Social Media Success! Bastian Salon Celebrates 4 Years with GANZ Media!

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In 2012 we met the owner of Bastian Salon at our tradeshow booth put on by CBS Radio at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center. Like many new retail business owners, they were faced with the challenge of creating an online marketing program.

GANZ Media analyzed their top local competitors to determine a baseline for how other hair salons promoted themselves though both the use of their websites, and social media. We determined which were the most effective social media channels to use, the frequency and type of content used for online promotions, and the most popular and relevant topics being discussed. The competitors revealed not only what areas should be focused on, but showed what was missing, thus giving Bastian Salon an opportunity to differentiate and stand out.

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Using their logo, we setup Social Media Profiles on Yelp, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Then GANZ Media started a monthly social media management campaign. In the beginning, the owner of Bastian Salon reviewed the content we created every 2 weeks (in advance of it posting). Items sent out over social media included: monthly promos & specials, industry news, positive Yelp reviews, and haircuts of happy customers. We came to their grand opening and took photos and a series of YouTube videos. After a trial period, they allowed us to send out content without a bi-monthly review process.

Within 3 months Bastian Salon ranked #1 in the Search Engines for Hair Salons in Artesia. This was even before they had launched their website! At that time the owner provided the following quote:

“I’ve been receiving plenty of congratulatory messages about the salon. I’m enjoying the new “flavor” of our FB posts and tweets. Thanks GANZ Media! Social Media Marketing Plan & Monthly Management & SEO.”

To date, Bastian Salon enjoys 189 Yelp reviews (4.5 out of 5 stars). With thousands of viewers sent to their site every month through social media, and dozens of new clients every month, Bastian Salon is happy with the results. As you can see from their recent Yelp Review for GANZ Media:

“Our small business started out with Aaron from day one. That was nearly 4 years ago. We expanded into a 60% larger space and from 2 employees to 8. Aaron and Ganz Media have been with us all along. Thank you, Aaron for putting the word out there about us!  I really appreciated having your help during our early days!”

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ABOUT BASTIAN SALON

Specialties: Aveda Products, Aveda Color, Yuko Hair Straightening, Anti-Frizz by Yuko

History: Established in 2012.

Bastian Salon originally opened with the idea of being a space where similar-minded artists could create and share.  It wasn’t enough just to “do hair.”  We became a group that wanted to continue learning – to be more and to give more.

Business Owner: Bastian Villarama

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I can hardly believe it’s been 20 years since I started in the hair industry. I’m a 4th gen stylist which includes my mom, sister and grandmother. It really is a craft I am proud to be a part of and my passion for it continues to grow. I worked in our family salon on Guam for two-thirds of my career and trained at the Sassoon Academy in Santa Monica, CA many times over the years. In 2010, I trained at the Sassoon Academy London for 6 months in cutting and coloring. What an experience! Still, I wanted more, I was blessed to be able to join the Sassoon creative team as a stylist. My time with Sassoon has taken me to Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and Miami. Now, I’m back in the Cerritos area starting a new adventure. I can’t wait to see what the future holds!

GANZ Media Launches Press Campaign for World’s first Automotive Dynamic Cabin Pressure Checker

CASE STUDY: Validyne Engineering

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Press Campaign for World’s first Automotive Dynamic Cabin Pressure Checker & More!

We began working with Validyne in January 2013. A World Leader in Variable Reluctance Technology (VRT) and Pressure Sensors since 1968, Validyne contracted with GANZ Media to complete the following:

  • Created 2 Line cards (digital flyers) as a tool for their sales force
  • Developed Social Media Plan & Competitive Analysis to evaluate online trends
  • Conducted Monthly Social Media Marketing & Blog postings
  • Performed SEO Optimized Social Media profiles to boost rankings in the search engines
  • Created a Series of Press Releases including a Nationwide announcement introducing the World’s first Automotive Dynamic Cabin Pressure Checker for the Transportation Industry.

These efforts produced the following:

  • Provided Inbound Marketing Strategies for Website resulting in 120 new leads per month vs. 10 previously
  • Developed Email Campaigns with average 15% open rates and 3.2% click through rates, increased online followers and Social Media reach
  • Press Releases resulted in over half a dozen Magazines & Publications

GANZ Media: Social Media & Small Businesses with Mother Love on LA Talk Radio!

