We were lucky to find out about TrustRadius the enterprise software comparison site founded by Vinay Bhagat
Image via CrunchBase
through a search we were doing for clients. As a result, we got in touch with them and secured an interview.
Why did you start TrustRadius?
We’re trying to change the way software is bought and sold. If you’re a consumer who wants to buy a product or service there’s a wealth of information out there. But if you’re trying to buy a piece of technology which could have a huge impact on your career, or business – it’s more challenging; more opaque.
Technology marketers try to control the information flow a customer gets.
Our belief is that through a platform like TrustRadius we can give buyers a more authentic, rapid way to make smarter decisions. It’s not just picking the right product – it’s the right product for your use case.
Every business has unique needs – on TrustRadius you can crowdsource different perspectives about the context around the problem the business is trying to solve. This allows the user to made a more informed choice.
This isn’t trying to provide all the answers. TrustRadius is a layer to get intelligent and get insights, way to avoid mistakes. It’s more than a content layer, it’s a way to allow people to connect with each other. a contextual social network.
What are the issues with other solutions?
The Gartner magic quadrant is not appropriate for everyone.
We have a user who contacted people through the site and did information exchanges to get to the real story behind their tech selection and purchase.
People have tried to do backchannel references for years – it’s hard to get peer input rapidly at scale.
Reviewers have authentication – and we use Linked In – in connect button to verify identities.
What’s your business model?
Today we are not focused on making money – we’re trying to create a trusted at scale network – as a young company we
have to concentrate at this. If we can wedge ourselves between the buyer and seller its a $4trilliion marketplace. We bootstrapped for 1 year and now have raised VC money last June – we maniacally focus on getting to scale through effectively recruiting reviewers, sourcing content and engaging vendors. Read more
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2014-04-14 10:00:002023-08-24 13:01:46Interview with TrustRadius founder, Vinay Bhagat
We advised a client today about how to make 3 improvements to their proposal ending texts. Writing a descriptive of your service or product and pricing it is only part of the new business development process. It is essential that it leads to a next step to keep the discussion going and lead towards a buy/no-buy decision by the prospect.
Three key information points in a proposal
clarifying next steps
adding a timescale
pushing the client towards buying what you want to sell
Here is the original ending paragraph they wrote:
Let me know if you are interested in talking more. If it would help, we can quickly provide a demo of steps 1 and 2 if you provide us with some game event data. As part of that demo we can demonstrate how simple creating new reports / analyses is.
By improving the text the reader is given clear expectations about next steps in the discussion process .
We recommended editing the last paragraph to give clarity on the 3 key information points
“The next step is for you to send us with some game event data and we can quickly provide a demo of steps 1 and 2.
As part of that demo we can demonstrate how simple creating new reports / analyses is. We would make a nominal charge for this work of $XXX which will be fully refundable if we proceed to a full implementation.
I will call you on Wednesday next week to confirm when you can send us the data and a date for the demo.”
Although sounding rather presumptuous this text sets clear expectations with regard to timeframes and next steps against which you can update your biz dev pipeline.
What are your favourite closing sentences in a proposal?
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2014-04-11 12:09:092019-08-13 15:07:483 ways to improve proposal writing next steps
I was at a networking event yesterday and the Sales Lady from Facebook New Zealand was presenting. She made this statement
Google is advertising around intent; Facebook is about demand generation
And it started me thinking.
Google – yes I get it – the intent is shown by your search string.
Facebook’s claim is harder to back up.
Why Facebook’s demand gen claim is slack
The sales lady says that because on Facebook brands advertise to drive likes, then it’s demand generation.
I think because it’s hard to get visitors off Facebook and onto your website where you can actually make prospects take actions that lead them into the sales funnel, the effectiveness of this strategy is low.
The answer today is yes… but. We have great client brands who are successfully recruiting new readers through their Facebook promotion, advertising and status updates. But without a clear set of tactics to drive those readers off Facebook and onto their website, all this work would be hard to monetise.
For many brands, especially B2B, their audience isn’t on Facebook. So it’s irrelevant to their marketing plans.
Take a look at this FB post and the comments below. We are seeing readers adding in their friends’ names to their comments in order to draw their attention to this bit of content, and that’s bringing in new visitors.
GoHachi threatens to make this history with its network-of-networks approach to business referrals and introductory sales.
I was an early beta tester and I love the idea of joining together all my networks and using whichever works best to connect with prospects.
