Every year, new web tools come onto the market. These are supposed to help make our lives as marketers easier with better time management, multi-layered views of web properties, or a better consolidated and aggregate dashboard. Many of them are free or have a "lite" version of the webware available. Here are a few good ones that come to mind:
YouSendIt - Ever get thwarted by IT's security or file size settings in Microsoft Outlook? YouSendIt provides temporary file transfers between users. It's not just a work-around for Outlook. Most email providers limit the send/receive file size to 10 mb. Their lite version is not too shabby for the occassional user. You can send files up to 100 mb with a 1 gb/month bandwidth restriction. Your recipients have up to 7 days to download the file before the system automatically deletes it. YouSendIt provides a handy link for users to download.
Icerocket - Using an RSS reader to track updates for twitter feeds or blogs is fine if you want to keep track of what people are saying about you. But what about all the other sites that are saying something about your company, its products, or brands? Icerocket is an aggregate search engine that looks for your keywords across a variety of online media: Blogs, the WWW, Twitter, MySpace, News, Images, etc., and does this all at once.
Mailinator - This is a service that lets you create a temporary email account. It's good for signing up for consumer newsletters that don't secure their account creation pages. Why is this relevant for marketers? If you're testing web contact forms, you might not want to have your work email address captured into your company's CRM; but you still want verification (e.g., like the autoresponder) that your web forms actually work.
ShareThis - Definitely not a new tool on the scene, but this is an easy sharing link for all types of web content. Check out their blog and why it makes sense for online marketers to use this tool. Did I mention? It's really easy to use, for users, content providers, and web publishers.
LovelyCharts.com - An online diagramming application. Ever wonder how flow diagrams (e.g., wireframes, flow charts, organizational charts, network diagrams, process flows) are created for PPT presentations? This tool can help map our your data bits into something graphical and more meaningful than drawing out the boxes by hand in PPT.
OMS Portland
Am at this event today and overall the content presented has been pretty decent given the spread of the attendees and the industries represented today. I managed to sit through three sessions and two keynotes so far:
Resource links from the event:
http://blog.onlinemarketingconnect.com/
http://blog.onlinemarketingconnect.com/resources/
http://institute.onlinemarketingconnect.com/
- Morning Keynote "Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying"
The Medium Is the Message: Advanced Strategies for Email, SMS & Voice Marketing Success - Demand Generation Essentials
- Lunch Keynote "How to better understand your customers' online behavior and profit from it”
- Designing Your Email Program From Online Outreach to the Welcome Message
Resource links from the event:
http://blog.onlinemarketingconnect.com/
http://blog.onlinemarketingconnect.com/resources/
http://institute.onlinemarketingconnect.com/
40% of US Gamers are Women
In the Entertainment Software Association's 2008 report...
Audience Sample:
1,200 nationally representative households identified as owning either or both a video game console or a personal computer used to run entertainment software
Notable Stats:
So, how is this relevant to marketing? CRM strategy is one aspect that comes to mind. It is a marketer's ability to define, track, and market to specific demographic sets of customers who frequently buy certain game genres. Customer relationship management, CRM, is more than just a collection of people who bought your products and services at some point. A few challenges exist for anyone entering or playing in this industry:
- to create a substantial revenue stream of recurrent purchases from new or existing customers
- to maximize ad and marketing spends in the promotion of sales
- to anticipate what customers want to play next based on purchase behavior
A good CRM system helps marketers keep the customers populations in the right buckets, and by doing so, we're able to direct appropriate messaging and content to those customers. Just having software in place isn't going to tell you how or where to market, that's what marketers are for.
Audience Sample:
1,200 nationally representative households identified as owning either or both a video game console or a personal computer used to run entertainment software
Notable Stats:
- 65% of American households play computer or video games
- 35 is the average game player age
- 26% of gamers were over the age of 50 (in 2008)
- 13 years is the average number of years adult gamers have been playing computer or video games
- 22.3% Action
- 17.6% Family entertainment
- 14.1% Sports
- 12.1% Shooter
- 33.9% Strategy
- 18.8% Role-playing
- 14.3% Family entertainment
- 11.6% Shooter
So, how is this relevant to marketing? CRM strategy is one aspect that comes to mind. It is a marketer's ability to define, track, and market to specific demographic sets of customers who frequently buy certain game genres. Customer relationship management, CRM, is more than just a collection of people who bought your products and services at some point. A few challenges exist for anyone entering or playing in this industry:
- to create a substantial revenue stream of recurrent purchases from new or existing customers
- to maximize ad and marketing spends in the promotion of sales
- to anticipate what customers want to play next based on purchase behavior
A good CRM system helps marketers keep the customers populations in the right buckets, and by doing so, we're able to direct appropriate messaging and content to those customers. Just having software in place isn't going to tell you how or where to market, that's what marketers are for.
