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Achieving Relevance: Understanding and Connecting With Constituents by Brandon Walsh
Much more than just "your customers" or "your audience," your constituents are all the people for whom your work is meaningful—the internal and external populations whose interest, participation, and advocacy are important to your stability, growth, and long-term success. How ...
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The Top Five Things Marketers Must Do in 2010
by Joel BookThis year will be another year of key strategic and tactical decisions for marketers. With flat or reduced budgets, marketers will once again have to determine where to invest for the best return. So if you want to get the ...
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The End of the Long-Copy vs. Short-Copy Debate by Barry Densa
Which converts better and drives more sales: long-form copy or short-form copy? "The more you tell, the more you sell," claim the adherents of long copy. "No one has time to read below the fold," counter short-copy partisans. Of course, ...
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The Secret to Success in a Down Economy: Market Intelligence
by Barbara BixEspecially in a down economy, it's important to understand where the opportunities are—and how to capitalize on them. Luckily, today's companies have many avenues for gathering such information.
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Six Keys to Writing a Great Proposal by Doug Stern, Jaclyn Landon
Looking for ways to create a proposal that sets you and your company favorably apart? Ways that capture the great things you have to offer? Here are six suggested best-practices intended to not only maximize your chances to stand out ...
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Problem Solved: How Do I Keep My Website Interesting, and Keep Visitors Coming Back? by Claire Coyne
We've created a cool website. The bell and whistles are working well—not too little, not too much. We're getting lots of visits from lots of cool folks. But now that we're up and running so well, we're panicked about keeping ...
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Five Ways to Create More Value in Your Presentations by Joseph Sommerville, PhD
During challenging economic times, buyers look for value. The more value you provide, the more likely you are to become the provider of choice. Presentations offer you excellent opportunities to provide that value at different stages of the sales cycle. ...
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How to Be Successful With New Web Initiatives by Christian Shea
One of the traps that many organizations fall into when launching a new Web initiative is putting the focus of the project on new technology or new functionality. Instead, you need to start your project with the end result in ...
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Is Your Sales Team Creating Real Differentiation? by Tom Roth
Salespeople rely on strategies such as "sell the value" or to "value-add"—neither of which produces sustainable advantage. They do so because it's hard to achieve genuine differentiation based on something the customer values. But suppose salespeople were able to create ...
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What Every CMO Should Know About Music by Ruth Simmons
Sir John Hegarty, the man behind the Levi's jeans and Lynx deodorant ads, once claimed, "Music is 50% of an ad's success." Yet even today very few metrics are regularly applied within the planning and creative processes to measure the ...
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Look at Business Presentations as a Process, Not an Event by Joseph Sommerville, PhD
If you look at creating an effective presentation as a process rather than as an event, you'll quickly realize that it isn't a Sisyphean task. A process has the advantages of being both learnable and repeatable, so once you master ...
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Sales: Strategic Calling to Find Hidden Opportunities in Your Current Accounts by Ken Valla
What growth strategy is your sales organization pursuing as the economy begins to show signs of recovery? As the business climate improves, so do the opportunities for shifting from survival mode to growth mode. Frozen budgets are beginning to thaw, ...
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Brand Control to Major Tom: The New Rules of Brand Management by Roger Sametz
The notion that you can manage your brand by making and distributing messages and materials that you want "out there" is becoming quaint. And though the new age of extreme participation is a challenge, you as brand manager haven't lost ...
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The Brave New World of the Engaged Web by AJ Harring
We no longer use the Web just for browsing, we use it for doing: posting videos, creating content, sharing things, and connecting with people and organizations. Welcome to "the Engaged Web," a new world where passive websites have been replaced ...
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Marketing Is So Much More Than Promotion: Just Visit My Hairdresser by Barbara Bix
What can marketers learn from the smallest of small businesses, a hair salon? You might be surprised: Here is a story of an integrated-marketing and client-service approach that any business would do well to emulate.
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Selling B2B Social Media Internally: Ten Arguments to Win Over the Boardroom, Part 2
by Christina "CK" KerleyIt's year's end, and you need to rally internal support for integrating social media into your marketing mix… or have it play a much larger role. Here's how to win over the Executive Committee members, who are sure to have ...
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Ten Commandments for Effective Online Social Networking by Paul Chaney
Here's a 10-step game plan for social-network involvement. You don't have to think of these steps as commandments; rather, they are practical guidelines that will make you a better member of the social-networking communities in which you participate.
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Write From Your Reader's Perspective by David Fideler
When potential customers arrive at your website or look over your marketing materials, they immediately want to know what's in it for them. If that's not obvious, chances are they will move on quickly.
By using the word "you," you begin ...
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Why 70% of Facebook 'Fans' Don't Want Marketing, and What You Can Do About It by Morgan Stewart
Most consumers who use Facebook and are a "fan" of a company or brand don't believe they have given those companies permission to market to them; many don't believe marketers are welcome in social networks at all. But here's how ...
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Marketers: Don't Just Buy Media—Earn It! by Ben Straley
Want to get started with an effective earned-media marketing program? Here are three tips for launching, measuring, and monetizing a low-cost earned-media program that will drive a surge in online word-of-mouth traffic about your brand.