Change is necessary for almost any business. In fact, two of the most important jobs of any marketer are to anticipate customer needs as they evolve over time, and then translate those emerging needs into the next thing you do for customers. Change can be positive and very profitable if these two jobs are done well. If not—as I believe we have in this case with what Netflix did—change can be stressful for customers and shareholders (and you).

With that, let’s take a closer look at a few of Netflix’s missteps—and lessons you can take away, as marketers, and use in your day-to-day work:

1. Leading with a price change. A 60-percent price increase was the first of many changes Netflix customers would hear about. Ouch. Right off the bat, customers were riled up. Although the reality that the 60-percent increase translated to just a few dollars more per month for most customers, the problem was that customers began to re-evaluate the value of Netflix’s service. Lesson: Carefully consider where price increases fall on the timeline of announcing business changes.

2. Failing to explain why in an authentic way. Prices often change for goods and services, but when times are tough, people want an explanation for price increases. To be fair, Netflix did write a detailed blog post on the changes. However, had they offered more insight into why the changes were happening in the first place, customers may have been more understanding and accepting. One possible reason it could have pointed to: Netflix’s licensing payments for content have become more expensive. Lesson: Be authentic. Most customers will understand business decisions if they are given a full explanation. And, don’t be afraid to provide more detail to your customers—it will help them better understand the change.

3. Losing sight of customer effort. When Netflix announced it was creating a second entity, Qwikster, it split its core services into two separate businesses. Let’s look at this from the customer perspective: One day, there’s one company handling all your entertainment content needs, and the next day, there are two companies. Customer translation: Two bills, two websites, two account logins, and two customer service numbers. Whose life was made easier by this decision? Netflix simply lost sight of its promise of convenience and effort in its target customer experience. Lesson: Every decision you make should be driven by the clearly defined, ideal version of your customer experience. Plain and simple.

4. Forgetting why your business exists. When Netflix launched and later added instant streaming, it filled a need for customers who wanted any media, at any time, through one service. By splitting into two companies, Netflix lost track of the problem they originally solved for their customers. The company literally moved backwards. Lesson: Remember the original need your business filled for your customers—the offering that made you successful in the first place. Even as your business changes and evolves, don’t stray from that mission.

5. Falling into the trade-off trap. Netflix made massive operational changes, and in doing so, short-shrifted their customers’ experience. It doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition, though. Does it take more planning and thoughtfulness to achieve both? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely. Lesson: Don’t fall into the trap of thinking operational excellence and customer experience is a tradeoff. You can have both. Top performers in any industry know this.

6. Leaving your customers behind. Netflix has always been ahead of the curve, but this time they were leaping a bit too far ahead of its customers. There will likely come a day when everyone will be streaming, and DVDs will fall by the wayside; but we’re not quite there yet. The infrastructure for streaming is simply not available to all consumers. In addition, not enough in-demand, “hot” content is available via streaming from Netflix (or anywhere for that matter). Netflix’s aim to solve an emerging need for anytime, anywhere streaming is smart and spot on. It just executed too early. Lesson: Be careful not to move your customers to a future they can’t have yet. You can make a good decision—just make it at the right time.

One thing Netflix did right: They recognized that it wasn’t worth pushing a bad plan forward and decided not to split the company in two (although they did keep the increased prices). They didn’t avoid a few bruises, though. The company lost 800,000 subscribers in Q3.

What did you take away from the Netflix debacle? What lessons did you learn?

Wow. So let’s dig deeper. According to Catapult Marketing’s Brian Cohen, digital shopper marketing director, “We looked at 1,200 consumers, and the role that social media is playing is not as large as we thought it would be. It’s a good consumer and advocacy tool, and it builds brand awareness.” But he went on to say that when the consumer’s mind turns to actual shopping, they aren’t tuning into social media. Rather, they are checking out company websites, Internet ratings, and review sites. Especially for big ticket purchases. Well, I think that makes sense.

As for QR codes, Cohen cites the rapid adoption of new technologies by marketers without full consideration of the customer. He points out that many consumers who don’t own iPhones see smart codes and that translates to: “You can’t play” to them. He also states there’s a “fatigue” among iPhone users where QR codes are concerned; interaction with them is down 20%. Besides fatigue, QR codes aren’t always delivering interesting or useful material.

The study revealed two consumer mindsets when engaging with QR codes:

Armed with smartphones and a determination to change the way they buy, shoppers are storming retail aisles. On-the-fly comparison-shopping, scanning, and research are creating new ways for marketers to influence in-aisle buying behavior. But as smartphone usage in the United States reaches critical mass, retailers’ response must evolve rapidly.

We set out to identify the areas of greatest opportunity for retailers and CPG to develop a mobile experience strategy that aligns with changing mobile behavior. Our research included a 390-person survey of smartphone users, as well as “shopalongs” with smartphone shoppers in a range of retail environments. The infographic below excerpts six key findings from that study, which is available for download.

Eric Anderson was recently named to iMedia’s annual list of 25 Digital Marketing Innovators in recognition of his work in applying new analytical methods to digital media. He has more than 17 years of marketing experience and 13 years of digital specialization. At White Horse, he has led marketing strategy for clients like Columbia Sportswear, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, and Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield. His book Social Media Marketing: Game Theory and the Emergence of Collaboration was published by Springer in 2010.

In search of the elusive social media ROI, brands are doubling down on metrics around engagement, influence, or monitoring. The key pillars of social media (monitoring, analytics, engagement, reporting, and collaboration) work together; they should not be disconnected from each other or from the rest of the business.

Social media can only deliver results and ROI if it’s used as a tool to solve actual business problems. The simplest example of this is customer service: A brand needs to monitor for negative comments, engage with customers and then report whether the social customer service initiative has achieved some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

In this infographic and the downloadable “4 Pillars of Social Media Success” whitepaper, we have tried to demystify how the most successful social media practitioners are using all these social media pillars to solve business problems, rather than just running social media initiatives for the sake of it.

Dragos Ilinca is the CMO and cofounder of uberVU, a social intelligence platform that helps enterprises and agencies understand and connect with their customers, get more from their social media marketing, manage their reputation, and provide better customer service.

So, to give you an early start on your plans for 2012, we’re giving you this freebie: How-To Guide: A 5-Day Action Plan for Converting More Website Visitors Into Leads and Sales.

The guide will walk you through the steps of:

• Developing attention-getting calls to action that win conversions
• Designing pages that focus your visitors on conversion
• Deciding what to test on your landing pages

All you have to do is take this easy-peasy (and fun!) quiz. Then enjoy the free guide from us here at MarketingProfs!

The quiz will help you begin to identify what you need to learn about conversion. Then, best of all, the action plan will give you a powerboost for the beginning of 2012. You’ll get a jump on the competition—while they’re still stringing along popcorn.

Here’s how to get it:

• Existing MarketingProfs members: Make sure you’re signed in when you take the test. When you’re done taking it,  you’ll get a link show up for you to download the PDF.
• Brand-new MarketingProfs members (i.e., you just signed up): You’ll receive an email with a temporary password and link to the guide.

Everybody loves and hates Facebook at times. It’s a great way to build your brand, whether you’re a business, a band, or a worthy cause. You can get fans quickly, spread the word, and create an online community using Facebook’s ready-made platform.

But it just takes one visitor leaving a negative comment on your Facebook Fan Page to ruin your whole weekend and make you hate social media once and for all. People can do a lot to damage your reputation on Facebook, but there are things you can do to save face and even turn it around completely into a boost for your brand.

Resist the Urge to Hate Back

Your first impulse will be to hit “reply” and put that hater right in their place. It would certainly feel good—but it can actually do worse damage to your reputation. The reason is that you look defensive. Even if you reply with a witty comeback that you know will get your other fans chuckling, it’s obvious that the hater hit a nerve.

Instead, you should take a few deep breaths. Although you need to respond as soon as possible, give yourself the time and thinking space to respond appropriately. Otherwise, you (and your company/brand/etc.) look like a jerk as well.

The Nature of the Hating

How you should respond depends on the nature of the negative comment. Is it an unhappy customer? Is it constructive criticism? Or is it just trolling and spamming? The first step in responding is to figure out where they’re coming from.

If you’ve been trolled, spammed, flamed, or otherwise meaninglessly attacked, delete the comment. No one’s going to miss it. None of your other fans will be shocked that the comment yesterday that said “U SUKK” is gone today. You might consider reporting it as spam to Facebook and banning the user.

If it’s a legitimate complaint, criticism or problem, make it one of today’s high-priority tasks to craft your response.

Replying the Right Way

I don’t mean to lay on the pressure here, but your response is critical. It’s your chance to turn this negative comment into a PR opportunity that shows your concern for your fans.

When you reply to negative Facebook comments, there are four things to aim for:

• Acknowledge the comment and admit to your faults (if there’s any legitimacy to what they say).
• Offer an explanation to help them understand.
• Show that you’re working to resolve the issue.
• Encourage more discussion from your fans.

All of these show that you’re concerned about the products or services that you offer—and also concerned about what your fans think. Any combination of these four will create a good response that can turn a negative comment into an opportunity for you.

Example 1: The Case of the Shoddy Gym Gear

Here’s an example. Let’s say that your company sells home gym equipment. Somebody gets on your fan page and says, “I bought this piece of crap two days ago and the straps are already broken!”

