulder has already been inundated with calls related to flood damage.

“We had over 140 calls on Friday by noon. We’ve got people working pretty long hours trying to keep up, and we were already pretty busy,” says Melton.

“We’re in a triage area, trying to help out our existing customers and help out some new people,” says Melton, who says six of his 35 employees were affected by the flooding.

Melton says he’s received calls from a number of businesses looking for help putting offices back together, including a law office with a foot-and-half of water on top of documents, and doctors’ offices with standing water as well.

“Some minor things will get taken care of in the next few weeks, some major ones will take months,” says Melton. Some of the homes he’s surveyed are looking at more than a million dollars’ worth of damage.

Businesses Lend a Helping Hand

Melton’s is one of multiple businesses that have reached out to aid the city of Boulder with its recovery efforts. Over the weekend, a Melton Design company truck delivered pallets of water donated from a local Target to responders at the airport.

Boulder Chamber of Commerce president John Tayer says he is touched by the outreach from local businesses looking to help.

“The classic for me was immediately I got a call from Betty Artes of Casa Alvarez, and she started cooking burritos for emergency response folks. She was right on it,” says Tayer.

Artes says she was happy to help out, given that her restaurant experienced only slight flooding in the lower level. While Casa Alvarez and neighboring businesses didn’t see too much physical damage, she says it will still take time to recover.

“We’re impacted by the fact that people were afraid to get out into the streets. Businesses are open, and just resuming normal operations,” says Artes.

In Longmont, one of the cities most heavily affected by the flooding, Public Information Officer Rigo Leal says businesses have also pitched in; he says restaurants including Georgia Boys, Red Robin and Panera donated food in wake of the disaster.

“It’s amazing the amount of food donated,” says Leal. “It’s a great example of the community coming together in that regard.”

Assessing the Damage

Tayer says Boulder’s burgeoning startup scene has made attempts to calculate the total business impact more difficult, as the Chamber of Commerce tries to make contact with local business owners.

“One of the unique things about the Boulder economy is that many are startup entrepreneurs who in many instances don’t work in traditional offices,” says Tayer. So while commercial areas may have experienced lighter flooding, many of the residential areas which experienced serious flooding are home to a number of businesses and startups.

In addition to attempts to fully understand the physical damage experienced by businesses, cities are also trying to figure out the long-term effects of water damage.

In Denver, there are already concerns about the agricultural impact of the flood, despite the fact that the city experienced a lesser amount of flooding than other areas in the state.

“When you have a flood on essentially flat land … it picks up everything from gasoline and diesel fuel to pesticides in agricultural communities, along with large torn-up houses and concrete,” says Tom Clark, the executive vice-president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation.

As the city tries to ascertain the damage to sewage and water treatment plants, Clark says there is worry the soil may be affected for a period of up to three years.

“We’ve had two to three years of good agricultural prices, and for the first time in many years we’ve had our financial head above water. We were forecasting another good year in 2014, and we haven’t begun to revise estimates – it’ll be nowhere near what we’ve had in the last two,” says Clark.

In Boulder, Tayer says the city is also doing everything it can to make sure that food sources haven’t been contaminated, but seems optimistic about the findings.

“Boulder is recognized for having strong protections around hazardous materials, so we expect that we will benefit from that type of approach,” says Tayer.

Read more: http://smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com/entrepreneurs/2013/09/17/colorado-businesses-volunteering-in-floods-wake/#ixzz2fScxAB8u

Is the Price Really Right? 5 Ways to Tell | Inc.com

Is the Price Really Right? 5 Ways to Tell | Inc.com

Setting a price point for goods or services is one of the most difficult decisions an entrepreneur can make.

As an economics major in college, the concept of supply and demand was ingrained in my mind early on. Set the price too high, and you won't attract buyers. Set the price too low, and sales may flourish at the expense of profits.

