Who is going to use mobile payments?

The age group between 20 and 44 are lion share, and with more than 4% growth in the mobile payments industry every year plastic’s days are now numbered.

Where are people most likely to embrace mobile payments?

1. Groceries at the supermarket
2. Clothes at a retailer
3. Phone bill at a wireless store
4. Coffee at a coffee shop
5. Sofa at a furniture store
6. Taxi ride

So.. If you are in one of the 6 markets above and are looking for new customers in the 20-44 age group segment, beginning to use mobile payments before the rest of the retailers out there would be a good idea.

How can I get this implemented?

There are several ways.. On the high-side ($$$) you can build a mobile app for your business and have them use that to pay you. On the cheap ($) you can leverage the PayPal mobile merchant solution. You can call us for details of these solutions and all of them in-between. (478) 227-4366

Now.. on to the #chartporn…

via: The Digital Wallet and the Future of Payments [INFOGRAPHIC]

Mike McDermott, President - Bash Foo

Miami County Chambers of Commerce Small Business Council

Business Advancement Seminar Series

Registration:

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No, not those annoying people who post their Farmville updates to your wall, a friend farmer is someone who seeks to be friends with all of your friends for purposes of either to market their products or services to you, or they are simply curious and want to snoop into your collection of friends.  Is the correct approach to then remove them from your friend list?

Friend to All Manner of Beast

Friends and friendships are vital to social networking site such as Facebook, without them you simply would not be linked up, ‘in the know’ nor have anything to read and distract you from getting anything worthwhile done during the day. The Art of managing your social networks includes that beguiling spell where you simply “friend” every person who has ever occupied space and time with you. You meet someone at the farmers market for the first time, and you rush home to add them to your social network (or even worse, do it right in front of them on your mobile device). If you are a confident and grounded person you won’t have any use for that additional random person as you have already fostered years of real-life investment in your friendships. The message that the social neophyte sends to their new electronic acquaintance, ”It doesn’t take much for someone to be my friend”.

Fair-Weather Friends

This lowered barrier of entry to your social circle also allows for the creation of masses of “fair-weather” friends who only want something when They are in need, and are rarely happy unless you are unhappy. Also in this category of social media friend can be found the “Desperate Business Owner” who doesn’t have enough work to keep themselves busy during the day, so they surf for friends to farm from their acquaintanceship with others. Their Primary Goal is not to be your friend or to build an existing relationship (from nothing), but to have you visit their retail store or restaurant and buy their wares. They NEED you to be their friend so they can stay in business. They are rarely happy unless you are felt to be left wanting without them. “Your day won’t be complete without buying my stuff”

Beware

You should beware the next time you accept a friend request from a random person via Facebook. Their intentions may not be the best for you. On top of them trying to shill wares to you, they may want to pry into your box of friends and hit them up as well. This usually precipitates a private message from your friend that says “Hey… Do you know this guy, he looks creepy but Facebook said he was your friend”. My personal guidance on the subject, if you find a friend farmer on Facebook, delete and block them and let them know why you are killing the social media connection or they will continue to try to friend you. Their friend following will be large, it will swell due to the number of people who don’t preen their social media nests, or those who have very low self-esteem and are desperate for a crackpot in their life who will immediately trounce on their harvested friendships with wild abandon.

Getting called into an RFP (Request For Proposal) with very little information or requirements gathered is a commonplace enough event for technologists. An RFP is the chance for the service provider to deliver a summary of what sort of services they intend to deliver to the customer. Rarely will an RFP include pricing, as in this initial stage the service provider has not collected the Customer Requirements.

Apparently for the client in question it was not RFP time, it was RFQ (Request For Quote) time. They wanted to know soup to nuts what services would be provided for them and what it would cost plus or minus 10%. In order to perform such a task a service provider must have gathered together the Customer Requirements. Some people call them “Customer Spec” short for specification. Essentially the service provider has to have a good understanding of what the client wants in order to ensure that all of their basic requirements are met, and that most of their “would like to have’s” are at least addressed by the proposed solution.

This particular “emergency” RFQ was initiated by the customer as they wanted to know by 1:15PM how much “it all” would cost. The customer prefaced the conversation that he recently fired the last service provider for not delivering what he needed. The customer delivered a few printouts of screens in the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) application that was built by the prior service provider. The customer stated that it was “all wrong” and that he wanted things done differently. When asked for test data he said that he did not have any data or transactional maps that would guide a service provider in building the application, just a handful of utterly useless screenshots.

Dear Mr. Customer;

I so wanted to take part in your urgency today. You see I thrive on action, and it sounds to me like you needed some.

I understand that you are behind schedule and without any tool in place to do work. Your line of business is not a commonplace one, so it demands a level of customization that many would not understand. Your business size is not large enough for an enterprise solution, but it is big enough to demand some level of automation. You have been recently burnt by a prior service provider who did not understand what you needed, and only delivered a fraction of your un-documented requirements.

Please, please, please. Mr. Customer, gather thee requirements three.