A good response would be something like, “Fred, thanks for drawing my attention to this. Can you explain in more detail about how they broke? We’re in the development phase of our next model, and we want to address every customer issue. Please email us, and we’ll give you a refund.”

What an awesome company! They care about quality and customers. What this says to other Facebook fans is that you care about the quality of your products and the happiness of your customers. You admitted your fault, and you’re going to resolve the issue so that Fred is totally satisfied. OK, he could’ve been nicer in his comment and not called it crap, but it’s just water off a duck’s back for you.

Example 2: Website Design Wackiness

Here’s another one. Let’s say that you’ve got a fan page site for your design company. Somebody gets onto your Facebook fan page and says, “It looks like you guys do nice work, but, good grief! White text on black background? That’s a rookie mistake!”

Ouch! They called your professional design company a bunch of amateurs. With a comment like this, you might say something like, “Thanks for the tip, Jarvis. We thought that the black background worked well with the banner we’re using, but now that you mention it, the white text is a little tough on the eyes. Any other opinions on this?”

Again, you’re acknowledging the comment and taking it as a bit of constructive criticism. You explained that you guys aren’t rookies, thank you very much, but designers who chose the black background for a reason (without saying it in those exact words). You’re also asking for more opinions. That shows that you’re interesting in what other fans have to say.

The Good News About Bad Comments

A negative comment can be a good thing. It gives you a chance to show off your customer service skills and create a dialog for your fans. When you get negative comments, this also means that you’re getting fans and traffic. It means that people are interested in your business and what you have to offer.

Of course, this isn’t the case if it’s just some moron blasting you for no good reason. In that case, erase it and forget about it.

One thing to keep in mind is that whenever anybody succeeds at anything, they always have haters. It comes with the territory. Think of this when you get discouraged by negative comments. There are lots of people who love to hate those who are successful.

Greg Scott is a freelance writer at Greg Scott Writes. He blogs about Japan at BlogIt Japan and plays in several Tokyo bands.

That can be a complicated process, but one that Spiral16, a web and social media monitoring tool, was built to facilitate. It’s also a process that Aaron himself has been involved with since the days that he served as a “content meatshield” for the (now defunct) site Transbuddha, a self-styled “repository and showcase for those wonderful and compelling nuggets of media that pepper the information highway like so many two-headed cows and 20-foot spiders.”

During his Transbuddha days, as Aaron describes it, he learned how content spreads across the Web as well as how to interact with people online. Today, he applies these lessons to the work he does as Spiral16’s data and analytics manager.

In this episode of Marketing Smarts, we talk to Aaron about what makes content popular (the big thing that people often forget, he says, is that “a lot of it is pure luck”), how effective algorithms are at parsing the Web’s information (turns out that, somewhere along the line “you need a human brain” to make sense of what you find), and how best to connect with the people who are actually talking about you on the Internet (the precious “signal” so easily lost in the “noise”).

On this last point, Aaron is adamant: Developing connections means remembering that all content on the Web is produced by “someone sitting at a machine carving out their world.”

Unfortunately, he adds, ”To the suit who wants to push product, that voice on the Internet is just a distribution method.”

To learn more about mining the Web for business intelligence, the seasonality of content, and how we consistently bring technology down to our level (rather than letting it elevate us), give our entire conversation a listen. You may do so here:

You can also subscribe to the Marketing Smarts Podcast in iTunes.

You can also download a transcript of this episode right here: Marketing Smarts-Episode 5-Aaron Weber of Spiral16

If you’d like to learn more about connecting with customers via social platforms, you might want to check out this recent PRO Seminar, “How to Strengthen Customer Experience on Four Social Media Platforms.”

1. It looks nothing like the ad’s call to action or theme.
How many times have you clicked an ad or link in an email only to find out that the page you land on has nothing to do with the ad or link? That mistake is so unbelievably irritating for the person who has clicked through to the landing page.

When visitors arrive on your landing page, they should feel the connection between the ad or link that got them there and where they’ve ended up. If your ad is appealing to the champagne-and-caviar set, you can’t have them landing on a page that’s for the milk-and-cookies crowd.

2. Your call to action is unclear.
Ineffective landing pages are bossy; they push you around in different directions, trying to herd you one way and then another, shouting at you the whole time. But the folks who arrive at your landing page need to immediately know what to do or how to get the info they need. You need to communicate very clearly what you want the visitor to do. So, imagine that you’re writing an old-school telegram (or its modern equivalent, a tweet). You don’t have a lot of time to get your point across, so just say it without getting too wordy or fanciful.

3. You showed off in smarty-pants language.
Let your credentials show your business savvy. Avoid sounding like a snake oil salesman shouting out the miraculous power of your product or service, but then don’t go to the other extreme and end up sounding like a robot either.

“Speak human,” Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman write in Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business. “Communicate your brand missions, values, and philosophy in simple terms, using the language of your customers. Speak in a conversational tone, with personality, empathy, and true emotion. Kill corporate-speak, buzzwords, and other language that makes you sound like a tool.”

4. Your content is buried.
You don’t want heavy, bloated landing pages that creak under the weight of their own text. Website copy (not just landing pages) shouldn’t remind visitors of dissertations by a 19th century professor. Write in crisp, snappy and focused sentences. Think Ernest Hemingway, not Charles Dickens.

5. You’re rushing the goodnight kiss.
Crummy landing pages are like bad first dates. Instead of just enjoying the date and spending a reasonable amount of time building up interest and trust, the bad landing page is pushing the viewer along with excessive demands, unclear goals, and just wanting the reward at the end of it all. Make sure you’re not demanding everything as soon as the person arrives to your landing page.

Are these landing page mistakes sounding familiar? Want to learn more about what makes a landing page an excellent destination for your target audience? Then be sure to check out our handy, dandy guide, Landing Pages 101: Common Mistakes That Confuse and Confound and How to Fix Them.

Are we aware of the psychological tricks and traps some marketers use to lure us into purchasing specific brands? Just because most of us at the Daily Fix are involved in marketing doesn’t mean that we can’t be affected by our colleagues’ ruses.

No matter how smart we think we are, I guarantee we’ve all fallen prey to a marketing enticement trick or two. I know I have.

While working out recently, I watched an interesting segment on the Today Show about a branding experiment conducted by author and branding/consumer behavior expert, Martin Lindstrom. In it, a California couple agreed to promote specific brands to their friends and social circle in everyday conversations and at parties that they hosted. At the end of the three-month period, the results were staggering:

• 9 out of 10 brands were bought.
• One brand had a 1,000% sales increase.
• An estimated 13,000 people were affected by the couple.

Now, maybe our pal, Daily Fix blogger, author, and word-of-mouth marketing guru, Andy Sernovitz wouldn’t be surprised by this, but others may.

Admittedly, I haven’t yet read Lindstrom’s book, Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, but based on the experiment and book reviews, I am certainly intrigued.

I could never have imagined that some companies begin marketing to babies in the womb. Or that shoppers in U.S. department stores who are exposed to Muzak with a slow tempo shop 18% longer and purchase 17% more than do those who shop in silence. Or that peddling panic and paranoia was so ubiquitous.

What’s even more interesting is Lindstrom’s take on it all.

“Whenever I meet up with executives around the world, I remind them that today the most powerful force in marketing is not a corporation. It’s not a CEO. It’s not a big-budget marketing department. Today and in the future, the people who hold the real power are hyperconnected, mouse-clicking consumers and their wide circles of virtual and real-life friends and acquaintances. In other words, the people who hold the real power are us.

“As a result, brands of the future simply must be transparent and live up to their promises. Trust me (and you marketers out there take note), any brand that doesn’t will be instantly and painfully exposed and reviled.”

Your turn: Were you aware of these types of brandwashing  tricks and tools? Have you ever been duped by them? Do you think marketers should continue to employ these tactics, or do you think they are unethical? WEIGH IN!

There’s no secret that many new business ideas never get off the drawing board. The risks and initial investments are just too great for the majority of new business ventures. However, I will reveal a few secrets that most people don’t realize they can do at home to determine the viability and potential market of a new business idea.

When researching demand for a new business venture or idea I have, I always start online. There are a number of procedures and tools that you can use to determine demand for a particular product or service—even if no one else is offering it yet and it’s completely unique to the marketplace.

With five simple (and free) steps you can easily determine whether your new business idea is viable.

1.) Use keyword tools to estimate the search volume of the keywords relevant to your business idea. To determine how many people are interested in products or services relating to your new business idea, use search tools to get an estimate on how many people are actually looking for them. For example, at my site, I found out the number of monthly searches for things like: “customer appreciation program,” “customer retention,” “customer thank-you gifts,” etc. That gave me a good idea of how many people were actively interested in a customer-retention program or gifts for customers.

There are a number of free and paid tools you can use that are fairly accurate. Google Keyword Tool is the best free tool. SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool, Wordtracker, and Wordstream are also great applications to estimate keyword search volume. By using a few different tools and comparing the results, you can get a very accurate picture of the demand for your product.

2.) Search the terms on Google and analyzed the results found. Find out who else is  offering comparable services and ranking for those keywords that you just analyzed. After filtering out the results for relevance, you can use a number of other free tools to identify the estimated traffic for those domains and the top referring keywords for each site. This will help you identify how successful the competition has been and helps give you a clearer picture of what you can hope to accomplish. You can also analyze the backlink profiles of those domains to see what kind of press their comparable products have been receiving—and it can point you in new directions of where to research your ideas further.

