Professional Services Marketing

Social Media Syndication Contracting

Eric Webb — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 12:18:24 +0000

I tested the idea of outsourcing social media syndication to a firm in India and it’s paid off. In order to get content being created noticed and to drive links back from other relevant discussions, these contractors scour the internet for relevant conversations that align with some thought leadership that’s been created.

Preliminary results suggest 10x increase in visitors downloading the content. The contractors don’t provide answers, just direction to the content.

Will keep you posted.

Filed under: Strategy Tagged: content, syndication

New technologies creating lazy marketers

Eric Webb — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 12:09:17 +0000

Whenever I go online I see constant chatter about Twitter, and email blasts, or syndication tools that allow us marketers to post one comment across different media channels.

It all seems lazy to me. In typical marketing fashion we take new tools and concentrate on the efficiency of the tool rather than being more effective. Really, using a tool such as a hootsuite, while convenient, is not very relevant to all channels. Your comment or post can’t be. Is the audience in FaceBook just like that of LinkedIn or YouTube? Clearly, there is overlap but the contextual relevance of any post in either media needs to be different.

It appears to me that while we continue to talk about engagement and having the ability to provide 1 to 1 discussions, all we’re doing is blasting content into the ether.

Time to stop focusing on efficiency soley and work on effectiveness.

Filed under: email marketing, Strategy Tagged: marketing automation, Twitter

Market Automation can make you a Spammer

Eric Webb — Sun, 01 May 2011 17:58:59 +0000

It’s interesting to see companies try to implement marketing automation. Most can leverage the email engine built into most automation systems, and a few get to the level of segmenting their audience on various characteristics, but many can’t move beyond that.

Senior leaders that don’t accept the premise of relevancy and timeliness based on behavioral activity, end up forcing marketers to stay at the level of basic demographic segmentation. Worse still, the lack of belief by senior management will inevitably lead to the mandate that marketing continue to email everyone in the marketing database despite their lack of interest or behavioral response.

Make sure that senior management isn’t just buying into the efficiency of marketing automation, but its effectiveness of it by leveraging the behavioral aspects. Without proper usage of marketing automation you become a good spammer.

Filed under: Database, Direct Marketing, email marketing Tagged: accounting marketing, marketing

2% of Your Data Base Becomes Outdated Per Month – What to Do?

Eric Webb — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 14:59:28 +0000

The foundational elements of your data base erode slowly but surely without proper maintenance, and it’s costing you dearly. Sirius Decisions research points to the cost points of keeping your data clean. It costs $1 per contact upon entry to verify the data, $10 to clean it and verify it later and $100 per contact if left as is. This points to an ongoing need to make sure you data is maintained through deliberate and actionable effort.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t take the time to maintain it or don’t have the resources. Get the help by understanding what bad data is costing your firm.

Filed under: Database, Direct Marketing

Being an “idea person”

Eric Webb — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 19:37:14 +0000

I hear the term all the time. “They’re a great idea person. They will give you dozens of ideas in no time.” What most neglect to tell you is that 99% of the ideas are useless and don’t help solve the problem in front of you.

Filed under: Strategy Tagged: creative, ideas

How you educate yourself says alot about your future

Eric Webb — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:42:09 +0000

Whenever I interview someone for a marketing position, I ask them how they educate themselves in the latest trends and happenings in marketing; not just the news, but tools and tactics that they try to implement. I find those that limit their learning short on skill and limited on growth.

The world of marketing changes so quickly, that you can only move forward if you constantly stretch your own learning. Reading one or two publications is fine, but making time to execute ideas and attend seminars or webinars is very important. Getting your certification shows you continue to learn and want to become expert in areas even if your current role doesn’t quite need that skill yet.

You’ve got to look outside your industry, your day to day and scour the knowledge base for new ideas – that is how you will stand out and move ahead.

Filed under: Strategy

Really Earn Your Degree in the School of Hard Knocks

Eric Webb — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 00:36:53 +0000

Most people rely on formal educational programs to gain an upper-hand in the market, their career and personally. Whether it’s a university, an association, an online group such as marketing Sherpa or internal CPE, they all can supply you with great ideas and ways to learn. What most of us miss is really learning from the school of hard knocks. You are tested every time you perform a marketing activity and with access to the many platforms and expert resources we have in the marketing organization, a little before-school-chatter can propel you farther than months in a classroom. As an organization we’re running hundreds of programs every month. Taking the time to learn from all of these real world effort and optimizing what you do is a great way to move to the head of the class.

If you’re not regularly reviewing the results of the programs you run to optimize results next time, then you’re really missing the best education you can get. if you want to get to a point where you’re valued as a true advisor to the firm, you need that education and the experience in order to be believable. But you truly have to understand the results. Pull in people you know understand a particular space and ask for their review and recommendations, and collaborate more.

You have the opportunity, wherever you are, to get a great education; we have some of the most sophisticated platforms for marketing. If you pay attention to results, direct, hard-line results your education will be propelled faster. If you decide to just handle the work and not pay attention to the results or live with “soft” results to just get the job done; you can succeed, but you won’t really grow.

Filed under: Strategy Tagged: accounting marketing, education, leadership

Bad Revenue?

Eric Webb — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 01:49:19 +0000

I’ve been reading a book and it brings up the idea of “good” and “bad” revenue. Bad revenue being those ways of increaising profits that actually make your customers angry. Think about the cable company which continues to increase rates but never improves value, or all the extra bank fees that pop-up even though you’ve been a solid customer for decades; these are examples of bad revenue and based on what I see in the business world more and more are companies making short term profits based on bad revenue. Good revenue is derived when your best customers sing your praises and your company gains market share. You use profits to create more value for your best customer, who continue to sing your praises.

Good revenue, bad revenue, not all revenue is the same.

Filed under: Sales, Strategy

The most effective hedge against job loss and career stagnation

Eric Webb — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 13:26:12 +0000

Job search via the Internet is a lazy effort at best, compared to face to face networking. This is why taking the time to search groups and organizations that can help your career is so important to find a job when you really need one.

My last three positions came about because of people I know. And my friend’s recent job loss in August was scary to her. Older, and in a city not known for professional services marketing, she did what all of us should do even when we have a job – network. She went to all relevant networking events that made sense for her, connecting with new people and reconnecting with people she hadn’t seen in quite some time.

That effort resulted in a job offer in late October. She was out of work for less than 2 months and after receiving the job offer, took a month off and cleared her mind of the full time job search. This is just one example of how networking is a good hedge against job loss or career stagnation.

You just have to network on an ongoing basis. Don’t wait for when the job you have is no longer yours.

Filed under: Strategy Tagged: education, marketing

Direct Marketing Knowledge Paramount to Internet Marketing

Eric Webb — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 22:14:01 +0000

There is no magic to Internet marketing, other than the technical capabilities of different tools such as Social Media, Marketing Automation, Search Engine Optimizatino and Web Usability. What’s common among all these Web 2.0 tools is measurement; something direct marketers have understood for decades. Understand the metrics and you understand how best to deploy it.

It behooves anyone interested in Web2.0 marketing to also read some of the all time greats in direct marketing. To this list I would add “Direct” by Bob Stone, “Being Direct” by Lundstrum and some of the better copy writers out there including David Olgilvy.

Filed under: Advertising, Direct Marketing