Small businesses getting more sales via mobile devices

Fathom Studio in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, needed a guinea pig for its new small business marketing product, called a ZippyPitch. So it put out a direct mail piece to Carlisle Chamber of Commerce members emblazoned with a guinea pig hoping to solicit one — or several.

It found Beth Roeder, a one-woman organizing machine who owns and runs the business OrgnyzMe out of her Boiling Springs home. She had a Web domain name and some clip art of a smiling, blonde organizer woman for a logo. But she needed to bring in more business — fast.

In other words, Roeder was the perfect candidate for a ZippyPitch that would stamp her smiling, trademark character on QR-coded “ZippyCards.” The cards would then link to an animated, 46-second ZippyPitch that brings the logo character’s organizing powers to life, making the case for Roeder’s services.

Taken together, the one-two punch of the flashy ZippyCards and the catchy ZippyPitch is all aimed at corralling new OrgnyzMe customers via their smartphones.

“She is just one super-passionate lady,” Fathom owner Jason Smith gushes of his firm’s first ZippyPitch client. “Beth is an entrepreneur who means business. But this is not something that could have been affordable for her a couple of years ago. I feel we are at a lightning-strike moment for Fathom.”

As far as Roeder is concerned, ZippyPitch has been lightning in a bottle, pulling in a couple of clients, with more on the way as she aggressively distributes those ZippyCards that link to her punchy ZippyPitch. Together, the marketing tools effectively tout her services and skills on smartphone screens.

“I said, ‘this is my business; I want to see what you come up with’,” Roeder relates of her initial meeting with Fathom. “What they did went far above any expectation I could have had. Everybody loves it. I am singing their praises. They are awesome. They are so creative. They took it and ran.”

All that creativity culminated in the 46-second animated ZippyPitch — a clever bit of small business marketing that thinks big. Big, because it has the potential to advertise Roeder’s exceptional and exceptionally well-priced organizational services to anyone with a smartphone. The OrgnyzMe ZippyPitch can be found here.

“I was upfront,” Roeder recalls of her $1,700 investment. “I told them I don’t have a lot of money. But I need to get my name out there. They worked with me. They said, ‘we can do this.’ And they even gave me ideas for the future.”

And for both Fathom and OrgnyzMe, that first ZippyPitch is just the beginning.

“There is just nothing like animated, accessible marketing,” explains Smith. “It just pulls people in.”

In turn, Smith hopes it pulls in a lot of small business clients for Fathom’s ZippyPitch products.

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