In the final fiscal quarter of 2018, Facebook ad revenue was over sixteen billion dollars. But did they earn this money ethically? Despite years of activist pleas, Facebook has done little to address racism and other issues on its platform. In 2019 Facebook said that they would update algorithms to promote avenues for leaving hate groups. Have you ever seen these resources? Time and again, Facebook proves they won’t make meaningful change on their own. So now corporations are pulling advertising for July. Welcome to the Facebook ad boycott.

Reasons To Boycott

 

The Facebook ad boycott started in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the resulting protests. Activists condemned Facebook’s treatment of demonstrations, some even claiming the company directly incited violence, following this major civil rights organizations banded together to take action. But this is not the first time people have spoken directly to Facebook about this issue. For years Facebook pledged to crack down on hate speech. But the results are utterly abysmal.

It becomes clear that the leadership of Facebook places a higher value on daily active users than our community’s health and safety. Allowing the spread of hate speech encourages violence, destruction, and Manny extremely harmful philosophies. The goal of the stop hate for-profit campaign is to force Facebook into action through economic means.

Simply put, boycotting leverages our capitalist system. Facebook wants to be viewed as a wholesome community. But make no mistake, they are a company, and they care about their bottom line. The more companies that boycott the ads, the more significant the campaign’s impact will be. And many corporations have already signed up. So who exactly is stepping up to Facebook?

Who Is Boycotting

 

Stop hate for profit is a coalition of groups like Color Of Change, NAACP, ADL, Sleeping Giants, Free Press, and Common Sense Media, and more. The original idea for the boycott comes from these civil rights groups. Since its inception, many companies have joined on and pledged to stop Facebook advertising. And some of the companies are major brand names.

The boycotters include companies like Ben and Jerry’s, North Face, REI, magnolia pictures, and many more.  Some advertising agencies are even advising clients to boycott. 360i, a significant name in advertising, counseled its clients to join the boycott and pull advertising. 360i represents massive brands like 7-eleven and OREO. But Facebook has been hesitant to make real change when called upon by lawmakers and the community it serves. So what makes this push for change any different?

Why Ad Boycotts

 

Remember Facebook’s fourth-quarter earnings we mentioned earlier? Well, it’s only a small slice of their pie. In 2019 Statista reported that Facebook’s ad revenue was 69.7 billion dollars. In the past, we’ve talked about pay per click ads. These are hugely important for many businesses, but none more than Facebook. Statista also reported that in 2019 over 98 percent of Facebook’s total profits were from these ads. Without the money generated from advertising, Facebook is not economically viable.

This sole reliance on advertising is precisely why an ad boycott is a powerful tool. Mainly this would be like placing an embargo on a country. If Facebook insists on profiting from hate speech, then they will not get any profits. Because of the reliance on these companies, Facebook is vulnerable to anything that disrupts their ad system. By doing precisely that, corporations and civil rights groups hope to shift the core values which Facebook is operating under.

Facebook Ad Boycott

 

Yet again, we see a call for Facebook to put an end to their promotion of hate speech. In the middle of a wave of civil rights protests, activist groups are calling on Facebook to stop this kind of content. A coalition of civil rights groups like the NAACP and Sleeping Giants have called on advertisers to pull their July ads. Many significant companies and marketing firms are behind the movement and have committed to removing their ads.

Facebook has had a long time to change on their own, but they haven’t. It is time to use the power of money to fight for the people. By pulling Facebook advertisements, companies are trying to force action from the social media giant. In the past, efforts to make Facebook address hate speech has failed. But this campaign might be the most significant threat to the bottom line Facebook has faced.

We are happy to announce we will be participating in the stop hate for profit boycott. Kallen media is excited to pull our Facebook ads for July, and we encourage you to join the stop hate for profit movement too. Pledge to remove Facebook advertising for July and use your platform as a company to help your community. If you need help developing an alternative communications plan, please contact Kallen media on our website.

The technology we need to do business is changing faster than ever. And having the wrong tech, or not enough of the right stuff can spell disaster. Because of the overhead of tech, investing yourself can be costly and hard to scale. Today we’re going to talk about a group that tackles your tech problems head-on. Welcome to the Kallen media ITRA company spotlight!

The ITRA or international technology rental association is a collective of AV and IT production and rental companies. There are over 100 members of the ITRA operating in 15 countries. When a company joins the ITRA, they get access to a network of industry professionals and knowledge.

ITRA Membership Benefits

 

One of the best benefits of ITRA is the members’ ability to ping other members for assistance. What do you do if you have an event that needs more computers than you have? You rely on your fellow ITRA members! This allows for the rapid expansion of your inventory of you need to scale for a project. Similarly, membership helps your companies reach.

