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Dec20
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In chatting with a potential client (smart developer-type) recently he asked the following question: "Is marketing ever done?" My answer: "No." Any marketer that tells you different is simply not a great marketer. There is always something to do in marketing. Even if the budget is gone. Even if it's Friday afternoon at 5pm. Even if it's the last day of the year. Good marketing takes a plan and execution. GREAT marketing takes relentless execution, innovation and pushing the limits. Be GREAT in 2007.
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Dec20
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Everywhere you turn today, you can find rosy indicators or predictions of the future growth on online advertising. From Google's employee's ridiculous tax burden to Forrester's forecast that spending will hit $26 billion in 2010. That level of spending...
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The Aviva Directory recently published a great list of marketing ideas entitled Little Known Ways to Brand on the Cheap: 99 Tips for Poor Web Startups. The list is packed with great advice but I particularly liked #26, #63 and...
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Dec18
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Attention is a hot topic these days as it should be. From attention economics to continuous-partial-whatever, some really smart minds are starting to think about the implications for marketers and businesses. Since we are all stretched and busy, we seek...
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If you're a marketer like me, you spend a lot of time looking at media kits for a number of purposes - competitive research, media planning, negotiation prep and the list goes on. That work is highly valuable but...
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Time Magazine recently chose their Person of the Year and that person is....You. And every other member of the amazing online community that is the Internet. From social networking to online video to blogs to tagging to open source...
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Dec17
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Strategy + Business, the quarterly business magazine top-tier consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, recently released the list of their selections for the best business books of 2006. Contained within the overall list are their selections for the best marketing...
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Dec16
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Scoble of Podtech has a great post discussing why Google's business approach creates such problems for Microsoft and serves as such a great marketing tool for Google."What does make sense is when you see a Google map object, or...
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Dec15
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Max Kalehoff of Nielsen BuzzMetrics recently shared some great examples of why marketers need to start thinking about marketing to algorithms as well as to people. Now, I think it is important to note that he's not just talking...
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From north of the border, today comes Agent Wildfire's Hierarchy of Evangelism, a way of looking at your customers based on how much they love you and your company. From zealots to advocates to the mass market, this hierarchy is an...
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Andy Beal recently wrote the post entitled "Five Secret Strategies to Add $1 Million in Revenue to your Interactive Marketing Agency in 2007." (Great headline, isn't it?) The strategies he recommends are useful for many types of businesses so...
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In a continuation of my thread of competitive advantage, I wanted to write a bit about my current favorite advantage - strong relationships.Strong relationships are my favorite advantage because they are available to all companies from the lowest tech...
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I'm in the middle of reading Hardball, a well-regarded (4 stars and 32 reviews on Amazon) tome about business strategy from George Stalk and Rob Lachenauer. The book's basic premise is that if you want to win in the...
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Dec14
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Yesterday, I posted about marketing with widgets. Today, there was an incredible analysis about the growth of mybloglog and the value of its widget from an advertising perspective. Fred Wilson (a NY-based VC and prominient blogger) estimates that the market value...
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Dec13
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comScore and Yahoo released a new study today examining how consumers use social media, search and online communication tools to research and discuss brands and products.The study found:--The Internet has significantly impacted how consumers talk about and recommend brands....
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Widgets are little applications that sit either on a computer desktop or are sometimes installed on the sidebar of a blog. They can be phenomenal tools for branding, marketing, customer service, and seo.Here are a few great examples. The Southwest Airlines...
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Narendra Rocherolle of 30 Boxes, a calendar start-up, recently advocated and explained the advantage of intimacy in marketing. Intimacy is achieved via acting human, thinking small, and being personal. Narendra points to Flickr as one great example of this....
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Because we often are forced to live in a "ready-fire-aim" world, marketing planning is often something that is overlooked or rushed through. But since it is almost a new year, and since planning can be incredibly valuable tool for...
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Yahoo's long-awaited new search marketing platform "Panama" opened to the masses yesterday. The platform represents Yahoo's efforts to develop a solution that will make them more competitive with Google's popular Adwords.This is an exciting move for a company that...
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Dec12
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Since I'm on the subject, I thought I'd mention the new endeavour of the mastermind behind the original, brilliant and much-copied Million Dollar Homepage. His new company, Pixelotto combines the original idea with a new twist to drive more traffic...