What do business owners need to know about Social Media?

What do businesses need to know about Social Media?

Aaron Ganz, CEO of GANZ Media joined Mother Love to give the lowdown on the importance of social media for small to medium sized businesses.

Small to Medium Sized Businesses – Don’t understand the new technologies, and GANZ Media helps them overcome their fears. We both educate and manage companies Social Media platforms on a monthly basis.

Small Business Owners are focusing on running and managing a business, and don’t have the time or energy to learn the new online tools. It can take up to 5 years get the education to fully learn how to develop a Social Media strategy, and use the new tools to their full potential.

GANZ Media analyzes competitors to build off the backs of giants, learn our clients industry, and becomes the new voice of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc, to engage existing and potential customers in a two-way conversation.

You can listen to this broadcast to learn what you need to know about Social Media for your business, and how to think about this new technology as a way to extend reach, grow your customer base, and as a customer service tool:

GANZ Media broadcast on LA Talk Radio with Mother Love – click here.

Also click on the link below to see a picture of GANZ Media featured on the Mother Love Show via Instagram!

 

4 Benefits of a Yelp Ad – GANZ Media Can Help!

GANZ Media is now an authorized Yelp reseller!

GANZ Media - Authorized Yelp Reseller!

GANZ Media:  Authorized Yelp Reseller!

 

Want to Advertise on Yelp? We can get you lower rates and higher impressions.

Contact us today to find out how!

 

4 Benefits of a Yelp Ad for your Business Include:

 

1. More Visibility on Yelp search result pages

Advertising on Yelp gives a business the opportunity to show up above the regular search results for category/city combinations.

2. Visibility on other business profile pages

Your Yelp ad may show up on a competitor’s business profile at the top of the page.

3. No competitor ads on your profile page

Competitors’ ads will not show up on the profile page of your company. You are essentially paying to keep competitors from advertising on your profile page. But note that Yelp still does show other competitors on the page under a “People Who Viewed This Also Viewed” heading.

4. Additional content options

Yelp advertisers can also add extra content to their business profiles, such as a photo slideshow and a video.

You can check out our page on Yelp:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/ganz-media-los-angeles-2

Email Campaigns bring Holiday Joy! GANZ Media can help!!

Email Campaigns bring Holiday Joy! GANZ Media can help!!

Marketing Tips: Importance of a Clever Subject line & High Open Rates

 

Great subject lines = higher email open rates!

 

Are you considering creating an email campaign? Are you prepared for it to fail? How much does the success of your business depend on your online promotions?  Open rates in the past five years have decreased industry wide due to image blocking, increased use of smart phones and list fatigue. At GANZ Media email campaigns for our clients consistently exceed industry averages, resulting in thousand of dollars in additional revenue.

Would you hire a plumber to do your root canal?  Your best bet it to have a professional marketer help you with your online marketing.

Times are tough, and money is tight.  Some companies think they are being frugal by having an untrained staffer run their email campaigns instead of using Marketing professionals. See this related article: 11 Reasons a 23-Year-Old Shouldn’t Run Your Social Media.

Without training and experience, finding the right subject line is next to impossible. Even with the best content, If your subject line doesn’t resonate well with your target audience, all your hard work is going into the spam box. Cutting corners for your online marketing can prove disastrous.

When creating a subject line for an email campaign here are a few items to consider:

1) Demographics: Who is your target market? Generalize subject lines appealing to everyone will result in large numbers of unsubscribes and low open rates.

 2) Cleverness: Is your subject line too serious? Does it immediately compel one to read your email?  Humor can be very useful to capture attention in the current short attention span era.

3) Pose a question: Asking a question that helps solve problems your prospects/customers may be experiencing.

4) Limit the use of discounts: Everyone wants a deal, but used too frequently, this can alienate your subscribers. Be a thought leader and have the majority of your emails focus on content/articles they might like to read.

GANZ Media would like to thank all our email list subscribers for reading our holiday email. You can view our email by clicking on this link: eepurl.com/s-b6f

Our most recent email campaign had an open rate of 16.3%, 3% higher than the industry average!

Click here to contact GANZ Media today to see how we can help you with email campaigns and all your online needs!

 

Ten Blog Writing Tips Every Business Should Know!