3.) Look at the CPC (costs per click) for each keyword in Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter. By looking at what the competition is paying for traffic for all your relevant keywords, you can get a clearer picture of what kind of return you should expect for each visitor you can get to traffic your site. A low CPC shows that people searching for that term are not very likely to be qualified buyers. Testing different ad copy and targeting different keywords, then analyzing the results, gives you a better idea of which terms/aspects of your business and marketing message should be reevaluated.

4.) Browse the question and answer sites online for questions relating to your business idea. By searching sites like Yahoo! Answers, Ask, Quora, and a number of other Q&A sites, you can see if others are interested in the new service you are thinking about providing. You can even start looking in forums if you don’t immediately find what you’re looking for.

5.) Crowdsource your friends, family, and business contacts. Besides the obvious ways of calling and face-to-face contact, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ are great methods for crowdsourcing opinions from your contacts. Facebook even offers built-in polls that you can use for this very purpose. You could pay to outsource this service as well with things like focus groups and group surveys … but this should always be done last, because after doing the first four steps, you might not even need to!

If your results are still inconclusive, it might be a good idea to plan a small-scale product/service launch. For example, create an informational website about your product. Make it known that the product or service is coming soon and that visitors can join your mailing list to be notified once the product/service is available. (Offer some sort of discount or incentive as well.) Use PPC methods, email marketing, or even SEO to get traffic to the site. Depending on the result, you can determine the interest level of potential customers in your new business idea.

New business ideas are dreamt up every single day. The difference between going broke and becoming a multimillionaire is determining whether your business venture is viable and potentially profitable. Taking these five steps into account, you should be able to save time and money the next time you get a great idea for a new business.

Chris Wise is head of SEM at Customer Rave.

In May 2011, the European Union made changes to how companies worldwide are allowed to collect or use information from web page visitors from Europe. The legislation, called the European e-Privacy directive, legally mandates that websites tracking users with cookies collect explicit consent from the person being tracked prior to dropping a cookie. Although they are similar, the legislation is even stricter than the CAN-SPAM Act of the United States because it forces U.S. email marketers to delete a client’s information as soon as the customer unsubscribes.

The EU’s Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding, says, “Privacy standards for European citizens should apply independently of the area of the world in which their data is being processes. To enforce the EU law, national privacy watchdogs shall be endowed with powers to investigate and engage in legal proceedings against non-EU data controllers whose services target EU customers.”

All businesses and websites tracking Europeans must comply by the regulations to be in compliance with the EU’s new legislation. American businesses will need to take reasonable measures to identify which website visitors are European and collect their permission.

Compliance is important for international email marketers because in some cases, not being compliant with international law can cost thousands of dollars in legal fees and fines, and possibly even criminal sanctions.

When asking for permission, inform subscribers about exactly what data is being tracked and how you will use it. The key is obtaining explicit consent.

Furthermore, there must be some kind of affirmative action where the subscribers acknowledge their consent to marketing and tracking. A good example of this is where a subscriber provides consent by clicking a link, which causes a pop-up box specifying what you will do with the subscriber’s personal data.

You can decide where to collect consent and then drop the cookie. Many businesses allow European visitors to browse some pages of sections of the website before asking for permission. The idea is to enable the website visitor to see the value of the web content or services before asking for tracking permission.

For example, you might want to ask permission after a European visitor has viewed a certain number of pages, spent a given amount of time on the site or visited specific web pages.

The following are laws enacted by the European Union that address email marketing from a privacy perspective. These laws must be followed by all of the member states.

• Data must be fairly and lawfully processed.
• Data must be processed for limited purposes.
• Data must be adequate, relevant, and not excessive.
• Data must be accurate.
• Data must not be kept for longer than is necessary.
• Data must be processed in-line with individual rights.

To safely comply with the European e-Privacy directive, remember that every EU member state interprets and implements the laws relevant to privacy and email marketing differently. Don’t make the assumption that legislation in one member state automatically complies with the legislation in another.

Yo Noguchi is an experienced freelancer, guest blogger, and frequent contributor to a blog hosted by Benchmark Email.

The recent summer blockbuster, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, though perhaps not vying for membership in the annals of film art, has earned a substantial berth in the chronicles of marketing.

Film and marketing are similar: the latter being the combined art and science of telling brand stories, and the former the same, only non-advertorial stories (with some exceptions, of course). Film and marketing also frequently share craftsmen and artists: filmmakers who relish the brief and well-paid commercial gig between feature projects, and marketers, like myself, who come from a visual storytelling background (there are many of us) and who continue to produce movies on the side.

But unlike marketing, where research and insight are king, Hollywood is a “drop it and see where it lands” business, with the studios regularly losing money on nine out of 10 pictures. They usually do make up the loss exponentially on the one “tent-pole” film that not only works with audiences but also keeps the studio from collapsing. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is such a picture.

Isn’t it natural then that marketers should glean priceless insight about the disposition of the market from a similar enterprise, Hollywood, which is essentially a barometer for consumer climate? Try this on for size.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes, starring James Franco and released by Twentieth Century Fox, is the story of what happens when a scientist, trying to find a cure for Alzheimer’s, genetically enhances a pet chimpanzee who uses his sudden and enhanced intellectual power to lead other chimps to rebellion and, ultimately, freedom. It cost around $93 million to make, over half that much again to market, but at the time of this article, it has already grossed roughly $125 million, and shows every sign of being an absolute windfall.

Now, I know the plot sounds staid. It is a loosely associated and shameless addition to the Planet of the Apes franchise, and it’s not the first film that’s had viewers sympathizing with lab chimps. (Remember a young Matthew Broderick in Project X?) But here’s where this film is different.

1. In this film, the apes represent a film history first where the lead protagonists—the characters with whom the audience truly sympathize—are the only purely digital creations surrounded by a cast of real-life, flesh-and-bone actors.

2. The film makes the apes the heroes, whereas in previous iterations the apes were tyrants who oppressed the humans. This change is significant, and what I call the “Howard Zinn Effect.”

3. Finally and most important, the emotion that the film’s marketers are using to successfully sell the movie suggests that we are on the precipice of a new Zeitgeist, an important change in consumer attitudes.

The Apex of the Digital Evolution

Consumers are no longer merely conceptually literate in digital media. They are now emotionally literate, too.

There have been films in the past that have compelled audiences to care, sometimes deeply, for characters that were not human or portrayed by anything “real.” From Bambi to Where the Red Fern Grows to the Toy Story franchise, from animated deer to real-life dogs to computer generated pixels, this has always been part of the magic of movies. In Bambi or Toy Story, however, what choice does the viewer have? Everything is animated. In Red Fern, the dogs elicit emotion, but it is really through the boy that emotion flows. In none of these instances does the audience sympathize completely with a character that is neither human nor real, and do so despite all the other real, human alternatives.

In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, audiences do.

This insight is of unimaginable value to marketers. Marketers now know with certainty that consumers are capable of sympathizing, even empathizing, completely and in favor of human counterparts, with computer generated entities. This film proves that consumers are now not merely conceptually fluent, but emotionally fluent in the digital language. Imagine what this means for the telling of advertorial stories in the future, the proof that mankind’s long-unmolested narrative archetypes are not only changing, but perhaps changed. The proof that notions of (what were) human emotional trajectories and boundaries may no longer be ample to define the true range of consumer resonance.

One would not dare to speculate here on the myriad ways this shift will evolve the brand stories of tomorrow, but one certainly does wait with bated breath to see.

The Howard Zinn Effect

Consumers are no longer interested in aspirational and commercial stories, but rather backlash against them in favor of stories that raise person above product.

Howard Zinn is an author, professor, and intellectual perhaps best known for his book, The People’s History of the United States, which relates major historical events from the perspective of the loser—through British eyes, for example, instead of the American Revolutionaries, or the American Indians instead of the U.S. government’s. I use the term “Howard Zinn Effect” in my office when I believe that a fundamental shift is occurring in the stories consumers want to hear.

Someone at Unilever or Ogilvy Mather, for example, shrewdly saw a Howard Zinn Effect occurring in the story appetite of female consumers. Many of these consumers were no longer interested in stories about perfection, flawless beauty, sheer convenience, or sex. Someone saw that these women were craving stories that exalted inner beauty, authenticity, independence, and dignity. This person put together the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, a campaign that so resonated with these consumers that it spawned everything from mass sleepovers to stage plays and films.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes gives marketers a similar glimpse into the changing story appetites of consumers today. The success of Rise of the Planet of Apes—a story, remember, about the evils of unchecked capitalism, the danger of corporate and governmental hubris, and the unalienable value of the individual and therefore the group—portends a consumer craving for brand stories that avoid too much humor, feeling too good and overt sex appeal. The consumer opts, instead, in favor of transformational, cause-related stories like we haven’t really seen since the late 1960s and 1970s. (Remember Coca Cola teaching the world to sing?)

Smart marketers will recognize this Howard Zinn Effect occurring in consumer tastes. Smart marketers will start telling brand stories that exalt social responsibility and deny the supremacy of the almighty dollar, stories that illuminate the intrinsic value of transparency and avoid any hint of manipulation or “selling,” and stories that challenge the status quo. Smart marketers will recognize that consumers will soon demand brand stories that, above all else, raise people above commerce.

The Apex of the Revolution

Consumers are at the threshold of a market revolution, and smart marketers must stop marketing to the movement and realize that now the movement is the market.

