How to Fix Marketing in 2010: 6 Steps

An interesting piece. Some points you may agree with, other points you will not, but worthy of thought.


Now that it’s a new decade, it’s time to wean the marketing group away from their delusions of strategic grandeur. Here’s a simple, six-step program to ensure that your company’s marketing is successful and productive in 2010:

• STEP #1: Correctly define marketing. If your company’s marketers think that they’re doing something “strategic”, they’re wasting money. Marketing is a tactical function whose sole purpose is to provide qualified sales leads. In a productive marketing group, all activities serve that goal.

• STEP #2: Make marketing subservient. In most companies, there’s often a total disagreement about basic issues, like the intended market and the target customer. The only way to prevent stovepipes and infighting is to fold the marketing group into the sales group. Do it now.

Click here to read more.

The Brave New World of the Engaged Web : MarketingProfs

It goes without saying: The Web is very different from what it once was.

CNN and other "old media" stalwarts such as NBC, ABC, and the New York Times are no longer the top-ranked, most highly trafficked websites. Now, the darlings of Web 2.0 and beyond are Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter.

It's clear that Web habits are changing fast. In terms of clicks per minute, the world's attention is dominated not by traditional content-based sites but by a set of radically different, interactive, community-based tools and services. Read More.

Marketing Communications Talent Needed Now More Than Ever

I recently finished reading “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis (I really do not read ultra slowly and I did start reading this book a several weeks ago-other reading temporarily usurped this book’s place in the queue).

As I read this book. I had many “ah ha” moments. I do not believe Mr. Jarvis’ book contains all of the answers—it is a book designed to stimulate thought, not a Ouija board.

The seeds were planted for the changes we are now experiencing 15 years or so ago, but it has really been the last handful of years that the world of media has been turned on its head. Every type of media from television, newspapers, magazines, books, movies, music….the list goes on and on, has been forever changed.

B2B media has been far from immune. And an improving/recovered economy will not bring new life and prosperity to a forever changed and constantly changing landscape. Those merely waiting for the economy to recover so that we can return to “the way things were,” will be sorely disappointed.

However, in a media landscape that has radically changed, I find comfort in the reminder that as long as there is more than one supplier for a given product or service (in other words, as long as there is competition), marketing, marketing communications and advertising will exist. As long as competition or choice exists, product, service and solution providers will work to establish themselves as the products/solutions of choice.

In other words, as long as choice exists, marketers will strive to change the behavior of non-customers. And, changing behavior of non-customers or motivating continuation of desired behavior amongst existing customers has been the core goal of marketing and advertising for decades. If we are Coke, we want to change the behavior of Pepsi drinkers. If we are Thermo Scientific, we probably want to change, at least to a degree, the behavior of Bruker customers. If we are Emerson Process Management, we certainly want to change some of the behaviors of Rockwell customers.

So as marketing, marketing communications and advertising professionals, we can rest assured that there is an ongoing need for our craft. However, the question is, are we going to update our thinking, strategies and tactics to take advantage of and to survive in the new marketing and media landscape? This is the magic question in my mind.

My Experiment with Google AdSense

I am fascinated by all things Google. Google has reinvented the world as we know it in many ways and has made some extraordinarily smart moves. I am particularly fascinated by Google’s efforts to get to know us as individuals, to predict our needs and to predict what might interest us. Given that the majority of their revenues (just under $22 billion in 2008) are achieved by Google AdWords pay-per-click sales, their entire business model is based on predicting as accurately as possible which ads, which vendors and which information might interest us. Google continues to get smarter…to know us better while staying within the bounds of acceptable privacy practices.

I write three blogs—this blog as well as two blogs in which I address interests, opinions and thoughts outside the context of my professional life. I am now permitting Google ads to be served on all three blogs.

No, I do not envision getting rich via blogging. And no, I have no plans to quit my day job. Rather, I am interested in following the types of ads that are served. As traffic continues to grow on my blogs, I am interested to observe to what extent Google gets to know my audience. Quite possibly, Google will get to know my audiences more quickly than I do.

It will be a fun experiment and maybe within twelve months or so a check large enough to take my husband out to dinner might roll in from Mountain View, California.


This Wikipedia article offers a very good overview of how the Google AdSense program works.

Marketing Profs: The Three Most Popular Social Networks for Business (and Why You Should Use Them)

This article offers a very good basic overview of the three largest business social networks: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

I am active on all three networks; however, at this point I use Facebook for personal connections and my Twitter activity is far from regular. LinkedIn I find extroidinarily useful for a wide variety of professional networking, sourcing, idea and information sharing. I will be interested in hearing your thoughts on your use of the three networks.

MarketingProfs
The Three Most Popular Social Networks for Business (and Why You Should Use Them)

Thoughts on News Ways to Create Value

This is quite interesting and pretty funny in places.

Learning to Let Go—Examining True Value

For most of my adult life I have considered myself to be receptive to change, mentally agile, not rigid and a lover of learning.

The reality is, I want to possess these characteristics and comparatively speaking I do in a lot of ways. But, at times (more and more frequently as of late) I catch myself and realize that I am far from immune to resistance to change.

Recently, my husband and I stumbled into a conversation about the movie theatre industry. A variety of internet distribution channels are revolutionizing the movie, television and cable industries. Movie rental stores are closing at a rapid pace across the country and I cannot imagine that closure of the big multi-screen movie theaters will be far behind. As my husband and I progressed in our conversation, I started becoming sentimental.

Over the years I have watched so many great movies (and plenty of bad ones too) sitting beside friends, family members, boyfriends, my husband and my stepson. I experienced new freedom as an early teen during Friday night movie outings with friends. I experienced first kisses at the movies. My experiences are far from unique.

Just as I started to convince myself, with a sigh of relief, that as a society we would never give up on the collective experience of going to the movies, my husband asked the following. “Are all of these great memories really worth spending $50 (by the time you buy popcorn and sodas), sitting in a big room with strangers (some of which are always talking insistently right in front of you) and prying your feet off of the sticky floor when you go to leave?” He continued, “Even though we watch a lot of movies, we rarely go to the movie theater anymore.”

Deflated, I conceded that he was right. Sooner rather than later, going to the movies as we know the experience, will take its place along side the memory of drive-in movies. Going to the movies, as we have as a culture for 80+ years, will soon enter our collective memory banks and fond memories will be shared with our children, grandchildren and/or great grandchildren.

Many other media experiences (both informational and entertainment) are being assessed as well. Media and entertainment companies (and individual people) trying to hang on to the old hear the death rattle in the approaching distance.

This is NOT to say that traditional media will die. It just means that value is constantly being re-evaluated. If the “old” provides value in the “new” and changing world, it will continue. If the old does not provide value or enough value—for instance, what value is there really in today’s movie theatre experience—it will either change or die.

Given human and organizational resistance to change, I believe that there will be a lot of bodies in the wake. Personally, I just hope not to be one of the bodies.