Blogging can bring excellent and relatively quick search engine optimization (SEO) benefits to a company’s website. Catfish over at BusinessOnline has some great tips for marketers in the blogging department to help with search engine optimization (SEO). Called “3 Top Ways Blogging Enhances Your SEO Campaign“, the article touches on the 3 easy-for-executive-to-understand reasons why blogging is important for any corporation.

In a nutshell, the 3 benefits blogging can bring your business are:

• Blogging creates new content opportunities. With blogging, a marketer can write marketing content relevant to any desired marketing message or campaign with very little effort, and without messing up the main corporate website. For blogging to be effective, all blog content should be keyword focused.
• Blogging creates new internal link opportunities. Because of new keyword focused content being generated regularly, there are ample of opportunities for internal linking between keywords and other relevant blog posts and articles. And when you automate this process with tools such as the Cross Linker WordPress Plugin for WordPress (as suggested by Catfish), the benefits can be multiplied ten-fold, as older content are given new life with every new keyword linking back to them.
• Blogging creates new external link opportunities. Blogging by its nature encourages communication between readers and content creators. If your content is captivating, interesting and useful to others, they will want to link back to your source article, vote for or recommend your content to others on social sites, and subscribe to your content through RSS feeds.

These are all excellent reasons for companies to get into blogging. But there is an additional good side effect from a marketer’s point of view. Blogging provides a critical, yet almost forgotten basic skill a good marketer must possess: the writing skill.

Anyone and everyone can claim to have excellent verbal and written communication skills. But let’s be honest to ourselves and our customers, how much formal marketing communications do you as a marketer actually write? And how often? The fact is we get bogged down in everyday to-do lists and deadlines that we no longer write proper marketing communications. Blogging brings good writing back to marketing communications.

And you know the saying is still true. With practice comes perfection.

So are you and your organization blogging? If not, what are some of the hindering factors? Share your experience with us.

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Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Blogging for SEO Benefits, Plus a Great Side Effect

Web page titles are an important element of getting traffic to your site for the following reasons:

• Page title is one of the few elements search engines show in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Therefore the words in the page title do carry significant authority in the subject matter of your web page content.
• Because page titles are representative of the content on a page, it’s an effective technique to link to pages using their page title as the link anchor text. This is another SEO technique discussed in another post on link anchor text, and it directly influences click-through rate (CTR).
• On a SERP, more informative page titles are likely to attract clicks from a searcher because it meets his search needs. Good, descriptive titles stimulate an emotional response and promise to the searcher that what he is looking for can be had by clicking on your search result. This is a key differentiator between your site and other sites listed on the same SERP.

It is recommended that your page titles be different from page to page on your site. And when pages have similar content, thus causing similar sounding page titles, try to creatively vary the keywords within the title so it is clear that the 2 titles are different and represent 2 different pages.

In addition, the format, order, and word selection of the words in your page title should be somewhat different than the words in your page meta description and on page headers.

Finally, if you look at a typical Google search result page, you’ll notice that Google does not display the page title beyond 65-70 characters. Therefore your title should fit within 65-70 characters and anything beyond that will be cut off by the search engine. You may still write longer than this character budget to provide great user experience for your web visitors, but be sure to put all important keywords up front before the 70th character.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

How to Ensure Google and SEO Friendly Page Title

Back in August 2008, Peter Kim blogged about “How to set an ego trap” on his beingpeterkim.com site. He received lots of feedbacks from both regular readers and the “influentials”, as Guy Kawasaki calls them.

Mr. Kim wrote, “In a nutshell, social technologies use game mechanics to get users hooked on participation.  People often get addicted to ego-stroking system feedback, until they can temper their usage (addiction?)” He gave a few examples to illustrate how well-known bloggers have used social networking for viral marketing and promotion, for both products and services. These can be read on his blog so I won’t repeat them here. For each example Mr. Kim observed some simple yet important characteristics. In one, he noted, “So why did it work?  The offer was simple.  It was personalized.” In other, “So why did it work?  The offer was limited.  It was relevant to the bloggers and their readers.” And in the third example, “Why did it work?  Game mechanics – competition and a somewhat objective comparison scale…” Mr. Kim ended the blog with the some suggestions on how to set an effective “ego trap” with your own offer:

• Keep it simple.
• Make it scarce.
• Personalize it.
• Use numbers.
• Appeal to the head…and the heart.