All of the above leads to a primary, consequential conclusion: Among consumers, there is a revolution brewing. The core emotional strategy successfully employed by the marketers of Rise of the Planet of the Apes is this simple tagline: “Evolution Becomes Revolution.” Judging from ticket sales, this emotion resonates with consumers today, who live in a country where 90% of the wealth is controlled by 1% of the population, the economy is in the proverbial can, and most mothers can’t afford the medical care their children need. Is it any wonder that consumers en masse have grown tired of evolutionary messages and are connecting with messages of revolution?

Much has evolved recently in a short period of time concerning consumer psychographics and therefore marketing strategy. The advent of emotional marketing and cause marketing are examples. But now, consumers are not satisfied by offsetting their complicity in the status quo. They want to change the status quo, and they are developing a taste for brands whose stories don’t merely mention the greater good, but are built upon it, TOMS Shoes and Eyewear being a shining example.

So, what does this mean for marketers? Just as in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the primary emotional driver is a combination of the audience knowing the apes will rebel and wanting them to do it, so, too, will smart marketers realize that successful brands will soon have to tell stories that know change is coming and are eager to be a part of it.

It is no longer enough for brands to market to the movement. They must become the movement. Any brands that fail to tell their stories from the frontlines will risk becoming irrelevant.

Duke Greenhill is the founder and CEO of Greenhill+Partners.

In 2002, I ran the first eMetrics Summit: The Web Analytics Conference. In 2007, I changed the name to the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit. Why?  Because web analytics is a just one piece of the puzzle.

What started as the tabulation of visits and pageviews has become the means of all marketing validation. It turns out that the Internet has become such an integral part of everyday life that online behavior is an excellent indicator of marketing prowess.

If you run a killer radio spot, it drives traffic to your website, Facebook page and/or your mobile app. If you run a killer branding campaign in the newspaper, it drives branded search, which drives traffic to your website, Facebook page and/or your mobile app. If you run a witty TV spot, it’ll show up on YouTube, get tweeted and Google+’ed, which will drive … You get the picture. Bottom line: You can use interactive data to measure the success of all your marketing.

So, what should you measure?

1. Awareness

Have you ever heard of Coca-Cola? Of course. Ever hear of Squamscot’s Golden Ginger Beer? Faygo’s Jazzin’ Blues Berry? How about Dry’s Lavender Soda?  Didn’t think so.

Your first challenge as a marketer is to get your product known. After scraping up some hard-borrowed cash to make a splash, you want to know whether spending it on radio, email newsletters, or a Twitter crusade will yield the best results. The only way to find out is to test and measure. But measure what?

Survey results is the best place to start. The typical approach is aided and unaided. “Name as many soft drinks as you can” is the standard unaided, and “Have you ever heard of Sioux City Sarsaparilla?” is the way to ask in an aided way. True awareness is not fulfilled by “Yeah, I think I’ve heard of Tizer before.” To score a hit here, they would have to respond with something as informative as “Stewart’s Orange-N-Cream? Yeah, it tastes like a 50-50 Bar!” or maybe “Virgil’s Root Beer? Oh yeah, ‘It’s so rich and creamy you’ll swear it was made in heaven.’”

How well do people know your product name and some of its brand attributes? Do a survey, run a campaign, do another survey, and see if you have moved the needle.

2. Interest

Just having heard of your product is OK, but do they care? Have you piqued their interest? Are they enticed enough to seek more information? Do they take it to the next step? Did they bother to search, click, browse, and consume the marketing materials you have waiting along the purchase path? This is easily measured and critical to success.

3. Engagement

So, they looked at your website/mobile app/Facebook page. Is that all there is? It’s time to measure whether they were involved. Did they just read or did they download the PDF, play the interactive game, “Like” what saw, tweet about it to their followers, etc.? Did they come back for more?

4. Sales

Did they buy anything? As fun as marketing is and as exciting as online is and as hip as social media are, we really do need to sell stuff in order to carry on. If you’re a publisher, you need to engender more pageviews to sell more ad space. If you’re a non-profit you have to sell ideas to generate  more donations. Did the work you are doing on awareness and interest and engagement result in a benefit to the organization? Did we reach our goals more often with this sort of promotion or that one?

5. Profits

Most people think the buck stops at sales. Not so. Because not all sales are created equal. If you had to spend $10 to raise awareness and get people interested and engaged enough to buy your $5 product, you have a problem. Anybody can sell dollar bills for 50 cents.

Profitability comes from getting the best results at the lowest cost. Profitability is about adding up all the costs and balancing it against the income. Once you know which campaigns produce profitable sales, you can properly determine which campaigns to try again.

6. Advocacy

Your customers may Like you on Facebook, but that might just be to get the coupon. Do they like you well enough to tell their friends? How about 10,000 of their friends? Advocacy is another way of measuring customer satisfaction. If people like your offering, they will act as your brand ambassador and bring more sales your way. The more people who recommend you, the more likely it is that you are marketing well, have a good product, are selling it at a good price, and are backing it up with good service if and when necessary.

This is not to say that you can skip the rest and fall back on the Net Promoter Score as your only metrics. Instead, you must continue to measure all the bits in between, including customer satisfaction. That’s the only way you’re going to find out where to make specific improvements and continue to dominate the market.

The Bottom Line

The magic here is tying together all of the above. If you can track the results from a branding/awareness campaign all the way down to the profitability of a sale and they advocacy of your customers, you can create a winning marketing budget for the foreseeable future.

That’s why the eMetrics Summit became the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and we include such diverse tracks—so you put all of the puzzle pieces together and get the big picture.

Jim Sterne is a founding director and present co-chairman of the Web Analytics Association.

What gives with this sudden transition to e-books? What are the implications of this e-reading trend for marketing professionals?

The Economist article “Great Digital Expectations” highlights the rapid rise of e-books. And “rapid” is exactly the right word, as it was just in 2006 that e-reader sales were a measly 100,000, whereas 25 million units are expected to be sold in 2011. The article also mentions some startling ramifications of this trend towards electronic reading and publishing (paraphrased):

• E-books have higher profit margins.
• Romance e-books are selling like hotcakes.
• Digital piracy is a threat.
• Pricing is all over the map.

As more people switch to e-readers and the tablet craze really takes off, there are certainly some implications for marketing professionals.

1. The Long Tail

The long tail will be much more of a selling force. In the past, publishers would rely on big box stores, such as Borders or the like, to prominently display their wares. In addition, publishers would expect discount stores and warehouse firms, such as Costco, to move book volumes. With digital publishing, it’s conceivable that more players will have a “fair shot” at publishing success as clustering algorithms on Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com and the like suggest books based on our browsing history and past purchases. For sure, blockbuster titles will continue to have a conspicuous display on Kindle and Nook homepage screens, but readers will discover more book options as expert recommendation engines suggest likely interests that can be purchased in seconds.

2. Pricing

Pricing will take on added importance. Today, print publishers wrestle with initial price setting as they must deliver books to stores that will sell and also create profits. Pricing must be decided before printing because each book has a printed list price on the back cover.

However, with digital publishing, there is essentially no need to establish a “set in stone” price. In a virtual world, publishers (and online retailers) can experiment with pricing every day, perhaps setting different rates by country, discounting “on the fly” based on daily e-book sales, or offering deals to Amazon Kindle customers through its Special Offers. Amazon shoppers know it’s not uncommon to view a book, say “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” one day at $21.24, and then come back to the site tomorrow and see it listed for $22.09. Pricing experimentation will happen instantaneously based on near real time data analysis—without the need to change store signage and update retail POS systems.

These are just two implications for rising e-reader ownership and there are certainly dozens more.

• Can you think of other marketing implications for the rise of e-books?
• How will social media change the way we find and buy e-books?
• What changes, if any, will this e-book trend have on B2B marketing tactics?

I’d love to hear from you!

So, what’s the driving force behind all this change, the force that has marketers failing? It’s the buyer. Studies continue to confirm that, when it comes to making a buying decision, they have more access to technology, more interaction with their peers via social networks, less need for vendor-driven information, and less reliance on salespeople. Marketers are struggling with this new dynamic. Amid the morphing of the buyer and, subsequently, the B2B environment, marketers are failing to convince buyers to buy their products or services. Why? Because there remains one constant no matter how technology-driven or socially enabled we become. That one constant (and many fail to understand it) is that we market and sell to people.

As obvious as that seems, it is something that is lost in many of today’s marketing approaches. It’s as if we in the B2B space have failed to understand that behind the “B” in business to business are hosts of “Ps” (people).

A recent study by Televerde shows that even though some companies are making an attempt at nurturing the buyer, they are truly not connecting to the human element of B2B marketing.

• Over 60% of those surveyed stated incomplete data and poor data hygiene as their biggest marketing challenge when it came to data.
• Only 29% stated that more effective and relevant customer touches should be the highest priority for lead nurturing. (For that 29%, conversion rates ranked the highest. This indicates that  more effective and relevant touches lead to higher conversions.)
• 83% described their definition as providing educational and collateral (i.e., one-way communication).
• 57% make no distinction on how they nurture leads based on their buying stage. (All buyers are treated the same.)
• Of those that use nurturing, 54% do not use lead scoring. (Lack of lead scoring does not allow for one-on-one dialogue, but ensures that all buyers are treated the same.)

As seen above, many organizations are still not clueing into the fact that we are selling and marketing to people. People are the ones who make the buying decisions and vendor choices. Those people have thoughts and emotions that affect their buying decisions. We must remember that. To help move from a B2B mindset to a B2P mindset, here are a few quick tips.

