Marketing Re-Imagined: Jim Clouse Of ClikitySplit.com On How We Can Re-Imagine The Marketing Industry To Make It More Authentic, Sustainable, And Promote More Satisfaction
An Interview With Drew Gerber
Empower business owners with real time dynamic marketing tools so they can communicate special sales promotions to their customers or immediately respond to deteriorating traffic conditions during slow times to drive revenue.
From an objective standpoint, we are living in an unprecedented era of abundance. Yet so many of us are feeling unsatisfied. Why are we seemingly so insatiable? Do you feel that marketing has led to people feeling unsatisfied and not having enough in life? If so, what actions can marketers take to create a world where people feel that they have enough, and they are enough? Can we re-imagine what marketing looks like and how it makes people feel?
In this interview series, we are talking to experts in marketing and branding to discuss how we might re-imagine marketing to make it more authentic, sustainable, and promote more satisfaction. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Jim Clouse.
Jim Clouse is the Founder, Owner, and Inventor of ClikitySplit.com, the world’s first and only real time dynamic marketing engine. Jim has made his living online full time for almost 25 years and recently received US patent #10,810,619 on real time marketing. ClikitySplit’s passion is to revolutionize marketing by prohibiting all advertising, doing no targeting, replacing typing key words by just tapping categories and subcategories, and putting the end user in total control of his mobile experience.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to know how you got from “there to here.” Inspire us with your backstory!
I became an internet entrepreneur in 1998 with the release of nashvilleNOW.com which was designed to capture everything to do in Music City USA. Search results were shown visually and geographically via GPS rather than vertically like the search engines do.
Displaying search results visually via GPS made me realize that doing so gave that point of interest tremendous visual marketing power. That is when I first conceived the idea for ClikitySplit. But it took almost ten years for the technology to catch up with the idea.
In 2001, I released hotelmotelNOW.com which again showed hotels visually via GPS and provided sorting by star ratings.
But my passion was always been to build a mobile website for both businesses and end users/consumers. Businesses use ClikitySplit’s real time dynamic marketing tools to immediately communicate with their customers and followers.
ClikitySplit’s user interface is 99.9% tapping, not typing, prohibits all push advertising, does no targeting, and puts the end user in total control of his mobile experience, solely determining what displays on his smartphone and how long it is displayed.
What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
hotelmotelNOW.com was very successful because it became an authority site in Google and my organic rankings were fantastic, often #1. I was receiving up to 10% commissions on hotel reservations but I thought the site needed an overhaul to make it more attractive.
So I hired developers from Miami, flew down to meet with them, and paid them $16,000 to code my re-design of hotelmotelNOW.com.
What I didn’t know is that they did not know critical things about the search engines. They did not place a no index, no follow meta tag on the new development site and since my old site was still active, Google penalized me on December 13, 2005 with the infamous minus 30 penalty for duplicate content.
My rankings for my main search results dropped from being #1 to #31. My revenue dropped from five figures per month to $- 0- per month. My rankings never recovered although I spent 13 months getting the duplicate penalty removed.
None of us are able to experience success without support along the way. Is there a particular person for whom you are grateful for that support to grow you from “there to here?” Can you share that story and why you are grateful for him or her?
Fred Chateau is the programming genius behind all of my websites. I designed the websites and then Fred took my ideas and made them better than I could have ever imagined. Fred led the team that built ClikitySplit and was always on the cutting-edge of Microsoft’s latest developer technology.
Fred designed the five accordions (“Hot Deals”, “Coupons”, “Multimedia”, “Menus”, “Quick Information/Guest Reviews”) that we use for each customer’s rich, multimedia mobile website in ClikitySplit. While contacting Microsoft, Fred discussed how he was using the accordions. The Microsoft support person was amazed and told Fred that the accordions were not designed to work that way. So Fred’s design was superior to Microsoft’s own design. Fred never thought anything was impossible programmatically.
Sadly, Fred passed away in May 2019. I miss his brilliance every day.
What day-to-day structures do you have in place for you to experience a fulfilled life?
I love living on the cutting edge. I love designing websites for both the business owner and the end user that are in reality very complex programmatically but are so user friendly that anyone of any age can use them.
That is what we have done with ClikitySplit. ClikitySplit is 99.9% tapping. The only typing that is required is to change the default map that displays at login based on the end user’s GPS location. Tapping makes ClikitySplit blazingly fast.
In addition, changing categories (Restaurant 🡪 Retail/Shopping) or subcategories (Restaurants 🡪 Steak 🡪 Seafood) only requires tapping with the new search results immediately displayed on the same hyperlocal map where the previous category or subcategory search results were displayed.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think it might help people?
My total focus is on marketing ClikitySplit which I am convinced is the next big thing in mobile marketing which is marketing dynamically in real time.
ClikitySplit is built for both business owners and end users. Search results are not prioritized like with the search engines. The business that impresses the end user the most and has the most enticing Hot Deals earns the end user’s patronage.
We build the businesses’ rich, multimedia mobile site with them and empower them to change the content of their “Hot Deals” in just two minutes to run Flash Sales during slow traffic times to drive revenue by filling those empty seats and stores.
ClikitySplit’s simplicity, speed, and prohibition of all push advertising and targeting is every end user’s dream come true. Add putting the end user in total control of what displays on his mobile phone and how long it displays and you have the best user experience that anyone could ever imagine.
Ok, thank you for sharing your inspired life. Now let’s discuss marketing. To begin, can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority on marketing?
I invented real time marketing and hold US patent #10,810,619 on it. Real time marketing turns ordinary advertisers into savvy marketers.