So now you may ask, “Ego trap or just human nature?” I would say probably both. It’s all about feeling good and important. We’re all humans, and many would agree that feeling good and important are two of human’s strongest straits – they’ve helped build empires and cause wars in our history. It’s all about self-importance. That’s why face-to-face networking works. That’s also why social networking works.

It’s no surprise we’ll use social media and networking to our benefits, and we’ll be glad to be used by the medium. So here’s a question: We’ve done face-to-face networking in older times. We’re now doing social networking in the Internet age. How do you suppose we’ll network next? Let your imagination flows.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Getting Used by Social Media Marketing?

Need a little help to kick-start your social media marketing? Here are some tips from the Air Force.

From a post by David Meerman Scott on WebInkNow, the U.S. Air Force is now Armed with Social Media. The Air Force apparently now has a team called the Air Force Emerging Technology team, led by Capt. David Faggard of the Air Force Public Affairs Agency in the Pentagon. The group is responsible for “developing strategy, policy and plans for an ever-changing communication landscape for communicators worldwide”. This includes their main mission of using “current and developing Web 2.0 applications as a way to actively engage conversations between Airmen and the general public”. By any name, this is social media marketing at its core.

It is refreshing to see such a large organization committing and embracing social media as an important communication and public relations tool. This serves as a good example for private corporations who are still on the fence or even “not sure” on how to proceed with social media. When you are committed and do it right, social media can be one of your best marketing and PR friends. In the case of a global organization like the U.S. Air Force, what did it take to pull this off? I’m sure it was not easy flying. In Capt. Faggard’s words, “There has been resistance; but the leadership of the Air Force is very supportive of what the expert communicators say are the best ways to reach people”, especially young people.

Here are a few tips we can learn from the USAF on getting involved in social media:

• Encourage, empower and employ all your human resources as communicators for the organization. The problem is not that people can’t represent their companies properly. It’s the lack of training and guidance from upper management on corporate policies governing such communication channel. Employees are always good resources to advocate for the company. For the Air Force, the program’s goal “is that every single Airman is an on-line communicator.” So what’s your corporate goal?
• Again for the Air Force, the focus is on “Direct Action within Social Media (blogging, counter-blogging, posting products to YouTube, etc.); Monitoring and Analysis of the Social Media landscape (relating to Air Force and Airmen); and policy and education (educating all Public Affairs practitioners and the bigger Air Force on Social Media).” So if you’re not sure where to start your social media program, as a starting point, just replace “Air Force” and “Airmen” in the statement above with whatever appropriate for your organization. It’s totally applicable.
• Capt. Faggard explains “counter-blogging” as when “Airmen counter the people out there in the blogosphere who have negative opinions about the US government and the air force.” Well this sounds 100% applicable to corporate marketing and PR to me.
• According to Capt. Faggard, “We educate people in the Air Force about security of social media to make sure that people don’t expose secrets via Twitter or Facebook…” Again this is totally applicable to private corporations when running a social media campaign. Inaction is not a good option. The key is proper education and guideline must be provided to your team to carry out the mission.
• “Besides Twitter, Capt. Faggard writes The Official Blog of the U.S. Air Force; has pages on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook; helps publicize a Second Life area called Huffman Prairie; contributes to iReport (user name USAFPA); and is on Friendfeed, Digg, Delicious, Slashdot, Newsvine, Reddit. There’s Air Force widgets. And there’s even a video mashup contest for high schools to show school spirit sponsored by the Air Force.” It’s a pretty impressive list of social media channels. However, it would be not be fair to expect a new corporate team to try doing all these things at the start. Just pick a few in combination that you’re most comfortable with and add new channels as you go. The important thing here is to get started.