Book Review: Get Content. Get Customers.
Oooh! I'm so excited. My copy of Get Content. Get Customers. by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett just came in the mail. I'll be posting a review of this soon and x-posting it to Amazon.com. The inside flap reads:
"Get Content. Get Customers. shows you step-by-step how to create and execute a content marketing strategy that works regardless of the size of your company or type of business you are in. This book provides dozens of examples of how large and small companies, associations, entrepreneurs, and international organizations are leveraging the power of content to drive their businesses."
I wholeheartedly agree with the authors' suggestion that all the rules have changed and marketers need to relearn the marketing game with a brand new marketing mindset.
This book pairs with the Right Content. Right Response. webinar hosted by BeGreeted.Com, Junta42, and Conversion Sciences.
"Get Content. Get Customers. shows you step-by-step how to create and execute a content marketing strategy that works regardless of the size of your company or type of business you are in. This book provides dozens of examples of how large and small companies, associations, entrepreneurs, and international organizations are leveraging the power of content to drive their businesses."
I wholeheartedly agree with the authors' suggestion that all the rules have changed and marketers need to relearn the marketing game with a brand new marketing mindset.
This book pairs with the Right Content. Right Response. webinar hosted by BeGreeted.Com, Junta42, and Conversion Sciences.
Nap technology.. good for the body, brain, and heart
This looks like something right out of a science fiction movie but it's real. It's a sleeping pod made by MetroNaps. It looks prettier and more ergonomic than the Nappak Sleeping Cube. But can these things really help boost worker productivity? Sleep studies say yes in addition to other health benefits.Related articles:
Effective Napping Can Boost Memory, Productivity
Nap Your Way to the Top
ABC News: Why You Need to Take a Nap at Work
CNN.com: Sleeping at work -- more of us are doing it
Sleep studies:
Study: Naps may cut heart deaths (article1, article2)
"Power Nap" Prevents Burnout; Morning Sleep Perfects a Skill
Read more from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
Eep, a tradeshow
I went to the Healthy Harvest tradeshow in Long Beach last weekend, mostly out of curiosity, but also to see what level of marketing noise retailers are exposed to when being presented with hundreds of different vitamins, supplements, and everything else under the "natural health" spectrum. I attended as someone's guest and was able to pose as a retailer for the day. One manufacturer's rep I spoke to went so far as to explain the life science mechanisms behind their products and I'll admit, it was too much information. Seriously, my eyes glazed over once he started talking about molecular protein energy cycle actions that go on inside the body, or something. Sure, I had three years of life science coursework at the undergraduate level; but none of it prepared me for the drivel I had to endure over the next several hours as I visited other exhibit booths. Though, not all of it was that bad.
If it's this hard for a retailer to understand a manufacturer's product when this group has the most amount of product data available to them, I can't imagine that this would be an easy task for a consumer seeing these products on a store shelf for the first time.
It takes something spectacular to catch the attention of a marketer at one of these shows. If you don't have a background in life sciences, medicine, or alternative health, you're about at the same body of knowledge as the average consumer who shops for these products. With that said, only the truly whacked out marketing concepts made it past my if-I-were-the-end-user filter...from both well known and obscure companies. I'll post pictures of these samples soon.
It would appear that there are booth hosts who know how to run and organize a tradeshow booth and actively engage future business partners, and there are those where you pretend to avert your eyes as you pass by their booth because you don't want to talk with someone who looks more bored than yourself. The mix of booth hosts varied from distributors, manufacturers' reps, owners of niche product lines, and marketing affiliates. I didn't have many preconceived notions about what I would expect.
I looked at this show from a marketer's perspective, taking in how detailed vendors had setup their booths, product packaging, what types of marketing collateral were being used to pitch a product, how engaging the booth's host was, and what level of knowledge these people had about product and pricing.
Overall, it was a decent experience from an industry outsider's point of view.
If it's this hard for a retailer to understand a manufacturer's product when this group has the most amount of product data available to them, I can't imagine that this would be an easy task for a consumer seeing these products on a store shelf for the first time.
It takes something spectacular to catch the attention of a marketer at one of these shows. If you don't have a background in life sciences, medicine, or alternative health, you're about at the same body of knowledge as the average consumer who shops for these products. With that said, only the truly whacked out marketing concepts made it past my if-I-were-the-end-user filter...from both well known and obscure companies. I'll post pictures of these samples soon.
