Even if your brand is not an active user of social media, your customers are

11/28/09 09:35 AM Filed in: Social Media

According to Paul Worthington “ In a conversation driven world, the real threat is not conversation itself, but commoditization. Unless customers have reason to talk, they won't. And a brand that generates little or no conversation will be killed by one that does. You can't spend your way to success. No matter how big your advertising budget, or how much equity your brand already has, an undifferentiated offer will be found out through the power of online conversation. The number of brands consumers have to choose from is exploding exponentially. For example, in just the past five years, trademarks in the technology space have risen from just under 100,000 to just over 500,000.
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CFO's: Shoot all the marketers and while we're at it devalue the brand !

11/27/09 02:14 PM Filed in: Management Marketing

ipsos-consumers-switch-brands-economic-downturn-april-2009.jpg

In a recent survey 60 percent of the CFOs answered "no" when asked, "should your CMO have a larger marketing budget ?" Surely this comes as no surprise to most marketing people who have seen companies continue to reevaluate the value of marketing so they can add results to the bottom line. Once the budget cuts are over however you will eventually have to find ways to increase revenue without cutting people & budgets. Read More...

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More proof that a lot of companies don't understand social media

11/26/09 03:15 PM Filed in: Social Media

The latest stroke of ignorance is that a lot of companies want to hire interns or college people to implement social media for them. Now think about this for a second; do you really want an intern or college kid whose main concern is getting paid to be the contact point for your company/brand? Read More...

Tags: Working for the man

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Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors

11/26/09 11:46 AM Filed in: Segmentation

This is one of the Cluetrain Manifestos and with consumers spending less it’s more relevant than ever. So why are so many marketers and companies still applying mass marketing to segments of one? Every marketer should be required the Cluetrain Manifesto because it’s as relevant today as it was when it was published 10 years ago. Read More...

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Web analytics: Marketers continue to ignore key data

11/26/09 07:06 AM Filed in: Web Analytics

I am amazed that marketers will spend countless hours and a lot of money to measure TV and print but when it comes to measuring the Internet they are unprepared and unwilling to put in the time and money needed to really evaluate a social media marketing program. Read More...

Tags: Social Media

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Listening to consumers is not enough, you have to implement changes quickly

11/25/09 07:56 AM Filed in: Listening to your customers

Social media has given people a chance to tell brands and companies exactly what they think of their products and customer service. If you’re not prepared to listen to what consumers are saying and take action on it than you’re missing a great opportunity to really make marketing work for you and your company. Read More...

Tags: Consumer trust

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Open branding is the rule now not the exception

11/24/09 05:41 AM Filed in: Branding

Engagement, transparency, brand aggregators, these are all the elements of marketing to today's consumers but it requires a completely new way to think about your customers and an approach that many marketers may not be willing to take as they continue to push marketing to consumers who don't want to hear it anymore. Read More...

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Social media is not going to save your brand

11/23/09 09:40 AM Filed in: Social Media

Want to know the difference between hype and reality? Look no further than the use of social media for business vs. ROI. While some brands, including Coke and Starbucks, have a great social media following their brands are still in decline. Why? Because social media is not a strategy it is part of an integrated marketing strategy. Read More...

Tags: Social Media ROI for marketers

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Coke's big social media push is both stupid and doomed to fail

11/18/09 03:01 PM Filed in: Social Media Branding

Coke’s Expedition 206 will send three 20-somethings to 206 countries and territories where Coca-Cola is sold in 2010. The trio sets off on their 275,000-mile tour from Madrid on Jan. 1, stocked with laptops, video cameras, smartphones and plenty of other gadgetry, in order to document for the masses their search for happiness. Their journey will be tracked via social media sites but one has to ask “how the hell is this going to lead to more sales of Coke”?
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Tags: Social Media Disasters

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Reality of social media for business is that it has to lead to conversion

11/18/09 10:23 AM Filed in: Social Media

Just finished reading an interesting book called “The Whuffie Factor”. It’s interesting in that it focuses more on keeping customers happy via learning cycles but in today’s economy anyone who goes into a meeting with senior executives and says we are going to become people centric and make our customers happy without a way to translate that into sales dollars or business objectives is asking for trouble.

Website basics include limiting the use of FLASH

11/16/09 11:41 AM Filed in: Internet Trends

When it comes to consumers and websites a great motto might be "instant gratification takes too long". In fact some research suggests that if websites take longer than 5 seconds to load consumers will go elsewhere. So why are so many consumer packaged goods companies using FLASH within their websites? Because they are not doing usability testing and also because some creative person at a big agency recommended it for show. Here are some basics for a great consumer product website experience. Read More...

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Consumer segmentation based on spending in a recession

11/13/09 12:45 PM Filed in: Consumer lifestyles

Consumers in the US have shaken out into four distinct purchasing and attitudinal groups based upon how they have internalized the current recession and how they plan to spend after the economy improves, according to a new study from Decitica. The four groups, Steadfast Frugalists, Involuntary Penny-Pinchers, Pragmatic Spenders and Apathetic Materialists were derived by analyzing the frequency, satisfaction and the self-efficacy associated with a variety of spending, purchase and consumption behaviors. Read More...

Tags: Segmentation

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The future of social media

11/11/09 05:21 PM Filed in: Social Media

Well, we're getting pretty close to closing out 2009 and social media is still a topic that is being discussed and evaluated by a lot of marketers. While some are some are making predictions about the future of the Internet and social media one thing is for certain; change is inevitable.

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Tags: Future of social media

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Run away ! Brand marketers now want to use social media to interrupt us !

11/10/09 12:11 PM Filed in: Branding

A recent study also showed that consumers were happy to let brands be part of their social media experience, so it concluded that opportunities for branding do exist within social media. As Monty Python said when they confronted the killer rabbit "run away, run away!"

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The sandwich generation & new segmentation in a down economy

11/07/09 01:38 PM Filed in: Segmentation

For marketers the news could not have been worse this week. First one in ten Americans is now out of work and for Americans that are working they are saving more and spending less. This comes on top of repeated horror stories of 30% interest rates on credit cards and banks refusing to lend money to small businesses. Voters showed their dissatifaction at the pools this week where 90% said it's about the economy. Read More...

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Are people with DVR's really watching commercials?

11/02/09 07:12 AM Filed in: Media

More households own DVRs — 33 percent compared with 28 percent at this point in 2008 and according to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year. But are people really watching the commercials?

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Tags: TV

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