Well, it’s that time of year again! Time to make those declarations of wild-eyed optimism and outright fantasy known as New Year’s Resolutions. Unfortunately, on average, most New Year’s resolutions made in earnest in January are all but forgotten by March. Why? Well, life has a way of presenting us with a series of “crisis/emergencies” that distract us, test our willpower, and challenge our priorities. Do you even remember what your resolutions for 2011 were?

At Advanced Marketing Strategies we say “Forget Resolutions. Make a Plan.” For the past several months we’ve been hard at work developing comprehensive 2012 strategic marketing plans for all of our clients. These plans have well-defined budgets, and will serve as the blueprints for everything that happens in 2012 – from media buying and research to social marketing, creative and more. It’s all there, in black and white! Sure, there will be changes as new opportunities present themselves in 2012. But we will constantly come back to these plans to guide our clients to their next level of success this year.

There are a myriad of benefits for having this kind of strategic marketing plan for your business. You’ll save money because the plan will help you avoid impulse buying decisions that generate no return. You’ll save time because the plan will keep you from wasting time on disjointed, overlapping marketing activities with no clear goal. You’ll also have a guide to help you determine which new opportunities you encounter throughout the year are worth pursuing. Before you make any marketing decision, you can ask yourself – how does this fit into the plan for 2012?

One of our newest clients recently said to us, “I’m tired of flying by the seat of my pants, this year I want a plan!” Now, that’s our kind of client! What about you … are you making a plan this year? Or is it another “seat of the pants” year?

Why not give us a call! It’s never too late to make a great plan!

Basically since the founding of GPS we have a whole new world open! Location-Based Services (LBS) are popping up like rabbits in the spring! In health, indoor object search, entertainment, work, personal life, etc. LBS include services to identify a location of a person or object, such as discovering the nearest banking cash machine or the whereabouts of a friend or employee. LBS include parcel tracking and vehicle tracking services. LBS can include mobile commerce when taking the form of coupons or advertising directed at customers based on their current location. They include personalized weather services and even location-based games. Advanced Marketing Strategies is closely following what that means in terms of targeting customers and how to do it in the most palatable way!

More and more information about us is put out for those that want to grab it. We are lucky here in the U.S. – we have much more stringent rules on who can get this information and how they can be communicated with. With the passing of the Can Spam Act in 2005, it became illegal in the United States to send any message to the end user without the end user specifically opting-in.
Huh – I still get text messages all the time – when did I opt in? Sometimes you may not even know the implications of opting into something. There is so much fine print you may not know just how much information you are opening up.

But if we think we are giving up OUR privacy here in the U.S. – just look to Japan to see what is truly possible! They are on the cutting edge of LBS. The Japanese based company, DOCOMO, is leading the way with this new technology. They have developed new smart phone-based systems that can track your every move and even speak directly to you according to what you are doing at the time. For example you are driving past the local Starbucks and you get a message: “Martin – you have a friend in the area. Would you like to know more?” You respond “ Yes” and you are invited to Starbucks to host a meeting there with an old friend. They give you a map and a coupon for a cup of coffee for two. You get to Starbucks and a friend is sitting there that you have not seen in 6 years! Weird! Well, not in Japan – this type of targeting has been around for a while.

But that’s not all. New technology is emerging that will talk to you in “the still sacred space” of your car! Technology is being developed that would let your car actually talk and interact with you. Here’s the scoop. You get an offer for a huge discount on your new Toyota if you opt in to a program where you give a bunch of personal information about you and your family. You now have opted in to letting advertisers target your location and push messaging to you. For example – You are driving past a McDonald’s and your car radio starts playing Happy Birthday (it knows your son’s birthday is today). It then actually mentions his name in the end of the song! And then offers a free McDonald’s birthday meal as you drive by the Golden Arches! Sound like science fiction? Nope – just the wave of the future! The real question is who will actually be the first to get this technology mainstream? Will it be Google, Apple, the auto industry or companies like OnStar? At Advanced Marketing Strategies, we will be watching this new growth and calculating how our clients can best utilize it to target their best customers in new and exciting ways! Look at us as the surf board for the wave of the future!

