Category: Uncategorized
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Sea Change in TV Advertising
Unless your business is big enough to devote millions of dollars to television advertising every year, or you’re into direct response TV (it’s own unique marketing system), using television to market your business has always been very problematic. Houston’s Gallery Furniture figured how to avoid prohibitive TV production costs by building an image of being…
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How to Take Care of the Goose
Is this company called Reward Paths saying that U.S. mid-sized companies apply short-term, seat-of-the-pants solutions? I’m shocked, shocked. … For too many medium-sized companies, marketing is about driving sales and cracking those golden eggs this quarter, and not about nurturing a nice flock of golden-egg laying geese. When you establish any marketing program, especially a…
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How to Evolve Loyal Customers by Experimenting
While the Picasso/Cezanne analogy seems to annoy people, Malcolm Gladwell’s new presentation on loyalty building shows great insight. He contrasts a Picasso-like desire for immediate results with a Cezanne-like commitment to testing new ideas and "taking a journey" with your customers. He’s right about one thing: customers don’t expect you to be perfect, they just…
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Marketing with Social Objects Vs. Social Media
"Social media marketing" is justifiably hot. If your brand can participate, you have an opening to find more evangelists, build awareness, obtain cachet, and maybe even ride a trend to higher revenues, all at lower cost than traditional advertising. However, the unpredictability of social media marketing is daunting to many marketers. Fortunately, the architects of…
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How Pepsi Identifies Evangelists
Some companies try and recruit evangelists (loyal customers who help market the company), but I think a wiser route is to identify them by their actions, the way Pepsi does. RetailEmail Blog: Takeaways from the Email Evolution Conference. 2008-Feb-14, by Chad White: We identify email forwarders and treat them differently, rewarding them, said Lawrence DiCapua,…
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How Liberty Mutual Opens a Conversation
Have you ever tried to start a conversation with someone who just wasn’t interested? Marketers face this problem all the time. They want a dialogue with their audience but find it challenging to connect. The key is to take it lightly and keep trying. I’m not overly impressed with Liberty Mutual’s new site, The Responsibility…
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How to Serve the Tribe
One way to avoid depersonalizing the people who use your product or service is to consider them as members of your tribe, instead of as a target market. You have to live close with members of your tribe, and you can’t afford to disappoint them. Seth’s Blog: Tribe Management. 2008-Jan-30, by Seth Godin Tribe management…
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How to Survive the Inbox Stew
Once you’ve been working for weeks on a newsletter or a campaign, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like to see it for the first time. But that’s only way it’s ever going to perform for you. Your email messages may compelling on your desk but in the stew of nagging assignments, endless negotiations, purchase…
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How Pepsi Followed Through
The amazing thing about the Pepsi SuperBowl "Stuff" commercial was not the spectacle of Justin Timberlake (not pictured here) flying through the air, but the way Pepsico has wrung every opportunity to score from this campaign. They did a great job of thinking through how people would act after seeing the commercial and how to…
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How to Welcome Email Newsletter Subscribers
Here is an excellent checklist to make sure your new subscriber welcome is "best practice." These are from Margaret Farmakis, Return Path’s director of strategic services. You can download an entire white paper on the subject at www.ReturnPath.com. Target Marketing: Eight Steps to More Effective Welcome E-mails, 2008-Mar-1, by Hallie Mummert: Welcome new subscribers within…
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