Outside the classroom, however, there are far greater factors to consider when setting your price. Here are five things every small business owner should know:

Know your value proposition.

Always ask yourself what the value of your goods and services are. Assuming there is no competition or other distracting factors, what is the value of what you're doing in the eyes of consumers?

Know your customers.

You may know deep down that your goods and services are worth a certain amount, but that will only to do so much if you don't consider what your customers can afford or are willing to pay.

Know your costs.

I repeat--know your costs! What are your sunk costs? Facilities? Materials? And what are your non-sunk costs? A smart business owner will know all the answers. Price your goods or services so that expected sales--at a bare minimum--cover your costs.  If not, you can make all the sales in the world and still lose money.

Know your competitors.

Unless you're fortunate to have a monopoly, assume there's some competition in the marketplace. You should research to determine what your competitors are charging for similar goods or services, then adjust your prices accordingly. If you price too far above your competition, you'd better have something that sets you apart.

Know the seasons.

Almost every good and service has peak and off seasons. It's critical to anticipate these changes in order to build a pricing model that can change when needed. After all, you're trying to create a steady flow of revenue, not break even.

MATTHEW SWYERS is the founder of The Trademark Company, a Web-based law firm specializing in protecting the trademark rights of small to medium-size businesses. The company is ranked No. 138 on the 2011 Inc. 500.
@TrademarkCo

Why Your Small Business Needs a Content Marketing Mission Statement

Why Your Small Business Needs a Content Marketing Mission Statement

Thursday is guest blog post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is Joe Pulizzi  - Enjoy!

Did you know that 94% of small businesses (less than 99 employees) use some form ofcontent marketing to grow their businesses?  That’s a staggering number, and almost hard to believe.

But it’s true.  Yes, nearly every small business out there is creating blogs, articles, eBooks, white papers, newsletters and more to try to attract and retain customers. And then nearly all of those are pushing that content out in the form of tweets, Facebook posts and LinkedIn updates.

Here’s the bad news: just one in three believe it’s actually helping their businesses.

Here’s why it’s not working – Most of the content you are distributing is (to be nice about it) not very helpful or entertaining.  Your customers are most likely ignoring it.  It’s clutter.  You are spending time creating it and your customers are working to avoid it.  This is a problem.

But the reason isn’t just because your content is lackluster.  The issue goes deeper.

I’ve had the privilege of speaking in front of thousands of small business owners and marketers over the past year.  Do you know how many of those people have an actual strategy when it comes to their content marketing?  Try less than 10%.  How can we be effective with our content if we have no clear idea what the content should do – both for our business and for our customers?

For you, that stops right now.

Enter the Content Marketing Mission Statement

Marketing professionals from most small businesses get so fixated on channels such as blogs, Facebook or Pinterest that they honestly have no clue of the underlying content strategy. So, the why must come before the what? This seems obvious, but most marketers have no mission statement or core strategy behind the content they develop.

Think of it this way: What if you were the leading trade magazine for your niche area? What if your goal was not to first sell products and services but to impact your readers with amazing information that would change their lives and behaviors?

Inc. magazine has its mission statement in the first line of its About Us page.

Welcome to Inc.com, the place where entrepreneurs and business owners can find useful information, advice, insights, resources and inspiration for running and growing their businesses.

Let’s dissect this a bit. Inc’s mission statement includes:

• The core audience target: entrepreneurs and business owners
• What will be delivered to the audience: useful information, advice, insights, resources, and inspiration
• The outcome for the audience: growing their businesses

Inc’s mission statement is also incredibly simple and includes no words that could be misunderstood. This is our goal with the content marketing mission statement.

Before you develop any more unwanted content for your customers and prospects, you need to develop your own content marketing mission statement. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, and it doesn’t have to be written on stone tablets, but you do need it to point your content ship in the right direction.