Stop Trying to Sell

Randy Aronis of Ingenuity Sales Consulting has taught many that the first sales call should be focused on the building of rapport. In other words, start by getting to know your buyer. It seems crazy, but try it sometime. The first time I tried this was early in my career. I was selling into the largest IBM distributor in the world and had secured a call with one of the key decision-makers.

After the obligatory introductions and overview, we spent the next 25 minutes talking about golf, our favorite courses, etc. (Keep in mind the call was scheduled for 30 minutes.) We ended the call by scheduling a follow-up onsite that, of course, included a round of golf. Long story short: They were one of my best accounts for my remaining two years at the company. Why? My contact told me, “You guys were not the lowest cost nor did you have the largest staff, but I liked your company and knew I could call you directly if we were ever going to have a problem. I felt that you would personally address it.” Instead of selling, I built a relationship. Marketers would do well to begin thinking this way.

Put the Social Back in Social

The term “social media” is interesting to me. Yes, there is indeed a component that is social. Yet, social media also provides a false sense of relationship. Too many marketers are using this channel to provide one-way communication, doing nothing but sending out facts, figures, and business information. They forget to use social media to engage. What does that look like? Well, for starters, don’t be afraid to have some fun with social media. Comment on posts, answer questions in forums, and engage in online conversations. This will significantly enhance relationships with your buyers online and socially. Buyers want to know there are people behind the walls. So, listen and respond.

Act Like a Politician

OK, before you stop reading, don’t worry. By suggesting you act like a politician, I am not suggesting you give yourself a pay raise every year, slander your competition, or tell lies to divert attention from your mistakes. What I am suggesting is, like many politicians, seek to get personal with your buyers. This doesn’t necessarily mean a marketing/sales bus tour. However, it does mean adding face-to-face interactions to the mix. Marketers erroneously think that the face-to-face stuff is for sales to handle. Not so! Marketers need to stop hiding behind technology and to start meeting with buyers. This can be done by attending sales calls, conferences, and even one-on-one meetings. Nothing will replace a face-to-face interaction and connection. Sitting down across the table from your buyers (or playing a round of golf) will go a long way.

Be Slow to Speak

This goes hand in hand with the “Stop Trying to Sell” tip. My brother tells his kids all the time, “God gave you two ears and one mouth to remind you that listening is more important than speaking.” He may have something there.

By listening to your buyer and asking questions, you will gain (as will they) more from them than from all the things you so desperately want to tell them. You will also show them that you are genuinely interested in them and in meeting their needs. In the course of building a relationship, you’ll have plenty of time to talk about your product or service. So, be patient.

No matter how advanced technology becomes or how easy it gets to dole out information about our products and services, we’ll always be marketing and selling to people. That fact is something we cannot afford to forget.

This was reported in a research brief titled “Through a Glass, Darkly.”

Note: This survey was conducted during recent stock market volatility. Regardless, results are quite startling.

• 41% of respondents expect their local economic conditions to improve over the next 12 months (a decline of 10 points since April and 22 points since January 2011).
• 77% rate the economy fair or poor; 23% good or excellent.
• 72% of consumers still think we haven’t reached the bottom of the economic downturn yet (13% higher than January 2011 surveys).
• 85% of respondents view employment opportunities as fair or poor in their area; only 13% said they were good or excellent.
• 44% of Americans think they’re less secure financially than they were at the start of the 2008 economic meltdown.

These numbers are significant. Probing into the causes of the malaise divulged important insights:

• 41% are worried about basic living costs; food and gasoline prices head up the list.
• 28% are worried about the cost of health care.
• 21% are worried about the health of their retirement accounts.

In response, consumers aren’t just cutting back on spending; they’re slashing spending. They’re saving a lot more, spending a lot less.

• 72% reported they use coupons from multiple sources.
• 62% have cut back on premium products, choosing less expensive options.
• 44% are purchasing food in bulk.
• 36% are taking advantage of online deals.

Now, knowing how consumers feel, what do you as a marketer have to do to get them to spend these days? What do you think works best?

• Coupons online and in print
• More social media engagement
• Groupon deals
• Advertising lower prices and making statements like “We Beat All Competitors’ Pricing”
• Upping the ante on service
• Surprising customers with an unusual product or service they can’t find everywhere else
• A combination of tactics

What’s it going to take now to engage consumers and get them to part with some of their cash—while making them feel good about it?

I’d love to get opinions from marketers and consumers at large …

Recently, we drove with friends to Ashland to see a couple of plays in the 2011 season of the venerable Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Beyond a dazzling dunk into contemporary and Elizabethan drama, I was reminded of a few things relevant to all of us who market for a living.

The first night we saw “August: Osage County,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a dysfunctional Oklahoma family. However, the play we thought we were seeing and the play we actually saw were two different things. We arrived to learn that the Bowmer Theatre had to close for structural repairs, and the play would be relocated to a smaller theater at Oregon State University. Only 300 seats vs. the 600 tickets sold were available, so it would be a first-come, first-served experience.

The festival staff compensated by offering all patrons the opportunity to get either a refund or a voucher for another play. And for the 300 who made it into the new theater, the performance would be free. We arrived early to wait in line and get our seats. The festival staff was on hand to direct us to the location of the unfamiliar theater and to delight us with free chocolates while we waited. We felt well-attended to.

Lesson #1: If you must tell a customer bad news, leaven it with care, consideration, options for satisfaction … and freebies.

Once inside, we faced a stage that was completely bare, save for about a dozen school chairs situated across the stage in twos, threes, and fours.

The director came on stage, apologizing for the lack of a set—which in its original staging was comprised of a three-story home, replete with sitting rooms, kitchen, and an attic bedroom. He walked us through the chair set-ups, naming each set as a particular locale in the home. He also advised us that there would be one violent scene that could not safely be performed on this stage. Instead, the stage manager would come out and tell us what was occurring, so that we could safely segue to the next scene.

Not knowing what to expect, we watched the play unfold. The acting was brilliant, the characters deftly drawn, the dialogue powerful and resonant. We forgot that there was no set. We were all deeply immersed in the drama. We could imagine the attic bedroom, the staircase, the kitchen—and all the pain, humor, and insight the author intended. We all stood for a thundering ovation, moved to tears by this powerful work.

Lesson #2: At the end of the day, marketing is about content. Great content moves people. You can wrap crap writing in a gorgeous red bow, fancy website, or colorful ad, but if you don’t provide information or writing that moves people, it’s still crap.

The next night we saw Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” in the outdoor theater in the round. The director staged this comedy of love in the fifties with the entourage of the king dressed and cavorting as a college varsity team. The young queen and her coterie were dressed and behaved like spoiled sorority sisters, with their sweater sets, puffed skirts, and ponytails. It was clever costuming and clever staging, and we were initially smitten with the hijinks and collegiate repartee overlaid on Shakespeare’s poetry.

Lesson #3: Shakespeare has been around for centuries, but his works remain fresh because every director brings a new sensibility, nuance, or style to it. His “brand” doesn’t get old and stale because we renew it every time it’s staged.

We made it to intermission. However, two of the couples decided they’d had enough. They didn’t enjoy all the silly wordplay. We, however, stayed to the end as we rarely get to see Shakespeare’s plays. Our friends, however, didn’t miss much; the second act was more disappointing because instead of the typical joyful pairing of young lovers, they end up postponing their amour for a year.

Lesson #4: Even Shakespeare can write a stinker. We all try to be original, to produce great and lasting creative content. It’s good, however, to remember that even William wrote a clunker or two … and it hasn’t diminished his reputation. He just kept at it. And so should we all.

We marketers may not be producing great works of lasting literature … but Shakespeare, in his lifetime, wasn’t doing so either. Like us, he was making a living by his wits. And therein lies the tale.

Mimi Sells is the chief marketing officer of Oshman Family JCC.

As a direct mail marketer, it’s ingrained in me to say that any marketing campaign should include direct mail. In reality, brands will get the greatest return when they use direct mail intelligently.

Direct mail also works best when used in combination with other channels, such as email, phone calls, mobile marketing, etc. There are certain audiences and industries for which direct mail is a perfect and necessary option, as well as recommended tactics to employ to ensure success.

While direct mail can and does work for a myriad of industries, reaching all kinds of audiences, here are my thoughts on when direct mail works best and how to make it smarter.

Audiences

The affluent consumer
An article in Luxury Daily reports that 50% of our wealthiest populations (the top 10% of affluent U.S. individuals who make up 35% of all U.S. income; individuals with a minimum net worth of $828,000 and an average net worth of $3.1 million) don’t engage with social media—at all. In that same article, to Ron Kurtz, principal of Atlanta-based American Affluence Research Center suggests that to reach these affluent buyers, brands should focus on customer referrals and direct mail, including catalogs.

The 55+ consumer
Brands that sell to a target audience that could easily be described as mature and conservative would benefit from using direct mail. While there are members of that audience that are on Facebook and other social media channels, it’s important to recognize that a traditional channel, such as direct mail, might still pack a powerful punch for the majority of that audience.

American youth, 18-34 demographic
Technology is often associated with what’s fresh and new. It’s an association so strong that some marketers assume younger generations would prefer to receive information online or via other digital channels. Within that last couple of years, however, studies revealed that American adults ranging in age from 18 to 34 actually prefer to receive messages for certain types of products and services by print. A study titled “Finding the Right Channel Combination: What Drives Channel Choice?” indicated that more than 60% of that demographic group surveyed preferred to receive information about personal care, food, and cleaning products through direct mail and other print media.

