How well is your digital strategy working? Are all your digital channels – including your Web site, email, and social networks – integrated and optimized to provide the most value to your organization most efficiently in these lean times?

Here’s a step-by-step outline for a full Digital Audit of a brand’s marketing efforts in the digital space. Answering these questions will help identify doable actions to focus resources on areas that are working best, extend the life of your current Web site, and provide greater value from digital media channels. Read more…

There is no question that social media communications exert a strong influence on customer loyalty.  People trust the opinions of other people far more than they trust companies.  Recommendations from absolute strangers online carry more weight than advertising in swaying consumer purchase decisions.  And the voice of the online consumer commentator grows louder every day as the number of social media participants steadily increase.

Today, all marketers need to understand social media and how to engage with customers through social channels to build and enhance loyalty.  Understandably, many marketers have plunged into the social media waters just to test the currents.  But is there a better way than just diving in?  Can social media activities be used tactically to move customers up the ladder of loyalty? Read more…

In case you aren’t aware, there is an unprecedented five generations alive today that we must take into consideration as we plan our marketing and advertising efforts. And, as you can imagine, each generation has very different needs and desires in terms of how they want to be marketed to and communicated with.

Somewhere between the Dot Bomb and the Great Recession, the most sought after market in America became passé. The fortysomething-to-sixtysomething crowd has not been attracting its fair share of commercial attention. Read more…

Successful digital marketing entails more than just using digital media channels to communicate with your audience.  It involves connecting with prospects and customers and analyzing the “who, what, when, where, and how” of engagement as it relates to the bottom line. Read more…

A Checklist of Digital Marketing’s Deadliest Sins

Digital marketing can be challenging. But your chances for success are much greater when you can avoid the (sometimes) simple pitfalls that sabotage response. So we have decided to start a checklist of “response killers”– things that can ruin your chances for productive digital marketing results.

This list is intended as a reference to help assure better performance from your Web, email, mobile, and social media efforts. We’re leading off with 25 deadly sins, in no specific order, and we’re looking for the input of our blog readers to add to the list. So read on…and contribute your own ideas for things to avoid if you want to achieve “killer response”. Read more…

Think about this when developing your marketing campaigns.

Who would you respond to? Someone who tracks you down, cajoles you, and relentlessly lurks in the shadows, or someone who makes you feel special in their presence?

For years, most marketers have been stalkers. We define and segment our target consumers, follow their every move so our marketing messages can reach them through whatever media they use, and hit them repeatedly with “act now” messages. As a result, our stalked audiences turn to media where they think they can escape marketing messages, like digital social networks and mobile channels. Of course, they can’t escape for long, because advertisers are always trying to get their messages wherever consumers’ eyeballs are. (And the media owners are usually all too happy to cooperate for the advertising revenue.) Read more…

In my previous post on this subject, I stressed the importance of making it easy for consumers to take action by clearly indicating in your advertising what it is you want them to do.  You need to lead consumers with verbal and visual cues to generate a desired response.

Experienced direct response copywriters know that a call to action is strongest when repeated.  Some espouse to a “tell ‘em what you want ‘em to do, tell ‘em to do it, and tell ‘em again” philosophy.  Experienced direct response art directors like to employ techniques like “handwritten” margin notes, highlighted copy blocks, and graphic design elements that grab attention and move the consumer’s eye towards a call to action. Read more…

Did you see the latest proposed changes to the Facebook? They have a new feature called “Instant Personalization” that shares data with non-Facebook websites. My issue is that it is automatically set to “Allow.”

Or in other words, to protect my privacy and not have my content automatically shared with someone outside, I need to do something, I need to opt out. Not opt in to allow it. Read more…

Facebook is all the rage; we can share our personal content with all our friends, now that they are all there. We might feel protected because we made a conscious decision of who to “friend” and where we’d join. Facebook says our content is private and they do provide warnings when you post.

But, have you accepted an application lately? Did you notice what permissions you were giving to get the benefit of the application? After digging under the covers a little, I am thinking that Facebook looks like the largest data mining, contextual advertising platform in history.

And I wonder if it’s a tinder box about to go off. Maybe we should all be very careful… Read more…

George Lois was perhaps the greatest print art director of the 20th Century. This image is from an impressive 2008 MOMA exhibit of his electrifying work at Esquire magazine. If he were alive today, George would also be a provocateur on the web.

…just like the Michael McDonald, James Ingram song.

When print comes back, it won’t be “like it never left”. There will be far fewer printers, budgets will be even tighter and volume will be smaller. Many printers will not have survived the recession and the sobering declaration of 2008, “Print is Dead”.

Mass mailings, elaborate annual reports, and newspaper ads… OK, those ARE disappearing. But, targeted, personalized direct mail and print advertising…
Not going away. Not ever. I talked to a printer last week and he framed the situation by pointing out the shift from ink to toner. That’s an enormous change, (and it’s certainly not for everyone,) but I find it encouraging because it means that personalization is very much alive in the printing world.

And when print comes back, I’m going to be there with a grin on my face, complete with my Pantone books, paper samples, metal rulers, #2 pencils with erasers, graph paper thumbnails, circle templates, folding dummies and business reply envelopes. Believe it! Read more…