So when Hachi invited me to test it out again, I jumped at the chance.
Hachi is improved
Take a look at the nice graphics and easy site layout. All good for UX.
I added in my Linked In contacts.
Hachi linked in connections
– but was a bit confused because I thought I’d already done them.
My profile photo isn’t rendering properly (but I know what I look like).
Hachi helps make a connection to a prospect
So I thought I’d try out a couple of new introductions.
I browsed the “surprise me” tab to see who Hachi thought I should connect to.
Then I ran and saved a search for “marketing managers” in Auckland, New Zealand. Came up with someone at Fonterra – a milk marketing and buying company so I thought I’d give it a go.
Hachi offered me 5 possible routes to connect and I selected Jason – who I know from PocketSmith (cute financial planning tool).
Irritatingly, it doesn’t offer me the chance to just click and send. I have to manually type in his email (necessitated going to Linked In which I thought I’d connected).
Hachi requires you to insert email
There’s a nice page where you can keep track of all the introductions you have in progress.
Let’s see what comes back.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Rebecca Caroehttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgRebecca Caroe2014-02-24 17:50:302020-01-24 01:44:29GoHachi introduces you to new biz dev prospects
Social Media is the “in” thing. We often say to our clients – where are your customers? If they aren’t using Twitter or Facebook then why bother using it for business purposes?
No one really likes discussing death and the topics that surround it – so why would they want to even consider it on social media?
That begs the question: how should a Funeral Home use social media, if at all?
Well this depends on a variety of factors – who your market is, what will be successful on social media and on what social media channel you operate in.
Many funeral homes are already exploiting channels such as Facebook to share obituaries and funeral dates. This is of course a useful feature, which should be utilised with social media, but it should not be your only type of content. People will only check your content and follow/like your page if you post content which is interesting and different from your competitors.
Think about where your funeral home is situated
Are you operating in a small town where everybody knows everybody? Then your messages should be more personable and meaningful than a simple announcement. Whether it be a remembrance post (after 1 year) or a death of a previous local, thinking of social media as more than a simple noticeboard is the easiest way to get in the right frame of mind.
Larger funeral homes (which often deal with people they’ve never met before) may find it appropriate to share famous deaths from around the world and share alternative ways to celebrate a life. This will act as a break from the otherwise seemingly continual stream of obituaries.
What sorts of things work on social media
What works on social media? It’s not like you can post pictures of dead people…
Social media can offer potential customers an opportunity to “view” your facilities. Taking photos of all available areas can show off your home and help guide people to your home. The funeral industry is relatively insensitive to price. This means that once they physically view your premises, they usually commit to doing the funeral service there. Therefore, you all that is needed is to get people to visit your home and if seeing photos of it online helps, then it is definitely worth doing.
Social media can help give ideas for other potential customers. Taking photos of other services and posting other ideas of how to celebrate a loved one’s life is another way of adding varying content to your page.
Which channel are you on?
The Social Media channel you use will determine whether what you post will be successful or not. Twitter encourages short text messages with a link whereas Facebook thrives on videos & photos. Pinterest focuses purely on photos, a useful tool if you want to share photos of your home/grounds or beautiful services (which can be shared with attendees).
Ensuring you use the appropriate content for each channel will prevent your social media efforts being frowned upon.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Creative Agency Secrets Teamhttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgCreative Agency Secrets Team2013-12-02 16:38:472013-12-02 16:38:47Social Media Marketing For Funeral Homes
QR codes enable website linking from mobile phones. And are a simple way to connect your prospects to your physical marketing materials.
They are butt-ugly.
Who wants to ruin a nice design with a pixellated image plonked down in the corner of the page?
We’ve found easy ways to improve the look of QR.
Unitag QR Code Generator Review
Unitag Live is a website that lets you create and customise QR codes in a huge variety of ways. More free online QR code generators have limited customisation but Unitag lets you add your logo into the code, change the corner images and alter the colours.
Unitag Live Features
The first step in the QR code creation process is picking the website your QR code will link users to. You can send them to a location using the GPS on their scanner or tell their smartphone to instantly call a number. You can even have the QR code call in a business card for the user to look at.
Once you’ve directed users to the right content you can start customising the look of your QR code. Unitag has several predefined template ideas, but gives you the power to alter every aspect of your QR code in a variety of ways.
Colors (American spelling) – allows you to modify the QR code colour. You can also blend two colours into the QR code which gives a shaded rainbow effect across it.
