 Your new post is loading...
Guy Kawasaki once said: 'If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing'. We’d like to think that no matter what you have, money or brains or both, inbound marketing is the only kind of marketing that works today. Inbound marketing, by the way, has a lot to do with digital marketing. If you are a digital marketer, you are probably forgetting a few marketing principles. Here are some of them including: - be remarkable - not about you - big rocks first - and more...
Have you seen what’s been dubbed “the greatest car commercial ever?” If you haven’t, don’t bother looking for it on TV. It’s online . . . and it’s racking up millions of viewers. Audi’s latest spot pits the “Old Spock” (Leonard Nimoy) vs. the “New Spock” (Zachary Quinto) in a promotion for the new Audi S7. (Watch the video below.) It’s engaging. It’s persuasive. It’s relevant. And it’s a great example of the impact and reach of video marketing. Marketers recognize videos like these play an increasingly important role in the marketing mix, yet many of us have questions about producing effective video campaigns –regardless of whether we have Audi-sized budgets or not. How can you squeeze every ounce of value from your investment, and use video not only to inform and entertain, but also to capture leads and drive revenue?...
Computer scientist and author Jaron Lanier has turned his back on the “information wants to free” meme to which he once subscribed, and he thinks advertising as a business model for media is doomed. It’s not just that Craigslist and other Internet businesses have snatched ads away from traditional media, he reckons; it’s that in this digital era, when Google and Facebook increasingly own most of the inventory, not to mention the ad servers and distribution channels, relying on advertising to prop up your media company just doesn’t make sense. youLanier, the guy credited with coming up with the term “virtual reality,” outlines this thesis in his new book “Who Owns the Future?” which examines the effects network technologies have had on our economy. In an interview with Nieman Journalism Lab, Lanier builds on that case, stating flatly that advertising isn’t a viable business plan for media businesses in the long term. He tells the publication...
For a recent presentation at a corporate communications and PR conference, I polled my network of digital marketing and PR pros working client-side about the most pressing questions they’re dealing with when it comes to integrating Marketing and Public Relations. Since we’ve been working in the digital marketing and PR space at TopRank Marketing for well over 10 years, it was interesting to see the diverse feedback from companies of various sizes and industries. But several themes revealed themselves that I think our readers will relate to. Thanks to feedback from Digital and Integrated Marketing Communications professionals like Corinne Kovalsky of Ratheon, Susan Beatty of Bremer Financial Corporation, Frank Strong of LexisNexis, Lesly Cardec from Randstad US, Sarah Skerik from PRNewswire and Pam Didner of Intel, it became clear that one of the key questions organizations are facing is the need to break down silos between marketing and PR....
This infographic explores the psychology of color and suggests why brands like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut prefer red whereas Lowe’s opts for blue.
The social media movement born of Alan Jones' sexist comments had huge early success, but its clicktivists' wings have since been clipped. It was around the year of my birth that Philip Morris began a campaign to seduce its female smokers. In an era largely untroubled by my pregnant mother's cigarettes, the Virginia Slims campaign was, in itself, unsurprising. What was surprising was the company's use of a ''women's libber'' to promote its product. This was the first time feminism sold anything to anyone; apart from its core principles, I suppose. Since then, the idea of an emerging social freedom has been used many times to sell women face cream and alcohol. The ''you go girl'' message has been successfully co-opted to bring my gender high heels and financial services and small cars. Because you're worth it. These days, women are still buying back their own dissent from advertisers. But things are different now. In an age of social networking, where so many of us feel we are in ''control'' of our media, the way to a lady's wallet is a more difficult business....
A recent study shows Twitter outperforms LinkedIn and Facebook 9 to 1 for lead generation. For B2B marketers, that's a big deal. Here's a quick guide on getting the most out of your Twitter for lead gen campaign.
If your 'About' page ain't too nifty, check out these examples and fix it up in a jiffy. When you’re building a website, it’s tempting to get distracted by all the bells and whistles of the design process and forget all about creating compelling content. But having awesome content on your website is crucial to making inbound marketing work for your business. So how do you balance your remarkable content creation with your website design needs? Why, with your 'About Us' page, of course! For a remarkable 'About Us' page, all you need to do is figure out your company's unique identity, and then share it with the world....
So how did we grow the business to over 100,000 customers? Well for starters we used to have a free plan, which helped a lot. And you probably see advertisements for Crazy Egg all over the web, but we’ve been over 100,000 customers for years. Before that point we didn’t have a big marketing budget… all we had was $10,000. So how did we do it? 7 essentials to startup success...
