By Jarvis Cromwell This year Black Friday morphed from a single shopping day into a mega four-day shop-a-thon, helping many retailers turn profitable for the year and, possibly, breathe a little easier. Yay. Of course consumers were most responsive this year to deals and door-busters – and increasingly they are triangulating price and product information online to make the most informed decisions they can. In the online channel, retail is …Read More
The Top Five Reasons Why Social Media and Direct Marketing Need Each Other
By Special Guest Blogger Debra Ellis External competition is good. It forces us to improve our game by rethinking strategy, honing skills, and working as a team. These benefits are lost when the competitive focus shifts from market share opponents to internal marketing strategy. It’s time for the sibling rivalry between social media and direct marketing to end. Each strategy has unique strengths that can be leveraged to offset weaknesses …Read More
Job Search Advice According to Yogi Berra
By Special Guest Blogger and MENG Chairman Richard Sellers I think Yogi Berra is a brilliant career coach. Really, I do. Let’s start with one of his most famous quotes: “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.” I’ve reviewed more than 125 resumes written by senior marketing executives during the past two years and more than half …Read More
7 Tips to Give Your Career a Social Media Facelift
By Special Guest Blogger and MENG Member Heidi Cohen Not on social media platforms? Think again! You or the content you’ve created may be on social media networks without you even knowing it. Here are a few examples where you’re popping up on the social media landscape. Are you in photos with family, friends and/or colleagues? If so, they may appear on Facebook, Flickr or Twitter. Have you dined with …Read More
How Social Networks Change the Rules of Sales and Profit
By Christopher S. Rollyson Social business technologies and behaviors will change the economics of markets because they enable buyers and sellers to find each other far more easily, but most organizations have yet to discover the secret. To many executives, social networks and blogs are still barely legitimate. However, I will outline here how social networks can enable companies to significantly increase profitability by changing their client mix. I’ll use LinkedIn to illustrate the case …Read More
Is Too Much Choice a Bad Thing for Marketers?
By Richard Guha We, in America, tend to hold as a matter of faith that “choice is good.” Clearly, elections are good, more elections for more posts are better. Consumer choice is a good thing, so having more brands of shampoo to choose from is a gift. Inviting consumers to select from a huge range of financial or medical options has to be seen as a good thing. To believe …Read More
Ten Signs You’re Ready for a PR Firm
By Dorothy Crenshaw It’s been an interesting fall so far for the PR business. At an annual forum hosted by the Council of PR Firms, P&G Chief Marketing Officer Marc Pritchard headlined his keynote by calling PR “the most authentic form of marketing.” He followed up with splashy PR case histories featuring powerhouse P&G brands. A week later, B2B marketing blogger Chris Koch offered a journalist’s perspective. “The era of PR …Read More
What Do Marketers Think About A Chief Marketing Technologist?
By Pat Allen You’re a marketing executive in 2010. How satisfied are you with Marketing’s performance in leading and managing initiatives that are technology-based? Could your organization benefit from a Chief Marketing Technologist (CMT)? The role of Chief Marketing Technologist has been suggested by Scott Brinker, president and CTO of ion interactive , developer of a landing page software platform. Brinker argues that Marketing’s collaboration with IT would be enhanced …Read More
LinkedIn for Job Hunters: Tips to Create a Must-Read Profile
By Ira Koretsky LinkedIn is an integral part of your job search. LinkedIn complements and extends your credibility and therefore enhances your attractiveness as a job candidate. Imagine you were an executive comparing two candidates—both with stellar credentials. One has only a resume, while the other presents a resume and a full LinkedIn profile, complete with glowing recommendations from former bosses, colleagues, staff, and clients. Whom would you prefer to …Read More
Is It Time to Replace ‘Positioning’ With ‘Purpose’?
By Carol Phillips, Brand Amplitude, LLC Has the idea of ‘positioning’ outlasted its usefulness as strategic tool for building differentiation? Positioning helps focus the value proposition into a singular promise and supporting evidence for a particular target audience. But, it is primarily an inward looking tool. With social media forcing marketers to rethink how their brand identity is expressed across conversational forms of communication, it’s worth considering the limits of …Read More