July 2, 2008

One of my goals this year was to do a study on reputation management. As we all factor in the effects of new media on our brands, I felt this was a topic with long-lasting appeal to every marketer.

June 26, 2008

B2B marketers with highly complex products and services have been given a gift in the last few years in the form of Social Media.

June 19, 2008

Classically marketers have always been protective of their content locking them up in PDFs and then putting a registration page in front of them. This behavior is known to have a 1 in 10 (10%) download rate, which isn’t bad by marketing standards. But on the flip side, that means there is a 90% leakage rate!

June 17, 2008

It should come as no surprise that the online gaming market is exploding. In fact, last year online gaming attracted 28 percent of the total worldwide online population -- almost 217 million people!

June 10, 2008

One of my most trusted friends and mentors recently joined a very intriguing company called – SuccessFactors (stock symbol SFSF). They specialize in HR software with a SaaS product that is second to none in the market.

June 5, 2008

An interesting study from the University of Texas recently showed that the typical information posted on social networking sites – favorite books, movies, music, and quotes; major; hometown; and similar personal items – doesn’t always give others an accurate impression of you.

June 4, 2008

Many marketing teams are being asked by senior leaders in their organizations why they aren’t using the same cutting edge tactics as some of their competitors. When is it right to use cutting edge tactics? When is it right to use traditional tactics? When and how should you integrate the two?

May 28, 2008

What if you placed a call to GM and the CEO answered the phone? You would think perhaps this company is too small to suit my needs. This is why the bigger a company gets the more faceless they become because they layer on infrastructure to foster a certain perception.

May 19, 2008

Right now, your customers are writing about your products on blogs and reediting your commercials on YouTube. They’re defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you on social networking sites like Facebook. These are all elements of a social phenomenon — the groundswell — that has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works.

May 15, 2008

For years, classic brand strategy has always been about the creation of a single message that can be used with all of your constituents; investors, employees, senior management and customers about who you are and what value your company provides. Brand managers tend to write it up and paste it on every wall and train every new recruit in it.

May 6, 2008

When marketers design a marketing campaign – we typically design them for “rational” buyers. But do buyers ever act rational? And what about us?

May 2, 2008

My wife loves to travel, and spring break for my kids is always the perfect excuse to get away. But this time was different; for over a year my wife had been planning a trip to Turkey with a family we tend to travel well with.

May 1, 2008

Over the past few years marketers have been working on tracking conversations about their brands on the Web. (You are tracking and listening, aren’t you?) But once you have that in place, then what?

April 28, 2008

Lots of brands are finding out the hard way that there are plenty of conversations taking place about them online. For good or bad. Many brands choose to ignore this. But hope is not a strategy.

April 21, 2008

Ok, here is something I’m wrestling with: Can a community be successful with low brand awareness? If you are a big tech brand like Dell or Microsoft, you have no problem launching a community. In fact, many of these organizations have several communities.

April 9, 2008

A growing trend in B2B marketing today is in the realms of “lead nurturing” and “lead scoring.”

April 8, 2008

I can’t get an idea out of my mind that I think is profound for this social media age. Recently I blogged about giving your customers and prospects the opportunity and the permission to start a dialog with your brand. Here’s the important follow-up to that idea – don’t do it with banner ads or other roadblocks!

April 3, 2008

Harvard Business School professor John Quelch once said, “The purpose of marketing… should be geared to changing and reinforcing customer actions rather than customer attitude.” I recently revisited this quote and feel it still holds true. But in the age of social media, it is likely to come under siege.

April 1, 2008

Is the press release dead? Well, not really. But there certainly is a new wave out there – the social media press release, or SMPR, spawned by Todd Defern and the folks at SHIFT communications.

March 24, 2008

Thinking about buying media? Well, it’s no longer just about ad space or traditional print. Today media has to “sing and dance.” It has to have a tight connection to the brand at the same time it distributes the brand with rich experiences online through social media – social networks (like Facebook), videos, podcasts, RSS feeds, and maybe a widget.

March 18, 2008

More and more these days it seems that the raw material for technology firms is less and less the silicon chip (oh so 1990). Instead, the startup has replaced those tiny wafers in the 21st Century.

March 13, 2008

I submit that it is! Please hear me out. When I say Ralph Lauren, Nine Inch Nails, Vineyard Vines, GAP – or even Apple – you get a sense of a very homogeneous type of person. You get a picture of exactly who I mean and the “lifestyle” that brand portrays. When I say Ralph Lauren, it’s like reading the preppie handbook.

March 10, 2008

Brand building and reputation management are two sides of a coin. What brand managers do to build their company’s reputation can come crashing down overnight with the keystroke of an angry blogger.

March 5, 2008

You can run but you can’t hide for long from social networking. At some point or another you will have to sign up for one (or probably more) social networks. But recently some early adopters have said they want out completely – the equivalent of unplugging entirely from social networking. To them I say – Get a “social” life!

March 3, 2008

Nothing focuses the sales force on sales like a quota. But what does a CEO use to focus Marketing? Can Marketing really begin to source leads for Sales? And how can you really optimize the relationship between Sales and Marketing?

February 28, 2008

Having a steady stream of content is more important than ever. Podcasts, blogs, videos, communities – all are very different types of content. And there is no such thing as "sharing" in the content realm.

