How to sell a ton of Squatty Potty’s:

Step 1: Educate people about something they are doing wrong

Step 2: Provide medical facts

Step 3: Show a low priced product on how you can solve what they are doing wrong. (The word “wrong” is of course a matter of opinion but when you add medical studies and historical evidence the pitch becomes extremely persuasive.)

Check out their convincing educational video and tell me you aren’t convinced:

This reminds me of how the tooth paste become a common household item. They put up billboards saying “lick your teeth” if you feel some grime then you probably need to clean them with some toothpaste.

Phillips, 1942 Commercial:

The next step for SquattyPotty would be to mention that you will smell less making women more attracted to you.

Update (this is awesome, the folks over at SquattyPotty said this):

@risk thanks for the link-love! OH, BTW it does make you smell better, More complete elimination = less gas. Less gas = happy girlfriend.

— Squatty Potty® (@squattypotty) February 20, 2014

What are some other good examples of Educational Marketing?

This is how Russia is promoting the 2014 Sochi Olympics!

Discovered on Reddit and just had to post this awesomeness!

This is a guest post by John Boudreau, COO and Co-Founder of Astonish, a digital marketing company for Insurance companies.

“Trouble Keeping up with Social”

Let’s be honest: Many small businesses have enough trouble keeping up with the fierce foursome (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+) but Pinterest and Instagram? At times, it may be a struggle to keep up with the social media world! However, it is critical to have a presence on the major platform. Instead of shying away from the up and coming image sharing platforms, it is time to learn about useful strategies that can be incorporated into your business. Here are a few effective marketing tactics that you can implement.

An Image Speaks Volumes

Memes, infographics, e-cards… they all make their rounds around the web! One of the many reasons why they are so popular is the simple fact that they are based on images. In fact, articles with images receive 94% more total views than those without. Jumping on the image-marketing bandwagon may not only allow your business to appeal to a whole new market, but may inspire you to create and share your own personal images.

Now that you are onboard with image marketing, let’s take a look at the two most popular social platforms: Instagram and Pinterest.

Instagram-ing Your Way to Marketing Success

“You MUST post that picture on Instagram!” Have you heard this phrase often? It is no secret that Instagram has climbed up the social sharing pyramid quite quickly. In fact, Instagram has over 100 million monthly active users, 40 million photos posted per day, and 1,000 comments per second. As you can see, there is a lot going on! It’s time to join in on and action.

One of the best features of Instagram is the ability to link the app to your Facebook AND Twitter accounts. This makes it easy to share your posts across all three platforms. You can use #hashtags to organize your posts and you may even receive a new follower who has found you through the use of hashtags. What else can you do the make the Instagram experience effective for your clients? Here are three tips:

#1: Share “sneak peaks”. This is a great way to capture company culture. Take photos of employees, new goods and services, office celebrations, big wins, and everything in between. Take your fans inside of your business and show them what makes your company unique. If there is a new product launching, why not make it fun for your fans by taking pictures of “clues” and counting down? There are a number of ways that you can keep clients on their toes while humanizing your business. This is also great for recruiting top talent.

#2: Connect with clients easily. Always answer your followers’ questions/concerns. If you have posted a photo of a new product and there are comments about it, do not hold back! This is the most opportune time to interact and engage with your market. Brand your business as an expert, and a friend.

#3: Reward your followers. Post about company sales, promotions, and even discounts. This is a great way to keep your customers in the know, and possibly allow you to win over a few more.

Changing Your Marketing Strategy, One Pin at a Time

On the other side of the spectrum is Pinterest. Pinterest is a social network that utilizes photo sharing tools. It enables engagement with various audiences through likes, shares, and re-pins. This social platform is on the rise and is one of the fastest growing social media platforms out there. Whether your business decides to post original company photos (for instance, pictures from Instagram) or simply re-pin others, pinning is a great way to connect with clients.

Here are three tips that may help business owners when it comes to building a Pinterest strategy:

#1: Create an infographic. What is important to your clients in your industry? Whether it is saving money or simply hearing tips and tricks, leverage these important points. Create an infographic which is both visually appealing and informative. If you give your clients the answers and information that they want, they are sure to “like” it or possibly “re-pin” to their fans and followers.

#2: Drive traffic back to your website. Have you been taking original photos on Instagram? Perhaps you took our advice in the first point and created an original infographic. Whatever image you choose to post, always include a link back to your website. This is a sure way to receive traffic and you may start to notice the change right away.

#3: Promotion. Create a board specifically meant for saving money. You could name is “Deals and Steals!” and be sure to upload any videos, images or flyers that are promoting upcoming sales and events. This is a quick and easy way for followers to find exactly what they are looking for. This “perk” may also draw clients to follow your brand in the first place.

Start Sharing Images, Today

As you can see, there are a number of tactics that can be implemented to both strengthen and improve your marketing strategy. Being active on the fierce foursome is a start, but it adding both Instagram and Pinterest will take your presence a step further.

John Boudreau, COO and Co-Founder of Astonish, has been in the insurance marketing and technology business for nearly 10 years. He works closely with local insurance agencies across the country to understand what works and what doesn’t in an attempt to increase their share of the digital landscape through online marketing tactics and a robust customer relationship marketing tool. To find customer reviews of Astonish a, visit Astonish’s list of business profile sites. Before Astonish, Boudreau honed his problem-solving abilities while working as an environmental analytical chemist. He also founded Ion Marketing Group, a digital marketing company focused on the real estate industry. An avid musician, John plays the drums, the bass and the guitar.