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From PSFK, I just learned of this novel student project called Lost. The goal is a simple one: "The aim of LOST is to show how 7 million people connect to one another, and break the record for the game...
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Continuing the trend of using "power of free" in marketing, Wikia (the for-profit sister company of Wikipedia) announced that they will host wikis for free (and not take any of the ad revenue) for anyone who wants one. For...
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There has been a lot of buzz in the blogosphere lately about Google's efforts in the radio advertising space much of it stemming from their acquisition of dMarc advertising earlier this year. The platform of Google Audio Ads appears...
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Dec11
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The former author of the Search Engine Lowdown and newly minted consultant, Garrett French recently wrote a great Market Conversation Strategy Guide for those new to social media marketing. In the guide, he lays out an approach "for the enterprising...
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From Stan James of Lijit comes a great new idea. He proposes that it is not the 80/20 rule that you need to be thinking about. Instead it's the .1/99.9 rule. What is the .1% of functionality or your business...
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PR is being forever changed by the adoption of social media. While the WSJ, NY Times and "old school" media still have enormous power, every joe schmoe with a blog is now a force to be reckoned with. One...
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There is a lot of talk about consumer generated content (CGM) these days with the rise of YouTube, blogs, podcasts, review sites, crowdsourcing and more. Today, Radical Trust asked a question that I've also been struggling with a lot...
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Dec10
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I wrote a few days ago about the power of free in marketing. Now from the Financial Times and Bill O'Reilly comes even more evidence that one of the best ways to build a high growth business (e.g. Google,...
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From the UK comes a great example of a special offer that went viral and showcased the true power of the web. In November, Threshers, an off-license liquor/wine chain, published a "friends and family" 40% off discount coupon for...
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The NY Times has a great account of the accelerating growth of online advertising in the UK. As recently as 2002, Britain lagged behind the US on a number of online related measures (broadband penetration, % of total spend,...
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In the last few years social networking has reached a significant maturity level within the market. The amazing growth of Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn and others have proven the business model and the demand. Yet, social networking is still not a...
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Dec 9
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Over at PBS, Bob Cringely recently stepped up to his pulpit to talk about the influence of Craigslist on the current poor outlook for newspapers. Basically, his argument is that Craigslist's free ads attack the "bread and butter" revenue of...
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Dec 8
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SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM. If you're like me, you still get a bunch every day (umm, google I know you're busy saving the planet but could you spend some time on that issue with gmail, please!) and you...
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If you hang around the blogosphere long enough, you will get caught up in a debate of partial text RSS feeds vs. full text RSS feeds. Partial text feeds are attractive to publishers because by providing only a tempting...
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Search engine optimization is a critical subject for just about any online business today. The topic is complex and changes rapidly making constant learning a necessity. But what is the best way for you to get up to speed...
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There are millions of new blog posts, forum conversations and websites created every day. The odds are good that your company is mentioned in some of them. But how do you track those conversations? A new start-up called relevantNoise thinks...
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Between my various online activities, I get a decent amount of PR pitches. Most of them suck. They're usually badly written, full of hype, unpersonalized and offer no value to me.But today I was pleasantly surprised to receive a good...
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Dec 7
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I'm not sure that we needed a study to tell us that ads on niche sites are more engaging than those on mass media sites but now we have one. A recent Media Screen (discoved via MediaPost) research project...
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S&H Solutions announced that it was purchased by Pay By Touch for $100 million in cash and stock. S&H has a 110-year history and is the "grand daddy" of loyalty marketing in many ways. "A generation of Americans grew...
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If you're like most people, you've "egosurfed" once or twice before. Egosurfing is the act of using an online search engine to look for yourself usually via your full name. Do you know what comes up? Anything damaging? Anything helpful...
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Dec 6
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In one of the most interesting posts that I have read in a long time, John Hagel (Author, Consultant, Speaker) summarizes the research and writing to date about attention economics. As marketers, the inherent time limitations of the day...
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Boxes and Arrows just published a great interview with Paco Underhill (Best-selling author of Why We Buy and Call of the Mall) about behavioral research, observing people and design.The interview is packed with good stuff but I particularly enjoyed...
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I called Comcast yesterday because I wanted to upgrade my high-speed Internet service (i.e. give them more money). After explaining my request, I was informed that because of the special promotional deal that I was on, I couldn't get...
