Before women could vote in national elections they got a shoe specifically designed for them: Keds. It’s a classic example of marketing: identify a market segment (middle class women) with a need (a more comfortable shoe), and create a product specifically to meet that need. Keds didn’t try to be everything to everyone, and that was central to its success.
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Many of blog posts have been about particular, discreet tactics: how to use Facebook and emails, host events, improve conversion rates, etc. The real opportunity is when you start to use all of these together strategically with a program of integrated, cross-channel marketing. Continue reading
Many companies have created the position of a chief marketing technologist (it may go by different names in different companies).
A chief martech is a person who is equally comfortable and knowledgeable about both marketing and technology. They can act as a link between marketing and IT, explaining the needs of marketing to IT, and the requirements of IT to marketing. Continue reading
A few years ago I heard the CMO of Vistaprint give a talk and he mentioned that they email customers every day. “I know we’re not supposed to,” he said, “but we’ve found that daily works best for us.”
They’re not alone. HubSpot, which sends out millions of emails for its customers, put out a report saying that companies that email 16-30 times a month have the highest open rates. I receive daily emails from organizations ranging from 1-800-flowers to WGBH. Continue reading
Unlike these informational emails that I’m sending you, most business emails will have a call to action that they want the recipient to do such as take advantage of a limited time offer, return to complete an abandoned shopping cart, sign up for a webinar, attend a summer networking event – whatever. Continue reading
Influencer marketing involves getting key industry influencers to promote your products. Every industry has influencers. They can include reporters, analysts, VCs, etc. In this tip I’m talking about social media influencers.
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A couple weeks ago Facebook made an announcement that they are changing their news feed algorithm to emphasize posts from friends and family over those from brands and publishers because that’s what people prefer to see.
It’s not uncommon for people to Like over 100 brand and interest pages, and the median number of friends is 200. If even a few of those friends are active in posting it’s impossible for a person to see everything. So Facebook needs to prioritize and personalize what you see. Continue reading
This is the final chapter of Louis Gudema’s Bullseye Marketing book, which can be bought on Amazon.
It’s one thing to create a marketing strategy based on an understanding of your customer personas and touchpoints, an informed media mix, and constant optimization based on feedback and data. It’s another thing entirely to execute on that.
Many marketing teams start off with the best of intentions but get distracted along the way by shiny objects, competitor efforts — or simply a lack of discipline.
This is from chapter 26 of Louis Gudema’s Bullseye Marketing book, which is available on Amazon.
“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” – Thomas Edison
It’s one thing to create a marketing strategy based on an understanding of your customer personas and touchpoints, an informed media mix, and constant optimization based on feedback and data. It’s another thing entirely to execute on that.
Many marketing teams start off with the best of intentions but get distracted along the way by shiny objects, competitor efforts — or a simple lack of discipline.
It’s easy to be creative and have new ideas, especially when we see so much inspiring creative around us every day. It’s much harder to do the day-in-day-out work to stay focused and make a marketing program successful.
When marketing programs fail, most often it is due to a lack of consistent, day-to-day execution.
So do your homework, plan, be creative, and then stick to it.
Execute.
It’s often said that acquiring new customers is something like five times as expensive as retaining existing ones. As a result customer retention programs tend to be much more profitable than customer acquisition programs. A study by Bain and the Harvard Business School said that increasing customer retention by 5% increased profits by 25-95%. Continue reading
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