Finally, courtesy of David Meerman Scott’s site, below is the detailed Air Force blog assessment flowchart shared by Capt. Faggard. It provides a visual representation of what social media work is all about. It’s obvious that you don’t have to be in the Air Force to understand and use it. We actually paid for this and I hope you’ll find good uses for it. I know I will.

In the end you don’t have to be a large organization to employ social media in your marketing mix. The Air Force is really using the resources it already has, and so can we.

Click on image to view larger version (172KB).

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Social Media Done Right: U.S. Air Force

Most of us recognize a marketing creep when we see one. But not many are willing or equipped to deal with it.

What’s a marketing creep? Marketing creep is comparable to feature creep in web development, or design creep in engineering. In whatever name or industry, marketing, feature or design creep refers to unforeseen requests for additions and changes that are outside the project scope. Generically it can be called scope or requirement creep, but again they all mean the same thing: You’ll run into trouble if you’re not careful.

Why is this important? We all have our own way of dealing with marketing creep in a traditional marketing, but with online marketing, the problem can be much more easily compounded. New features can creep into the project at any time, therefore strict project management and control is crucial.

The fact is, features are normally agreed upon with the client and formalized in a contractual agreement at the beginning of the project. Considering today’s communication options are available in many forms including voicemail, email, text, instant messaging, even through social media channels like Twitter and others, ideas being kicked around in these remote communication methods can easily become a new, undocumented feature or requirement without a formal agreement. Over time the list grows uncontrollably and can spell trouble for your marketing project or campaign. SEO itself is especially vulnerable to feature creep.

Kevin Lee writing for Online Marketing for Marketers touches on this issue in his article “Learn How to Say No to Dumb Ideas“. He suggests to deal with the issue by paying attention to these 4 things:

Beware “Pet Projects”
There are always plenty of tasks and projects on any road map or agenda, many of them with a high likelihood of success. Otherwise those tasks and strategies wouldn’t have made it onto the roadmap (assuming the team putting the roadmap together was competent). Yet it isn’t unusual to see a strong personality on a team or outside supervisor suddenly derail a highly profitable project plan with some pet project…

Remember: You’re Being Paid For Your Expertise

Sure, saying no feels dangerous. And there’s still a decent chance that a superior or client will override your objections. In reality, once you become a search marketing professional, your opinions (backed up by experience and expertise) are what you get paid for…

Fully Analyze the Cost of Changing Directions

The question becomes how do you present your case when you think a campaign is about to go off track due to a “pet project” inserted by a well-meaning senior manager or a client. The first method that can be effective is the pros and cons discussion…

Search Engine Reps Will Never Have Your Unique Expertise

Interestingly, as a search marketing expert, your responsibilities include protecting the marketing budget and campaign from outside influences who promote projects that have a low expected return…

Jacob Gube also offers some excellent ideas in “Eight Tips on How to Manage Feature Creep” in his post over at SixRevisions.com. Based mostly from his own experience, you may find them useful below:

1. Accept that feature creep will happen.

Feature creep is a natural part of any project-based work. Acknowledging this eventuality will allow you to be prepared when it finally rears it’s ugly code-retrofitting, design-wrecking head. Anticipating unforeseen changes in your plans forces you to be more adaptable, and promotes the development of a solution that’s flexible and malleable to your client’s ever-changing needs.

2. Commit enough time to requirements-gathering.

Easy and fairly common sense. Just don’t rush the planning phase of projects.

3. Giving a hand might cost you your arm.

If you constantly give in to changes, you might be get more of them in the future. Try to set boundaries of what is and isn’t appropriate to revise, this not only prevents unneeded requests for changes, but gives the project strict quality-control guidelines.

4. Be the devil’s advocate when changes are requested.

You were hired and assigned to the project because of your knowledge and expertise. Don’t be afraid to contradict unwise feature requests by providing well-formed reasons that the project should proceed as originally planned.

5. Be task-oriented, not vision-oriented.

Be clear on what it is, exactly, you’re developing for the client. Don’t promise a grand, exciting, but ambiguous/ambitious end result.

