Remembering to Support Your Sales Reps: A Marketer’s Dilemma
Sales and marketing should go together like peanut butter and jelly. Unfortunately, many organizations experience friction between these two areas, especially when it comes to meeting goals and hitting sales numbers. Sales tends to blame marketing for lack of sales support and successful advertising campaigns, while marketing becomes frustrated with sales….
Digital Marketing Power
You might think digital marketing is already “mainstream,” but the bulk of marketing budgets still goes toward offline activities such as trade shows, radio, TV, and direct mail. According to a research study conducted in Australia and New Zealand, around 61% of marketing budgets is still spent on offline activities.
Don’t Hide From Your Customers
It’s important for small businesses and first time entrepreneurs to take extra steps to ensure the accuracy of their online business listings.
The Human Element of Online Marketing
How smart can computers get? Most of us already have smartphones we use for a thousand small tasks that used to take a lot longer to accomplish: check out library books, find the cheapest gas station by your office, Google an authoritative-sounding statistic to use in the heat of an argument. One day we’ll just leave it to the iPhone to cut the grass, babysit the kids, and serve the perfect martini. (What will I do with my weekends then?)
Email Marketing: Timing is Everything
Remember the days before the Do Not Call list? We all had landlines that rang at home, and since this was before the days of caller ID, you never knew if the person calling was a friend with an emergency or a telemarketer calling to sell you magazine subscriptions, “limited-edition” commemorative coins, or something else you didn’t need. Often, telemarketers struck as you were sitting down to a family dinner after a long day at work. Do you remember how annoyed you felt that the caller was intruding on your family time? How effective do you think those calls were overall?
TMI: Too Much Information
A few weeks ago, we posted a series about predictions in the marketing industry for 2014. The insights came from industry blogs and people calling themselves (or introduced as) experts in the field. Yesterday, I found an interesting flip side to those posts: The results of a comprehensive survey by StrongView of marketing leaders’ actual plans for 2014 (and the accompanying infographic).
Right on Time: Timeliness is Key to Email Marketing
Remember the days before the Do Not Call list? We all had landlines that rang at home, and since this was before the days of caller ID, you never knew if the person calling was a friend with an emergency or a telemarketer calling to sell you magazine subscriptions, “limited-edition” commemorative coins, or something else you didn’t need. Often, telemarketers struck as you were sitting down to a family dinner after a long day at work. Do you remember how annoyed you felt that the caller was intruding on your family time? How effective do you think those calls were overall?
Art School: Lessons from the Google Doodle
If you’re observant, you’ve probably noticed that the Google logo on Google.com doesn’t always look the same. Often, it correlates with the time of year or a holiday, and Google frequently chooses to highlight obscure holidays that most of us aren’t familiar with.
Do You Accept this Challenge?
Over the past few weeks, we’ve posted a survey of past (and current) predictions about the future of the marketing industry. Along with those predictions of trends in the industry, many of the sources I surveyed also pointed out what they think the big challenges of 2014 will be. Whether or not they end up being 100% accurate, it’s helpful to at least consider how your company will handle the complex realities that arise as technology advances.
Toast to the Future: Part 3
Happy New Year! As you’re recovering from your epic New Year’s Eve, planning your marketing strategies for 2014 probably isn’t your first choice in recuperating activities. Unfortunately, time marches on – which means you’d better start reading up.
