What’s Working in Marketing

I was talking with a friend the other day on the phone when he received an email message from a vendor he works with and he immediately reacted with “Yea right, that’s NOT what I need right now.”  It got me thinking about the messages we are sending to our customers and subscriber lists and [...]

I was frolicking around Twitter, following the #marketing chat, and was reminded of the old McGraw-Hill advertising guy. Anyone remember him? For those of you who are too young, he’s got an important message for all B2B marketers:
“I don’t know who you are.
I don’t know your company.
I don’t know your company’s product.
I don’t know what [...]

Marketing professionals across the globe are facing budget challenges, with the added pressure to grow business in this tough economic climate.  You can bet there is buzz going around, because new technologies are throwing curve balls to the best laid plans.  Last budget planning period, typically August – October looks dramatically different from today in [...]

We’ve been doing a lot more work in the Web 2.0 space recently. Not surprisingly, we see a lot of skepticism from vendors. I’m sure it’s because these marketers aren’t really familiar with the Web 2.0 world. If they were, they would know that their customers are really using social networks and blogs and microblogs.
Take [...]

Despite Google’s customer service blackholes discussed by Shari last post, it doesn’t seem to matter much on the search side.  In a new study that I read on BtoB Online, Google owns 72% of searches in the US, an 8% increase in February 09.  It’s sad how far behind all the other search engines are:
Yahoo [...]

Have companies pushed automation too far, to the point where customer service (if there is such a department) can take no responsibility? I’m sure we’ve all had experience with a voice mail system that never lets you get to a real person. Recently, Juliann talked about her run-in with Facebook and their less than stellar [...]

We are always looking for interesting B2B examples in marketing, and I have come across a couple of things I thought was worth sharing.
First up, for a good laugh too, is IBM’s social media effort that I read about in a recent Brand Week article. Meet Mr. Fong, Mr. Wong, Ms. Song, and Mr. Zong.  [...]

One of the things we talk about frequently to our clients is managing the overall “touch” plan for your outbound campaigns.  We find that many companies do not keep track of how many times they are touching a customer at any given point in time. In smaller companies it’s not such a huge problem, but [...]