6. Shed the “Customer is Always Right” mentality.

You, more often than not, are a more qualified judge of how things should be developed. You’re not working to get a big tip at the end. Don’t feel pressured to do something that isn’t in the job description or something you feel will lead to a less desirable end product.

7. Research before committing.

If you think the budget and timeline can handle a modification in plans, research thoroughly on what the change actually entails before committing.

8. Realize that feature creep is a two-way street.

Clients and employers aren’t (purely) evil. They don’t intend to make our jobs more difficult. Oftentimes it’s our desire to please, to prove our worth, and our perfectionist mentality that can be, in part if not equally, to blame. If feature creep happens, it’s only because we allow it to.

So how are you dealing with your own marketing creeps?
What would you do if you realize, way deep into a project, you now have a long list of features that were regretfully accepted verbally?
And what do you suggest the best ways to bring feature creep back to the negotiating table?

Share your experience with us.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Beware the Marketing Creeps

Over at eBizMBA there is a list of the top 30 social bookmarking sites that just went up, dated December 2008. Based on a combination of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank and U.S. traffic data from Quantcast, the list gives an relative view of who are the biggest players in this social media field.

We all know that these are real big names and many are recognizable even to the most casual Internet users. On the other hand there are many that you’ve never heard of! That’s what amazing about the list. Regardless, I must say some of these numbers are staggering! They really show how huge and popular these sites are, and how small the rest of us are. Here we go, courtesy of eBizMBA, the sites are:

1. digg.com - 382,792,751 – Inbound Links | 22,578,945 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 10,300,000 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 124 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 8
2. Yahoo!Buzz - 900,571 – Inbound Links | **128,556,575** – Compete Monthly Visitors | 2,500,000 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 1 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
3. Technorati.com - 75,306,437 – Inbound Links | 3,231,709 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 1,400,000 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 216 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 8
4. del.icio.us - 171,593,051 – Inbound Links | 1,699,128 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 1,300,000 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 248 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 8
5. Propeller.com - 997,000 – Inbound Links | 1,454,912 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 2,180,176 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 2,308 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
6. StumbleUpon.com - 19,050,177 – Inbound Links | 1,313,586 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 695,239 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 300 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 8
7. reddit.com - 45,307,577 – Inbound Links | 2,587,503 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 344,383 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 852 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
8. mixx.com - 6,175,082 – Inbound Links | 507,100 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 475,000 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 1,880 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
9. Fark.com - 11,438,723 – Inbound Links | 306,597 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 1,767,165 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 1,958 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
10. MyBlogLog.com - 1,742,265 – Inbound Links | 1,972,847 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 84,922 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 432 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
11. Slashdot.org - 13,555,035 – Inbound Links | 724,424 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 269,884 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 579 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 9
12. kaboodle.com - 100,266 – Inbound Links | 1,751,763 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 851,858 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 9,125 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
13. Bloglines.com - 50,717,948 – Inbound Links | 382,663 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 103,711 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 853 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 9
14. newsvine.com - 24,200,775 – Inbound Links | 315,857 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 203,761 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 3,977 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
15. blinklist.com - 23,770,576 – Inbound Links | 243,277 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 165,306 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 4,647 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
16. netvouz.com - 8,112,272 – Inbound Links | 75,507 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 54,325 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 15,048 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
17. clipmarks.com - 164,419 – Inbound Links | 196,107 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 147,131 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 6,740 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
18. Furl.net - 49,595,144 – Inbound Links | 148,975 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 57,547 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 4,112 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 8
19. Mister-Wong - 13,214,146 – Inbound Links | 25,416 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 3,432 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 1,889 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
20. dzone.com - 1,065,009 – Inbound Links | 100,784 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 117,897 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 5,187 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
21. ma.gnolia.com - 13,701,444 – Inbound Links | 110,662 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 32,363 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 7,454 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
22. Tailrank.com - 5,320,211 – Inbound Links | 71,563 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 35,783 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 28,920 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
23. ShoutWire.com - 168,480 – Inbound Links | 101,738 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 55,337 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 10,552 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
24. simpy.com - 13,107,730 – Inbound Links | 62,645 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 49,205 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 10,948 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 7
25. BlogMarks.net - 9,748,453 – Inbound Links | 61,740 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 28,075 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 11,880 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
26. BlueDot.us - 1,159,780 – Inbound Links | 107,717 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 60,045 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 12,072 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
27. Spurl.net - 18,628,253 – Inbound Links | 42,300 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 3,483 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 14,300 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 6
28. linkswarm.com - 150,842 – Inbound Links | 14,504 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 10,476 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 47,267 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 5
29. Spotback.com - 97,564 – Inbound Links | 42,838 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 5,037 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 42,015 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 5
30. MyBookmarks.com - 25,191 – Inbound Links | 10,934 – Compete Monthly Visitors | 7,727 – Quantcast Monthly Visitors | 108,226 – Alexa Ranking. | Page Rank: 5