Expanding your companies geographic presence can be difficult. Sometimes you have to refuse work because you don’t have inventory or employees where you need them. You don’t have to lose these clients or jobs. ITRA members work together to provide service wherever they required. You’ll also see more work at home. When fellow members need help in your city, you’ll see brand new revenue opportunities.

Who do you talk to when you hit a wall in your business? Often problems you are facing are common industry obstacles. With over one hundred members, one of the companies in ITRA has faced the same challenge. Communication is key to success, and the ITRA massively expands your connections to insider industry knowledge.

Do you have a product you’re having a hard time connecting to the niche target? The ITRA can expand your client base by helping other members with these product offerings. And this street goes both ways; if you need a product you don’t offer a fellow member can assist! So how do you join the ITRA?

Becoming an ITRA Member

 

Are you an AV or IT company and want to be an ITRA member? Joining the network is easy and fast. After applying on the website, applications are typically processed within 48 hours. A basic membership costs 595 dollars. A basic membership lasts for one year but is not automatically billed. Hundreds of companies such as Hartford Technology rentals and Aria Technology solutions are already using their memberships.

Once your application is processed, you’ll officially join the ranks of a worldwide network of AV and IT professionals. One of the key benefits is the ability to send out pings for support or information to the ITRA network. This allows you to access all of the benefits of working with other members. Tech trends are continually changing. But joining the ITRA can help you keep your business on top. We’ve had the pleasure of seeing the ITRA benefit its members first hand.

Kallen Media and the ITRA

 

So why are we writing an ITRA company spotlight? Kallen media has had the pleasure of helping the ITRA with its web presence for many years. Over the time we’ve worked together, we’ve gotten to watch the ITRA connect and benefit countless people. One area we think the ITRA is incredibly successful is scaling. Scaling a company with high product overhead is exceptionally costly. Working with the ITRA allows a company to scale at pace but with reduced cost. When a company teams with the ITRA, they climb and build a robust network of connections.

Another area Kallen Media worked closely with the international technology rental association is blogging. In 2015 we started writing industry-related blogs and were still working closely with them today! Kallen media tailors blogs for ITRA’s niche.  Kallen media is happy to work with the ITRA because we believe in the service they provide.

ITRA Community Spotlight

 

The ITRA is a collective of IT and AV industry professionals. Basic membership to the ITRA lasts one year. Once you are a member of the ITRA, you can access your full AV and IT community. ITRA members can both provide and seek support from this network of companies.

The ITRA can help you expand your business network, create new clients, and scale existing projects. By teaming up its members, the ITRA helps satisfy inventory needs, offerings, and knowledge! When you join this association, you can link up with over 100 companies in fifteen countries.

The Kallen media has been working with the ITRA to develop their web presence for a long time. We are happy to do an ITRA company spotlight because of the work they do to connect AV and IT providers. If you are interested in joining the ITRA, you can apply via their website. Are you interested in learning about other businesses we work with? Check out our last company spotlight!

Are you looking to expand your web presence? If you want help with blogging, webpage development, or any digital marketing projects, contact Kallen media.

Viral marketing is quickly becoming the industry standard for new products. The peer to peer promotion of viral campaigns is unmatched. But you can’t just produce random content and hope for a win. Viral marketing campaigns should be planned out like any other marketing effort.

Planning your viral promotions can seem complicated. Do you want to have your product featured in videos? Do you need more peer-to-peer conversations? A plan is key to the success of an ad campaign. The first decision to make is if you want to have a passive or active campaign.

Targeting Groups or Individuals

 

For a campaign strategy, it’s essential to decide a market segment you want to target. Your two main choices are abundant, diverse groups, or smaller, more targeted groups of individuals. When targeting groups, expect to produce high amounts of content. So to target these groups often, viral campaigns turn to automation. Automation used to be a costly process, but modern advances make it easier than ever!

If a campaign is focused on individuals, you need less content. However, this content is harder to generate. Often the best way to market to individuals is peer-to-peer contacts. This kind of marketing campaign creates lots of responses but takes time to do right.

Passive Viral Marketing Campaigns

 

Passive viral marketing is the idea that consistent touchpoints over the internet will provide results. One example of passive marketing is email flyers. These automated email systems send out constant promotions to anyone from their target markets. Most automated marketing is passive online marketing.

 

 

Because this marketing strategy relies on sheer numbers, it provides a great mix of potential new consumers. Passive campaigns are valuable to inform people about a new product and generate users. Passive marketing is a numbers game. Because of this, more touchpoints means more users! But there are some risks to passive marketing.

One big drawback to these campaigns is their ability to generate interest. While the sheer numbers make them successful, most automated ads don’t translate to sales. Because of this, these ads also create less loyal customers who may only buy a product once and never return. You also have to be careful with automated ads. If someone receives too many ads, they might become annoyed. This outcome is the opposite of what a company wants its ads to do!