How to Use Your Content Marketing Mission Statement

Remember, content marketing is not about “what you sell” it’s about “what you stand for.” The informational needs of your customers and prospects come first. Although there must be clear marketing objectives behind the mission statement, those should not be outlined here. The Inc. mission statement doesn’t say anything about selling more advertising or paid events. To work, your mission statement has to be all about the pain points of your readers and followers or it simply won’t work. Once you consistently deliver on this promise, your customers will reward you by buying your products and services.

After you create your mission statement, do the following:

• Post it: Include the mission statement where it can be found easily by your customers (perhaps, on your blog).
• Spread it: Make sure everyone creating content for your organization has a copy. Encourage them to print it out and pin it up on the wall.
• The litmus test: Use the mission statement to decide what content you will and won’t create. Often, a bad judgment in content creation can be fixed by running it by the mission statement.

Remember, your marketing goal should be to become the leading expert in your particular niche.  You can’t do that without truly epic content.  Start your journey by developing your mission. Do it now!

Joe Pulizzi is founder of Content Marketing Institute, the leading education and training organization for content marketing, which includes the largest in-person content marketing event in the world,Content Marketing World.  Joe’s third book, Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less takes small business owners A-to-Z toward creating a content marketing strategy that works to grow the business.  You can find Joe on Twitter @JoePulizzi. If you ever see Joe in person, he’ll be wearing orange.

Contemplating the future of shopping malls - Mobile Marketer - Columns

Contemplating the future of shopping malls 

September 20, 2013

Gary Schwartz is president/CEO of Impact Mobile

By Gary Schwartz

Samsung strikes a deal with the beleaguered Best Buy to subsidize its rent with a store-in-a-store initiative. Borders exits the mall and last-man-standing Barnes & Noble seems to become a living room knickknacks vendor with more book browsers than book buyers. Zappos Labs runs field research in malls and Facebook launches a commerce strategy – again.

Is a retail dust bowl about to blow through the mall nationally? Or is this a digital tempest in a tea cup?
We know that online commerce is booming, but it still accounts for a small slice of the United States’ mall business. Undeniably, this $200 billion digital business – per comScore – is expanding scope daily.

If there was ever a digital demarcator, it is the soap business.

When Unilever and Procter & Gamble, the market’s main consumer package goods companies, begin to sell soap on Amazon, and when Walmart begins to ramp up its online business, leveraging its 4,000 stories and 158 warehouses as an online distribution network, then mall property owners possibly need to rethink their role in bricks-and-mortar.

Inertia as strategyMalls are entertainment destinations. Always have been. We go to the mall for a movie or latte just as we bundled the family into the Buick 60 years ago to go shopping. But if Best Buy and Barnes & Noble leave the mall, what is left to attract the consumer? Hours of gizmo browsing and cook-book thumbing gone.

Browse-verse-buy business has whittled way the margins of many stores, making Blockbuster and Gamestop digital road kill. It forced Target chief executive Gregg Steinhafel and Kathee Tesija, Target’s executive vice president of merchandising, to cry uncle on “showrooming” in a memo to its suppliers in 2012.

However, muscling your supplier’s prices down is a pyrrhic victory. Even with the volume sales of Target and Walmart, they know that they need to move some of their business into the cloud.

During Walmart’s August 2013 earnings call it announced that ecommerce sales rose by 30 percent in two trailing quarters. Walmart indicated its total online sales could pass $10 billion in fiscal year 2014. This is only two percent of the stores’ earning and only 12 percent of Amazon, whose sales totaled $61 billion in 2012. But it is a marked trend and a harbinger of the exodus of earns from the mall.

What incumbent stores presently have in their favor is inertia. The cloud and the mall are still not fluidly connected. Although each shopper is armed with a mobile computer that has the capability of scanning, sourcing and saving the consumer in every aisle, there are too many hurdles and much friction between the idea of digital buying and the products within arm’s reach.

The mandate of any red-blooded digital retailers is to eliminate this inertia.

