When McDonald's launched its specialty coffees earlier this year, its banner ads inviting consumers to "McCafé Your Day" were all over the Web. Great branding, but does such online advertising send customers to local establishments? The short answer: When combined with search, it does! According to Christa Hoyland, editor of QSR Web, Google research ... more

If there's anything Second Life has taught us, it's that people like having a place to come back to—a virtual hideaway where you're always well-coiffed and surrounded by friends, and everybody knows your (avatar's) name. Well, here's some good news for mobile marketers: virtual living just got a whole lot ... more

Americans 65+ comprise less than 10% of the active Internet, but their numbers are growing: In the last five years, the number of seniors actively using the Internet grew 55% to 17.5 million in November 2009, up from 11.3 million in November 2004, according to a survey by Nielsen. more

Companies tend not to understand what people want from online branded communities––or the role that the brand plays in fulfilling those needs, according to a study by ComBlu. more

In late October, Twitter launched its Lists feature, which might just improve your life in a panoply of organization-friendly ways. The new feature helps you sort your own contacts based on personal relevance, but—maybe more importantly—it also provides you with ready-made groups of people to which to target your messages. ... more

Americans can't live without the Internet and television; they prefer advertisements that are innovative and playful; and they are open to new technologies that monitor their media usage if privacy is ensured, according to a recent study by Synovate. more

The integration of social media into American lives has created a world that is simultaneously expanding and narrowing, making it easy to create connections with people and businesses around the world—and in the immediate vicinity—while sometimes behaving in ways one wouldn't in person, according to a recent study by Euro ... more

Fully three-quarters (77%) of Facebook pages––public pages set up by brands, media outlets, and celebrities––have fewer than 1,000 fans and only 4% of Facebook pages have more than 10,000 fans, according to a study by Sysomos. more

Get this: 8 in 10 smartphone users say they have trouble accessing content from their handhelds. What's more, they swear they'd spend at least $9 more per month on purchases if the products they wanted were easier to find. The stats come from a survey of both US and UK smartphone ... more

Since 2003, senior executives have steadily increased their use of electronic media—so much so, that as of 2009 80% say within five years they will be consuming over half of their work-related media online and 60% say the same for leisure media, according to a Decision Dynamics Survey cosponsored by ... more

Here's a story that extols the power of Twitter as a technical-support tool. More importantly, it demonstrates how a large company, Comcast, found its customers in a social-media venue—and responded to them. Neville Hobson, in a post on Social Media Today, discusses the Twitter-centric customer-service operation at Comcast. Twitter hasn't ... more

Business leaders among the Inc 500, an elite group of the nation's fastest-growing private companies, consider social media a central part of their marketing strategy, according to a recent study by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. more

In a video at TED.com, Israeli conductor Itay Talgam gives a spirited 20-minute talk on what modern leaders could learn from great conductors. Interestingly, a lot of the principles he presents in the video can apply to nourishing a social-media campaign. Here are some of his words of wisdom that can cross over ... more

We're very proud of the amazing marketing events produced by our MarketingProfs colleagues—they always deliver a lively, insightful experience. If you missed this year's Digital Marketing Mixer in Chicago, Matthew Grant reports on key takeaways like these in a post at the MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog: There's ... more

Businesses are gearing up to increase their marketing spend on email marketing and social media in 2010, making those the top two areas of marketing investment in 2010, according to the just-released 2010 Marketing Trends Survey by StrongMail Systems. more

Few things are as irresistible as a mobile game that lets players rack points up during waiting-room or bus-ride lulls. But if you're a brick-and-mortar shop, or a restaurant, there isn't much incentive for throwing another branded version of Tetris out into the ether. What to do, what to do? Solution: Hook up ... more

"Looking for a way to punch up your email campaigns and get subscribers more engaged with your site?" Julie Waite asks in a recent post at the Bronto blog. "Product reviews may be the answer," she says. "Implementing product review functionality on your site can help seal the deal and convince ... more

Time spent viewing video on social networking sites has nearly doubled in the past year, from 503.8 million minutes in October 2008 to 999.4 million in October 2009, according to Nielsen. more

You're in the business of communicating, and in the age of Internet-and-mobile, your platforms for doing so have expanded almost exponentially. But here's a down side: From fielding phone calls to checking email to ensuring your personal/company blog and Twitter accounts are well-populated, how do you manage it all? Lucky for you, slews of ... more

Gen-Y women have emerged as a distinct and influential consumer demographic, and they wield significant brand influence over older Gen-X women, according to a study conducted by Radar Research for Sugar Inc. more

As mothers carefully budget for their families, they are sacrificing purchases that are for their own use in order to ensure their families get what they need, according to a study by the Marketing to Moms Coalition. more

Prices on the lunch menu at Maloney & Porcelli are typical of restaurants in its segment: You can start with appetizers like the $14 tuna-and-avocado tartare or the $20 crab cake; a mixed-green salad goes for $10: and one of the eatery's signature filet mignons will cost at least $39. As ... more

Kevin Nalts, a marketing director who produces hi-lar-ious videos on YouTube under the handle nalts, once joked that after cutting a bazillion notches into his belt, he still has no idea what makes a viral hit with users. And that's the accepted wisdom: Creating a truly viral video—something people want to ... more

Hard, cold fact: Few B2B sales reps relish having to make cold calls. And Laura Ramos could not agree more. "I believe marketing should strive to put sales out of the business of cold calling," she states at the B2B Marketing POSTs blog. Since that's a tall order, she offers a ... more

Nearly one in five holiday shoppers will rely on digital advancements such as social media and mobile phones for help with holiday shopping this year, according to Deloitte’s 24th Annual Holiday Survey of retail spending and trends. more