Look – this modifies the shape and style of the corners and main section of your QR code. The main section refers to the dots that make up the code.
Logo – uploading a photo here places that uploaded image in the center of your QR code. Large files cannot be uploaded however so you’ll have to save big images as smaller ones (e.g. reduce the size in powerpoint and re-save it as another picture).
Eyes – this feature changes the colour of the inside and outside of the corners on your QR code.
Options – here you can change the background colour of your QR code, it’s shading and the quality of the image (the size). Be wary of altering this too much because if the background colour clashes with the QR code colour then the QR code cannot be read by scanners (e.g. dark purple QR codes on a dark blue background will not work).
You can also pay a yearly fee to get extended features from Unitag including:
1 or more mobile websites
QR Codes management and storing
High resolution exporting
Template management
Batch generation
Editable QR Code content
Tracking & analytics
Intelligent filter (e.g. different languages)
Multi-user accounts
Statistics per campaign
XLS and CSV export for statistics
Definitely explore the higher level plans if you run marketing campaigns that require heavy statistics tracking. Website clickthroughs and tracking on Google Analytics would more than likely track the same statistics, however.
If you’re looking for a simpler QR code creator online you can also try:
Just to give you an idea of what these codes look like and are capable of, here’s one that leads back to the Creative Agency Secrets homepage!
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Creative Agency Secrets Teamhttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgCreative Agency Secrets Team2013-11-15 15:38:002013-11-12 14:51:40How to make a visually attractive QR code
If you’re looking to keep track of multiple social media pages or for a way to track the success of a campaign you’re running you might want to look at DashThis. With DashThis you add in links to your persona around the web (like your Twitter or Facebook account) and then create a “dashboard” of information about them. We recently reviewed DashThis for a client and this is our analysis:
How DashThis works
As an analytics tool DashThis provides in-depth reports on your pages using devices called “DASHBOARDS”. You get acertain number of dashboards per month but can swap them for different periods or social media links, essentially re-using them. Once you have loaded in your page (e.g. Facebook) you can select it when you next create a dashboard. You can customise these dashboards to show the information you want, but you cannot seem to take it further than that and must use what they have built in.
As an example, Facebook pages get stats tracking for things including:
Fan/ like count and increase over your chosen period
Fans added / new likes over your chosen period
Page impressions (views/ reach) over your chosen period
How many impressions were viral over your chosen period
Page interactions (comments, post likes, etc)
Top posts (by various groups e.g. engaged users) over your chosen period
Number of people talking about you over your chosen period
Number of stories about you over your chosen period
etc
Dashboards are versatile and can be used for a variety of statistics. The rolling dashboards are for instant statistics. Periodic reports do just that, report across a set period. Campaign dashboards follow the response your activities have gathered over a given period. This gives DashThis a wider variety of applications outside of just tracking social media page statistics.
Your account
The FREE account ends in just two weeks, which you can extend to a month by sharing DashThis.com otherwise your account will become inactive. From then on you have to pay a monthly fee where you get a number of dashboards starting at 1 dashboard for $19, then 3 for $39, 10 for $99 and so on. This means you can only have a certain number of dashboards active at any one time but you can delete one and recreate it for another page. In that way you could start with 1 dashboard and check a series of reports daily, although this could become time consuming.
Who would DashThis be good for?
DashThis is a comprehensive statistics tracking tool suitable for businesses managing a wide variety of pages, particularly social media pages. In some cases pages have their own tracking systems (such as Facebook on company pages) so if a business has a limited number of pages to track, having them all in one place won’t do them much good.
The picture above shows the multitude of pages DashThis supports, including a new way to view Google Analytics.
If you’re a company overwhelmed by statistics tracking on multiple pages you’ll want to give DashThis a trial run. If you already have your analytics figured out it’s best to give this one a miss.
We run a monthly podcast for one of our clients which has become fairly popular in it’s respective industry. This is a relatively new ability we’ve learned and as with everything we do, we’re happy to help others learn to do it as well.
To be clear, when we say webinars or podcasts we mean live audio and video feeds (much like radio if it had view-able PowerPoint slides!) which are broadcast over the internet for everyone to view. We record these broadcasts as we do them and give that recording to viewers afterwards and post them on YouTube or SoundCloud.
