Pink Banana Media
Tonight our guest is Matt Skallerud, president of Pink Banana Media, specializes in LGBT online marketing, targeting gays & lesbians via content marketing, social media, programmatic ad banners, mobile smartphone apps and more. We have conducted an interview with him.
What inspired you on starting the LGBTBrandVoice.com website?
LGBTBrandVoice.com has allowed us to give a name to, and more clearly describe, the specific mix of marketing strategies we bring together into one cohesive and comprehensive campaign. Our parent company, Pink Banana Media, has evolved over time to continually develop and add new online marketing concepts and ideas as they have come along, including adding first Facebook to our social media strategy list, and then Twitter with #hashtags, and now Snapchat, Instagram and Vine. We’ve also put banner advertising back in the forefront, now that the technology has evolved to allow us to micro-target our client’s exact LGBT demographic they are looking to reach online. LGBT Brand Voice has allowed us to better describe these online marketing components as all part of one, unifying LGBT marketing strategy.
How is Pink Banana Media different? Which are your top 3 bestselling products/services?
As described above, Pink Banana Media offers these various online marketing services, including social media marketing, programmatic banner advertising, mobile advertising, etc. LGBT Brand Voice simply brings them all together.
Our top market we work with is the tourism & hospitality marketplace. Destinations around the world have been some of the first organizations to make outreach to the LGBT traveler, first in print and then online. They have also been at the forefront of trying new, cutting-edge technology when it comes to their LGBT marketing outreach, including online contests & sweepstakes, mobile advertising, social media marketing, etc., as they strive to attract the affluent LGBT traveler to their destination and stand out amongst the crowd of other destinations seeking to do the same thing.
Our top service clients purchase the most is our mix of targeted banner advertising on websites, mobile and Facebook, along with a mix of social media marketing and analytics to both monitor their campaign and gauge how well it’s working. We offer this as a fixed rate package at $2,500 per month and this has become our top seller over the past year.
What unique strategies do you use to reach out to your clients' audience?
When it comes to destination marketing, we’re able to now target specific LGBT travelers who have shown an interest in traveling to our client’s destination. We’re currently working with Spain Tourism to do just that. They’ve also asked us to help them push the social media marketing boundary a bit this year as well, allowing us to both encourage and then leverage user-generated content posted online using key hashtags such as #GayTravel, #GayMadrid and #VisitGaySpain. By using this kind of multi-pronged yet integrated approach to online marketing outreach, merging user-generated content with a social media-optimized campaign targeting Spain’s specific LGBT traveler, we’ve been able to fine-tune some of our more cutting-edge strategies and techniques for other destinations, clients and organizations in the years to come.
What kind of problems do you address?
First, for most advertisers, they are looking for an efficient yet effective LGBT marketing solution that best fits their needs. In years past, these advertisers had to go separately to all of the various LGBT media companies they wished to work with in order to negotiate and place their editorial and content marketing (known then strictly as PR), as well as their print, banner ad and e-mail campaigns. In today’s world, they can go to one company that can now place their advertising on nearly all of the best LGBT websites online today, using programmatic advertising technology. They can also reach their LGBT target market on mobile apps, as well as wherever they may be on LinkedIn, Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.
We also solve the age old adage that only 10% of a company’s marketing plan and budget is actually working and effective… but the company just doesn’t know what 10% of the overall marketing plan that is. Now they do! Using a variety of social media and online advertising analytics tools, we now know which campaigns are performing best and which ones need to be modified. We know which websites and which social media posts perform better than others, and can tailor a client’s future posts and advertising placements accordingly
How effective is Interpersonal Marketing services of LGBTBrandVoice.com? How much does it cost?
Interpersonal Marketing is similar to LGBT Brand Voice… giving a name to a set of marketing strategies. Prior to LGBT Brand Voice, a lot of our client work was focused strictly in the world of social media. It was new and it was where they all wanted to be, and to stand out along the way. Interpersonal Marketing was our way of giving a name to a set of marketing disciplines that were coming together in ways that were unforeseen just a few years back. The world of public relations (PR) has merged with social media and has changed the landscape forever. A company can bypass traditional media and get their message heard directly via both social media and working with influencers, bloggers, vloggers and YouTube Content Creators. In a campaign that brings both disciplines together, realizing that some traditional media has stepped up and maintained their relevance in this online/social media-optimized world, a client is able to have the best of both worlds, ensuring their message is seen and heard with traditional LGBT media leveraging their online and social media outreach, as well as some of the newer forms of media, including the LGBT influencer… aka the Media Entity of One.
