My Marathon Days - The First Finish Line By Nick Ferris

Yes, we did walk a little. I can’t remember when it started but both my dad and I got to a point around mile 16 or so when we had to stop. But we came up with a plan - walk a mile, run a mile. And funnily enough that seemed to work. It gave us enough time to catch our breath, have a banana and energy drink and then run a little more. Other related articles in this series include NICK FERRIS INCORPORATING TECHNOLOGY IN MARKETING

Each time we stopped though and started, our legs felt so much heavier and by the end it was like lifting weights with every step but we got to 26 miles. We weren’t last and we knew we were going to make it. Once you knew you were going to finish it was an incredible feeling. We even managed a sprint in the last few hundred metres. Once you enter the Central Park section and know the finish line is around the corner your brain goes into a state of extreme exhilaration. Especially with the crowds cheering you on, there was nothing that was going to stop you at that point. Don’t forget to also check out Nick Ferris, Life Time Value - A Dummies Guide.
 
We crossed the finish line together and were both as shocked as each other that we had finished and also raised a lot of money for charities too. We went to a bar on the Upper West Side with hundreds of other racers to join our friends and family. It’s incredible that you would think you would be so thirsty after a marathon, but my body was in such a state of shock it was almost impossible to finish one drink.

The next day Nick Ferris’s legs were like concrete pillars. I hobbled to work and every step was one of agony. I had blisters and it took about 3-4 days before I could walk normally again. But I am so glad I set that insane target for myself. I pushed myself, I didn’t listen to people who said it was impossible and I was crazy and I achieved an incredible goal in just a few weeks. In doing so I also started a marathon bug which I will go into details in further posts. The lesson here, whatever the dream, go for it. You can always surprise even yourself.

Nick Ferris is a global marketer and marathon runner. He has run four marathons in New York, Dublin and London to date and has raised over $10,000 for charities whilst he has hobbled across the finish lines!

Coming to America - Part 3 by Nick Ferris

Nick was about two weeks into his loft living experience in New York, still living on an air mattress and waiting for his belongings to arrive when he received a phone call on Sept 10th. His girlfriend, whom he thought was packing up her own belongings (she was living in his apartment in London) had decided she would not be coming and called him to say so. He was heartbroken. Nick was very much in love at the time (at least he thought he was) and this was a devastating blow. It can be tough going to a new city or new country and it’s even tougher doing it alone. If you like articles by Nick Ferris you can also check out his marketing series including Nick Ferris - Marketing Tips, Phone Calls Aren't Dead Yet.

Nick put on a brave face, went to work that day and made it through somehow. The one good thing about being busy at work is it can distract you from your inner feelings of heartache and loneliness. It’s not until you get back home to your blow up mattress that things really set in. Don’t forget to check out other essays like Nick Ferris, Digital Marketing Beyond the Box.

The next day, Sept 11th Nick Ferris took the train to work as normal. Only this day, he took the wrong train. Uptown and Downtown sounds simple enough but for someone new in the city the platforms can sometimes be confusing and he ended up taking the train the wrong direction to the World Trade Centre. He quickly got off, crossed the platform and went back uptown to the offices on Madison in the 50s.

Nick Ferris had not been at work long when he received an email from my brother about a small plane crashing into the World Trade Centre. This had happened before and he had no reason to think it was anything other than just another accident. Then the calls started coming in from friends abroad and everyone became glued to their desks watching the news.

That was a day he’ll never forget as we all watched the World Trade Centres fall down. It was a surreal experience being in the city as it unfolded.

PR Stunts Part 4 by Nick Ferris

So let’s talk about some of the PR Stunts Nick Ferris has done across his positions. In other essays like Nick Ferris - Marketing Tips, Phone Calls Aren't Dead Yet we’ve talked about using old media but this next example was using cutting edge tech to draw PR. Working in predominantly B2B areas the opportunities are a little more limited - quite often you are trying to get the attention of a few hundred or a few thousands at best given the products are very niche. You’re not looking for a widespread million view of something as that won’t necessarily translate into sales.

One thing Nick Ferris pioneered back in the early 2000s was the use of gamifying to drive trials and subscriptions. He was working with Institutional Investors and trying to increase the circulation of the main magazine in his portfolio. Given the audience were predominantly traders, he worked with a third party to develop an interactive game. Don’t forget to also check out his other article Nick Ferris, Digital Marketing Beyond the Box.

The game let people catch bags of money that were falling from skyscrapers and had a league table. Adding that competitive element ensured traders (who are naturally very competitive in their industry) would play the game over and over as well as share it. The game was built by a third party for roughly $10,000 and was played by over 50,000 people.

At the end of the game, users could opt to take a free trial to the publication as well as subscribe. Nick Ferris helped orchestrate a PR release when the game came out too, so people knew about it and covered in the press. The game helped generate over 150 trials and 25 subscriptions which netted a year one profit of over $10,000 and lifetime profit which was a multiple of that.

So games really can work in the B2B space and generate sales. You have to be clever in your content and make sure it matches the audience. When you’re targeting traders, a game about puppies probably would not have worked quite so well! And be sure to Beta test. Send the demo to people who are your target audience and make any adjustments and refinements before releasing wild into the public.

The last thing you want is a PR stunt backfiring on you, advises Nick Ferris. Sometimes no PR is better than bad PR.

Crowdfunding Basics Part 6 By Nick Ferris

Nick Ferris- Senior Media Executive & Global Digital Marketing Director, continues to look into the world of Crowdfunding and marketing tips to maximize your return and money raised.

Press Releases can be very be very daunting if you haven’t done one before, but for any crowdfunder you should consider writing and sending one out. For one, it makes your product or company look legitimate and it’s also another potential way of driving traffic and even potentially getting some publicity. Don’t forget to check out my other pieces such as Nick Ferris, KPIs An Overview too.

