I have been reading Tom Feltenstein’s 401 Killer Marketing Tactics… so my marketing muscles are looking rather buff.
One idea I found in the book that I am applying as we speak for a client is the idea of a customer map.
The map would have pin-points at the address of each current/past customer. (actually all customers are current customers if you market right)
Having a physical map would be nice for the wall, but we are in 2009! So Hi-tech it is.
From my clients quickbooks file I have created a report of all the customer’s addresses.
(go to reports –> customer contact list. – and customise it to list street, city, zip separately)
I am now taking that list and importing it into a Google Maps account to create a custom map.
Here are resources I found to help me do that (Googling is invaluable):
batchgeocode.com – gets you the geocodes (lat / long ?) of your addresses in order to plot them on the map.
Two Metafilter Q & A threads:
Automating the creation of a Google map.
Need tool for creating online map with large number of locations (400+).
And official from Google (Google spreadsheet to Google Maps):
Creating Dynamic Client-side Maps Mashups with Google Spreadsheets
Brilliant