Buy low, sell high marketing

“Buy low, sell high” applies just as well to market and mind share as it does to stocks.  Astute marketers recognize that the current weakness in economic activity can be turned into an opportunity for growth.

In fact, a recent global survey of chief executives conducted by McKinsey & Company found that 20% of organizations plan to increase their marketing budgets over the next year.  Now, what do these firms know that the 45% planning to reduce budgets don’t?  Simply that advertising investments during a recession can pay off handsomely.

Cutting Out Negative URL Potential

NBC Universal, parent company of the newly-rebranded SyFy Network, realized there might be hecklers that didn’t approve of the station’s new focus or look.  The executives bought SyFySucks.com to combat this, leaving Internet trolls and detractors one less avenue to damage the company’s reputation or marketing campaign.

This was a smart move for the company, especially since they knew a majority of their viewers were avid Internet users. If fans were unhappy about something, they would most likely find an avenue on the Web to address it. Some places like NoSyFy.com got through, but the damage was minimized.

Dell makes $3 million from Twitter

For those businesses that don’t think there’s money to make via social media, think again! Check out this Wall Street Journal blog about how Dell has surpassed the $3 million mark using Twitter to promote product sales and discounts.

Dell seems to have broken through the glass ceiling of social media, successfully turning it into a business tool that directly drove profit for the computer maker.

Tweeting for Business

Tweetdeck offers a nice search function that some entrepreneurs (hello #Bradford Shrimp!) are using to find business leads on Twitter. How? Type in a search phrase like “WordPress help” and find everyone who’s talking about your topic. Then follow them and offer interesting content/tips they can use.

Run a restaurant? Try searching for the phrase “happy hour,” or if you’re a grocery store chain, “coupons” or “groceries.” It may take a couple tries to get the phrase or keyword that works for you, but a little research could yield a new customer/client you weren’t reaching yesterday.

If you’re not in the business of directly selling something, you can use the search function on Tweetdeck to network within your industry.

Using URL Shortener Bit.ly for Marketing Efforts

Twitter has done a great job of making Internet users write more concisely with its 140 character rule. It helps that URL shortening services let us share links that may be too long in their original state.

TinyURL and Bit.ly are great ways to condense a link into a small amount of characters for tweeting and retweeting purposes.

The advantage to using Bit.ly is how it doubles as a marketing tool  for departments and companies investing their time and money in Internet marketing and social media.