Ten Blog Writing Tips Every Business Should Know!

 

Ten Blog Writing Tips Every Business Should Know!

Ten Blog Writing Tips Every Business Should Know!

Blogs have become a primary source of information for a great number of people – and are surpassing the older forms of information gathering. People want to learn something – fast. They are seeking information on a person, an activity, a business, a recreational activity, technology or other area of interest. Here are some tips that can help you write a blog that gets read and shared with others:

  1. Keep it short. Don’t be long-winded. 250 words is adequate.
  2. Ensure you have done your research and that your facts are 100% correct.
  3. Keep it simple, straightforward and to the point. Avoid long, convoluted sentences.
  4. Take the right “tone” – whether friendly, informative, or aggressive, that best reflects your brand or the image you want to project. Avoid “salesy” blogs – keep it informational.
  5. Add an image. People want to see a graphic representation.
  6. Write it but don’t post it – take a least ½ an hour, re-read it and make changes, and then post it.
  7. Choose a subject people are interested in, or present your company’s strong points in an appealing way – you want to engage your reader.
  8. Use keywords sparingly. Keywords and phrases are important for ranking, but when overdone, it is a disaster. Your content must make sense and be interesting to the reader.
  9. Introduce your key point early in your blog post. If it is hidden within the text, the reader may never get to it. Once you lose them, they are usually gone for good.
  10. Include a link to your website so that the reader can find you, your company or the activity you are discussing.

Use these tips if you want your blog to be read and shared. If you aren’t a writer, hire a professional. It is affordable, and ANY content posted on the web should be 100% unique, professional and engaging.

Contact GANZ Media to see how we can help you with all your online content needs.

USC Social Media Seminar for Small Businesses by GANZ Media – June 7th

GANZ Media to give seminar on Social Media for Small Businesses @ USC June 7th!

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USC sponsors Los Angeles Chapter of Entrepreneurs Professionals

 

Entrepreneurs Professionals

Los Angeles Chapter

 

Who: Sponsored by Entrepreneurs Professionals (Los Angeles Chapter)

When:   Thursday, June 7, 2012, 6:00 pm

Where:  USC Campus Taper Rm. 116

Exposition Blvd and S. Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles, CA

Discussion by GANZ Media: What is Social Media and how can it help your Small Business?

To attend, please sign-up at the Meetup.com page: click here.

At our Information Meeting, we will tell you what our group is all about, so you can see how belonging to a “Business Development” group can not only be a whole lot of fun, it can also make your business more than successful. We don’t settle for the notion of just “surviving” in this current economy, we are set on the notion of thriving in this economy. We invite you to meet the group and see if Entrepreneurs Professionals would be a good addition to your business growth strategy.

 

What Social Media is and why your company will fail without it.

What is Social Media?

GANZ Media Social Media Global Chart

This is Social Media!

 

The Internet is a transformative force, especially for businesses. When the World Wide Web first arrived in the late 1990s, companies were unsure if they should have a website, how to properly use them, and what content to put online. Today nearly every business of any size understands that a website is a necessity, and most can’t conceive of how they would conduct business without one. Like those early days of the web, Social Media is in its infancy. There are few standards, and less general understanding for how Social Media can and should be used to increase business. And yet, like the Web, Social Media has the ability to transform your business, increasing your sales and building trust and rapport with your clients and customers.

 

1. Social Media (Function):

Imagine what the future of Apple computers would have been if Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, after building their first computer in their garage, had simply announced over a bullhorn to their neighborhood that the future of personal computing had arrived. Would anyone have taken them seriously? They had no credibility, no track record. In fact, they were just one of thousands of computer kit builders in the United States at that time.

Instead, Apple launched their product and generated a significant following through years of organic growth through tradeshows, developer forums, outdoor concerts, and more recently selling a technology lifestyle though brilliant ads appearing on buildings, billboards, and breathtaking storefronts in malls and shopping centers across the country.

If you have ever watched the hit TV show ‘Madmen’, you can see how advertising changed the face of history in the 1960s. New promotional techniques combined with improved channels of communication altered American culture forever and expanded the possibilities for businesses to reach their customers. Branding was born.