Industries

Generally speaking, a brand that requires local awareness to sustain and grow business understands how direct mail fits in the new marketing mix. Not only do local businesses (including national brands with local retail stores) need to reach consumers that may not be online, they also must direct internet-using audiences online to collect more customer data.  With new technologies now available allowing brands to initiate automated and trackable direct mail campaigns, the need for brands to capture detailed and reliable customer data is key for growth. Some examples of local, neighborhood businesses include restaurants, retail stores, real estate agents, household service providers (plumbers, roofers, landscapers, etc.), child-focused businesses (day cares, photographers, play gyms, etc.), and any franchise business with multiple locations.

Local and franchise businesses can use direct mail to drive awareness, extend special offers and customer loyalty appreciation, and incorporate variable mapping options to direct recipients to the business, based on the consumer’s address. Another localized industry that can benefit from the use of direct mail is the health care industry. Doctors’ offices, hospitals and other health facilities often have a need to communicate particularly sensitive messages, which are typically best delivered via mail. These sensitive messages are not defined as personal, private data, but rather topics that are sensitive and relevant to certain demographics.

Content

Personalize direct mail, and by that I don’t mean a simple insert of the recipient’s name. For optimal performance, personalization should extend far beyond that to include content that’s relevant to the recipient. This level of personalization is not only recommended, but is becoming expected by consumers. To make your direct mail piece even stronger, it should refer to past purchase behavior and/or information that is unique to the recipient. Keep close tabs on your customers’ buying behavior via CRM, and this should make this level of customization fairly simple.

To influence behavior, direct mail works best when there is one, very clear call to action such as a coupon, special offer, or a reason to go online to find out more. Including multiple calls to action may seem to be a good idea on the surface, but instead of enhancing performance, this approach can often leave consumers confused, sending your direct mail piece to the trash bin.

Direct mail that has some form of emotional impact or message is often successful. Content that evokes an emotional response is clearly a perfect fit for non-profit, but can also be quite effective when used in B2C and B2B campaigns.

Data and Technology

Data
Sure, it is fun to spend time on the creative portion of a marketing campaign. This may include the design, the messaging, and the call-to-action. However, the success of a direct mail campaign is almost always primarily related to the quality of data for the mailing list. Brands that take the time to scrub their databases in an effort to truly target the most highly qualified members of their audience will garner much higher response rates.

Direct mail not only helps to get a message out to an audience, but also to receive information back from those that interact. It can be a great way to collect further customer information and collect information on new prospects. Keeping track of new and repeat customer behavior and then using those insights to tailor offerings can shorten the purchase cycle and encourage loyalty. The latest variable data print technology combined with targeted data can be a very powerful, automated solution.

Technology
When integrating barcodes with direct mail, marketers must understand how and where they will be used. Will the consumer take the piece into the store so the barcode can be scanned at the register? If so, marketers need to be mindful of what type of barcodes will be recognized by their POS system. Will the consumer scan the code to go online? If so, make sure the destination is mobile friendly and that it is a continuation of the sales experience.

Before attempting to integrate mobile with direct mail and print, marketers should clearly define what type of consumer they’re trying to reach. Research to determine if the target consumer primarily uses smart phones, flip/feature phones, no cell phone, SMS, etc. to decide if the audience is likely to engage via mobile—and how. Also determine if the action you want the direct mail recipient to take would feasibly be taken using mobile technology before slapping a QR code in mail piece, for example. It doesn’t always make sense, therefore don’t integrate mobile with print if there’s not a compelling reason to do so that benefits the brand and the consumer.

Integrating technology is best when used to make direct mail more relevant to the recipient and track able to the brand. If your campaign is not audience specific and simply blasted to the masses, the true benefits of technology integration will be glaringly absent.

As always, have tracking mechanisms in place so you can determine campaign ROI.

One final area that is imperative to keep in mind to execute an intelligent direct mail campaign is not to stop at the initial mailing. All too often, brands send out one postcard to a list, then sit back and wait. Then, if they are dissatisfied with the results, they often make one awful mistake—they do nothing. To ensure that a message gets noticed and the intended action is taken, plan for a multitouch approach that includes A/B testing. Today’s consumer’s attention is being demanded by a multitude of distractions—from children, to technology, to work, etc.—therefore repeat and relevant messages are more essential than ever before to convert a direct mail recipient into a customer.

Jamie Klemcke is the marketing director at QuantumDigital.

Just because everyone and their online peeps are talking about you that doesn’t necessarily mean that those social media mentions are resulting in more coins in your coffers or a more positive reputation for your brand. So, how do you know if you’re hitting your marketing campaign goals?

The key is to write clear,  measurable objectives right from the get-go. As public relations strategist Geoff Livingston mentioned in his MarketingProfs PRO seminar Measuring and Sustaining Social Success, the basic question in writing a clear goal is: “How many by when?”

Goals of “get more tweets” and “have (number) more Facebook fans” are too vague. And because they aren’t tied into any specific campaign, you can’t measure their effectiveness. To have a goal that you can measure, make sure that it is: specific (you know what you exactly want to do), measurable (you’ve got the right analytics tools in place), attainable (i.e., realistic), results-oriented (you actually accomplish something) and time-bound (you have a deadline). In other words, make sure it’s SMART.

Sound difficult? It’s not when you narrow down the seemingly overwhelming world of metrics to three areas that truly matter: attention, attitudes, and actions.

Livingston suggests that you ask yourself the following questions when creating measurable goals for your social media campaign:

Attention (e.g., fans, traffic, volumes of interest, online mentions)

• What will your loyal clients and would-be customers know?
• What will they come to understand?

Attitudes (overall sentiment regarding your business)

• How will the people you are targeting feel about your brand or business?
• What will they believe about your brand or business?
• Who will they trust?

Actions (business results of online outreach)

• What will your targeted group now do?
• What will they support?
• What will they stop or avoid doing?

Sure, everyone likes to be mentioned positively on social media (who doesn’t like being liked?), but when it comes to straight-up metrics, it’s important to strike a balance between the numbers-only philosophy of the more mathematically inclined and the relationship-only philosophy of the personally inclined. Smart objectives do just that.

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It got me wondering how successful these restaurants, salons and other small businesses are at converting new clients and ultimately achieving a positive return on their investment.

According to a study conducted by Rice University, only 66% of companies who participated in Groupon promotions did so profitably. How can you make sure that your small business lands in the lucky two thirds? Just follow this model:

1.) Make sure your employees are happy. The Rice study cited employee satisfaction as being the biggest indicator of a promotion’s profitability. Make sure you communicate with your employees what is happening, so that they will be ready for the rush. Offer compensation to make up for lower tips and possible longer hours.

2.) Capture contact information upon redemption and ask for the opt-in. Have a comment card, or better yet, iPad available to collect your customers contact information.

3.)  Follow up via email/phone/mail. You’d be surprised at how many businesses my fiancée never heard from again—despite having provided contact information at the point of redemption.

4.) Ask for feedback by sending them a quick online survey. Contact customers immediately after a sale or service has been rendered to get their feedback while the purchase is still on their minds.

5.) Keep them coming back. You got the hook; now reel them in with your own Groupon deal based on your terms. Send them a coupon with a discount that works for you. Chances are they have already made up their mind on whether or not they will return, but either way this is a good nudge.

If you are thinking or running a Groupon or any other social coupon deal, the question no longer is: Will it be successful? But rather, how do I prepare and follow through?

What are your thoughts on social coupon sites such as Groupon, LivingSocial, and Bloomspot? Have you had success with social couponing?

I was a tad jealous as I listened to my brother recount to me the details of their meeting. Interestingly though, the thing that made the biggest impression on my brother was that Bono was the one who asked all the questions. To quote my brother, “He didn’t break eye contact and his demeanor showed that he was genuinely interested in learning about me.”

It often comes as a surprise when we hear stories of world-famous celebrities showing so much interest in “the common man.” Why? Because we often get the impression that they have more important things to do.

This thought made me wonder how that same dynamic applies to companies and those that buy their products and services. Are buyers surprised when a company shows genuine interest in their wants and needs? Which are you, as a seller, more concerned with: being interesting or being truly interested in your buyers’ needs? While the difference in the two may be subtle, the way they come across to your buyers will make an incredible difference in how they engage with (and ultimately buy from) you.

Continuing with the theme, here are four characteristics of companies that are more focused on being interested than interesting:

1.  They Engage With Their Buyers.
Organizations that are interested in their buyers focus on engagement. What does this mean? It’s not just the new wave of brand marketing. It’s a communication process whereby they connect with their buyers, seek to understand them, and ask questions. The questions lead to answers that provide understanding; understanding leads to a better overall buyer experience; a better experience leads to a long-term relationship. This rarely begins with: “Hello, when can you view a demo? Engagement takes time and will be accomplished by patient, ongoing dialogue.

2.  They Know Who Their Buyer Is Before They Engage
Ask anyone what they are looking for in a romantic relationship, and the answer often is a list of character traits or a description of the ideal mate. Companies that are interested do the same with their buyers. They create buyer personas or ideal profiles, which allow them to better focus and target their messaging and offers.

The development of these profiles is a continual process. The more information you obtain through engagement, the more the profile of your buyer will evolve. The more you know about them (being interested), the better you’ll be able to help them achieve their goals.