Despite the many miserable prognoses for the future of the media business, a few stubborn entrepreneurs still see fit to venture into content-driven companies. Among the crop of new players in media is Skift, a 10-month-old travel publication that merges content with data services while targeting a crossover audience of business readers and consumers. Skift, which is already among the top three or four online travel industry trade publications in a space that has lagged behind the times, today announced that it has raised an additional $1.1 million in seed funding, adding Advancit Capital, Ironfire Angel, Mesa+ and others to an investment roster headed up by New York’s Lerer Ventures. (Disclosure: Lerer Ventures is also an investor in PandoDaily.) The round brings Skift’s total funding to $1.5 million. Skift was brought into the world by Rafat Ali, who founded paidContent in 2002 as one of the first blog media companies. He later sold paidContent to Guardian Media, which subsequently sold the blog to GigaOm in 2012. After a couple years’ respite since selling paidContent, Ali saw an opportunity in travel, the world’s biggest industry, noticing that the publications that covered the industry had not been subjected to the same waves of disruption that, say, the tech and finance media had. Social and mobile, for instance, were still largely foreign concepts among travel industry publications, which include TTG, Travel Weekly, and Business Traveller, all of which are freighted with legacy baggage from their print magazine backgrounds....
Whether it’s your website, blog, brochure, newsletter, Facebook page, press release or newspaper ad, nobody reads your content because they’re simply enamored with your business. Why? Because nobody cares about your business. Don’t take it personally. And please, stop scowling at me because I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve heard this. People read your marketing content because they’re looking for answers to questions. The first of these questions is usually, “What can your business do for me?”...
Click here to turn the clock forward on an iconic ad campaign -- using inbound marketing, the original ad will be reframed.... Knowing how complicated our media landscape is these days, what would an ultra-popular, uber-successful vintage ad campaign have to look like today to make as big of a splash as it did in its time? What would Wendy’s have to do to turn “Where’s the beef?” into a modern day catchphrase? How would Volkswagen’s “Think Small” campaign have to be executed to make the Beetle the most popular imported vehicle? These are the questions we explored with the help from a handful of advertising and creative experts in a recent ebook,Traditional Turned Inbound: Reimagining 5 Iconic Ad Campaigns From the Past. Here’s our take on what one of those five applauded advertising campaigns would have to look like if it were recreated today using some popular inbound marketing tactics....
Suffering from underperforming marketing KPIs? Read this post and learn how to fix those guys! After that, you’ve got to grab your marketing by the bootstraps and make the necessary adjustments in order to provide your CEO with the ROI they’re looking for. Below I’ve detailed six metrics highlighted by CMO Mike Volpe on this very blog, how to identify when they’re underperforming, and how to make the necessary adjustments to save your bacon. Here’s how. How to Fix 6 Critical Marketing KPIs When They're Underperforming....
|
It is no longer all fun and games. A few years back it used to be a lot easier to build and manage a social following or maintain a brand’s online presence. A good old portfolio website and a Facebook brand page with a few hundred fans was all you needed. Now, you need a strategy, a plan, a manager and of course an ‘oh, crap what just happened’ plan. While on the surface it might seem easier than ever to manage a brand, I want you to consider the contrarian take that it is in fact more difficult to manage a brand in the age of new media. Why? Ponder and please comment on these 4 points...
By understanding the customer journey across media, devices and platforms, marketers can better optimize search and social marketing performance.... On the one hand, there’s a temptation to spend a lot of time and resources developing “the perfect” strategy. On the other hand, you could also just start cranking out content and see what sticks. Neither of those approaches really work well in a practical way. What does work? There’s one thing that can help answer many of the concerns marketers have about content and that also helps you cut to the chase for practical implementation: Understanding the customer journey. Google Think Insights has a great post with tools to help marketers better understand how different content and channels affects customers during the buying cycle or customer journey to online purchase. Check it out and then come back....
While digital gives you the opportunity to reach out to millions with a single click, it also poses a problem: if not monitored properly, it will not be as effective as face-to-face communication. As consumers become more familiar with digital technology, businesses are evolving their marketing strategies to meet expectations. Websites and applications are now considered an essential part of a brand’s presence. The digital age is making it possible for brands to connect with their clients all over the world and reach out effectively to their specific target audiences. However, with so much reach, it is easy to get befuddled and make mistakes while communicating to your audiences digitally. Here’s our list of top six rules that your marketing team should know about....