February 25, 2008

Personally I am a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point. So it was scary to me to read the title of a recent Fast Company article, “Is the Tipping Point Toast?”

February 13, 2008

When marketers use the word “campaign,” it tends to suggest an initiative to get a message out to a targeted group of constituents. It also implies there will be a beginning and, somewhere down the road, an ending. This kind of thinking creates a danger zone for marketers when it comes to social media. Let me explain …

February 11, 2008

How do you enable legions of bloggers if you are a company like Microsoft? What policies and procedures do you put in place? What approval process can handle thousands of blogger posting each day? Who owns the corporate blog, Corporate Communications or Interactive?

February 6, 2008

Everything on the Web today is becoming more distributed. Sales applications, human resource applications, even marketing applications. This works well for us, because it’s easier to implement functionally important applications without knocking on the CIO’s door to ask permission. And it’s great news for these aps from a speed and timing perspective.

February 4, 2008

You can’t pick up a magazine these days and not see the words: Web 2.0. Social networks. Social media. Mobile computing. And the list goes on. But how do you make sense of these emerging trends in marketing?

January 30, 2008

Whether you work in the mailroom or sit in the C-suite in a big company, you most certainly have heard about the media revolution now underway. Social media is here to stay, and knowing what’s happening in the vanguard is important for everyone in the media business today.

January 25, 2008

A strong brand helps to communicate that a company and its offerings are relevant and uniquely able to meet customer needs. Most companies today pour millions into brand-building campaigns to generate that external awareness, which in theory can speed up the sales cycle. This has become the accepted norm, taught to us by the very advertising agencies we hire.

January 22, 2008

A recent issue of Wired magazine highlighted a company creating “alternative reality games,” or ARGs. If you missed the article, go back and read it – it is a must read!

January 17, 2008

Cost per click, cost per acquisition, pay per click, hits, time spent, unique users, unique visitors… the list goes on and on. With a bevy of systems and channels for marketing, how does a marketer make sense of it all? Well, fuggedabout metrics and start building your behavioral targeting systems – ASAP!

January 16, 2008

Do you do traditional customer research? Do you find that the loudest person in the room tends to skew the results? What if you had a research network you could tap into at any point in time to get feedback?

January 9, 2008

Online reputation management, be it a personal reputation or a corporate reputation, has become a growing issue for marketers over the past few years. Groups are popping up devoted to helping you manage, and in some cases clean up, your digital reputation.

January 7, 2008

You can't hop into a cab, step into an elevator or walk down the street without passing someone using a Blackberry, iPhone or other type of mobile device. Business professionals, students, police and even your kids are connected every second of the day.

December 18, 2007

The debate over how to make money with podcasts began shortly after they were rolled out. At first, the natural inclination was to do pre-roll or post-roll ads on podcasts – much like existing media such as TV and radio. But some very successful companies have ignored this strategy. They have developed their own business model that has allowed them to earn money from their passion. Here are 9 ways to make money from podcasting...

December 11, 2007

Imagine an event where all the content is delivered online, either "live" or recorded. This “virtual event” is delivered with an easy-to-use, game-like interface, and it includes features for social networking. (MarketingProfs held such a virtual event last June, and it's poised to announce a second one soon.)

December 5, 2007

PR professionals have been on the front end of all media relationships for a very long time. But the advent of new media poses some challenges for even the best PR professional.

November 29, 2007

Have you ever had a flash of insight in the shower, when you’re brushing your teeth, or even just before you fall asleep? If you want to know more about this serendipity, then you should learn about “strategic intuition.”

November 20, 2007

Is pay per click losing momentum? Is growth in the channel waning? In a recent blog post, Steve Rubel wrote “I am calling a top to this market now. There are five reasons why a pay-per-click advertising recession looms!”

November 14, 2007

In a recent blog post, Jim Nail, chief strategy and marketing officer at Cymfony, wrote about a study that provocatively proclaims “Spending on Conversational Marketing will Outpace Traditional Marketing by 2012”. To find out if that’s even possible, I got together with Jim and Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president at Nielsen Online Strategic Services. Like Jim, Pete is wary of the “conversation” hubbub.

October 31, 2007

Eduardo Conrado and I met up at the MarketingProfs conference at the beginning of October. I really liked his approach to using thought leadership in the positioning of the Enterprise Division of Motorola.

October 24, 2007

Is microblogging the latest fad or the next big thing? Microblogging is just like regular blogging, except it’s limited to 140 characters. The leader in the space is Twitter .

October 18, 2007

Through a classic Google search on her name, marketer Stephanie Fierman found some unwelcome entries.

October 8, 2007

In the new world of work, your reputation is the only accepted currency. Whether you’re looking to move up the corporate ladder at your current organization, find a position at another company, make a major career change, or start your own enterprise, you’ll no longer be hunting for your next position. Instead, opportunities will come to you.

October 2, 2007

As author Chip Heath told the audience at the Marketing Profs conference in Chicago this week, “In a market where it is difficult to be heard – only the sticky messages will break through.” One of the reasons for this is that “common sense” is not sticky enough for people to remember.

October 1, 2007

This morning at the MarketingProfs Conference, Stephanie Miller led a discussion on How to make your B2B email programs scale for higher impact throughout the customer lifecycle.