Active Viral Marketing Campaigns

 

Active campaigns focus on tailoring content specifically for individual niches. Because they focus on smaller groups, these ads can be much more detailed and focused. An excellent example of active viral marketing is to share buttons. Many websites will add a feature to share products via social media. So with the addition of a simple button, people create peer-to-peer reviews for your product! All active ads are focused on individuals.

The main issue for active campaigns is their narrow reach. The tailored approach means your audience is smaller than average. This niche means that you’ll tap into smaller market segments and slower adoption of the product. This can make it harder to get your campaign noticed. This being said, these active campaigns are still incredibly good at creating a brand.

 

 

Active ads create more loyal customers by serving a specific niche. Although there are fewer users, they are more likely to stick with the product. Active ads can also increase user engagement. By creating a community, dynamic ads can grow themselves.

Examples of Viral Marketing

 

Most viral marketing campaigns are classic examples of marketing to your niche. The main difference is these ads are all designed to create a peer to peer engagement. One perfect example of active campaigns is social events. Deals for people who promote social experiences improve the overall response of customers. Similarly, personal invitations produce more interactions. Only personalizing flyers creates extra interest. Both of these strategies create a community aspect for a product that helps build loyalty.

Unlike active campaigns, passive ads rely on numbers. Examples of these campaigns are marketing tactics that focus on reaching everyone you can. An excellent example of this is automatic product recommendations. Some e-commerce sites will recommend products you might want after purchase. These ads aren’t specific to any consumer but rely on cross-selling tactics to succeed.

 

Viral Marketing Campaigns

 

Viral marketing campaigns require appropriate planning. So a company must decide if it wants to target groups or individuals. When focusing on groups, passive methods work best. For individual campaigns, tailored active viral strategies are effective. Passive tactics get many more hits, while aggressive campaigns are more persuasive. Both approaches are valuable to viral marketing strategies. If you want to learn more about viral marketing, contact Kallen media via our website.

Choosing a sales strategy is a balance of adding risk for potential rewards. Often this area is where a company will choose to take risks to make extra profits. However, the risk isn’t always worth it. What if you want to select sales tactics that you know will work?

There are nearly infinite sales strategies you can use. But some choices are riskier than others. So what does a company do when they need a reliable plan? Well, many companies rely on similar sales tactics when they don’t want the added risk. Today we’re going to talk about four of these reliable sales tactics.

Up-Selling Sales

 

Up-selling is the process of making already profitable transactions more profitable. This can include stuff like upgrades and add-ons. This process boils down to leaving no stone unturned. This process improves value for both consumers and businesses. Often a customer will purchase an improved product, which in turn benefits the seller as well. So what does up-selling look life in the real world?

One example of the Up-sell is fast food upgrades. Fast-food chains will offer customer upgrades to more substantial sizes at a reduced cost. The upgrade means extra profits for a small price. Fast food has seen massive success from utilizing upsetting strategies! Similar to up-selling, cross-selling also capitalizes on existing sales.

Cross-Sell

 

Cross-selling is the process of collecting a database of past customers to market products and services too. Cross-selling can also happen immediately. If a customer makes a purchase and you offer a complimentary one, they might get that too. This process relies on the idea that some goods or services are complimentary. And customers are likely to buy these goods together when presented with the chance.

But how does cross-selling work on the ground? For a cross-selling example, we can look at online retailers. Its common practice in e-commerce to forward catalogs to past customers. The data shows these customers often return to buy other products. Even the corporate giants do this in the form of recommended goods or services mid purchase. Like up-selling cross-selling relies on predicting and adapting to customer needs.

Third-Party Charges

 

Third-party charges are additional payments to a separate party outside of the initial buyer and seller relationship. These charges are often found where a service provider is teaming up with other companies to improve services. Third-party charges can help facilitate previously complicated relationships. This is usually done where some part of the transaction is useful to the third party. One example of this is video streaming.

Often video streaming websites will offer their service for free. Initially, this might seem like a bad idea for profits. But when the third party advertisers step in, the business model is quite profitable. This model involves a third party to facilitate a better service at a lower cost. Including the third party saves both the consumer and the provider money. And they are often providing utility to the third party.

Bundle Offerings

 

Bundle offerings are sales that package goods together to create a more attractive offer. Because the purchase is more significant, the customers see a higher value to purchasing power. When customers feel this increased value, they are incentivized to buy. The bundled products should be complementary goods for this sales tactic to work. Complimentary goods make bundles worth the increased initial price. Some products are only sold in packages. A product that is bundle exclusive is oftentimes only purchased in tandem anyway. Because the product is only sold with its likely counterparts, the company actually saves money. So what are some examples of bundled products?

