In August, correction-tape brand Tippex launched an attention-grabbing YouTube campaign. Colorfully labeled "NSFW. A hunter shoots a bear!," it shows footage of a reluctant hunter faced with shooting a bear creeping up on his camping gear. At video's end, you're left with one of two buttons to push: should he shoot, ... more

In September, UNIQLO UK launched Lucky Counter, a piece of marketing genius that compelled users to Tweet about the company's products. Each time they did, the products got more appealing. How? Lucky Counter featured a diverse, limited array of UNIQLO products and prices. Click on one, and you'd be invited to Tweet ... more

Despite the image of teens being obsessed with digital communications, only 13% of teen word-of-mouth (WOM) about brands takes place online—via texting/instant messaging (7%), social networking (3%), and email (3%)—according to a survey from Keller Fay Group. more

Welcome to the power of the testimonial: A potent plug can make people as much as seven times more likely to buy or try than if they saw a paid advertisement. Email-based testimonials can be just as persuasive, but the key is to maximize their power. Here's how to do ... more

If you're like many professional service providers, you get a lot of business from referrals. You get them because you're an expert and you provide excellent service. Nevertheless, that's not enough. Several things need to happen first: In fact, the referral process parallels the buying process that prospects use to ... more

It's a global trend: Consumers want to buy from, employees want to work for, and other businesses want supplies from, socially responsible enterprises. Small-business owners can use the corporate social responsibility trend to improve their own businesses and stand out from competitors by taking the following steps. more

In a minor stroke of genius, Best Buy created @Twelpforce, a Twitter-based means to pose tech questions and get answers in real time. Today, Twelpforce is more than 28,000 followers strong. Reviews are so positive, and its execution so impressive, that the agency responsible (Crispin Porter + Bogusky) received the Titanium ... more

It's Lady Gaga lesson-time again. After all, she is a marketer who consistently goes viral. And her results ring loud: Gaga's the first artist to hit 1 billion YouTube views. And she's turned quite a handy-dandy profit: 11.5 million albums sold in two years, including through digital media (where she ... more

Driven by gradual economic recovery, advances in digital technology, and secular shifts in business and consumer spending, total communications industry spending is on pace to increase 3.5% in 2010 and post a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.8% from 2010 to 2014, reaching $1.4 trillion in spending by 2014, ... more

The Web's most influential teens are more likely than other teens to actively participate in social media and digital activities, such as updating their social networking status and sending text messages, but they are also more likely to spend time influencing their peers and socializing offline, according to a survey ... more

Coconut Bliss's grassroots, customer-focused efforts have enabled the company to establish a nationwide presence in just a few short years, while nurturing an incredibly strong and genuine passion among customers. more

You spend a lot of time ensuring the best-possible experience for every customer purchasing your product or service. You've trained a friendly, knowledgeable staff, and you use customer feedback—both positive and negative—to shape the sales process and provide ongoing support. But do you know how your customer experience compares with that offered ... more

Ever wonder about the true long-range value of a tweet? Now you don't have to guess. Just plug a link, phrase, hashtag or screen name into TweetReach.com to get a sense of the reach it's achieved via tweets and retweets. The cool part: TweetReach doesn't just reveal how many users ... more

Chloe Sladden (@ChloeS) of Twitter recently said Twitter was worth more to MTV during the 2009 Video Music Awards than Nielsen was. Twitter worked with MTV to provide illustrated data on reactions as users watched the VMAs. Kanye West's interruption of artist Taylor Swift's acceptance speech made a splash: A ... more

Customer loyalty matters, because selling more to current customers is easier and cheaper than finding and selling to new ones. Loyal customers tend to buy more, more regularly. And frequently they will recommend your business to others. Here are 10 tips for you to consider to deepen relationships with customers. more

Is it your job to listen to and analyze social-media messages and direct customer feedback about your product, brand, or service? Effective listening and insights analysis allow you to track not just the volume but also the meaning of online conversations across a complex web of consumer-interaction channels. more

Millennials are hard to sway using traditional advertising and media channels that don't promote interaction: Only 17.7% say their favorite TV spot has led them to purchase an advertised product, while nearly one-half (48%) say that word-of-mouth communications influence them more than TV advertisements, according to a study from Mr ... more

Conversation marketing. Engagement marketing. Social media. Earned media. Consumer-generated media. User-generated Content. Crowdsourcing. Outsourcing. Co-creation. No matter what you call it, the evolution of the way brands reach and interact with consumers has led to mass experimentation with the alluring, yet often hard-to-execute marketing tactic: the video contest. more

With social media a hot ticket item and social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube making it easy to share, people are spending a lot of time offering free advice and sharing knowledge publicly, yet they are not asking for anything in return. But it's OK to ask. more

OK. Time to clear your mind and consider some findings from Tremor, a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble that focuses on word-of-mouth (WOM). Tremor is populated by cognitive scientists whose job is to study the brain, then apply their knowledge to marketing. Some sample Tremor tips: The brain isn't actually wired ... more

In March, MarketingProfs ran an article about brand flubs in social media, starring Southwest Airlines and Heinz. Read the tale. Now we discuss a third brand's stormy social life: Nestle. Recently, Greenpeace, which raises awareness for ecological issues in provocative ways, released a video of a guy snacking on a Kit ... more

Analytics is a messy and complicated business. Even if you're monitoring data, you probably get more than you know what to do with—and once you have it all, you still have to decide what it means. Ugh. As a result, you may seek professional help (of the data-monitoring kind). And ... more

Consumer-based word-of-mouth (WOM) information is viewed as the most reliable source of information about brands on social networking sites: 38% of social networking users say posts from other consumers are most credible, followed by posts from brands themselves (32%), according to a survey from InSites Consulting. more

Sad news: Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketers have yet to grasp the true complexity of the online communal networks they are attempting to reach, according to one new research report. Here's how the researchers came to that conclusion. They set out to track the online WOM promotion of a "new" camera-equipped mobile ... more

Point of fact: One of the most alluring things about Facebook is its infinite capacity to find us a new distraction—be it Farmville, virtual gift-giving or browsing through an old flame's recent family photo shoot (major creepiness factor, BTW). Second point of fact: Some companies know this about Facebook, and are already ... more