Create you own webinar
Very recently we got a tweet from a sports coach wanting to start holding webinars and we answered. We arranged a Skype chat, walked them through the programs and techniques we used and introduced them to other possible solutions we found along our journey of developing a quality podcast. Here’s a summary of our advice.
Our process
We use a combination of the program xSplit and the website UStream:
xSplit – recording a webcam or a computer screen is a simple process today, but controlling that recording is an entirely different thing. The FREE program xSplit provides users with multiple “scenes” which operate like a powerpoint presentation. Each “scene” is like a slide in powerpoint and can be customised with images, live screenshots, webcams and more. It also takes audio directly from your computer and microphone, if one is attached. The program can broadcast to multiple sources and can directly record to your computer as a separate option for making videos. While it is only Windows OS compatible (so no support for Mac computers) it provides a lot of flexibility and control to the user.
UStream – when you are broadcasting you need a destination and a place for that broadcast to be viewed by others. We use our paid account on UStream with ads removed to broadcast our live viewing. UStream gives us a way to communicate with our viewers as well via a text based chat beside the video as it plays.
This set up makes it easy for viewers to watch as we just need to send them the link to our UStream account while we take care of the broadcasting and content. With other solutions you may need to download programs, make accounts or have to send attendees passwords. We have tested some of those solutions and for a wide audience and age range they proved too hard and presented barriers to attendance.
Other solutions you could use
Many of these solutions add a level of difficulty for either us or our viewers to join a webinar that we broadcast. However they may suit your needs better than they suit ours:
Google Hangouts – the Hangouts system created by Google is amazing. It allows you to broadcast your computer screen or your web camera to a live stream (then instant recording) on YouTube. For others to view directly they can watch from YouTube. If you’d like to chat to viewers however they would have to join your Hangout and thus disrupts many of your functions. You would have to mute each attendee if you want to talk and then you could communicate with them via text chat. It works but is cumbersome in it’s design. On the other hand it is a free solution without ads and is simple for basic internet users to learn.
Downloadable webinar technologies – there are meeting simulators that can be used effectively to run webinars such as GoToWebinar or Anymeeting. These solutions are often paid, require you and your attendees to download a program and are designed primarily for corporate use. They will take some training to use (especially for your viewers) but the technology is great. If you’re a businessman looking to run online meetings or training sessions this solution is a great way to go. [only problem with Citrix GoToWebinar solution is the meeting invite does not adjust timezone to the recipient’s calendar]
Now that you’ve got access to the tools, you can start exploring the world of broadcasting and build yourself a webinar! If you’re less technical, or would like to put all of your effort into the quality of the webinar, we’d be happy to take the broadcasting task off your hands. Contact us for more details on these technologies or for a quote on what it would take for us to set up and run your webinar.
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https://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpg00Creative Agency Secrets Teamhttps://creativeagencysecrets.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/CAS_Logo_1line_RGB.jpgCreative Agency Secrets Team2013-10-28 17:00:112022-12-19 11:57:06How to Set up and Host Live Webinars
Interview with TrustRadius founder, Vinay Bhagat
/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Marketing /by Rebecca CaroeVinay Bhagat, TrustRadius Image via CrunchBase
We were lucky to find out about TrustRadius the enterprise software comparison site founded by Vinay Bhagat
Image via CrunchBase
through a search we were doing for clients. As a result, we got in touch with them and secured an interview.
Why did you start TrustRadius?
We’re trying to change the way software is bought and sold. If you’re a consumer who wants to buy a product or service there’s a wealth of information out there. But if you’re trying to buy a piece of technology which could have a huge impact on your career, or business – it’s more challenging; more opaque.
Technology marketers try to control the information flow a customer gets.
Our belief is that through a platform like TrustRadius we can give buyers a more authentic, rapid way to make smarter decisions. It’s not just picking the right product – it’s the right product for your use case.
Every business has unique needs – on TrustRadius you can crowdsource different perspectives about the context around the problem the business is trying to solve. This allows the user to made a more informed choice.
This isn’t trying to provide all the answers. TrustRadius is a layer to get intelligent and get insights, way to avoid mistakes. It’s more than a content layer, it’s a way to allow people to connect with each other. a contextual social network.
What are the issues with other solutions?
The Gartner magic quadrant is not appropriate for everyone.
We have a user who contacted people through the site and did information exchanges to get to the real story behind their tech selection and purchase.
People have tried to do backchannel references for years – it’s hard to get peer input rapidly at scale.
