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This short stack of used sticky notes contains, without exaggeration, tens of millions of dollars in good ideas. I wouldn’t classify them as “great” or “revolutionary” ideas. Not rocket science. Most, fairly basic.
Yet, if these ideas were acted upon, they would drive tens of millions of dollars of business for the people who thunk them up.
Contributor Posts
I’m calling a time out for general celebration among the email marketing people! You are invited!
The good news is that while many marketers still don’t use segmentation or keep their files particularly clean, marketers are planning to adopt more of these strategies, including advanced segmentation (42%), personalization (37%) and behavioral targeting (34%), according to the Email Marketing Industry Census 2010 from eConsultancy and Adestra.
Don’t get me wrong … Working on the improvement and development of customer experiences is what we need to do. However, like so many of the customer-focused solutions that have come and gone before it, we’ve lost the forest for the trees.
For example, there are 47 pages of Google images for “customer experience.” We now have every conceivable type of chart, graph, hologram, diagram and process about customer experience. But what kind of experience are we all having trying to implement it?
If you are a marketing vendor, agency rep, or consultant, here’s a Bill of Rights just for you. And if you hire vendors, agencies or consultants, read this with your own brand in mind. Negative word-of-mouth works both ways.
1-800-FLOWERS.com President Chris McCann sits down with Kevin Lee of Marketing Obsessions to talk about social media, virtual gifts, and what business can learn from Second Life. It’s a brief (two minute!) video, and it’s worth the watch.
With the exception of the keynote, event planners increasingly want speakers whose presentation involves some audience interaction. So says Traci Browne, president of trade show marketing firm Red Cedar Publicity and Marketing. Browne books speakers for a number of organizations, including the Business Marketing Association Philadelphia.
The New York Times says The Shack has been a “surprise best seller.” Published in over 30 languages around the world, The Shack now has over 7 million copies in print and ranked first on the New York Times best seller list for 70 weeks. Some might argue the success of The Shack derives from effective use of traditional and social media marketing efforts. However with most book titles struggling to sell 1,000 copies, might there be something more to the success of The Shack than just good marketing technique?
Taking your business from good to great to remarkable can seem a daunting task. But, it may be easier than you think.
The bad news from a customer perspective is that companies aren’t doing the basics properly, let alone getting to remarkable. Customers hopes are high, but expectations low. This bad news is good news for your company. With expectations so low, simply doing what you’re supposed to do (the basics) may set you apart from the competition.
Yesterday, I spent the morning reviewing submissions for the Incredibly Boring Web Content Challenge.
The Boring Web Content Challenge, as I wrote about a few weeks ago, encouraged companies to submit their most lifeless, incomprehensible bit of web writing (a web page, or press release, or email, or whatever) to win a chance to have a free makeover from our friends at Captains of Industry.
The popularity of social media in marketing and PR continues to grow at a rapid pace, with more businesses taking this form of communication seriously every day. From restaurants to fashion, technology to travel, you can find information, special deals and customer care from your favorite brands online across Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Google and more.
But wait, there’s more!
My friend John Jantsch invited me (and a bunch of other people you probably know, including David Meerman Scott, Guy Kawasaki, Rohit Bhargava and Chris Brogan, Ivan Misner, Bob Burg, Ben McConnell, Dan Schawbel, Anita Campbell, Lisa Barone, Scott Allen, Scott Ginsberg, Janine Popick, and Pam Slim) to participate in his second annual Make a Referral Week, which is this week (March 8 through 12). What’s Make a Referral Week? The goal is dead-simple: To give 1,000 referrals to 1,000 deserving small businesses across the country.