3.  They Don’t Treat Everyone the Same
One of the things I like to do when I get a consumer telemarketing call at home is to see how quickly I can get the caller off script. It’s so painful to hear them reading word for word from this script, especially knowing that I’m hearing the same spiel they’re giving everyone else they call.  You know you have them thrown when you ask a question. There’s usually five seconds of silence and then they begin reading again, perhaps hoping I’ll forget I asked a question. It’s great fun.

Ineffective B2B marketing and sales organizations are acting in much the same manner. Instead of a one-on-one dialogue with each buyer, they take a scripted approach that indicates they have no understanding of the buyer. Conversely, organizations that are interested tailor communication and overall experience to each unique buyer (or buyer category).

4.  They Measure Their Engagement
I recently served on a panel which was asked, “How do you know if your content is effective?”  Other members of the panel began answering, giving elaborate answers about key indicators, and percentages of opens and clicks (obviously email focused). When my turn came, I offered up one short line: “You will know it’s effective if your buyers respond to it.” It’s pretty simple, but it’s true. If there is no response or action, your content is not working.

The only way to know this is to measure your buyer engagement, response, and (ultimately) purchase behavior. If they don’t keep coming back for more, then there’s a problem.

Interesting or interested? One gets attention, the other develops and maintains long-term buying relationships. Which one do you want to be?

Most of us are guilty of not being focused. We want to sell our product or service to as many people as possible. So, we go out there and market with a message that’s some flavor of “buy my product or service.” The spirit of this is not a bad thing—after all, most of us are in business to sell our product or service. But marketing is about changing behavior. And if you’re going to change customer behavior effectively, your marketing message needs to be focused.

To do this, you need to understand your customers’ purchase process and then focus your marketing objectives on a specific stage or two within this process.

Here are the six general stages of your customers’ purchase process.

1. Origination: What’s the need that triggers your customer to buy? If you’re a web design service, one origination trigger for your customer is the purchase of a domain or hosting service. Your marketing objective could be to “get people who just bought a web domain to use our web design service.” If you’re a flooring contractor, one origination trigger for your customer is the purchase of a foreclosed home. Your marketing objective could be “get people who just purchased a foreclosed home to repair their flooring with us.”

2. Information Gathering: Where and how does your customer gather information to address the originating need? If your customer turns to mommy blogs to find a solution to her need, your marketing objective could be “get moms who are searching on mommy blogs to find our product.” If your customer solicits the advice of her accountant for a product recommendation, your marketing objective could be “get accountants to recommend my product instead of competitor X’s.”

3. Category Choice: What category choices do your customers have when seeking a solution to their need? For example, a customer looking to create a website can choose between self-service web design services or full-service web agencies. If you’re a web agency, your objective could be to “get customers who are looking to build a website to choose our full-service agency instead of choosing a self-service option.” If you sell children’s toys, your marketing objective could be “when a parent is looking to buy a birthday gift for their child, get them to buy a toy instead of a game, puzzle, or movie.”

4. Brand Choice: Once your customer has made a category choice, which brands will she choose from? For example, if you sell PR services, you should identify your key competitors and focus your marketing objective on “get startups who are looking for a boutique PR agency to choose us instead of competitor X or Y.”

5. Usage: How does your customer use your product? For example, if your customers use your software weekly but you want them to use it more regularly, your marketing objective will be “get my existing customers to use daily instead of weekly.” Of if you offer a “freemium” product with a free trial, your objective could be “get more existing customers to signup instead of churn after the trial period.”

6. Repurchase: Would your customer purchase from you again? Would she refer you? For example, if your repurchase rate is low, your marketing objective could be “get more customers to repurchase my service instead of lapse.”

Sketching out your customers’ purchase process is a critical step in helping you decide where you to focus your marketing efforts. And depending on where you decide to focus, your marketing message and efforts will be hugely different.

Gary Gebenlian is vice president of marketing at Future Simple—small business software.

I have had enough, and I can’t stand no more.

I’m talking about ads, commercials, spots, whatever cool vernacular you want to use to describe the visual medium that plays over airwaves and into our house via what is commonly referred to as a TV.

The target of my ire is aimed directly and squarely at the airline industry. Truth be told, I do not blame these companies and their respective ad agencies one bit for capitalizing and promoting a benefit they offer and others don’t. I get it … It’s their USP, Universal Selling Point. Or at least it’s one of them.

Here’s two spots from two different airlines:

The first one is Southwest’s campaign—which I like by the way in terms of creativity and execution—that promotes and advertises the fact that on their airline “Bags Fly Free!”

The second spot is for Jet Blue and promotes and advertises the fact that passengers on their planes get … a whole can of soda!

Now before I go on, let me state for the record that I do not fly very often, point being I don’t even know if these “amenities” are still being offered by each respective airline. But just the fact that they were at one point in time was enough to make me want to put pen to paper, as it were.

I just love the line in the Jet Blue spot … “free unlimited brand-name snacks.”

Man: “What airline should be fly, honey?’
Woman: “Jet Blue, for sure … ! We can get all the Oreos we want, and none of that store-brand crap the other airlines offer.”

But think about this, boys and girls. Should we as consumers now be happy that we are getting something for free that should have been always been free to start with?

Are you kidding me?!?!?!!

I was out a few days … I apparently missed the part where the American consumer gleefully celebrates getting ripped off, duped, and downright conned by the greed of corporations and companies.

Don’t you see what is happening here, people?

1. Companies are taking things that used to be free and now assigning a cost to them.
2. Everyone gets outraged.
3. The outrage dies down and ultimately passes, and the aforementioned charging for what used to be free becomes an accepted practice.
4. Said company then creates an ad campaign/blitz that promotes and advertises something which is NOW free, which should have stayed free the whole time!
5. We all dance gaily in the streets and happily patronize said company for “being different” than the other guy.

And this is just one industry I’ve touched on …

Did you know some supermarkets now charge you to use a shopping cart? How many restaurants now charge for what used to be free refills on beverages? We even have to pay for air for our tires now!

So, if you’re enjoying something for free right now, chances are it won’t be free for very long, and the cycle will begin and then one day, it will be free again.

What can we as the American consumer to stop this incessant cycle from happening or are we powerless to stop it?

Help me out, please … someone. Anyone. Bueller?

When market researchers want to find out what customers think, they do everything—except ask them directly. Face to face. Or even Facebook to Facebook.

For decades, market researchers have surveyed customers anonymously by using methods that haven’t been cutting-edge since telephones and paper surveys were the last word in marketing technology. The results may or may not be accurate because response rates are so weak that many surveys aren’t statistically significant. These efforts don’t do much, if anything, to expand our brands.

Enough of that.

We in marketing research can strive for better results. We don’t have to bore customers with “do you agree, strongly agree, strongly disagree …” surveys that go on longer than the last Harry Potter book. By combining social media, business intelligence and customer interaction technology, we can initiate ongoing conversations with our customers that yield instant, bankable market intelligence.

Welcome to the era of the eternal focus group

Using business intelligence and customer relationship management systems to identify highly engaged customers, market researchers can invite them into ongoing discussions about products, services, branding, pricing—everything we study by blind surveys now. Social media is the glue that holds these panels together. It’s the conduit for quick, visual surveys that replace the time consuming paper-based questionnaires. Market researchers can send customers interactive images, full-motion video, even links to virtual worlds where the respondents “act” their replies. Companies distribute the questions to the panels as e-mail attachments, or through Facebook groups, or by tweeting links to Web portals. More engaging content increases response rates and accuracy while keeping customers from dropping out from boredom or overload.

Instead of a massive campaign that takes weeks of planning, marketers can tap into these online panels for input in real time from real customers without sacrificing research validity or missing out on an evolving trend or opportunity in today’s instant gratification society. The online panel and surveys are brand experiences in themselves and will keep online panel members engaged well beyond the single interactions of yesterday.

The philosophical base for this new marketing model is engaging customers directly. Objectivity has its place, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of marketing research. Tell your customers who you are and what you want to talk to them about. Somewhere along the line, marketing latched onto the idea that customers won’t answer honestly if they know who you are. They’ll be too nice and won’t yield a complete picture.

Not true.

There’s enormous value in having open conversations with customers who know they’re talking to you about your brands. Customers who like your product and want it to succeed so much that they’ll tell you exactly what they don’t like about it in unmerciful detail. It might not be objective because they know who you are, but it’s unvarnished and motivated by the right impulses—they like you and want you to succeed.

The future of market research lies in ongoing conversations. True insights and competitive intelligence come from open conversations with customers who know they’re talking to you about your products it’s time for a long talk at the kitchen table—a virtual kitchen table and a multimedia chat.

Andrew Reid is CEO of Vision Critical.

No doubt you’ve seen or heard the news about the most recent Census. The data indicates that the Latino population jumped from 12.5% of the total U.S. population in 2000, up to 16.3% in 2010.

Why is this a big deal? Because it represents a whopping 43% increase in just 10 years. Plus, if you look at children alone (age 0-17), the Latino population is currently 23.1% of the total. That’s a national trend any marketer needs to pay attention to. The big question though, is how do you put that information to use? Here are a few questions you need to ask yourself to get you started.

Is it right for your brand to market to Latinos?

