Direct Marketing Observations

FEBRUARY 17, 2012

An empowered customer who wants to buy from a business that doesn’t get “it” means nothing to that business-it’s just a lost opportunity to that business. Today’s empowered consumer has too many tools at their disposal to make an informed and educated buying decision. No one wins.

Buy 143

Buy Education Activities Groups 143

Direct Marketing Observations

FEBRUARY 18, 2011

Can they produce a compelling action on someone to buy product? Can they influence people to buy stuff? We have Justin Bieber , Lady Gaga , Britney Spears , Kim Kardashian, Ashton Kutcher , Ellen, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Oprah, 50Cent, Ashley Tisdale and Selena Gomez. 12 Celebrities from the world of entertainment. Immensely popular.

Social Media 168

Social Media Influencer Sports Buy 168

Direct Marketing Observations

JUNE 14, 2011

THAT is much different than buying followers on Twitter. In the world of digital, there exists the potential to aggregate your activities and consolidate your digital streams so as not to duplicate work. That’s not really a short cut.

Aggregator 143

Aggregator Comparison Discount Curation 143

Direct Marketing Observations

MAY 20, 2011

It’s community based and people based and not sales based.

Social Media 176

Social Media Social Networking Buy Sites 176

Direct Marketing Observations

JANUARY 30, 2012

According to a study from Accenture , comScore , and dunnhumbyUSA aimed at helping consumer packaged goods (CPG) marketers, visitors to CPG brand websites buy 37% more in retail stores than non-visitors to the brand site. The static website is dead long live the static website.

Retail 152

Retail comScore Loyalty Study 152

Direct Marketing Observations

JANUARY 12, 2011

Sometimes I forget that buying power is shifting to us. Are you down with personalization? permission based marketing? Disruptive technologies? How do you want your content delivered to you? Flip the situation. The v oice of the customer is the new black.

Buy 138

Buy Brands Marketing Content 138

Direct Marketing Observations

MARCH 30, 2012

.” (Full disclosure-Accenture is a client of mine) Though Accenture Interactive is talking about relevance of scale for the enterprise the underlying theme remains unchanged-when you or I are marketing, conversing, buying, shopping, or selling-relevance is the tipping point in the transaction or transformation.

Conversation 162

Conversation Buy Social Media Tips 162

Direct Marketing Observations

JANUARY 8, 2010

Couple that with Google buying AdMob for $750 million and you can easily see where this is all heading. In fact, if you look at what’s happening in Japan it would boggle your mind. Three-quarters of Japanese social network users access the sites only from their mobile phones.

Mobile 162

Mobile SEO Social Networking Buy 162

Direct Marketing Observations

FEBRUARY 24, 2012

Will you buy from my site? Every link that you will find will ultimately take you to my western hat pages. I may or may not have much on saddles, but the bottm line is that I sell hats not saddles.

SEO 182

SEO Hashtag Sites Social Networking 182

Direct Marketing Observations

AUGUST 5, 2011

Lack of belief or Buy in from Leadership. But the real reason a lot of digital strategies fail isn’t because of a dearth of good ideas or talent, it’s because of 5 things inherent in a lot of organizations. They are in descending order of importance. Turnover coupled with leadership vacuum. Red Tape/Politics/Hidden agendas.

Strategy 162

Strategy Analytics Organization Buy 162

Direct Marketing Observations

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

Tom: “Maybe I should buy Famous shoe brand x shoes and walk to work, it would be quicker!” What does a consumer want? Do they want content? Do they want to share what the brand says? Do they want something? Do consumers really want the following conversations? What’s new?”

Conversation 187

Conversation Brands Banking Compete 187

Direct Marketing Observations

OCTOBER 13, 2011

You can buy traffic, but short of spending in the 6 figures to create artificial traffic, the only real way you’re going to get organic visits to your sites is to write content and share content that has all of the “right” SEO properties so as to come up high in search. Organic search in a nutshell.

Content 220

Content Smart Phone SEO Yahoo 220

Direct Marketing Observations

JUNE 2, 2011

What happens when you have so many options to do something or buy something or say something or share something in social? I was reading an article on MSNBC recently about Groupon and the tag line to the piece was the following: “When everything’s social, nothing is.&#. Which gave me pause to think. I actually think so.