Reviewers have authentication – and we use Linked In – in connect button to verify identities.
What’s your business model?
Today we are not focused on making money – we’re trying to create a trusted at scale network – as a young company we
have to concentrate at this. If we can wedge ourselves between the buyer and seller its a $4trilliion marketplace. We bootstrapped for 1 year and now have raised VC money last June – we maniacally focus on getting to scale through effectively recruiting reviewers, sourcing content and engaging vendors. Read more
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3 ways to improve proposal writing next steps
/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Pitching /by Rebecca CaroeWe advised a client today about how to make 3 improvements to their proposal ending texts. Writing a descriptive of your service or product and pricing it is only part of the new business development process. It is essential that it leads to a next step to keep the discussion going and lead towards a buy/no-buy decision by the prospect.
Three key information points in a proposal
Here is the original ending paragraph they wrote:
By improving the text the reader is given clear expectations about next steps in the discussion process .
We recommended editing the last paragraph to give clarity on the 3 key information points
Although sounding rather presumptuous this text sets clear expectations with regard to timeframes and next steps against which you can update your biz dev pipeline.
What are your favourite closing sentences in a proposal?
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Google = advertising around intent; Facebook = demand generation
/0 Comments/in Lead Generation, Marketing ideas /by Rebecca CaroeI was at a networking event yesterday and the Sales Lady from Facebook New Zealand was presenting. She made this statement
And it started me thinking.
Google – yes I get it – the intent is shown by your search string.
Facebook’s claim is harder to back up.
Why Facebook’s demand gen claim is slack
The sales lady says that because on Facebook brands advertise to drive likes, then it’s demand generation.
I think because it’s hard to get visitors off Facebook and onto your website where you can actually make prospects take actions that lead them into the sales funnel, the effectiveness of this strategy is low.
But there are work-arounds – read this technique which we developed for our clients How Facebook boosted my newsletter subscribers.
Is Facebook still good for brands?
The answer today is yes… but. We have great client brands who are successfully recruiting new readers through their Facebook promotion, advertising and status updates. But without a clear set of tactics to drive those readers off Facebook and onto their website, all this work would be hard to monetise.
For many brands, especially B2B, their audience isn’t on Facebook. So it’s irrelevant to their marketing plans.
Take a look at this FB post and the comments below. We are seeing readers adding in their friends’ names to their comments in order to draw their attention to this bit of content, and that’s bringing in new visitors.
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GoHachi introduces you to new biz dev prospects
/3 Comments/in B2B /by Rebecca CaroeGetting in front of the people you want to sell to is difficult. Hell, we even wrote a how to manual about ways to research and find contact details of people online.
GoHachi threatens to make this history with its network-of-networks approach to business referrals and introductory sales.
I was an early beta tester and I love the idea of joining together all my networks and using whichever works best to connect with prospects.
So when Hachi invited me to test it out again, I jumped at the chance.
Hachi is improved
Take a look at the nice graphics and easy site layout. All good for UX.
I added in my Linked In contacts.
Hachi linked in connections
– but was a bit confused because I thought I’d already done them.
My profile photo isn’t rendering properly (but I know what I look like).
Hachi helps make a connection to a prospect
So I thought I’d try out a couple of new introductions.
I browsed the “surprise me” tab to see who Hachi thought I should connect to.
Then I ran and saved a search for “marketing managers” in Auckland, New Zealand. Came up with someone at Fonterra – a milk marketing and buying company so I thought I’d give it a go.
Hachi offered me 5 possible routes to connect and I selected Jason – who I know from PocketSmith (cute financial planning tool).
Irritatingly, it doesn’t offer me the chance to just click and send. I have to manually type in his email (necessitated going to Linked In which I thought I’d connected).
Hachi requires you to insert email
There’s a nice page where you can keep track of all the introductions you have in progress.
Let’s see what comes back.
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Writing a cold email introduction
/4 Comments/in Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Email /by Rebecca CaroeCopywriting for new business development involves meeting and starting conversations with new people all the time.
Sometimes, you have to write to someone you don’t already know and this is called “a cold” email.
I just received this one – and I think it’s quite good.
There’s only one thing wrong with it.
The link to the article is NOT actually authored by David Duncan – it’s by his boss.
Pity
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Social Media Marketing For Funeral Homes
/0 Comments/in Social Media /by Creative Agency Secrets TeamNo one really likes discussing death and the topics that surround it – so why would they want to even consider it on social media?