1. Stated Budget. Before beginning any deep dive into what a customer wants, it is imperative to understand what size budget they are willing to allocate to a project. If in the clients mind they want to spend $2,500 on a solution, the service provider must not take the time and energy to deliver a $50,000 proposal. It serves no one to hold back on rough numbers. ERP solutions (for an example) often run in the 6 figure range so a customer expecting to receive one for a few grand can quickly be educated on what is commercially available and developmentally  feasible.
2. Key Functional Requirements. The customer should be able to tell you the top 10 things that they want their website/application/service to do and what work it should perform. A good service provider can then help them to force rank those deliverables and put rough estimates on each one.
3. Tell us how you plan to grow. Scalability is the ability of a provided technology to grow with the business. Businesses may have in mind to NEVER go above ‘X’ number of employees, or another stated level of size. Such notions should be taken into account by a service provider when planning for website/application/services. The life-cycle of the services provided should not be shorter than the median growth estimates of any line of business. As an example, you would not sell a two-seat vehicle to a young couple with plans in the next year to have a child. (Well unless you are one of those really BAD car salesman/service providers) Estimating your usage and growth are important for a service provider to factor into their equations.

There.. That wasn’t so bad was it? Providing a few key requirements can help to streamline the RFP/RFQ process as well as help to shield your business from financial or operational harm. As a service provider, we are here to make your business work. We are only happy doing what we do when YOUR business is more effective. Ability… CHECK, Urgency… CHECK, Requirements… Well, now you get the picture.

The smell of chlorine, the patter of wet feet on white tile was unmistakable. In the pool at the Fairfield YMCA I remember going through a whole process on getting into the pool. Toes in first to test the temperature and always stay near the side of the pool.. Just in case you got into trouble. Use the ladder on the shallow end of the pool for maximum safety. Never, EVER jump in!

It is with the same timidity that many approach web advertising and social media marketing, but why is that??

Thinking back 50 years ago, you could ask a junior attorney whether or not he wanted to advertise in the Yellow Pages and he would say “YES!”.. “And I want the biggest advertisement that money can buy!” he would conclude. There was no timidity there. No process to swim. The young attorney just knew that advertising in the Yellow Pages would make him successful, just as every attorney he ever came in contact with.

So what causes timidity when confronted with the world of web advertising and social media marketing?

• Do business people truly still think that the Internet is a ‘yet to be tested’ advertising venue?
• Are they waiting for the “next best thing”?
• Is it because it is ‘technology’, and they ‘don’t understand technology’ that they steer clear?
• Do they fail to see their competitors taking advantage of web advertising?

I have rarely heard anyone respond to the affirmative on any of those counts yet today 98% of the businesses I meet with have failed to setup their local business profile in Google. It takes 10 minutes, anyone can do it, but many fail to even take those baby steps to growing a better, more recognizable business and brand.

This takes me to what I call the “Process to Swim”. It is something that I did not come up with on my own. These are the very steps that many of my clients go through to achieve their online success.

• Provide a detailed analysis of the “problem”. Send your consultant packing if he/she urges immediate action.
• Plan an online campaign just as you would a traditional one. (insider tip: sometimes I still rely on story boards to deliver the message)
• Define the boundaries. What are you willing to spend, willing to offer, willing to share?
• Work as hard as you can to engage the masses. Just like any direct mail, catalog drop or an email blitz. Know your customers, and engage them.
• Analyze results, rinse and repeat. From repetition, business leaders learn to TRUST, with this TRUST, advertising efforts receive REAL VALUE.

Anyone trying to pass along an e-marketing campaign that does not include REAL VALUE is missing the boat. The true “stump hole” out there is the fear that one will only receive INTRINSIC VALUE for participating in online advertising and marketing. Strategists must move beyond selling poorly supported advertising agendas that only exist to support a weak value proposition. If your online campaign does not instill a strong TRUST from leaders, and the follow-through RELIANCE from the sales organization, you have not learned how to swim.

Swimming lessons are available on a first-come.. first-serve basis.

Call me: Mike McDermott at 937-573-8535

OK, I thought I would never do it.. In fact I have taught those in my marketing classes that you shouldn’t have to separate your business and personal persona’s online. This evening I created a business Twitter account @bashfoo separate from my personal twitter account @Delta40 (which has over 3,500 followers)

After some recent conversations with peers and some detailed analysis of online conversations (particularly ones on Twitter) I have identified a couple of reasons why separating your personal and business personas may be a good thing. (and they are not the reasons you would think)

1. Number and Frequency of Messages. A funny thing occurs for people with 100 followers that does not occur for those that have many thousands. If you are a frequent tweeter, you may add updates to a followers queue faster than they are willing to accept them. While I usually tweet 20-25 messages a day, they cover a myriad of themes and topics. Even if the topics are varied, all of my low count followers get inundated with updates from … well mainly from me. Separating personal from business messaging theoretically cuts my number and frequency in half. A smart choice.

2. High Expectations. Those that expect to hear my funny quips and business conversation have also had to endure my political rants, family goofing-around and local sports and entertainment news. While these conversations are all 100% genuine, they do not serve to baseline expectations for an audience. And unlike #1, this is not an issue about “Too Much Information”, this is all about “Staying on Target”.

3. Conversational Depth. I have always been hesitant to dip too deeply into complex marketing topics, business strategies or client profiling with my wide array of personal followers. Really, they don’t care and could very easily start tuning me out and then blocking my stream.

Therefore, learning from these shortcomings, I have decided to crack open another Twitter account to converse on business topics and retain my primary account to handle all my “eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich” updates. Fans of @Delta40 will continue to receive my frequent and fun conversations. Fans of my company, Bash Foo Social Media will get treated to a much deeper conversation to help progress their business or their “social life”.

If this iTunes tip helped you out, subscribe to my podcast by clicking on this very Apple graphic or to this link: itpc://feeds.feedburner.com/GetSocialRadio