Making offers. Those finnicky little things marketers do in order to generate an order. Free this, bogo that, buy now and we will back up a semi-truck with all kind of freemiums to your home or office. All kidding aside, the offer you make is designed for one purpose: to reduce the friction between “should I…
Jim Gilbert
What is the greatest coffee secret at Starbucks you never knew? Simple answer: a cup of coffee from its Clover machine. I will get to the sales and marketing point of this blog post in a moment. But first let’s talk about a subject most of us love: coffee! If you've never had a "Clover," you're…
I live in Florida. We left for Boston three days before Hurricane Irma was supposed to make landfall there. As I write this article (the first in a long time, sorry fans — been really busy), Irma has not hit yet. The situation in Florida? People as you know are scared (to say the least).…
Don’t you just love it when Apple releases a new product. It brings out the haters. The iPhone 7 release last week was no exception.
To many who “grew up” in digital marketing, I look old. (Even to me, I look old these days.) For the record, I'm a marketer who is in my 50s. However, despite that, I'm NOT a marketing dinosaur. All you young guns in digital, don't count us old-school marketers out. It was our generation that…
Recently while I was in the mall, I saw the sign below in a storefront window. Marketers can drive revenue by making strong offers, either online or in this case at retail. I wouldn't consider this example to be a strong offer. Take a look. Can you tell me why? While the offer, “30% Off…
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While Facebook's users are getting their first taste of the new "Reactions" emojis that recently rolled out, marketers are already working to better understand the impact they will have on their social media efforts. Facebook Reactions, in case you missed it, are a collection of six emoji that can be clicked on all posts and…
When I post an article anywhere as part of my content marketing strategy, I need to know how it's performing so I can improve my writing and, hopefully, improve lead generation for my marketing consulting practice. So I was pleasantly surprised yesterday morning when I found a new button on each of my LinkedIn Pulse posts allowing me to track my results!
A few weeks ago, Twitter made a major change to its user interface allowing marketers to break the barrier of the 140-character limit. To those of us who found the 140-character limit challenging, this is excellent news. To others just wanting to "say more," you're going to love this new feature.
Video has become such a powerful tool in the marketer's toolkit that the future looks bright enough that digital recruiting guru Jerry Bernhart sees the position of director of video strategy becoming a key player on the marketing department org chart. Consider the following tips as you begin to incorporate video into your marketing efforts:
I've been using video for my clients since 2009. Some of my best examples came from a diet company that was a client a few years ago. I've replicated this success over and over, so I wanted to share this short case study (and a few tips from other clients) with you.
As Facebook becomes more pay for play, I've really stepped up my game on Twitter. Previously, Twitter was the least important part of my social strategy. Turns out I was missing an opportunity. Not only is Twitter perfect for getting my articles out there and shared, but it's also a great "REALationship" building tool. I've been actively engaged on Twitter for the last six months, and I've gained nearly 1,700 followers. This is pretty much a step-by-step guide to how I did it:
Call me a heretic, but a lot of the "gospel of modern digital marketing" seems a bit too familiar to me. Digital marketers have done a great job of discrediting "traditional" direct marketing in an effort to make what they're selling (pure digital) more palatable. I get it. They need an edge, and bashing channels like DRTV and direct mail, while building up search engine optimization, inbound and social makes sense for them. But lets get real for a minute, shall we? Many digital marketers "coming up" don't even know where the rules they practice daily come from. Yet they still say traditional direct marketing is dead. Makes no sense, right?
When I first wrote "The 9 Immutable Laws of Social Media Marketing" for Retail Online Integration as a blog post back in 2009, I never realized the stir it would cause in the social media marketing world. I've been told over the years that the laws provided a great context for how to create loyal followers and build social engagement. Since 2009, I've presented the nine immutable laws to thousands of marketers live, and the online version of the presentation has been viewed nearly 50,000 times on SlideShare. And yet, I've always felt that there was something missing.
As a marketer, I've put my best efforts into building not just likes, but deeply engaged communities on Facebook. And when you changed Facebook to a "pay for play" business, I had to pay to build my fan base, and then pay again to get my posts out (i.e., boosted) to the same fans, I accepted it for a while. But now I have to ask you this: Why the double whammy, Mark?