Social Media 244

Social Media MySpace Social Networking Mobile 244

Direct Marketing Observations

OCTOBER 3, 2011

Be it a utility like email, a social network like Facebook, or a site where we buy stuff like Amazon or sell stuff like Ebay, people who want to, neigh need to use that site, will figure out how to use that site, no matter how difficult is it. What does this mean?

Applications 148

Applications Social Networking Sites Buy 148

Direct Marketing Observations

JUNE 10, 2011

Again though, what do I get out of that besides the product that I may buy. At the least they, the brands, should be mining all of my demographic, social and personal data so that they can target market to me out the wahzoo. I have a modus operandi. I have to.

Brands 166

Brands Buy Engagement Data 166

Direct Marketing Observations

APRIL 19, 2011

To me, variety means keeping things fresh, not only from a marketing standpoint but also from the standpoint of giving you and your employees and your customers, a reason to come to work, do the work and buy the work. Variety is a two way street. Lastly we have one of the four pillars of life in my opinion. Consistency. Do you want to win?

Sports 159

Sports Buy Social Media Conversation 159

Direct Marketing Observations

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Combine the “high tech” with a bit of “high touch” and remember that people buy from people. My simple suggestion would be to consider what I was taught back in the dark ages of that lost art of face-to-face sales calls.

Content 184

Content Banking Skills Software 184

Direct Marketing Observations

FEBRUARY 8, 2011

I found this odd and yet this one thought was not lost on me even at that young age-I thought that my dad was trying to buy my affection. Some of which I was not even interested in nor had I asked for. I remember thinking that why couldn’t he just spend more time with me? Why couldn’t he have just hung out with me and talked with me?

Brands 162

Brands Loyalty Buy Conversation 162

Direct Marketing Observations

MAY 6, 2011

You could spend the majority of your time within your company trying to get buy in and roll out a social media initiative and get nowhere because of “the silos&#. And they’re still being used in some cases. They’re built to last and withstand the elements. How do you break down silos ?

Organization 164

Organization Buy Social Media Company 164

Direct Marketing Observations

JULY 28, 2011

So let’s think through that quickly about the multiple platforms that you, me, and your organization can now use to convey your key message themes: Blogs, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Forums, Websites, QR Codes, Group Buying sites, and LBS( location based sites)-to name but a few.

Platform 190

Platform Social Media Drupal Open Source 190

Direct Marketing Observations

APRIL 26, 2011

Users can buy the deal with a credit card, or share it or like it. The latest case in point: Facebook Deals Facebook Deals has been designed to let the site’s 600 million plus users easily share their shopping experiences with one another. The deals may show up on a users’ news feed, or in ads on the dashboard on the left.

Twitter 183

Twitter Facebook API Foursquare 183

Direct Marketing Observations

JUNE 23, 2011

Some of the likely examples that you may be aware of, are of course Zappos, Cisco, Dells, Best Buy, Home Depot, P&G, for example. All great poster children for corporate social success and the list continues to expand.

Social Media 200

Social Media Posterous Collaboration Course 200

Direct Marketing Observations

MARCH 8, 2012

I may have to sift through a search result that incorporate’s my Circle’s random observations, musings, photos and videos of violins, when what I was looking for was where I could buy one in my city that was inexpensive and durable.

Organization 156

Organization Policies Privacy Google 156

Direct Marketing Observations

MAY 2, 2012

You want to buy a product online so you do a search and you click on the first result and it doesn’t load quick enough, so you go to the second result. Forever being about 3-4 minutes. Why are we so impatient? Maybe these examples will help. You’re surfing the web and a page doesn’t load quick enough so you try another website.

Mobile 156

Mobile Buy Examples Products 156

Direct Marketing Observations

MARCH 19, 2012

Twitter didn’t buy Posterous just to spend money and collect a toy. Twitter ain’t going anywhere -From cars that tweet , to marketers figuring out newfound ways to leverage the power of microblogging and actually driving awareness and making money-Twitter is hitting some good times. need more proof? They have plans.

comScore 166

comScore Microblogging Posterous Marketing 166

Direct Marketing Observations

SEPTEMBER 30, 2014

Did you buy it? Maybe not so much in an analytical way but we do measure our daily outcomes. Was it fun? Did we lose? Was it worth it? Did you have a bad experience? Did they like you? Was it your fault? Did you win? Did you get the promotion? Lose your job? Did you diet? How was your workout? Are these successes? Sure they are!