That begs the question: how should a Funeral Home use social media, if at all?
Well this depends on a variety of factors – who your market is, what will be successful on social media and on what social media channel you operate in.
Many funeral homes are already exploiting channels such as Facebook to share obituaries and funeral dates. This is of course a useful feature, which should be utilised with social media, but it should not be your only type of content. People will only check your content and follow/like your page if you post content which is interesting and different from your competitors.
Think about where your funeral home is situated
Are you operating in a small town where everybody knows everybody? Then your messages should be more personable and meaningful than a simple announcement. Whether it be a remembrance post (after 1 year) or a death of a previous local, thinking of social media as more than a simple noticeboard is the easiest way to get in the right frame of mind.
Larger funeral homes (which often deal with people they’ve never met before) may find it appropriate to share famous deaths from around the world and share alternative ways to celebrate a life. This will act as a break from the otherwise seemingly continual stream of obituaries.
What sorts of things work on social media
What works on social media? It’s not like you can post pictures of dead people…
Social media can offer potential customers an opportunity to “view” your facilities. Taking photos of all available areas can show off your home and help guide people to your home. The funeral industry is relatively insensitive to price. This means that once they physically view your premises, they usually commit to doing the funeral service there. Therefore, you all that is needed is to get people to visit your home and if seeing photos of it online helps, then it is definitely worth doing.
Social media can help give ideas for other potential customers. Taking photos of other services and posting other ideas of how to celebrate a loved one’s life is another way of adding varying content to your page.
Which channel are you on?
The Social Media channel you use will determine whether what you post will be successful or not. Twitter encourages short text messages with a link whereas Facebook thrives on videos & photos. Pinterest focuses purely on photos, a useful tool if you want to share photos of your home/grounds or beautiful services (which can be shared with attendees).
Ensuring you use the appropriate content for each channel will prevent your social media efforts being frowned upon.
No related posts.
How to make a visually attractive QR code
/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Creative Agency Secrets TeamQR codes enable website linking from mobile phones. And are a simple way to connect your prospects to your physical marketing materials.
They are butt-ugly.
Who wants to ruin a nice design with a pixellated image plonked down in the corner of the page?
We’ve found easy ways to improve the look of QR.
Unitag QR Code Generator Review
Unitag Live is a website that lets you create and customise QR codes in a huge variety of ways. More free online QR code generators have limited customisation but Unitag lets you add your logo into the code, change the corner images and alter the colours.
Unitag Live Features
The first step in the QR code creation process is picking the website your QR code will link users to. You can send them to a location using the GPS on their scanner or tell their smartphone to instantly call a number. You can even have the QR code call in a business card for the user to look at.
Once you’ve directed users to the right content you can start customising the look of your QR code. Unitag has several predefined template ideas, but gives you the power to alter every aspect of your QR code in a variety of ways.
You can also pay a yearly fee to get extended features from Unitag including:
Definitely explore the higher level plans if you run marketing campaigns that require heavy statistics tracking. Website clickthroughs and tracking on Google Analytics would more than likely track the same statistics, however.
If you’re looking for a simpler QR code creator online you can also try:
Just to give you an idea of what these codes look like and are capable of, here’s one that leads back to the Creative Agency Secrets homepage!
No related posts.
User Review of DashThis.com
/1 Comment/in Data, Marketing /by Creative Agency Secrets TeamIf you’re looking to keep track of multiple social media pages or for a way to track the success of a campaign you’re running you might want to look at DashThis. With DashThis you add in links to your persona around the web (like your Twitter or Facebook account) and then create a “dashboard” of information about them. We recently reviewed DashThis for a client and this is our analysis:
How DashThis works
As an analytics tool DashThis provides in-depth reports on your pages using devices called “DASHBOARDS”. You get acertain number of dashboards per month but can swap them for different periods or social media links, essentially re-using them. Once you have loaded in your page (e.g. Facebook) you can select it when you next create a dashboard. You can customise these dashboards to show the information you want, but you cannot seem to take it further than that and must use what they have built in.
As an example, Facebook pages get stats tracking for things including:
Dashboards are versatile and can be used for a variety of statistics. The rolling dashboards are for instant statistics. Periodic reports do just that, report across a set period. Campaign dashboards follow the response your activities have gathered over a given period. This gives DashThis a wider variety of applications outside of just tracking social media page statistics.
