Making Marketing Work

September 5, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

If you plan to be in the Boston area next week, you will want to attend the 3rd Annual Print Buyers Conference, to be held September 10–12 at the Sheraton Boston, sponsored by Print Buyers International. What, pray tell, is the Print Buyers Conference? Basically, it is a two-day expo and conference that educates print buyers—which is what marketers are, in large part—about the print procurement process. But more than just technical nuances, it is also a showcase for print-based marketing strategies and solutions.

There will be more than 22 sessions that include such topics as environmental sustainability, digital printing, cutting paper costs, and developing cross-media marketing campaigns. The dynamic Peter Muir will be leading a session on “Marketing Ideas and Initiatives That Will Empower Prin...Read More
Industries: Sales and Marketing, Technology, Work Life

September 4, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Here is a link to an interesting story from Ad Age that came to me yesterday via my daily Interactive Advertising Bureau e-newsletter. It caught my eye because I buy shoes via Zappos.com, and I am very happy with them. And the fact that I just made it a point to say that in some way illustrates one subtle means of word-of-mouth marketing—which is the subject of the article. But not in the way you think. In this case, Zappos relies in no small part on its own employees to spread the good word about the company:

Every year Zappos.com, one of the fastest-growing e-commerce sites, publishes a "culture book." Three hundred pages in length, the book includes written -- and often gushy -- testimonials from employees about what it means to work at Zappos.com.

...Read More
Industries: Sales and Marketing, Starting a Business, Technology, Travel, Work Life

September 3, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Here’s how things used to be. In the dim and distant past, if a potential customer wanted information about what your company did, they called you on the phone and requested a brochure. (Yes, people used to do this once upon a time.) Or they filled out a reader service card in a magazine. Or they came by your retail location and engaged in a dialogue with a salesperson. Or they visited you at a conference or trade show and gave you a business card.

How has this changed today?

If a potential customer wants information about your company, they will visit your Web site.

Aside from the media involved, how do those scenarios differ? Well, in the first scenario, you had information about who was requesting information. A name, an address, maybe a phone number. These could be saved and used as sales leads; your sales staff could call them ba...Read More
Industries: Sales and Marketing, Starting a Business, Technology, Work Life

September 2, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Last week, I was in Chicago for the Creative Freelancer Conference, a new event cosponsored by HOW magazine and Marketing Mentor. It was designed to offer business and marketing tips to creative professionals (that is, designers and writers). I posted at length about it over at WhatTheyThink’s PrintCEO blog, but there were some lessons that I think are applicable to just about any business.

One of the sessions was called “Building a Well-Oiled Marketing Machine,” and was conducted by Ilise Benun of Marketing Mentor and Colleen Wainwright, self-described “communicatrix.” The session addressed five broad marketing “categori...Read More
Industries: Home Based Biz, Sales and Marketing, Starting a Business, Work Life

August 19, 2008 | Link This | Email this | Comments (0)

Last week, I was in Milwaukee for the inauguration of a new event, C2’s Creative Transitions Conference, where I got to sit on a keynote panel along with a representative from Adobe Systems who had won an Oscar for the visual effects in Titanic. (The closest I could come to that was being a consultant in the printing industry, which often gives me a similar sinking feeling.)

It was a generally young crowd—I would guess, out of the 150 people or so who came to the dinner keynote session, more than three-fourths of them were under 35. As a result, my quickie survey at the beginning of my talk (on the growing prevalence of cross-media and multichannel marketing) found that the majority of the crowd were heavily new media based, and even more heavily cross-media based already.

The sessions, targete...Read More
Industries: Sales and Marketing, Travel, Work Life