There are two questions you have to ask yourself right now:

1. What type of business are you in?
If you market directly to the consumer, you need to think about the Latino market regardless of your product. Latinos may not be a large portion of your customers right now, but they have the potential to be. Think about it. This demographic is growing. It will continue to grow. Start learning and experimenting now before your competitors beat you to it. Right now, Latinos have more disposable income than any other minority group. If you are a B2B business, you may have some time depending on your customer segments—chances are they are more in line with functional benefits. But, you should still know that their customers are likely to be increasingly Latino and you have an opportunity to help them meet the needs of their customers—even anticipate the needs of their customers—if you get a jump on learning about the Latino market now.

2. Where is your market?
If you manage a national brand, the answer is pretty easy. Start working on your Latino strategy immediately. But what if you’re regional, or local? A good place to start is to check out the census data in your own market. You can easily get that information at www.census.gov (and get the Latino brief right here). For example, if you’re in California, you already know that the Latino demo is a major part of your market, now representing over 37% of the population. But what about other states?

Take a look at this map from the Census. All those dark blue areas represent counties that have at least doubled their Latino population in the last 10 years. Again, that’s a trend that cannot be denied.

Let go of your assumptions about Latinos.

Does this mean you need to start marketing in Spanish?

That depends.  On the one hand, 39% of Latinos say they are more loyal to companies who show an appreciation for their culture by advertising in Spanish, and 42% report that they believe companies who advertise in Spanish respect their heritage and really want their business.  But that’s not the whole story.

A lot of what you do is going to depend on what generation of Latino you’re marketing to, which is going to dictate their acculturation levels in most cases.  For example, first-generation Latinos are overwhelmingly Spanish dominant while third-generation Latinos will likely be English dominant. But the thing that most people miss in this data point is that multiple generations live under one roof, so you have to have a strategy to reach the whole home, and often that means doing a mix of English and Spanish, depending on your product or service.

Look at what others are doing!

There are some pretty major brands changing the way they do things.  Just last week, Nissan rolled out a Facebook page entirely in Spanish as a companion to their English page.

And Diageo (the company behind spirits brands Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker, Cuervo and others) announced a precedent setting ad spend with Spanish language titan Univision.  Why?  Because numbers don’t lie and these companies and others see that paying attention to the Hispanic consumer is no longer optional.  In June at Nielsen’s Consumer 360 conference, Coca-Cola’s CMO, Bea Perez, stated, “We know that eighty-six percent of the growth through 2020 for Coca-Cola’s youth-target market will come from multicultural consumers, especially Hispanic, and focusing on this segment is critical to the company’s future growth.”  That’s a staggering number, and Coke is a pretty sure bet to follow when it comes to branding.

What do I do now?

1. Do a little bit of research. (There are great resources online.)

• www.census.gov
• Ad Age also has their Hispanic Fact Pack available free until September.

2. Go find some more best practices. Take a look around you and see what your competitors are doing.

3. If you know you need to act now but don’t have the expertise yourself, hire an expert.

Advances in social technologies have made the voice of the consumer more dominant in today’s marketplace. Consumers are vocal about their needs, wants, and preferences. They crave relevancy, personalization, and a platform to be heard.

These new consumers want control over how, when, and where brands engage with them and to what extent. This shift will be the most important trend to impact the consumer market over the next decade and beyond.

Marketers should consider the following when planning to reach current and future consumers:

• Have a plan to continually stay familiar with new technology.
• Track changes in how consumers are using technology to interact with brands.
• Pay attention to consumer preferences—especially how they are interacting with new technologies across multiple industries and devices.
• Understand the brand’s customer base, such as who they are, where they are, and how they shop (in store and/or online), what they like, and motivations affecting their decision-making.

Beth wrote, “As the research shows, it’s the quiet ones we all need to look out for, not the flashy rock stars.” That reminded me of a slide I once saw at an early WOMMA conference. While I don’t recall the presenter, I’ve never forgotten the actual slide and have often used it to demonstrate our misconceptions about what makes someone an “influencer.”

The slide was very simple: just a headline and photo. The headline was a simple question: “Who is the most influential person?” The photo featured a group portrait of the typical people who inhabit the modern-day corporate office:

Listening effectively to your customers can be a very insightful experience. The better you are at listening; the better you can understand your customers’ wants and needs. Do you wonder what your customers are saying about your product or service across the web?

With the rise, and seemingly universal adoption, of social media among consumers, businesses can now listen in on conversations regarding their products and services—if they have the right tools. Although you cannot control these discussions, you can monitor them and respond accordingly.

Here are five free tools to include in your social media listening tool belt:
1. Social Mention: A site that offers real-time social media search and analysis. It’s very easy to use and features the most common indicators of social media activity (strength, sentiment, passion, and reach).
2. RSS Reader: Sign up for a free RSS reader, such as Google Reader. Then use the Google Blogs search option, and search blog directory sites, such as Technorati and Blog Catalog, for blogs that are relevant to your product or service. When you find what you are looking for, simply subscribe by clicking on the RSS feed and adding it to your reader.
3. Search.twitter.com: Here you can search for keywords or phrases and view those mentions (up to two weeks) as they occur on Twitter. Once you find relevant keywords you can subscribe via RSS feed, add to your reader, and stay alerted when these mentions happen in real time.
4. Online surveys and polls: Online survey tools can be an invaluable resource for listening. Embedding a survey or poll directly into your website or blog engages your audience and gives them a voice. You can also launch a survey or poll directly into Facebook and Twitter, giving your business a focused listening platform.
5. Google alerts: Google alerts allows you to set up search queries for keywords which Google will then email you whenever it indexes those keywords. A good idea to start with is to set up alerts for your company name, relevant products, and your website URL.

This may seem like a lot to jump into—so try not to get overwhelmed. It can be a real challenge to monitor everything at first so take it in strides and find what works best for you. Once you get your “listening headquarters” all set up, you will find it hard to turn off.

Listening to what people say can teach you a lot about what you are doing right, and perhaps more importantly, what you are doing wrong. In any case, your current and potential customers will likely appreciate the fact that you are indeed listening.

Jason Miller is a social media marketing manager at Zoomerang.

For more info about free online tools, check out Take 10: How to Monitor Conversations With Free Online Tools.

Recently, more than 550 very credible health institutions and professionals challenged McDonald’s to stop marketing junk food to kids. Initiated by Corporate Accountability International, full-page ads appeared in several dailies across the country urging people and professionals to sign the open letter and share it with peers.

An American interagency government group has developed standards for marketing food to children to help food companies determine which foods should be marketed as a way to encourage a healthful diet and which foods shouldn’t be marketed to children.

Studies do demonstrate that reducing junk-food marketing to kids could help improve millions of children’s health. But, let’s be honest. Who is responsible here? Ronald, parents, educators, or all of the above?

Personally, I’d like nothing better than to see healthier kids in North America. As a former educator, I’ve seen how vulnerable many kids are to marketing in general. But, why are we penalizing one company? Sure, McDonald’s is the largest in its category, and Ronald McDonald is a widely-recognized figure, but if we target one, we must target all marketers of high-sugar cereals with premiums in the boxes, chocolate syrup that contains high fructose corn syrup, candy bars, sugary drinks, etc.

Nutrition and health education programs are direly needed in public schools. Projects and homework assignments can then engage parents, to enlist their support, and help enlighten them as well. After all, eating habits are modeled by parents.

My kids weren’t allowed to eat junk food during their formative years. That included McDonald’s, other fast-food restaurants, and most highly-processed grocery products. They complained, and I held my ground. Parents have huge influence on their children’s eating habits, especially during the first 8 to 10 years.

As a society, it’s very challenging to balance business success with the best interests of our people. When business thrives, people are employed and can support their families. On the other hand, when our families are in ill health, we all pay the price eventually—in the United States with higher health insurance premiums, and in Canada, with higher taxes to cover universal healthcare.

So, what do YOU think? Should Ronald McDonald retire? Should all food marketers be held accountable for the products that contribute to ill health?

There’s still time to register for the MarketingProfs B2B Forum! If you are contemplating whether to stay home or go, I say go! There are many good reasons why, but let me supply the top 5 reasons why you should attend this year’s B2B Forum.

1. Great Content & Education

If you are in B2B marketing, this is a great place to get a good dose of education. From the workshops being taught on Monday by yours truly and one of the best in B2B Ardath Albee to the sessions throughout the show, you are going to get some great insights and practical take-aways from this event.

2.  Networking

I know at every show you hear about the “power of networking” but in today’s social age, it is more powerful and relevant than ever. The opportunity to network and share ideas as well as learn from peers is invaluable, and MarketingProfs does a fabulous job at providing these opportunities throughout the event.

3.  Access to Pros

One of the things I like the most about this show is the one-on-one “therapy sessions” that MarketingProfs arranges for attendees. These sessions are designed for folks who want insight and advice, and want to go deeper in their understanding and approach to the challenges they are facing within their organizations. If you have a specific challenge or issue you want to address, I highly recommend signing up for one of these sessions.

4.  The Diversity of Speakers

One of the many things I love about the way MarketingProfs has designed their conference is the mix of vendors, analysts, and end users they have as their speakers. This provides such a well-rounded view of the B2B landscape that you are bound to walk away with new perspectives and insights into the challenges you face daily.

5.  It’s Just Fun!

We all work extremely hard and, to be honest, at this conference, your brain will be in overdrive, but I can tell you that it will be fun. The conference is fast-paced and exciting, and has a buzz about it. Why should it be any different?  I have stated before that there is no better time to be a B2B marketer, and this conference embraces that.

I hope to see you in Boston in the coming days. If you were on the fence before, I hope this has helped you make your decision.  Go and register now!