Your account
The FREE account ends in just two weeks, which you can extend to a month by sharing DashThis.com otherwise your account will become inactive. From then on you have to pay a monthly fee where you get a number of dashboards starting at 1 dashboard for $19, then 3 for $39, 10 for $99 and so on. This means you can only have a certain number of dashboards active at any one time but you can delete one and recreate it for another page. In that way you could start with 1 dashboard and check a series of reports daily, although this could become time consuming.
Who would DashThis be good for?
DashThis is a comprehensive statistics tracking tool suitable for businesses managing a wide variety of pages, particularly social media pages. In some cases pages have their own tracking systems (such as Facebook on company pages) so if a business has a limited number of pages to track, having them all in one place won’t do them much good.
The picture above shows the multitude of pages DashThis supports, including a new way to view Google Analytics.
If you’re a company overwhelmed by statistics tracking on multiple pages you’ll want to give DashThis a trial run. If you already have your analytics figured out it’s best to give this one a miss.
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How to Set up and Host Live Webinars
/2 Comments/in Advertising, Branding, Case Studies, Conferences / Exhibitions, Content Marketing, Digital media, Marketing, Marketing ideas /by Creative Agency Secrets TeamWe run a monthly podcast for one of our clients which has become fairly popular in it’s respective industry. This is a relatively new ability we’ve learned and as with everything we do, we’re happy to help others learn to do it as well.
To be clear, when we say webinars or podcasts we mean live audio and video feeds (much like radio if it had view-able PowerPoint slides!) which are broadcast over the internet for everyone to view. We record these broadcasts as we do them and give that recording to viewers afterwards and post them on YouTube or SoundCloud.
Create you own webinar
Very recently we got a tweet from a sports coach wanting to start holding webinars and we answered. We arranged a Skype chat, walked them through the programs and techniques we used and introduced them to other possible solutions we found along our journey of developing a quality podcast. Here’s a summary of our advice.
Our process
We use a combination of the program xSplit and the website UStream:
xSplit – recording a webcam or a computer screen is a simple process today, but controlling that recording is an entirely different thing. The FREE program xSplit provides users with multiple “scenes” which operate like a powerpoint presentation. Each “scene” is like a slide in powerpoint and can be customised with images, live screenshots, webcams and more. It also takes audio directly from your computer and microphone, if one is attached. The program can broadcast to multiple sources and can directly record to your computer as a separate option for making videos. While it is only Windows OS compatible (so no support for Mac computers) it provides a lot of flexibility and control to the user.
UStream – when you are broadcasting you need a destination and a place for that broadcast to be viewed by others. We use our paid account on UStream with ads removed to broadcast our live viewing. UStream gives us a way to communicate with our viewers as well via a text based chat beside the video as it plays.
This set up makes it easy for viewers to watch as we just need to send them the link to our UStream account while we take care of the broadcasting and content. With other solutions you may need to download programs, make accounts or have to send attendees passwords. We have tested some of those solutions and for a wide audience and age range they proved too hard and presented barriers to attendance.
Other solutions you could use
Many of these solutions add a level of difficulty for either us or our viewers to join a webinar that we broadcast. However they may suit your needs better than they suit ours:
Google Hangouts – the Hangouts system created by Google is amazing. It allows you to broadcast your computer screen or your web camera to a live stream (then instant recording) on YouTube. For others to view directly they can watch from YouTube. If you’d like to chat to viewers however they would have to join your Hangout and thus disrupts many of your functions. You would have to mute each attendee if you want to talk and then you could communicate with them via text chat. It works but is cumbersome in it’s design. On the other hand it is a free solution without ads and is simple for basic internet users to learn.
Downloadable webinar technologies – there are meeting simulators that can be used effectively to run webinars such as GoToWebinar or Anymeeting. These solutions are often paid, require you and your attendees to download a program and are designed primarily for corporate use. They will take some training to use (especially for your viewers) but the technology is great. If you’re a businessman looking to run online meetings or training sessions this solution is a great way to go. [only problem with Citrix GoToWebinar solution is the meeting invite does not adjust timezone to the recipient’s calendar]
Now that you’ve got access to the tools, you can start exploring the world of broadcasting and build yourself a webinar! If you’re less technical, or would like to put all of your effort into the quality of the webinar, we’d be happy to take the broadcasting task off your hands. Contact us for more details on these technologies or for a quote on what it would take for us to set up and run your webinar.
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