Everyone is going online these days and not even thinking about having a physical presence. It is cheaper, faster, and something you can start in a day!

Your Product in Human Hands

The hard part is still getting people to discover your product. Distribution is king! You can do online marketing … but what if you just need to get your product in the hands of people to really appreciate the awesomeness of it? This strategy worked for Apple (which is why they opened physical stores 12 years ago in 2001!).

 The first Apple Store at Tysons Corner Center – Opening Day in 2001

I was walking past my favorite coffee shop in San Francisco and happen to come across the Gorilly Marketing truck. Think Taco Truck meets Online Stores. This is perfect for everyone that doesn’t have Apple like Cash to start opening stores in malls (i.e. everyone).

The Gorilly guys converted their truck into a showroom for Dodo Case – this way potential customers can check out their awesome iPad cases. Customers can now try out a product before ordering it online. The business also benefits by building brand awareness in high traffic areas.

I took a quick interview with one of the founders on my iPhone, I was super awkward and you may cringe.

Dodo Case Showroom Inside Truck

Showroom on Wheels (Rain or Shine)

Future of Showrooms?

So, do you think this the future of commerce, a bunch of trucks driving around pimping online products? I’d really like to get your opinion on this. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email.

PS Their name is super clever because it is a play on Guerilla Marketing

This guest post is by Elizabeth Yin, CEO and co-founder of LaunchBit and NewsletterDirectory.co, an ad network for high quality email newsletters.

Email marketing is one of those activities you’re told to do, but you never really know how to do it effectively to increase engagement and/or sales for your company. Here are 4 tips to increase engagement in your email newsletter:

1) Assess exactly what you need to improve

There are so many different email stats you could be improving — your open rate, your click-through-rate, etc… Trying to improve all of them is too difficult and time consuming. Get a free assessment of your 2012 email communications with the Email Newsletter Report Card to see specifically where and how to improve. Check out what a full sample report card looks like here.

2) Optimize your layout for engagement

Email layout is one of the most ignored aspects of email marketing. Marketers spend far too much time thinking about creative and split testing content. Yet, just like on the web, you need a layout that makes it easy for your subscribers to click on your call to action.

In general, you should use:

• CSS buttons so that people who do not display images can see them
• 1 column to reduce clutter and confusion
• Use tables and inline styles (email styling is old-school)

Consider more best practices for mobile email if you have 30%+ mobile subscribers.

3) Reduce the number of links

My friend sends an email newsletter to 250k+ subscribers. I looked at her latest newsletter, and she had 40 links in her latest send!

“Why so many?” I asked.
“Because I want people to click and come back to my site!” she said.

It turns out that having more links doesn’t actually help with your click-through-rate. Having more links merely distributes the clicks. This brings me to my 4th tip.

4) Move your call-to-action up

When we looked at publishers who have < 5 links, it turns out the most clicked links are links #1 and #2. You can get a greater concentration of clicks on your key call to action by moving it to the second or first link.

For example, in this newsletter, you should expect the bulk of the clicks to be on these two links.

This is a guest blog post by Peter Meinertzhagen, an SEO Consultant based in Oxfordshire, UK. Having come into the industry from teaching he’s passionate about training, development, and dispelling the myth that SEO has to be complicated.

The browser is the window to the world of the web which those of us working in online marketing use as a our primary and most used tool – and as an SEO, a tool through which you can gather vast amounts of the data and information you need to do your job. I will be covering my four most used FireFox and Chrome extensions and detailing just what makes them so darn useful!

1. SEOmoz MozBar

The MozBar is provided by SEOmoz and has useful functionality whether or not you’re a paid subscriber. As a free user, it can give you a toolbar which shows you the domain authority, mozRank and page authority of the page you are on, but it will only tell you the amount of links and linking root domains if you’re a subscriber and signed in. At the click of a button it can take you straight to Open Site Explorer to look more deeply at the backlink profile (and link/social metrics). You also get a nice SERP (search engine result pages) overlay giving you the same information, underneath each result in the SERP. It is available for both Chrome and Firefox.

2. Redirect Path

Redirect Path is a Chrome extension from Ayima which is an HTTP Header and Redirect checker. It’s incredibly useful for discovering all of the redirects that happen on a page. The image above shows the Redirect Path when visiting gettingmoreawesome.com – a 301 redirect occurs taking us to the www version of the URL.

3. Google Ordered Lists

Google Ordered Lists is a very simple extension which puts a number to a result in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page) so when you’re looking up the ranking of a page for a specific query you don’t have to waste your time counting! SEOQuake below provides this functionality also, but I don’t always have SEOQuake enabled (there’s only such information a man can handle) so this unobtrusive plugin finds a use. It is available for both Chrome and Firefox.

4. SEOQuake

SEOQuake is like a more extreme version of the MozBar, giving huge amounts of information on a web page (both in a toolbar and in the SERP’s). The screenshot shows a small selection of the information it can provide: from PageRank, to domain age, to the number of indexed pages, SeoQuake gives you an immediate peek at really valuable information which you’d have had to fetch from a number of different sources.

These are four that I use most often – what others would you recommend? Let me know in the comments below.