[MUSIC] Hello learners. So you've tagged it, you focused on a target market, and you've developed tactics around the core entrepreneurial areas. Now what specific tools are you going to use to put yourself in the midst of traffic, to put yourself in a position where you have those physical connections, and you can strengthen the ties, those relationships? Well, there are any number of tools. Again, we aren't going to be able to give you specifics. But we want to look at the general, more prevalent tools available to you within your marketing strategy. This is a bit wordy, but again, it gives you that sense of how the industry is shifting away from the traditional media-based means of promoting and delivering a message to more social media, more web based. As we look at specific tools, we begin with this idea of tagging in the first place. This is a slight variation of our more detailed definition of entrepreneurial marketing, but it's focusing in on making something remarkable. Making something that puts your product in uncontested market space. Similar to our Keurig machine. In addition to entrepreneurial marketing, looking at the importance as a startup, as an entrepreneur, and being part of a network, not just part of a community, but your networking skills. We're going to talk about the selling process as one of our last lessons in this module. But your ability to build relationships and turn those relationships in to sales, is what generally is referred to in the discipline as being a rainmaker. All entrepreneurs need to be rainmakers. Networking is extremely important. As our anthem of an upcoming lesson says, you always have to be in a position to be closing. Then we have the whole area of social media. The important things with social media, not to get into all of the details, is that your goal in social media is to maximize conversations, not to maximize sales. It generally has to be a vehicle where you're building relationships, you're building communities. If it's all about delivering sales, then you have a e-commerce site. People may still come, but they're coming with the specific purpose of buying something. In terms of building traffic, in terms of building ties and relationships, it has to be a true social interaction where they're getting something out of it, maybe as much out of that interaction as you are. So social media marketing has to be about building conversations. And again, we have the whole gamut of social media outlets at your disposal. Related to that, awe said, social media are platforms in which the individuals already have a personal relationship. Content marketing is where we look at a brand community, or a online community, where typically people don't have prior relationships with one another. But they do have an affinity, they do have an allegiance to some product, to some call, to some activity. To what extent can you provide content? To what extent can you give them a reason for coming back to your site? Specifically as it relates to that activity, that cause? A very popular site is Madden University. This is a site where young people, or anyone for that matter, can go to be trained to heighten their skills in playing Madden. So the sole purpose is to provide all these secrets, to be a platform where people can exchange tricks of the trade, if you will, as well as the developers giving insights into next year's changes. It's also a place where players can provide suggestion to the developers to enhance the game. Now in the midst of that, that's the reason people go. That's what keeps them coming back. That's what makes them enjoy this site. They built a mall that they also have opportunities for people to buy special design, custom joysticks, or other products related to the playing of Madden. But that's a good example of a content marketing strategy. A couple of more tools. One is guerrilla marketing. This is an innovative way to deliver a message with limited resources. To deliver a powerful message with very little resources. You intercept individuals, you kind of literally get in their face at a time or place where they don't expect it, with a jolting message, okay? Something that really makes them focus, pay attention. Similar to the car scratch flier that we share with you in an earlier lesson. Consider this, we're just a little bit more money than the basic advertising billboard on a bus or a subway. This watch company created these handles for commuters. Very innovative, not extremely expensive, but certainly draws attention to the product and to the message. And very repetitive. Anyone that's actually commuting is seeing this twice a day, if not more, for several days in a row on the subways and buses that they're using to commute. This is an example of guerrilla marketing. Literally getting in their face, and in this case wrapped around their wrist, in a way that they wouldn't expect. Delivering a message that they weren't really expecting. And then finally, we have vending. Don't underestimate the power of vending. Especially, I would guess most of your launch activities are ones in which it's easiest for you to vend. To buy a booth at a church or school bazaar. Or maybe your community is having a festival. Maybe you have a farmers market, or a open market, where you can buy booth space. Maybe you have a friend that happens to have a vacant lot. Or the edge of a parking lot that's adjacent to a heavily trafficked intersection. But the opportunity to basically set up a stand, set up a booth, and engage the marketplace with the opportunity you're trying to sell or market your product. Going back to the music industry. Most of the dominant hip-hop artists, or rhythm and blues artists, started out vending. This was a little bit more upscale than most of them. Most of them simply had their CDs or their tracks in a box in the trunk of their car. And as they went to parks, as they went to arenas, as they went to concerts, etcetera, simply pull it out the box and started vending on site, spreading their product, generating some revenue stream. The idea of bootstrapping from one of our earlier lessons. Spreading the word, building their network, until they were at the point, like Beyonce, that they have the social network where they can release music and sell upwards of a half million or so within three or four days. So as we look at these various tools, how do we pick which one? Well, we need to focus on those three areas. Which ones are going to expose you to the greatest amount of traffic for your particular target market? It may be an actual store, an existing channel. It may be, again, a vending opportunity. This is more formal, a kiosk in an open market. As I said, you might simply have a booth at a community festival. But there's also virtual sites. To what extent doing a Google ad allow you to show up when people do searches on certain terms, on certain issues? So what's going to expose you to the greatest amount of traffic containing the greatest percentage of your target market? What's going to allow you, in addition to traffic, what's going to allow you to, in essence, come in contact when members of that traffic? Either your message being in front of them, becoming physical touch, if you are bending literally to be able to reach out and say hey, why don't you taste this? Why don't you try this? Which of those tools allow you to exercise, within your resources, techniques that allow you to touch the impact of your audience? [SOUND]
