Leadpile’s Blog

Seeking services (lead generation) online, communicating with others (social networking), and reading the top news stories, is now all being conducted through everything EXCEPT our nation’s newspapers. In recent years, many newspapers realized this need for immediate information, therefore created an online version of their newspaper. Unfortunately, this scrambling did not prevent the potential elimination of alot of the newspapers. It’s a sad day in the newspaper world when NPR reports the fact that our nation’s newspaper circulation has dropped 10%, just in the past 6 months. Newspaper’s loss of revenue is largely caused by a decline in advertising dollars.
What does this mean to all of us? In many ways, it takes away an old tradition that many of our parents and grandparents have experienced their whole lives. More importantly, it takes away a source for all of us looking for reading material, jobs, coupons, store ads, obituaries, local and national news. The question is, where on the internet can we go to now for this sort of resource? This is something very difficult for one “website” to be able to provide, so I am not sure how we are all going to potentially survive without the irreplaceable newspaper?

It comes to no surprise that economist are saying that spending will be down this year for the holiday season and Halloween is no exception. Consumers are cutting their spending across the board this Halloween. From candy to costumes to decorations, it is predicted that consumers planning to celebrate the holiday this year will be down two percent. Even the pumpkin patches are taking a hit!
What is one market that thrives this holiday? The alcohol business, specifically Captain Morgan rum (number 2 in rum sales). Adults love Halloween just as much as the kids do and Captains realizes that. Their new slogan of, “Calling All Captains” is being pushed through several of the marketing verticals. They have made a huge push this season not only coming out with new television ads, but also three Halloween parties, and a photo content. According to Tom Herbst, Director of Marketing, “We feel like Captain Morgan sort of owns Halloween. No other brand markets as much as we do and sees the return from it…Halloween has always also had an adult component to it and when that adult component reached mainstream, we felt that this was an opportunity to jump on it and bring the unique Captain energy to it.”. This time of year is one of the busiest for the brand. With the captain always being in costume it makes sense that this is his time to shine. I am sure that there will even be many individuals who dress up as him for Halloween. So this Halloween when someone asks what you would like to drink, go for the Captain. Why you say? Because you and the Captain can make it happen.
It is amazing the effects a “captain” can have on a company’s marketing. Leadpile and all other companies I am sure wish we had a catchy mascot like the “captain” to spread our marketing message!

Surveys & polls are often times a way to determine the public’s opinion on issues relating to politics, entertainment, business, and sometimes off the wall topics.  There is a website you can go to that allows you to see people’s opinion on literally ANYTHING you could imagine.   Buzzdash.com allows anyone to create a new survey (buzzbites) on whatever topic they want. Some of these buzzbites are about some really off the wall topics, but still very interesting to read about! Buzzbites can even be put on your own website to capture the opinion on any desired topic.

View real-time popular opinion on a range of timely issues.
Express opinions by voting or commenting on individual issues.
Post individual buzzbites to personal web pages, blogs or emails.
Create buzzbites for personal use, for submission to BuzzDash, or both.

Leadpile Lead Exchange should maybe come up with a buzzbite for our website, about various subject matters we are sometimes trying to determine amongst our marketplace.  So, is there anything you want to know the public’s opinion on?  This is the place to go to gather that information! Go take a look…. you might learn something!

In recent news, South Carolina is the next state to be heading in the direction of payday lending regulations. According to the Augusta Chronicle, the South Carolina house of representatives has passed a bill preventing consumers from taking out more than one payday loan (up to $600) at a time. In addition to the number of payday loans being potentially allowed, the bill requires the industry to allow customers to go into a extended payment plan if they can’t meet that deadline (without incorporating more fees). This bill is now going to be headed to the Senate to be voted on. If this passes this is just another state that is cracking down on payday lenders. Leadpile Lead Exchange will be keeping an eye on this.

Now might be the time to go out and get your new GM auto. According to MSNBC, the employee discount promotion will not be extended past the end of this month. If you are wanting any type of GM, now would be the time to go out and get it and save some money! The discount was saving some consumers anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars on that new car. This promotion has been going on since mid August, however sales are still down from the year before. Fortunately, it has allowed GM to have less of a “slump” compared to Ford and Chrysler.
If you are a consumer who is wanting to get that new auto NOW.. Let Leadpile connect you with dealerships in your area. Go to my loan and debt website to get matched up with an auto dealer.
If you are a publisher or advertiser, we would love to work with you here at Leadpile Auto Lead Exchange to connect consumers with dealership near them!

Jet Blue Airlines has rolled out a new innovative way to try and sell some flight fares.  According to Fox News, Jet Blue Airlines will be auctioning off 300 roundtrip tickets and 6 vacation packages on Ebay this weekend. The bids start as low as .05 cents, however they anticipate the ending price will be valued at 85%-90% of the actual value of the flight. Is this for real?

They are looking at promoting cheap flights, but looking at earning the actual value.  What would happen if this goes sour?  Can you imagine three dollar flights being sold?  Jet Blue Airlines is pretty brave to initiate a marketing technique of this nature.  The Marketing Director is probably getting a pat on the back for this one. Pretty impressive if all goes well!

I’m curious to see the end results.  I’ll keep you updated!