By comparison, digg.com has 10.3M and Yahoo!Buzz 2.5M. Very impressive numbers and I think they will continue to grow at least for the foreseeable future, regardless of any market condition. Social bookmarking is only a subset of this whole larger social networking movement, which is probably one area that is pretty much independent of any social, market or political conditions around the world. In fact any new or extreme social changes will only serve as fuel for the social network to grow as we’ve seen it already time and again.

Despite this, many of us marketers are still struggling with this thing called social marketing. Well social marketing is here to stay, so just don’t get left behind.

So here are some questions:

What’s your favorite social bookmarking site or sites? How many of these accounts do you have? What’s the reason(s) for the multiple accounts and how do you manage them?

Do you prefer to get the news from social sites like these or from more traditional news sites?

Finally, as social networking evolves, what tools do you think will become important (or need to be developed) for us to streamline our online activities? Are there enabling technologies that we have yet been able to master? Your thoughts are welcome

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

30 Largest Social Bookmarking Sites, December 2008

So HubSpot gave us another very easy to understand and easy to explain term: Inbound Marketing. It wraps everything about Web 2.0 into a neat little package. According to the article “Inbound Marketing & the Next Phase of Marketing on the Web“, the current recession is pushing the next wave of marketing on the Internet. And it’s a good thing. Evolution is good.

Marketers are seeing the value of Inbound Marketing. While we can’t totally do away with traditional marketing, or Outbound Marketing, marketers can certainly step up their Inbound Marketing with little to no additional costs. Considering these 3 key components that make a successful Inbound Marketing, one can see why it’s so powerful.

1. Content – Content is the substance of any Inbound Marketing campaign. It is the information or tool that attracts potential customers to your site or your business. Content is king.
2. Search Engine Optimization – SEO makes it easier for potential customers to find your content. It is the practice of building your site and inbound links to your site to maximize your ranking in search engines, where most of your customers begin their buying process.
3. Social Media – Social media amplifies the impact of your content. When your content is distributed across and discussed on networks of personal relationships, it becomes more authentic and nuanced, and is more likely to draw qualified customers to your site.

The beauty of it is anyone can successfully put them to use at very low costs. You don’t have a budget for this? Or your budget has just been scaled down? No worry, you can still run an effective marketing campaign. Here’s a graphic comparing Outbound and Inbound Marketing, courtesy of HubSpot. If you work up a marketing budget for each side of the table, it’s not hard to see the budget needed to do the left side is going to overwhelm the one on the right.

Print ads, TV ads, cold calling, trade shows, email blasts will continue to cost a bundle to do. On the other hand, blogs, eboks, viral videos, SEO, webinars and RSS are all very affordable to start or even expand in activities. To be fair, Inbound Marketing does require specialized knowledge and skills, and this is a good thing. It forces marketers to move with the time. It will weed out strong marketers from the weak ones. It’s the natural law of survival in the business jungle.

Pounding your message out to the customers? Not too effective anymore and too costly. Attracting customers coming to find you? Now everybody wins.

So consider these. Inbound Marketing costs much less than traditional marketing. It has better targeting with self-qualifying customers. And it is an investment with  word-of-mouth and viral effectiveness.

If it’s not already in your marketing game plan, then you may as well make Inbound Marketing your new year’s business resolution. But don’t wait. Start today. Remember, you don’t need a budget to do this.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Who Doesn’t Want Inbound Marketing?