It would appear that there are booth hosts who know how to run and organize a tradeshow booth and actively engage future business partners, and there are those where you pretend to avert your eyes as you pass by their booth because you don't want to talk with someone who looks more bored than yourself. The mix of booth hosts varied from distributors, manufacturers' reps, owners of niche product lines, and marketing affiliates. I didn't have many preconceived notions about what I would expect.
I looked at this show from a marketer's perspective, taking in how detailed vendors had setup their booths, product packaging, what types of marketing collateral were being used to pitch a product, how engaging the booth's host was, and what level of knowledge these people had about product and pricing.
Overall, it was a decent experience from an industry outsider's point of view.
Overview: social media metrics
All this hubbub about social media marketing has prompted me to scour the web for what organizations are doing about implementing this as part of their customer life cycle management strategy. If this scenario hasn't happened in your workplace yet, it might some day and it's best to at least have a body of knowledge when your boss or client asks for your insight about this very topic.
For a top-level overview, poplabs has put together a pretty succinct presentation about social media metrics. The premise behind the slides is: how do you measure the impact of your social media marketing campaign?
According to poplabs, social media is supported on the techdev side by entities like YouTube, Technorati, FeedBurner, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Facebook, VIRB, MySpace, twitter, Pownce, digg, del.icio.us, etc. There is a growing trend in the number of companies willing to adopt conversation marketing as a means to include customers in a product or service life cycle. Ultimately, this creates solid customer relationships because the customer believes they are not only being heard, but something is being done about it. Social media is an interrelational strategy that collaborates with and connects to web and internet marketing strategy.
Web strategy encompasses where customers get their news and information about a company's products and services. It should first be a solid, well developed website with all the necessary details a customer needs to perform a transaction, or as marketers call it, to respond to a call-to-action (e.g., customer fills out a contact form, requests more information or a demo, or purchases directly from the website).
Internet marketing strategy covers how the customers are pushed or pulled to website properties, whether it's by affiliate networks, banner ad exchanges, pay per click (PPC), search ads (SEO, SEM), or through online public relations efforts.
Social media enables customers to have an open feedback channel with a company, its core product groups, or with specific brands. It is supposed to use one-to-one relationships and personal-or-business social networks to succeed.
Influence and Engagement are two metrics that poplabs identifies as being the most important for social media. These concepts have always been around since the dawn of marketing where a person's influence traditionally drives referrals and cross-sell opportunities; and engagement is how far a referral is willing to become a lifetime customer of a particular product or service.
Tracking and measuring social media is also nothing new. This involves classic competitive intelligence where you look at key employees and CXOs, relevant industry sites, domains and urls, product/service names, product/service urls, tracking competitor activity for like products/services, insider activity, newsgroups, blog comments, etc.
For a top-level overview, poplabs has put together a pretty succinct presentation about social media metrics. The premise behind the slides is: how do you measure the impact of your social media marketing campaign?
According to poplabs, social media is supported on the techdev side by entities like YouTube, Technorati, FeedBurner, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Facebook, VIRB, MySpace, twitter, Pownce, digg, del.icio.us, etc. There is a growing trend in the number of companies willing to adopt conversation marketing as a means to include customers in a product or service life cycle. Ultimately, this creates solid customer relationships because the customer believes they are not only being heard, but something is being done about it. Social media is an interrelational strategy that collaborates with and connects to web and internet marketing strategy.
Web strategy encompasses where customers get their news and information about a company's products and services. It should first be a solid, well developed website with all the necessary details a customer needs to perform a transaction, or as marketers call it, to respond to a call-to-action (e.g., customer fills out a contact form, requests more information or a demo, or purchases directly from the website).
Internet marketing strategy covers how the customers are pushed or pulled to website properties, whether it's by affiliate networks, banner ad exchanges, pay per click (PPC), search ads (SEO, SEM), or through online public relations efforts.
Social media enables customers to have an open feedback channel with a company, its core product groups, or with specific brands. It is supposed to use one-to-one relationships and personal-or-business social networks to succeed.
Influence and Engagement are two metrics that poplabs identifies as being the most important for social media. These concepts have always been around since the dawn of marketing where a person's influence traditionally drives referrals and cross-sell opportunities; and engagement is how far a referral is willing to become a lifetime customer of a particular product or service.
Tracking and measuring social media is also nothing new. This involves classic competitive intelligence where you look at key employees and CXOs, relevant industry sites, domains and urls, product/service names, product/service urls, tracking competitor activity for like products/services, insider activity, newsgroups, blog comments, etc.
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