Valuable measurement perspectives and advice. The influential economist Albert O. Hirschman argues that customers can have a disciplining effect on companies and markets through their exit and voice behaviors. Instead of simply “quitting” a product, Hirschman urged customers to voice their complaints so companies could improve and learn. Hirschman would be a happy camper these days because social media puts a megaphone on the voice of the customer. Results from The CMO Survey® show that companies, in turn, are also starting to see the value of emphasizing voice-based metrics. The CMO Survey® investigated which metrics companies are using to measure the impact of social media investments. In August 2010 and then again in February 2013, top marketers were asked to share which metrics they use to evaluate social media. Looking across the results, we can see which metrics companies most often use. The survey did not, however, ask respondents to rank or rate each metric in terms of importance....
The media constellation has become increasingly fractured. The Web produced the initial fissure, but mobile created new cracks in the landscape. Today, no single medium earns more than 45% of our media consumption. How can you solve this problem? Social media offers a solution....
But how do you generate leads with successful webinars? This is the fun part! You get to use traditional and new tactics to gain registrations. You’ll use media relations, email marketing, social media, direct mail, content, and advertising. In most cases, you’ll be marketing to prospects who haven’t made a decision yet to work with you, former clients, or someone new entirely. Host a Successful Webinar Following is a step-by-step list of how you’ll do this. Of course, this list could change, depending on your business and your industry, but it provides a good place to begin thinking about how to generate good, qualified leads from content....
Double standard much? Debate has heated up in Sweden regarding American Apparel's sexualization of its female models. The retailer's shock-tactic ads featuring naked women are certainly nothing new. But this week Swedish blogger Emelie Eriksson made headlines by juxtaposing male models' poses in unisex American Apparel Clothing with the R-rated images of women wearing the same shirts (often sans pants). To show how American Apparel's double standard works, a small Swedish clothing company named byPM decided to do a photo shoot in which a man posed in the same position....
So your online business has always experienced praise for its crisp quality content from customers and admirers? But as of late, maybe you’ve noticed that your posts are facing a lot of stagnancy in reaching your perfect target audience? And after initial analysis, you may have realized that your social media messages somehow lacked the “visual magic” that is necessary for image success? Below are some tips to get you back on track....
In truth, ten years of material is a pretty conservative estimate but not because of the quantity. The way I see it, there is never any shortage of material as long as the instructor continues to explore, learn and grow. Ideally, they will with one foot in academics and one in the real world but sometimes one or the other will suffice. No one ever wants to feel dusty or complacent unless they've given up. Eventually, I settled on five things I wish every advertiser, marketer and PR pro knew because I think all of us, at one time or another, grows weary of watching people fail. That's the way marketing works. You can put in hard work or learn the hard way....
IR Smartt examines: How should you incorporate Google Tools in your Investor Relations strategy? Google has some wonderful Social Media tools for IR, including Google+ and YouTube. But today, we’re going to take a look at a few of Google’s other awesome web apps and how exactly they can assist in marketing your public company. Read on for a look at Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Reader, Google Finance and Blog Search....
...Among other things, baby-boomer marketers need to accept the fact that millennials have not inherited their parents' love for the "touch" of paper. They do not naturally go gaga over double-page spreads of either editorial or advertising in magazines. They do not feel compelled to seek their fashion and beauty direction from the magazines that served as bibles for older generations. Nor do millennials feel the need to park themselves in front of a TV at the time appointed for their favorite show, or even to watch TV on a TV at all. Millennials spend a huge amount of their lives online: on smartphones (59%), on tablets (35%) and on their laptops (70%). As of 2011, 91% of millennials are regular internet users, according to Forrester Research....
Marketers are missing their chance with persuasive technology. Need convincing? Let’s take a step back. Persuasion used to be considered an art in which advertisers were masterful.... ... Now in our digital experiences, especially the ones built around our mobile devices, there is a new form of persuasiveness in town. The problem is brands and marketers are undervaluing it. It is persuasive technology. In simplest terms, persuasive technology is any system, app or software that through its function and design can change a user’s attitude or behavior. For example, persuasive technology would be a healthcare app that encourages exercise and fitness and rewards you as you go. Or financial apps that encourage saving and investing, enabling you to not only track and understand your finances but also provide tips and education about how to be more fiscally responsible. Or Progressive Insurance’s “Snapshot” usage-based program that monitors your driving data via your car’s data port. The safer you drive, the more you save. Through the use of these systems, your attitude and behaviors are changed far beyond what a convincing bit of copy or picture can do. They become part of your daily life....
|