One classic example of a bundled product is often seen in car sales. Often, additional purchases of A.C. systems and window tint will be sold in a bundle with the car. These products would cost more aftermarket unless purchased from a dealership. This difference means that for most customers, a vehicle with additional bundled goods seems more valuable. To return to the fast-food metaphor, another bundle is kid’s meals. Certain complimentary kid foods are served together in a cost-effective package.

Sales Tactics

Some sales tactics come with more risks than others. But what do you do when you don’t want to add risk? Utilizing a trusted sales tactic can help remove some risk from your business plan. Up-selling is an excellent strategy to make the most out of your product line. If you can modify a product for little cost, up-selling is effective.

Similarly, if you offer multiple complementary goods, you can utilize cross-selling or bundle offerings to promote higher value sales. But what if your value is linked to your customers? Your company can team with a third party to offer a cheaper service.

If you need help deciding which sales strategy is best for your company, Kallen media can help. To get help with sales tactics and even more contact, Kallen media on our website.

Do you want to feel like the work you do matters? Most people crave a job that they feel pride in doing. At work, people often enjoy interacting face to face with customers who use their products regularly. These meetings are called end-user interactions. They occur in business when the person using a product or service interacts with its provider. Now more then ever with record numbers of people working from home, communication can be important. Connection with end-users can be beneficial to employees. But not all companies can interact with customers directly.

 

What do you do if you have limited end-user communication?

So how do businesses who don’t see their end-users operate? What does a business lose when it has less contact with end-users? How can these setbacks be overcome? Well, with a little bit of planning, a company can maintain an end-user relationship with almost no direct contact. But first, you have to decide if that’s right for your business.

End-User Value

 

So what does having regular contact with end-users bring to the table? Direct customer interaction lets a company know how well it’s performing. If customers are talking about how much they love you, great! But if they have some suggestions you might be wise to listen to them. Interacting with customers can make or break a business. This kind of feedback is valuable. With limited end-user communication, companies often have to resort to costly neuromarketing studies to acquire the same information.

 

Besides information, end-users create a sense of fulfillment in a job. Without some of this feedback, it can be hard for some employees to feel the value their job provides. For example, let’s look at restaurants. A recent trend in dining spaces is open concept kitchens. These kitchens are designed to allow chefs to interact more closely with customers. Some restaurants feel like this improves the dining experience by creating interactions with end-users. So how can you generate more end-user interactions?

Pictures of People

 

A straightforward way to create a link between customers and providers is to see their pictures. People have an easier time relating to folks when they can put a face to a name. Because images can humanize a group, they are useful to business with less face to face interactions. When a company creates a front for communications, the difficulty is harder for people to generalize about the companies. Pictures have a similar effect on customers in reverse.

 

 

A lot of companies have seen success by showing real employees in their advertising. From spotlights ads to letting employees design the entire production, showcasing workers has seen real success. This also enables employees to understand the best examples of their work in action. Another tactic for businesses with limited end-user conversation is to spread these kinds of stories.

Internal End-User Stories

 

So we’ve talked about how customers benefit from workers’ success stories, but can workers benefit too? The short answer is yes—however, it’s important to remember to keep the stories focused on successes, not failures. Promoting success stories creates a positive environment that improves workplace morale. One typical example of this is nightly reports where workers mention highlights of their work shifts. This creates a source of positive stories that higher-ups can distribute. When looking for insider stories, and the end-user story should be inspirational to workers but also show the customer positively. But what if these interactions rarely happen?

External End-User Stories

 

Sometimes a Job requires very little interaction with end-users. One example of this would be forest rangers. A lot of times, forest rangers are isolated and can go weeks without contacting a random person in their park. Sometimes the value of this job can be overlooked, and it can be hard to be motivated to protect people if you don’t see them. By sharing success stories of forest rangers, the sense of duty is upheld.

 

Similarly, in any field where interaction is limited, sharing success stories can help motivate workers. If a person can see their peers succeeding, they will be driven to succeed too! This tactic can also improve employee retention.

 

 

The hiring process can be complicated and costly. So if sharing stories of employees succeeding can increase loyalty its a valuable too. If an employer takes the time to make their company feel like a community, everyone will benefit in the long term. This is the significant benefit of spreading end-user stories externally. Because the sample size grows, the employees can see the value of their work as an industry, not just an individual.

 

Limited End-User Communication

 

End-user communications are valuable for a companies success. These resources help improve the business as well as create loyalty and motivation for employees. So when a business can’t create these interactions, it has the chance to lose some of these benefits. By showing the value end-users receive to employees, a company can address these issues. By replacing this relationship with photos and stories, a company can preserve end-user communication.

 

If you have more questions about fostering the end-user relationship, Kallen media is here to help. To contact us with your end-user questions, please visit our website.