Google, once an innovator, is looking more and more like an imitator these days. Instead of coming up with new ideas, they continue their rollout of “me too” online services – Google Music and Google+ to name a few. Their latest entry is a daily deal service called Google Offers. After unsuccessfully attempting to buy out daily deal pioneer Groupon for the astronomical sum of $6 Billion Dollars in December of 2010, Google has decided to get in the game on their own. Unfortunately for Google, they are a little late to this jam packed deal-of-the-day party. Just how crowded is the field? Well, besides Groupon there’s LivingSocial, Bloomspot, Bing Deals, TheDailySave…oh and about 695 more. Yes, there are an estimated 700 daily deal sites!

What makes Google Offers different than their competitors? Well, according to the Google Offers Beta page, the big difference is personalization. When you sign up for Google Offers, you tell Google what types of offers you want to see in your in-box, and what parts of town you hang out in – you even get to double check this info to make sure it’s accurate. While this seems like a no-brainer, it’s amazing how many online offers I get that are not targeted to my interests or geography. Unfortunately for Google, this feature can be easily copied by their competitors. Another advantage Google has, is that if you use Google search, and have a Gmail account, Google has a lot of data about you already. Deep inside knowledge about your online habits, what ads you click on, what kind of online coupons you’re already buying.  What’s intriguing about Google Offers is that it may create some unique opportunities for merchants and marketers alike – highly targeted Google Offers using data from Google Adsense.

But the question remains, will Google get behind their new service and put enough muscle and money into it to make it a success—or let it wither on the vine like so many of their other recent projects.

Like it or not Facebook is charging forward with a gaggle of new designs, technology and partnerships galore!

The first new little gem (or what some would call an unneeded bad idea) is the new ticker timeline. This feature is located in the upper right of the users news feed. It only appears if you have room in your browser. You can manually turn this on if it doesn’t appear. Facebook says it’s trying to unclutter the news feed. After using it all week – I see what they where trying to do – have the smaller, not so important feeds go into the ticker only – and the important content gets spotlighted on the main news feed. But the new ticker, in my opinion, actually clutters the page, forcing you to have to look one more place for your information. I do like the new picture format in the main news feed – with one large picture and two smaller ones highlighted on the side. Nice look. The uproar has been big to the new change, but it’s not gonna change – so get used to it folks! The biggest opportunity lies for marketers. They now have the opportunity (and much harder job) of getting their content in the main news feed and highlighted. BUT, they need to provide interesting, informative content that user want to consume. Otherwise they will be relegated to the side ticker!

But that’s not all! Facebook also rolled out the Timeline interface that essentially allows you to post your entire life in chunks on a timeline type format. I have to say – being the stalker that I am – I am intrigued. This new feature is actually letting people show off their own personal brand – Them!!! And once again, smart marketers will be able to take advantage of that and create content people will want to include in their Timeline. It doesn’t get any better than that for a marketer – personal testimonials about your product! Highlighted for the world to see.

Facebook is also offering Open Graph applications. Some cutting edge marketers are taking advantage of the new Facebook by creating custom apps that allow them to not just target people who liked a page – but anyone that interacted with your post! They then have the opportunity to turn the collected data into Sponsored Stories. You see these stories posted from your friends interacting with brands. The trick – the user must choose to interact and post – but this gives the post OH so much more weight. Your friend is actually promoting this product. Word of mouth is an advertisers best friend!

So Facebook users – get used to the changes! Marketers put on your strategy caps and learn all you can! And Brand Managers – if your agency is not on top of all the changes going on… maybe you need a new “Face” yourself!

Ever want to tell someone about a super cool web page and point out things on the page, take a picture of something you see on the web page and make comments to Facebook, or maybe like me you are working on a webpage and want to proof it and give instructions for revisions. Awesome Screenshot is a handy little browser plug-in that lets you not only take a screenshot of your webpage – but let’s you decide which portion you want to capture OR lets you take a picture of the ENTIRE page – including everything under the “fold” out of view. Once you have captured your page the way you like it – you have very simple editing tools to help you annotate the page. Make circles and squares around things, point to things, type instructions or messages on the page, change colors of annotations as well – no instructions needed. A kindergartener could figure this one out! Plus you can save the finished product and email where needed or post directly to Facebook. And this plug in resides right in your browser toolbar for easy access. See something you want to post to Facebook? Click the button, decide how you want to capture, annotate and post. So simple! We truly are in the “Instant Gratification” age!