Become A Student of Social Media

Social media is about engaging. Like it or not it is about giving more than you receive. If you don’t know what your audience wants or how you can help them, then you don’t know what to give. What does that mean? It means that your efforts in social media, internet marketing and probably business in general are going to provide half the return they could if you took the time up front to know your customer, build your plan and execute.

Read the full article.

Let Them Eat… From the Distributed Marketing… Cake!

Distributed marketing is a powerful concept and capability allowing the corporate marketing organization to develop campaigns in support of enterprise business goals, maintain the brand’s images and messaging while enabling a local flavor to the organization’s marketing execution. When I think of Distributed Marketing, a couple things come to mind.

Read the full article.

CIO to the CMO – "Get Smart Fast!"

Call it “the new marketing ecosystem,” “Marketing 2.0,” or “Marketing’s New World Order.” Whatever terms used, it’s clear that CMOs need to play an increased role in the technology future of their companies and continue to evolve their tech literacy rapidly to keep up with the continually evolving technology of our current marketing environment.

Read the full article.

Rx for Your Web Analytics

Do you remember in business school when you were presented a case study and there were always detours called “symptoms” which really weren’t the underlying issues but instead pointed you to the real problem? That’s what we have here. This inability to measure ROI for online channels is a function of the lack of skilled web analytics resources and not an inherent problem with web analytics.

Read the full article.

Why ROI Measurement Is So Elusive

Definitions for Marketing ROI abound, but the pressures to achieve it have increased to fever pitch across all channels and marketing specialties. Why? One reason may be that with all the new marketing technology tools―with their claims of incredible measurement capabilities blasted to your in-box daily―the real complexity of getting to ROI has become washed over. Expectations have been raised. You need to figure it out.

Read the full article.

Dating 2.0: The Revolution of Online Dating Through Beauty Segmentation

Online dating service OKCupid.com has taken the application of predictive analytics to a whole new level by ranking and segmenting the more attractive site users from the less aesthetically pleasing ones.

Read the full article.

Great Advertising for Next to Nothin'

Hasbro has launched an inventive new campaign for its NERF Brand that invites NERF owners to create and submit films of themselves using NERF products.

The Battle of the Ads is a web-based contest that includes social media, email marketing, and user-generated video.

Read the full article.

Facebook is launching the Open Graph protocol with 30 partners.

This is a really significant step for Facebook. For years we’ve been saying that FB is an open platform, but now for the first time, the likes and interests of my Facebook profile link to places that are not Facebook.com. My identity is not just defined by things on Facebook; it’s defined by things all over the Web.

World class sales? Where is marketing?

“Sales and Marketing” are often coined together in phrases and discussions, yet too often there is a disconnect with the value that marketing can and should provide to sales. Let’s get on the same page; maybe it starts with the elements that make up a world class sales AND marketing organization.

Read the full article.

Your Customers Are Mobile, Are YOU?

Thanks to devices like the iPhone, BlackBerry, and now Android, mobile is no longer an afterthought in most marketing budgets, but a well-deserved line item. Be it through the skyrocketing number of iPhone and other Smartphone device sales or mindboggling downloads of applications — more than four billion on for the iPhone in less than two years — mobile is fast becoming a central channel for your customer engagement efforts.

Read the full article.