Social Media is a new content distribution channel that is being used by businesses to increase their exposure and improve customer relations. Think of Social Media as the new digital Public Relations with a twist. Could you imagine Apple without a public relations department, or Microsoft without a marketing division? While the method of communicating with clients and customers has shifted over time from Radio, to Television, then to the World Wide Web, and now Social Media, each new technology allows for greater reach and greater participation from customers without replacing what came before. Social Media can significantly lower your marketing budget and can dramatically improve your overall marketing reach. Social Media marketing costs are far lower than traditional print and a fraction of TV and radio ads. Given the amount of competition for customers’ attention and dollars, companies cannot simply rely on the traditional methods of marketing and expect to survive. Having access to cutting edge tools can help you stand out in your industry and perhaps even lead the pack.

Advertising, Public Relations, and Marketing were not simply fads companies adopted and then later discarded. They were new ways of thinking about getting the word out on the street about a product or service, using the available technologies, and developing new processes along the way.

Social Media is one of the newest technology-based sets of tools available for businesses. The world-wide popularity of Social Media sites has shifted a “Tweet” from a message used by teens to tell each other what they had for lunch, or who their favorite singer is, to a media powerhouse companies use to announce IPO’s, announce mergers, release new products, and connect with their users, customers, clients, and stakeholders.

 

2. Social Media (Structure):

In the classroom there is not just one type of student. You have visual learners, auditory learners, and those that are a mixture of the two. In Social Media, one size does not fit all. There are multiple platforms, each appealing to a different online segment: Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter), Video (YouTube), Pictures (Pinterest, Instagram, Flickr,) Music (Pandora, Spotify), Location-Based Services (Yelp, Foursquare), Collaboration (Google Docs), and Interest-Based Networks (LinkedIn, Plaxo, Xing). Each of these channels appeals to different types of potential customers, and many appeal to more than one. It is important to understand each choice, how the consumers are using it, and how to best use these tools to communicate, build relationships, and sell.

3. Social Media (Unique Properties):

Websites in the past have been little more than online brochures, providing static content, and requiring much effort to drive traffic to them. Social Media is different in that it allows companies to engage in a two-way dialog with customers and vendors, and encourages participation, allowing businesses to pose questions, launch polls, and create surveys to get instant feedback from their target markets and buyer personas.

The collective nature of Social Media allows content to reach a larger audience at a quicker rate than ever before. Similar to a fire, where a small spark can turn dry brush into a wildfire, a simple Tweet can incite nations to act (think Tunisia and the Arab Spring); announce world-wide product launches (the Apple iPad); and potentially reach hundreds of millions of viewers (YouTube: KONY 2012 received 100 million views); all while driving traffic to your website/fan page, making your smart phone ring, or filling your email Inbox with hundreds of new potential customers.

4. Social Media (Advantages):

Small companies can now compete at the same level as the major Fortune 500/1000 corporations. Since many Social Media technologies are free and can be automated, the only expense is for expert advice and training. The first step to Social Media success is seeing what your competitors are doing and start looking for trends.

Through Social Media, you can position yourself and your business as a thought leader (an expert in your industry or niche). Instead of sending one way messages that interrupt the attention of your customers (and thus compete with every other interruption), Social Media allows you to engage your customers in a two way communication where they seek you out, and you provide the information they want when and how they want it, which increases the potential impact of your message many times over.

The most important thing to know about Social Media is that your customers want to find something unique or novel. They want new content, special discounts, or hard to find resources that aren’t available in either in your physical retail locations or on your website. If your Social Media strategy takes this into account, you will have mastered the essence of this new technology. Social Media is not just a repeat of your other messages. It is like the difference between radio and television—show, don’t tell.

5. Social Media (Drawbacks):

A poorly crafted Social Media campaign can alienate customers, cost you business, and can remain permanently posted on the Internet. Starting a social media program and stopping for month, or even a week, can give the impression of an unmanned ship, and reduce your online credibility. Not having a dedicated Social Media specialist and a crisis response plan means you lack the ability to instantly turn a customer service problem into a solution, leading to a potential public relations problem. A bad Social Media program will cost you credibility.

Conclusion:

The cost of doing nothing is much higher that doing something, even if you get it wrong the first time. Analyze your competition, develop a plan, and go for it! The very existence of your business may depend on how you approach Social Media.

Contact GANZ Media today to create a Social Media plan for your business!