No-click cloud checkout
Apple’s iTunes, Amazon and PayPal built their business on simplifying checkout: making sure that the act of buying does not get in the way of intent to buy.

One-click checkout, or combining stored customer credentials, with a simple password is the sole reason that these companies continue to grow their market share. Their UX team would tell you that every informational and graphic design is based on optimizing clicks to checkout. Each click makes a precipitous drop-off and abandoned shopping carts litter the Web.

But digital checkout demands trust and mindshare. Even online real estate barons such as Facebook have been unable to enter this market.

Although “social” and “commerce” seem natural allies, Facebook has not been able to deliver on its promise to leverage its millions of customers to shop cross-channel. The company launched Facebook Credits in 2009 and phased them out last year.

“F-commerce” experiments abound. Remember Facebook + Amazon + P&G partnering in 2010 to change the world. Unilever followed suit launching a storefront on Facebook for its Dove brand.

Retailers including J.C. Penney and Gamestop have attempted to monetize their Facebook community by opening stores inside the Facebook network. They shut their virtual doors after posting underwhelming results.

Apple and Amazon have proven that community plus one-click checkout works. These digital-wallet holders started their business explicitly to sell stuff. And they are poised to remove the inertia from online shopping and with it the last refuge of the mall owner.

Online shopping provides advantages with an endless aisle, allowing for access to more sizes and categories.

According to Nielsen, the average basket size is much larger for consumer package goods ($80 online to $30 offline) and beauty purchase ($30 online to $10 offline).

The question is that when the households put soap and diapers on their shopping list, will they log into Amazon to buy Dove Body Wash 24 Ounce Bottles (Pack of 4) and Pampers Sensitive Wipes 7x Box?

Baked beans and apple pieThe last refuge of the U.S. mall is maybe a can of baked beans and fresh produce. If the household shopper wants to grab a can for dinner tonight or smell the oranges and squeeze the melons before buying, then off to the store they will go. Grocery stores are big box convenience stores.

However, should mall owners that are grocery-anchored feel safe? Their clientele should come from a weekly shopping list.

Well, hold your Kraft peanut butter.

Traditional grocery retailers are faced with increased competition.

In March, Walmart opened grocery concept stores about a tenth of the size of their supercenters. With big box and online retailers entering the grocery space, specialty grocers capturing the “foodie culture” consumer and brands creating a direct relationship with the consumer, perhaps this is not a safe bet for mall owners.

Google Wallet, ISIS and other phone wallets promise to make in-store shopping more digitally fluid, but what is the digital wallet never makes it to the mall.

Online grocery shopping has grown fivefold over the past eight years to $25 billion. Tablets devices have made shopping more leisurely and couch commerce has accelerated.

With CPGs moving their diaper and detergent business into the mainstream online stores such as Amazon, the inertia may soon come from the home.

Poaching people
Since Tesco opened its virtual grocery store on the subway in Seoul, South Korea, two years ago, scan-and-shop-on-the-go signage has become more common. While it is still a media gimmick, it has the potential of becoming a way of luring the shopper online.

In every mall or transit hub in the United States, at least one brand has attempted to use the in-mall media to engage with the shopper and move them into their cloud store.

In CNET interviews with Amazon-owned Zappos Labs director Will Young confesses that his team sits around malls stalking shoppers. Their goal is to emulate these shoppers’ behavior online. Mr. Young is asking, “How can you make the digital experience feel like the in-store experience?”

WHETHER THEY succeed or not, there is no question that malls need to re-evaluate their passive media deals.

When a brand buys signage on an ad impression basis but uses this media to poach customers, then this signage perhaps should not be sold as an impression but as a “mini-storefront.”

Mall owners nationally are holding strategy sessions to evaluate how technology is affecting their business. These stakeholders need to re-evaluate their real estate assets and start to see media as leasable square footage.

Gary Schwartz is president/CEO of Impact Mobile, Toronto. Reach him at gary.schwartz@impactmobile.com.