This is from an older article at Forbes.com titled “Peter Drucker On Marketing” by Jack Trout. While it’s dated back in July 2006, good writings stand the test of time, and this one is no exception. Mr. Trout wrote that perhaps today’s executives are just getting it wrong in their priorities.

Peter Drucker observed:

“Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

Top management surveyed today probably name their priorities to include the likes of finance, sales, production, management, legal and people. Missing from the list, as Mr. Trout pointed out: marketing and innovation. He listed 4 important steps to help an executive find the proper direction. These are:

1. Make sense in the context. What does the market place perceive you and your competitors to represent? Do you know what the market wants? If you do, how do you differentiate yourself from the competitors?
2. Find the differentiating idea. Be different, be one of a kind, be not the same. And it does not have to be a differentness in just products. There are other areas of the business that can be used as your secret weapon.
3. Have the credentials. However you are different or claim you are different from the pack, you must prove it with credentials, demonstration, and logical argument. Customers are smart and knowledgeable. If you let them ask skeptical questions about your claim, then you have a faulty start and an uphill battle on your hand.
4. Communicate your difference. In the Internet, social media and social networking market environment, you can’t be too sure that customers will beat a path to your door. You have to work for it. Tell them what makes you different.

Marketing is definitely not everything. But it’s one very important thing. Management who understand that marketing is a high priority must-do item on their to do list will be way ahead of their competitors, in any market condition. They will enjoy rosier roads ahead of them. And much sooner too. Because marketing should be a way of doing business, and not a new company initiative.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Executives May Just Be Getting It Wrong the Whole Time.

Wise words from an ad copy described in the book Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy.

I don’t know who you are.
I don’t know your company.
I don’t know your company’s product.
I don’t know what your company stands for.
I don’t know your company’s customers.
I don’t know your company’s records.
I don’t know your company’s reputation.
Now – what was it you wanted to sell me?

Today’s customer is tough and knowledgeable. With the Internet as a tool, anyone can easily Google his/her way to a piece of information, an answer or a list of comparison. For this reason marketing and sales must work hand in hand to develop spot-on and effective strategies and messages for your products and services. From the customer’s or prospect’s point of view, there is only one entity: the company. Not the sales department, not the marketing department.

If marketing and sales just collaborate to develop message to address the I don’t knows, then we’ll be more than half way there.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Take Care of the I Don’t Knows

Whatever your passion is in your personal and work life, professional tools and skills are an important and critical element for success. We often think of carpenters and plumbers or even doctors and lawyers as requiring the right tools and skills to do their jobs right. Well think again. We all need them, whatever our professions. Communication. Negotiation. Relationship. Interpersonal. Time management. Marketing. Sales. Each of us must possess an effective set of our own Tools For Life in our back pocket.

I just got a good friend and colleague of mine, Tom Bartley, started writing his own blog called Tools For Life. Tom always seems to have lots of things to share, and he’s one of those guys who can talk your ears off, in a good way. Professionally, Tom possesses a wealth of information in the energy, environmental, transportation and high tech fields and is a problem solver. He’s a result-oriented professional always looking for innovative and new ideas to overcome obstacles, while stimulating creative thinking and inventive solutions in people around him. But in life in general, Tom can also give you tidbits and nuggets of wisdoms from interesting points of view and from his substantial knowledge of how work and life actually work, or should work, either separately or together.

What do you consider some of the most important tools or skills necessary to succeed in work and in life? I’d bet that if we make our own lists, we’d find that those in the “work” column would be just as applicable in the “life” column.

As marketers, we should keep our skills, tools and knowledge sharpened in both our work and life, because oftentimes they are one and the same. If not, we’re setting ourselves up with a formula for failure.

Do you have a favorite tool or skill you find critical to success in both your work and life?
If you have to pick just 3 to fully develop for maximum effectiveness, what would they be?
On the other hand, what would be a critical tool/skill that you wish you have or had developed?

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

A Sure Formula for Failure: Going Through Life Without a Good Set of Tools For Life.