Real time marketing empowers business owners to immediately communicate special sales incentives to their customers. This is especially critical during slow times when revenue is small but overhead keeps eating into the bottom line.
Using ClikitySplit, business owners change the content of their “Hot Deals” marketing accordion in just two minutes to run enticing Flash Sales. Each time the content is changed ClikitySplit immediately pushes notifications to the businesses customer’s smartphones and its Facebook timeline and Twitter feed, exciting its followers and driving revenue.
Throughout history, marketing has driven trade for humans. What role do you see that marketing played to get human societies where we are today?
Marketing is a long term process to increase sales while advertising is the short term method to entice customers to act. Sadly, advertising is more prevalent today than true marketing.
Unfortunately, advertising has become very intrusive and a lot of commercials aired or pushed onto consumers today have overstayed their welcome by being repeated ad nauseum (pun intended). In addition, many of the advertisements today test the viewer’s intelligence. You wonder how someone could have gotten paid for such a silly ad.
Targeting has degraded the mobile experience by pushing ads onto your smartphone each time you do a keyword search. Sadly, intrusion of your privacy is now the norm.
I work in marketing so I’m very cognizant of this question. What role does marketing play in creating the human experience of “I don’t have enough” even when basic needs such as food, shelter, and clothing are met?
Today’s advertising is targeted toward making people want more. Just meeting their needs and being satisfied is not enough. It is focused on selling them stuff they don’t really need.
What responsibility do marketers have when it comes to people feeling that they aren’t enough?
They are totally responsible for making people feel that they must buy this product to solve the needs that they didn’t even know they had.
Many 21st-century marketing professionals in a capitalistic society will discuss solving human “pain points” as a way to sell products, services, and other wares successfully. In your opinion or experience, has aggravating pain points led to more pain?
Too many vendors who sell marketing tools over-promise and under-deliver. Sadly, all the business receives is broad analytics to track their effectiveness. Since there is no viable way to accurately measure the effectiveness, the churn rate is near 100%. This has made it extremely difficult for vendors like ClikitySplit to even get in front of businesses.
One of my patented claims is the capturing of true “narrowcast analytics”. ClikitySplit captures every interaction with the businesses’ rich multimedia mobile website. At midnight, ClikitySplit emails business management the true narrowcast analytics, advising them to which of their marketing endeavors returned a positive return on investment and which ones were a waste of time and money.
Different cultures view trade/marketing differently. While some may focus on “pain-points” others may focus on “purpose-points”. How do other cultures differ in how they approach marketing? Please give examples or studies you may know about.
I love to watch the major golf tournaments on Sky Sports in Great Britain as opposed to watching it on American television. The reason is that their commercials are a lot shorter, wittier, and are not near as repetitive or silly.
On the other hand, American television wears you out with the same commercials seeming to loop regularly while testing your intelligence.
Okay, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview: It seems as if we have never stopped to question marketing. In your opinion, how can marketing professionals be more responsible for how their advertising shapes our human experience of feeling safe, secure, and knowing that we matter? Based on your experience or research can you please share “Five Ways We Can Re-Imagine The Marketing Industry To Make It More Authentic, Sustainable, And Promote More Satisfaction”?
- Replace intrusive push advertising with a “pull” model where end users are in total control of their mobile experience, solely determining what displays on their smartphone and how long it is displayed.
- Empower business owners with real time dynamic marketing tools so they can communicate special sales promotions to their customers or immediately respond to deteriorating traffic conditions during slow times to drive revenue.
- Teach business owners how to build and mine their customer base unobtrusively to achieve long term patronage.
- Capture true “narrowcast analytics”, advising business management to which of their marketing endeavors returned a positive return on investment and which ones were a waste of time and money.
- Teach business owners how to differentiate their business from their competitors by “out-foxing and out-marketing” their competitors.
The video “Push Notifications to Smartphones, Facebook & Twitter” demonstrates how ClikitySplit turns ordinary advertisers into savvy marketers.
For you personally, if you have all your basic needs met, do you feel you have enough in life?
Yes.
My passion with ClikitySplit is to not just level the playing field but to empower small business and medium size business owners with a decided marketing advantage over their deep-pocketed competitors. ClikitySplit gives small and mediums sizes business owners a platform to “out-fox & out-market” their competitors via patented real time dynamic marketing tools.
Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have inspired you to live with more joy in life?
I stay on top of things daily via numerous sources. I want to know what is going on today so I can project what will happen in the future and be ready to take advantage of those trends.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I believe I am doing that now with ClikitySplit.
My passion is to give businesses differentiating real time marketing tools that they had no idea were possible and to put the end user in total charge of his online and mobile experience, solely determining what displays on this mobile phone and how long it is displayed. I would love to kill all intrusive push advertising and targeting.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
https://ClikitySplit.com and its blog and https://SmallBusinessNetwork.tv are the best sources of information about ClikitySplit.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
About The Interviewer: For 30 years, Drew Gerber has been inspiring those who want to change the world. Drew is the CEO of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., a full-service PR agency lauded by PR Week and Good Morning America. Wasabi Publicity, Inc. is a global marketing company that supports industry leaders, change agents, unconventional thinkers, companies and organizations that strive to make a difference. Whether it’s branding, traditional PR or social media marketing, every campaign is instilled with passion, creativity and brilliance to powerfully tell their clients’ story and amplify their intentions in the world. Schedule a free consultation at WasabiPublicity.com/Choosing-Publicity
Marketing Re-Imagined: Jim Clouse Of ClikitySplit On How We Can Re-Imagine The Marketing Industr was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.