Writing a press release is nowhere near as hard as it sounds. For starters, there are many sites out on the internet that will give you easy templates to fill in. There’s no point re-inventing the wheel so take a look at other press releases, especially if there is a similar product or company in your industry and see how they structured and worded the release. Then you simply use that as a template and re-word to fit your product.

Press releases are also great ways to focus your copy-writing skills. What is the USP of your product? What are the features and benefits? It’s so important to think about your product and make sure you have the elevator pitch as well as bullet points - what is unique, what problem is it solving, why should people buy it and so on. Tag line is another good thing to include. Most products (Nike - Just Do it) (Home Depot - More Savings, More Doing) etc all have tag lines and the press release writing will help you focus on that too says Nick Ferris.

Once you have the release written, sending it out is also easy. There are many services that will send it out for you relatively cheaply. Many websites automatically pick up press releases so it will help you get the word out there and if you select the core industry you are in via the sending service you may get a journalist seeing the press release and writing about you. You’ll instantaneously get a boost in fundraising then. It may or may not happen but it’s worth a try!

Nick Ferris continues his insights into crowdfunding with a look at videos.

Part 2 Crowdfunding Basics By Nick Ferris

Nick Ferris – An expert in Digital Marketing continues to delve into the world of crowdfunding, where dreams can come true and new products find their audience.

We’ve talked about websites and landing pages in other articles such as Nick Ferris’s Marketing Tips, It’s Always Time To Test. But one of the basics before you even decide where to launch your crowdfunding campaign is to build a website.

So what should the website be? Well many people will want to visit your website before deciding to invest. It should be clean and concise. Make sure it captures emails of visitors, so if they don’t invest immediately you can market to them later. Make sure the website has stunning images of your product so it speaks / sells itself. Ideally have a video at the very top of the page too. So many websites these days have videos as the first thing people see. It can summarize your product or services in 30-45 seconds (make sure it is short and not 10 minutes says Nick Ferris!).

Always have an About Us section too. Whether you are a one person team or there are 10 of you, the more personality you can add to the site, the more people can create a relationship with you and your product. So have headshots and short bios. Have an FAQ too, as that can really help minimize your customer service issues. Especially if you are crowdfunding you want to minimize the questions you get from potentially thousands of people, so a thorough FAQ can really help reduce people asking you things.

Most important of all (especially these days) is to have your website mobile. You could have over 50% of your crowdfunders looking at your site via a mobile device and so it is so important to make sure you have tested and optimized it for mobile.

But we are not done just yet. There is one more important thing you should add to your website before, after and during the crowdfunding campaign which we will talk about in the next article.

Thanks again for reading this series of articles by Nick Ferris. We hope you enjoy them. You can also find more on Nick Ferris on Dailymotion.

The Launch of the Financial Net Continued by Nick Ferris - Part 8

Nick Ferris’s Marketing Tips, It’s Always Time To Test. Well the launch of The Financial Net was one of the biggest tests of his life and the most expensive and time consuming.

We just talked about the revolutionary conference set up in the Financial Net. Nick Ferris - The Best Leader And Mentor In The Marketing And Media Department and his incredible team also built many other groundbreaking areas of functionality at the time.  Users could select different levels of association (just like Facebook does now), they could send private messages, and another uig part of the network was the forums.

The Forums were the hub of the network. That’s where people could view news (so if you worked in Hedge Funds you could see the latest Hedge Fund news). You could see conferences that were coming up, recalls Nick Ferris. You could read featured articles, white papers, and many other areas.

Polls and surveys were another big part of the network. There were regular member polls on hot topics of the day so you could stay up to date with the latest news and opinions.

Another great part of the platform, recalls Nick Ferris, was that the company he worked for at the time mainly produced subscription products. These were magazines, newsletters and other premium products that were also transitioning to the new online environment and dealing with that challenge. The Financial Net opened up a whole new marketing channel for these products as well. Within the forums, Nick could post free content and teaser content from these publications, enabling a flow of trials and conversions to members of the forum to these premium products. As such it was creating an incredible marketing machine with daily exposure to thousands of users.

Next we will talk about all the revenue opportunities that The Financial Net opened up.

For many more articles on Nick Ferris and his many years of insights in publishing and marketing please read his dozens of blog posts that describe many different ideas and approaches to marketing.

Nick Ferris on Launching The Financial Net Social Platform - Part 2

Nick Ferris’s marketing tips, media swaps continues with a look at how he transformed a traditional print business in the internet age.

As we have previously described, Nick Ferris had to guide a print business in a rapidly transparent information age. Over the years sales of the print product were slowly declining and it was getting harder and harder to get the contact information in the directories themselves because of privacy concerns as well as opt in and EU laws that sprung up from the rise of emails.

So there were several challenges facing the business. The onset of the internet made it easier to find out some of the contact information people previously paid for.  Laws and regulation made it harder to research and so it became obvious that at some point the product would no longer be viable as a profitable business. Nick Ferris had to therefore come up with a solution to help maintain what was a very profitable business long term.

In discussions with his team and over several months of brainstorming the idea was finally drawn up. The concept, recalls Nick Ferris, was to take a traditional print product and publish online. And that’s where several revenue streams and business models could be tested for the long term viability of the business.

The first step was to plan out the business in intricate detail - revenue projections, staffing requirements and most importantly build costs. Back then, Nick Ferris, was at the cutting edge of web technology and it was still in it’s relative infancy so getting companies to quote to build the project, as well as design the UX/UI was a drawn out process.

Next Nick Ferris has to build the project.

Continue reading Nick Ferris’ other articles on all aspects of traditional and nontraditional marketing. He has held global marketing jobs in B2B and B2C companies in UK, USA and Asia and some places inbetween,