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I love when new phrases enter my life. Today, seamonkeyrodeo introduced me to "mayfly content" via his analysis of the new niche content initiatives of MTV and Yahoo."Mayfly content" is content that is "small", "of the moment", "out there quickly",...
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Dec 5
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As a marketer, the ability to reach the right audience is critical. And for many businesses the right audience is the local audience. Recent developments online have made doing just that easier.First, there is the fact that local reviews are...
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I've been thinking a lot about the "long tail" lately (it's a great book and should be on your holiday wish list if you haven't read it yet) because I might be teaching a class centered around it in the...
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RSS is certainly one of fastest growing communication technologies on the web. At its core, marketing is all about communication so it is certainly not surprising that marketers are getting into the RSS game. Recently, I was pointed in the direction...
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The New Yorker recently published a great article by James Surowiecki (author of the best-selling book, The Wisdom of Crowds) called: IN PRAISE OF THIRD PLACE.The articles examines how focusing on being #1 and "beating the competition" can often...
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Despite their estimated 130 million U.S. visitors a month, Yahoo has been under a lot of fire recently. First, the continued success of Google in terms of business performance and in the stock market has got to hurt a...
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Dec 4
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Online or viral video certainly gets a lot of press, attention and love these days. However, sometimes it can be hard to see how to apply it to your business. One option for just about any company or organization...
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The vibrant community on Digg has made it into an online marketing force to be reckoned with. There is even a name for the flood of traffic that getting on the main page get you. It is called the...
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I was amazed to see the stats from a new service called Remote Control Mail. RCM, if you're unfamiliar with the company, allows you to route your mail to its facility where it is opened, scanned and uploaded online...
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Despite the occasional bad experience, Dell has generally provided good service and products to their customers over the years. How do I know? Well, $58 Billion in annual revenues means they're probably doing a few things correctly. But can...
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As I've discussed before, viral video can be an incredibly cheap form of online advertising. The Viral Factory, a US/UK-based firm, has developed a strong track record for actually delivering viral campaigns to their clients on demand. Check out out...
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Dec 3
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In my continuing efforts to point you in the direction of great online marketing resources, I thought that I'd point you to the site of GSINC, a UK-based SEO firm, that has put together a nice series of video tutorials...
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Since the Cluetrain Manifesto was first published online in 1999, it has been read by millions, turned into a best-selling book, and influenced any number of marketers. Now, more than 7 years later, Michael Mace of Rubicon Consulting decided to...
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I was amazed to read that at a recent conference in the valley, AdMob, a mobile marketing company claimed 450 million (!) page views per month. Wow! The company's basic model is as follows: "AdMob is a mobile...
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Dec 2
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My friend, Chris Carfi, of Cerado, recently wrote about a concept called "beacons". He describes them as the following: "A beacon is a post in a public place, such as a personal blog, meant to draw the attention of...
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In the social media, Web 2.0 and entrepreneurial arenas, there are few names bigger than Techcrunch right now. With with virtual army of readers (150,000+) and a team of writers, the blog is breaking big stories right and left.Now,...
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Allow me to paraphrase and answer (ok, basically butcher) the old zen koan: If you have a website and no one visits it, it doesn't make a sound. And it certainly doesn't help your brand, increase your customer list, or, gasp,...
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Squeeze pages are a classic (and powerful) tool used by online information marketers.What is a squeeze page, you might ask?A squeeze page is a web page that offers you a free subscription to an email course, or access to a...
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Dec 1
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Mobile marketing is coming. There are simply too many cell phones and they're too core to our lives for marketers to not want to get on them.But I thought we still had a long way to go to get there....
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As marketers, we continually look outside the company as we try so very hard to "listen to our customers" and help the company grow. But this external orientation often creates a blind spot to the need to market internally....
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If you're at all familiar with the blogosphere, Feedburner is probably a name you recognize. The Chicago-based company serves up 28,709,530 feed subscriptions on behalf of 289,419 publishers (including many of the most popular and influential in the world)....
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Recently, I was at a group discussion that centered around creating sustainable user generated communities. One of the items that came up was this research study from Jakob Nielsen about the distribution of participation in online communities. Basically, his...
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Viral marketing is an often observed and rarely understood method for building a brand and web traffic online. One of the most common places that you see it today is on the popular video website YouTube. Some of the most...
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