Sentiment 196

Sentiment ROI Company Strategy 196

Direct Marketing Observations

OCTOBER 25, 2011

’s struggle because the advocates of social find that swimming with the current is much easier than trying to get internal buy-in, getting someone to change course, change direction, and think differently and do it differently just based on a notion or based on the mere fact that everyone may be doing it.

Travel 164

Travel Reputation Organization Buy 164

Direct Marketing Observations

NOVEMBER 2, 2012

Another prevalent business model in the online world is to build a product or service, give it away for free while trying to make money on people buying “other” things while in your store. One of the most prevalent business models in the online world is to build a product or service and then give it away for free.

Posterous 162

Posterous Tumblr Flickr WordPress 162

Direct Marketing Observations

JANUARY 3, 2011

Google buying YouTube awhile back might have seemed curious to some but now it looks like a brilliant move. I don’t think anyone anticipated YouTube being known primarily as a search engine, let alone the #2 search engine behind Google, but clearly the masses have spoken. At thend of the day we still do ALOT of searches on everything.

Trends 221

Trends YouTube Engineering Video 221

Direct Marketing Observations

APRIL 11, 2011

Does it buy you time compared to your comptetitors? Ironically they then claim that they are social, or that they’re doing nothing, because they’re waiting for things to sort themselves out. Does either strategy ( I use the term lightly) work? Not really.

Company 178

Company Social Media Compete Sports 178

Direct Marketing Observations

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

Interestingly enough though, the buying cycle is getting longer, not shorter. Forget writing letters to your friends to warn them that the “new & improved” product really wasn’t. Fast forward to today. Customers are more equipped through technology and network science to make purchase decisions than every before.

B2B 199

B2B Patterns Comparison Compete 199

Direct Marketing Observations

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

If you want to me to use, test-drive or buy your social media solution regardless of what it is-I want to see that you are actively playing in the social media space. Especially in the social media space. Not only that, you, the sales person, can’t be just talking it. You better be walking it as well.

Social Networking 138

Social Networking SEO Social Media Organization 138

Direct Marketing Observations

NOVEMBER 23, 2010

SMS drives conversation and just as search has become somewhat of a utility for the desktop, the smartphone is now the defacto device for driving purchases, for buying tickets, for research, for email, for being social and oh by the way…making phone calls. Search and social have migrated to the mobile device. So what does this all mean?

Mobile 177

Mobile MySpace SMS Yahoo 177

Direct Marketing Observations

APRIL 7, 2011

But I do want to possibly buy your product. If you’re a commerce site, or you sell product online, then why complicate the landing page with a corporate look and feel and experience? I don’t care about who your board of directors are! Make it simple. Want to get ahead of the curve?

Brands 166

Brands Retail Mobile Sites 166

Direct Marketing Observations

JANUARY 19, 2010

this gets broader input and incorporates all departments from the start which will make ultimate buy-in that much easier. Two key things here: 1) pull together a cross-functional team to develop criteria. 2) evaluate your needs and develop criteria that would best meet those needs.

RFP 159

RFP RFI Social Media Proposal 159

Direct Marketing Observations

OCTOBER 27, 2011

Does giving stuff away for free make you eventually buy stuff? Every day we’re faced with free and I hate it… Marketers throw free around like it’s confetti. Consumers snap up free stuff because it’s free. But does free work ? No, generally not.

Compete 162

Compete Case Study Social Networking Small Business 162

Direct Marketing Observations

MARCH 21, 2016

The entertainment industry is now built upon “Jenga” blocks of streaming services, subscription services, platforms for buying, sharing and saving music. in a nutshell. What’s changed since then? All are on tenuous ground except for social media. Entertainment and social media are made for each other.

Social Media 100

Social Media Fashion Eventful Industry 100