What's so smart about it?

Here at SmartCard we believe that given a choice between paying 100% of a bill or paying only 20-50% the "smart" person will most often choose the latter. We're betting on it. SmartCard allows you to pay through the app for huge savings!

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For 40 years and running, local marketing powerhouse Diamond Studios has looked for better ways for small businesses to get results from their advertising. Now, they are on the cusp of a breakthrough that looks to change the advertising landscape.

That breakthrough has come in the form of a mobile app Diamond Studios calls MyCity SmartCard.

Here's How It Works

A business trades its goods or services for advertising with a media outlet: a radio station, a newspaper, magazine, or a TV station. The media outlet then uses the SmartCard app to recoup their advertising revenue from that business.

With the SmartCard app, the media outlet offers these goods and services at a discount to its audience. The catch? Only through the SmartCard app can audience members get the discounted products and services.

To use their SmartCard, consumers link the SmartCard app to an existing credit or debit card to fund their purchases. That's it. When the media outlet offers a great deal on an item or service the consumer wants, he or she can snap it right up.

Pic - people ordering from a waitress at a restaurant

The end user—the customer—wins because he or she gets a full-valued product or service at a generous discount.

The business wins because it gets full-value advertising on local media for only the price of the hard costs they spend to produce or sell the item. Plus, for the first time ever, they get guaranteed traffic from customers. The only time it costs a business is when a customer responds.

And, of course, the media outlet wins because instead of advertising through social media or online search ads, businesses will advertise with them instead.

Pic - computer with marketing plan on it

Advertising is critically important to any business’s success

It benefits both buyers and sellers. It provides information to consumers about new products available and the advantages of buying and using the advertised goods or services. It's also a low-cost way for consumers to get information; they only need to see the information when they’re exposed to it.

Consumers often become aware of a product through advertising, he says, and since the introduction of a new product can lead to lower prices of similar products, consumers all around benefit from advertising.

But, again, which ads will the consumers of the future benefit from? How can traditional media even compete with the monolith that social media and search advertising has become?

The Answer is MyCity SmartCard

Finally, traditional media companies have something to put them on an even playing field with the online advertising boom, with MyCity SmartCard's appeal to today's mobile generation, traditional advertising can once again claim its position as the kingpin of the marketing world.

The Advertising business can pose some tough challenges today. While media outlets generate revenue by selling ads to merchants, it's becoming more difficult to get merchants to commit to buying ongoing monthly ads.

It's time for a smart, simple solution. It’s time for Smartcard! Smartcard is a “Pay As You Go Advertising” solution where there is no advertising cost to the merchant until the customer makes a purchase.

The SmartCard Media Flow

1) Media Partner Trades Media to new or inactive Merchants in exchange for Goods/Services
2) Merchant uses this media to Advertise Their Business
3) Media Partner uses the SmartCard App to sell these traded Goods/Services at a discount
4) Money from these sales (less SmartCard licensing fee) goes to Media Partner to Recoup Cost of Media

Here's a smart example:

Merchant A commits to a $1,000 monthly trade. You offer a 20% discount at this merchant
A customer visits the merchant and spends $50. And gets the 20% discount off their bill. The customer pays the discounted amount. While the merchant has the original amount deducted from their trade balance with you.
From a merchant perspective, the $50 amount which goes towards their advertising is based on the sales price, but their hard costs might only be 30% of that. So, they got $50 worth of guaranteed advertising for only $15 out of pocket!

Smartcard is not a new product to sell, but rather a valuable technology that can be used to help monetize all your existing advertising products.

Think about how many new merchants you could get, and those you could re-connect with, if you could tell them:

"We have a program in which you don't pay a dime for advertising unless customers come in!"

That's a guarantee that no one in the advertising world has ever made!

With as few as 500 active smartcard app users, you could easily generate $30,000 in new revenues.

You win because you sell more advertising and gain new and former merchants to advertise. Merchants win because they get guaranteed traffic from their advertising money. Your audience wins because they get a full valued product or service at a discount.

Read ALL the SmartCard Mobile App Features

It's a true WIN - WIN - WIN!

A smart idea made simple

The Smartcard App

When you were getting merchants, how did you incentivize your sales force and how are you commissioning them since it was a few months after the trade commitment that money started flowing into the company?

We pay our reps a salary plus 10% commission on sales. For smartcard, we pay our reps.on the net of sales (after smartcard discounts), at restaurants monthly. We made sure they set the appointments, and I went out with them and sold the concept. Salespeople had to wait for commissions at first, but now they love it.

When did the advertising trade start for the merchant, after the contract commitment, or after the app went live?

We made a target list of potential restaurants and set a goal of 10 restaurants signed up before we launched to consumers. The advertising can start at anytime the MP wants. If all depends on how the MP books it.

What was the average merchant commitment?

All the commitments are for 1 year. An MP needs the commitment in order to have continuity and volume of restaurants to offer to the consumer.

Some sign on for every week, and some sign on for every other week. We also offered our quarterly visitor magazine as an option and we have some advertisers doing both. We did allow for a 3 month period where a restaurant could opt out. Only 1 restaurant opted out.

What were the biggest obstacles getting merchants and how did you overcome them?

The usual: Didn’t understand the app- wanted to wait and see how it went- didn’t want to advertise. same old stuff. We just kept calling until we had enough to start and now we keep adding restaurants.

If I had it to do over again, I would make sure I had more restaurants than 10 as my target to start. Once the Smartcard app. has enough downloads, sales go crazy. Having enough inventory to satisfy consumers becomes the challenge.

Very Important!

The MP needs to mark up the price of ads to cover the discounts. That way the MP actually nets more from advertisers than if they charged cash. We nearly doubled our ad rates, and it is still better for restaurants than paying cash. The average cost of food and beverage for restaurants is about 30%.

MP’s will discover that selling restaurants on Smartcard is the only way to sell ads to restaurants. Restaurants are notoriously slow pay, or they go out of business and an MP is stuck. Even if a restaurant goes out of business, left over inventory is not going to be a big problem because it is month to month.

This program stared out with big discounts to spark consumer interest, and now most discounts are 20% to the consumer.