Many of the smartest marketers I have had the pleasure of knowing, agree that building an email list is essential to long-term success.Profiling is a term I use to partition my list into separate sub-lists that can help you identify what products or services are of the greatest interest to your list subscribers. A profile can be any way you want to separate the list members … [Read more...]
Owning Up
Social media technologies can be a powerful tool, but it's important to know who within your organization should be taking the lead for your social media marketing strategy, which includes responsibility for everything from budgeting to staffing.It's commonplace for executives and managers to ask about social media leadership and inquiries stem from the growing desire … [Read more...]
Participation Is Not Passive
Elvis has left the building and he took the audience with him.The only people left are fellow participants. Social media has made everyone an author, creator, director, developer, editor, critic and media outlet. There are millions of voices, but they are all saying the same thing - listen to me.Participants do not consume passively. They do not sit silently ready to have their … [Read more...]
Show me the Money
Currently, looking for the money in social media marketing is like asking directions in a foreign land when you don't speak the language and don't know how the locals connect and communicate.Social media is commonly defined as comprising "primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings."As an online marketer you want to hear about … [Read more...]
Incentivize Your Audience
Budgets are tightening, and advertisers need to boost ROI- fast. The social Web is gaining value not only as a medium that delivers measurable results, but also as a resource for gaining insight a company can use to make all of its advertising (TV, print, online) more effective, to increase ROI across the board.Social media is known for its wealth of useful information. Using … [Read more...]
Blurring the Lines
Recently, I posed my question to a diverse audience: "At your company, who is in charge of social media marketing? Raise your hand if it's the marketing group." A few hands went up. "The public relations team?" A few hands again. "Market research?" Once again, only a smattering of hands was raised. "So I guess most of you aren't using social media at all?" I suggested. "Must be … [Read more...]
Social Networking Bailout
Our politicians, along with Wall Street, a few bankers and some mortgage firms may be able to take our money, but they can't take away our friends. In fact, our friends may be all we have left someday. There's no doubt that the crisis we face today financially and otherwise will test our mettle as small business owners and brands.So in tough times what can we do? Well, if … [Read more...]
The Changing Digital Landscape
2008 has shaped up to be a crazy year for online advertising - the writers' strike drove people online and the presidential election and the Olympics are causing advertisers to boost spending in a down market. The timing of these factors has altered media behavior - making the business of online media anything but typical for the year. How the advertising dollars that moved … [Read more...]
Lights, Cameras, Action!
Raise your hand if you've heard of Blendtec. I bet you are familiar with Blendtec and I bet I know how you first heard of their blenders - from their viral video series called "Will it blend?" That series, showing iPods and other unusual items being reduced to powder by a powerful blender, serves a strong branding message: If it can annihilate an iPod, it will make quick work … [Read more...]
Video + Twitter = Seesmic
I recently had to stop Twittering. It was awful. The doctors said I would go blind.Seriously folks, even for as big of an Internet geek as I am, I was completely overwhelmed by the massive flood of 140-character messages from friends and colleagues that bombarded me 24 hours a day. So at the time of this writing, I'm off the Twitter-pipe, for now.But just when I thought I was … [Read more...]
Looking for a Few Good Affiliates
Linda Woods, CEO of PartnerCentric, an outsourced affiliate program management group, says that affiliate recruitment is the hardest thing affiliate managers have to do."There is no software that spits the names of affiliates out," she says, adding that there is no easy way around the arduous process of finding, meeting and building a relationship with the appropriate … [Read more...]
Fracas over Facebook and Trepidation with Twitter
Since Facebook was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine less than a year ago, it's been called everything from the social platform that would revolutionize marketing forever, to an overblown and overhyped experiment.Industry watchers say the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Although Facebook certainly offers marketers global reach, desirable demographics and powerful … [Read more...]
Home Office Advantage
Many online marketers started out working from home as a way to escape the Dilbert-like cubicle farms of corporate life in favor of a flexible schedule. And while these home-based workers may have managed to avoid rush-hour traffic, endless meetings and the watchful eye of superiors, their work life is hardly about hanging out in pajamas. According to 2000 U.S. Census data, … [Read more...]
Old Dog, New Tricks
Forrester's March report, "Email Marketing Comes of Age," finds that clickthrough rates have remained steady since 2003, at an average of 5 percent, and that email is the No. 1 activity on the Web. And Datran Media's December 2006 annual email study found that 83.2 percent of respondents picked email marketing as the most important advertising tactic they planned to use in … [Read more...]
Get a Second Life
Living in a virtual world may lead to innovation in the physical world.Innovation is the lifeblood of business. Failure to innovate is a common problem among businesses and even more common among big corporations where it is hard to turn on a dime and internal politics tends to slow down rapid thinking and change. This means that smaller marketers, boutiques and niche marketers … [Read more...]