Local businesses use blogs and podcasts
One of Lisa Scribner’s customers wanted baked beans. After work he rushed to Super Suppers, a meal-assembly business in Columbia, only to learn that Lisa, the owner, had sold the last of the beans earlier in the day. The next week, disappointed again by missing out on the beans, he said to Scribner, “Why can’t you put this on your Web site so I can check to see when you have them?”
At the time, her franchise’s site was also the corporate chain’s site—slick but inelastic to the needs of local business. Scribner sought an easy way to announce daily specials and warn clients when stock on a meal was running low.
Paula Elias, who, with her husband, Ken Leija, co-owns the local advertising agency Axiom, advised Scribner to start a blog on her own Web site. It would serve two purposes, Elias reasoned: to act as a marketing tool and to let Scribner carry on a conversation with her customers.
Many local businesses—including 62 members of Columbia Locally Owned Retail and Services (COLORS)—already have developed Web sites, but new tools are emerging as extensions of this technology. Forms of new media, including blogs, podcasts and video, are altering and accelerating the delivery of marketing messages.
Blogs, also known as Web logs, are informal entries on a site, much like a diary. Podcasts are audio or video files that can be downloaded from the Internet onto computers, iPods and other portable devices. Television networks such as CNN and ESPN already offer free subscriptions for podcasts of shows.
In Columbia, The True/False Film Festival has used e-mail lists and offered online ticket purchasing in past years. For 2007, organizers are planning to post movie trailers on its Web site and create message boards for people to discuss the March festival.
“We have a Web-savvy audience,” said David Wilson, True/False founder. “It’ll be a way for them to communicate with us.”
The Missouri Farmers Association (MFA) includes on its Health Track Beef Alliance site a trading post and a blog that features discussions about breeding, vaccine research and senate bills.
Lizzie West, a musician, offers videos, blogs and podcasts on her Web site. In a weekly podcast called “The Holy Road Medicine Show,” West and her guests give readings, perform songs and share travel tales.
The technology used by these groups indicates a shift in the way marketers connect with an audience, said Elias. “We are moving from a corporate-driven model to an individually driven one,” she said. “We get to decide when and where we access our news and entertainment. Now the river of distribution flows both ways.”
The new media encourage consumers to pursue interesting products, Elias added. In the past, consumers had a more passive relationship with advertising, with commercials washing over television viewers or e-mail clogging inboxes.
Scribner echoed that sentiment.
“If there’s something that’s important to me, I’ll go look for it,” she said. “That’s why a blog is so attractive to me. People don’t have to be inundated with mail.”
Other examples of companies using new media come from the automotive industry, Elias said. Rather than trying to send people to its Web site, Jeep promoted its new Compass on My Space and Facebook. Toyota developed a series of “mobisodes,” movie shorts for cell phones, about a group of carpoolers.
“Still, the principle behind any good advertising is the same whether you are using traditional or new media,” Elias said. “Marketing will always boil down to story telling. The best storytellers are the ones who will get their message heard.”
Scribner has found an easily navigable route to new media. She can make updates to her blog without needing to learn complicated computer language and can even alert customers to changes to the menu by the hour.
“I can say, ‘The girls are in the back making King Ranch Chicken. If anyone wants to reserve them, let me know now.’”
The system fits her philosophy. As a message painted on the far wall of Super Suppers reads, “Delicious doesn’t have to be difficult!”