Ethnic Marketing and Prepaid Promotional Phone Cards

Years ago you used to see big companies like Coke, Mercedes and CitiBank using promotional phone cards as part of their promotional item mix but in recent years, phone cards have been less attractive to the mass market with cell phones making domestic long distance practically free.

You will get no argument from me on staying away from phone cards as promotional items to the mass market but I think companies should seriously consider phone cards as promotional items in an ethnic marketing campaign.

Lets say you are Goya and are trying to think of a marketing strategy to build brand loyalty. Why not give a 15 or 20 minute promotional phone card to your customers as a promotion. Make the card so it gives 15 to 20 minutes to all Latin American countries and I guarantee that your customers will eat this promotion up! There are so many hot ethnic communities where this type of promotion would just plain work! Filipino, Polish, Czech, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, Mexicans, Ecuadorians and so many more.

If you are trying to reach one of the above ethnic communities, this will get you so much more mileage than a free sample or a t-shirt. Best of all you can gather customer information from the call records if you like...

It's a marketing strategy that will be gaining popularity and now is the time to help stand out and reward your customers with something they will love.

If you are interested just post a comment or drop me a note and I will help get you pointed in the right direction.

Getting Your Telecom Site Found on the Internet

There are so many players in the Telcom space today that it is becoming increasingly hard to get your small to mid sized company found on the world wide web. Part of my job over the past year has been helping these types of companies overcome the big boys, by making them more visible on the web.

While I can't give away all of my trade secrets to becoming more visible on the web, I thought I would at least share the basics to help get you started:

1) Identify the major trade publications for your industry and see if they have an online web directory and post your link

2) Submit your site to all of the free directories you can find. While not the greatest thing, it will help get you started.

3) Buy a handful of directory listings with the major players like joeant.com, yahoo.com and businesseek.com

4) Find other web sites in a similar industry and ask them for links (you would be supprised what many people will do for nothing in return... yes there still are some good people left in this world).

5) Trade links with others in your industry

6) Create an affiliate program with Link Share where you pay people commission for qualified sales that they bring to your site. This is great because you only pay for sales and not clicks.

7) Buy AdWords on Google and Yahoo... don't go crazy but this is a essential part of any online marketing program. These are pay per click programs so expect to pay a little more than with LinkShare since you are paying for each click on the link and not for sales.

8) Buy a few well placed banners on some major sites like yahoo. This is expensive and you pay by impressions but it can be helpful for branding.

9) Try some shopping sites like shopping.com and yahoo shopping. These are also pay per click programs but unlike the adsense programs they bring you much more targeted visitors and a better CPA.

10) Post your URL in a few subject relevant guesbooks... be careful as this can get you blacklisted by the search engines so keep it to a minimum... no more than 20 or so tops!

11) Try posting on some free online classifieds

12) Ask your friends and family with web sites to give you a link!

You don't have to follow all of these to be successful but doing some will definitely help and remember be patient it can take months for search engines to take notice of your hard work.

Good Luck!

Long Distance Options

While the international phone cards industry has taken a little bit of a hit over the last few years there is good news for consumers! Competition is the reason for this decline and variety is abundant and many great low prices.

Some of the options out there:

Residential home VOIP phone - Most offer unlimited calling local and long distance within the US and Canada for around $20 to $30 a month! Not bad compared with the $50 to $60 you would pay with Verizon

PC based calling (Skype, WebPhone) - What's better than free long distance! The catch here is that the other person needs the same client to take advantage of the free calling but considering the savings it worth trying

Calling Cards - While not as popular as they once were, the rates are still unbeatable and much of the immigrant communities still flock to these for all of their long distance calling.

Traditional Wireline - Verizon/SBC etc... tried and true but still very expensive

Cellular - Long distance in the US is a thing of the past thanks to unlimited calling in the US on many plans. It is truly braking down the barriers

10-10 services - Faded fast because of the complexity and a real knack for ripping you off with big connection fees... still an option but probably the least popular of the group.

Any way you cut it, the options for consumers are great and the prices are coming down and will no doubt continue this way for sometime!

Pick the one that is best for you and enjoy the savings.