What Channels Deliver the Best Results?
In the first quarter of 2011, Gleanster conducted the Multi-Channel Marketing Management Survey in which CMO’s were asked to select the two most effective communications channels. Traditional marketing tools beat out newer tools by a wide margin. Why? The survey report concludes that one of the major reasons is that most companies have not yet invested the time required to develop expertise in best practices, execution and measurement for social media. In highly regulated industries like financial services, health care, and insurance, the percentages were even higher, with 91% or more of the survey respondents picked “traditional” marketing methods like email, microsites Read More
A Casket Salesman’s Lesson on Infrequent Customer Loyalty
Brand marketers invest billions creating an emotional connection between their brand and prospective or current customers. In fast food, packaged goods, entertainment, fashion, automotive marketing and many other industries, brand loyalty is the Holy Grail for marketing. For any distributed marketing organization – companies who rely on franchise networks, VARs, dealers, agents, or chain store marketers to take the brand’s corporate messages to the local level – loyalty among every link in the chain between the brand and the buyer is vital. In a conversation overheard while standing in line at the multiplex last weekend, two friends were comparing their Read More
Can multi-channel automation shorten your sales cycle?
Long, long ago, in a business model that has now been relegated to the history texts, lead generation meant finding the name, address, and phone number of someone who could be added to a mailing list, or identifying a homeowner who would open the door to a salesman. Once you had the name and address, you simply began sending marketing messages to them. Now, according to Wikipedia, lead generation is a marketing term that refers to the creation or generation of prospective consumer interest or inquiry into the products or services of a business. Notice that the definition doesn’t talk Read More
Memorial Day: Remembering the Heroes
Today is Memorial Day in the U.S., a time to remember those who fought and died so that bloggers, social media users, and ordinary people could “have their say” online and everywhere else. That’s really all there is to say today, except a heartfelt thank you to the heroes of yesterday and today, known and unknown. The moving photo above was taken May 26, 2011 at Arlington National Cemetery during the annual “Flags In” ceremony performed by The Old Guard annually since 1948. An anonymous photographer made it available through a Creative Commons license on Flickr.
Please Don’t Feed the Trolls
There are two kinds of trolls on the Internet — and that’s if you discount the ones in the role-playing and Sci-Fi sites. As a marketer, you’ll want to avoid feeding both breeds. The first species that threatens online marketers is the copyright troll. These are law firms who license the right to sue from copyright owners, and file thousands of copyright infringement lawsuits against bloggers, social media users, and commentors on all kinds of Internet sites who link to or reuse their content without advance written permission. Organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation claim that the worst offenders make it easy Read More
Risky business – or manageable risk?
An interesting question was asked recently during a webinar titled Marketing & Compliance in a Regulated Environment (presentation download — recorded webinar – Q&A). The two-part question came up after one of the panelists said that companies in a regulated environment should “vet” links and comments. The first question was: What do you mean by “vetting” a link or third-party comment? Panelist Deb McAlister replied that “vetting” is marketing jargon for investigating, and apologized for using the term without defining it. Then she joined panelist Mike Wise in a discussion about why vetting (or moderating) links and comments is important. She said that Read More
If Words Have Two Meanings
“There’s a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure ‘Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings…” –Copyright, 1970, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Stairway to Heaven When words have two meanings it can lead to a hit song — or a compliance nightmare. Marketing people tend to like words. And, as a group, they’re pretty good at defining, understanding, and using them effectively. When it comes to complying with rules and regulations, sometimes words have two meanings – and understanding what they mean is critical for marketers who work in regulated industries like insurance, financial services, health Read More
7 “Must Know” Facts about Online Marketing
Yesterday’s webinar on marketing and compliance, sponsored by Distribion, WebWisedom and The Distributed Marketing Blog, was great. The complete webinar presentation is available for download by clicking here. There were quite a few questions from the audience, and several people One of the last slides in the presentation contained these seven “must know” facts about online marketing. They are: 1. Consumers drive social media. , today’s consumers are anything but passive recipients of corporate marketing messages. They’re active participants in the marketplace – posting reviews on websites like Yelp, Tweeting their friends to ask for recommendations on car insurance, and Read More
Last Call: Free Webinar Covers Changing “Rules of the Road” for Digital & Social Media
Anyone who works in insurance or financial services already knows that the rules and regulations seem to get more complex every year. So just what are the rules of the road for using the power of digital (web, email, mobile) and social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) to reach prospects and customers? That question got more timely this week as two new bills that would limit the way in which companies collect and use data about Web, mobile, email, and social media users moved a step closer to passage in the U.S. Senate. Many sales and marketing professionals worry about how to Read More
Senate Poised to Change Rules of the Road for Marketers
Three U.S. Senators and two bills in the U.S. Senate appear poised to change the basic rules for anyone involved in using Internet, email, or social media services. Senator Jay Rockefeller’s Do Not Track Act of 2011 and the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011 sponsored by former presidential hopefuls John Kerry and John McCain would limit marketer’s ability to track online behavior, and give consumers new rights to review the data collected about them, and make changes to that data. The bills expressly target the use of cookies, location tracking, and other technologies that monitor online behavior without Read More
