Master Marketer Seth Godin on marketing today

"The internet is not TV 2.0". You gotta love Seth Godin - considered, candid and rich with insight. I found this video yesterday and thought it was worth sharing. Why? A lot of my conversations I have with other marketers follow similar themes... "PPC ads does not work like they used to, I can't scale it up" "Banner ads don't work for us at all, we don't get the clicks" "How do we get social media marketing right" This video resonated with me, not just because I've learnt from Seth for over 10 years, but because he succinctly addresses the bigger problem that marketers face and then outlines the solution in only 10 minutes.

What are the take-aways?

Revolution not evolution

Revolutions are initially perceived impossible - Seth reminds us about Henry Ford and how the first…

The third report from the Pivot Conference and Brian Solis

Pivot have surveyed 230 brand managers and marketing professionals, this is their third report from that research. The report of course is helping promote something, an event that is pitched as providing tactical methods to effectively market to the evolving social consumer.

So, what's social advertising exactly?

It's good to ask the obvious question. Well it's most often Twitter’s Promoted Products suite, Facebook's contextual advertising, friend-based banners and “Sponsored Stories” program, and YouTube’s Promoted Videos, for example. You also have paid or branded Tweets/blogs, social media optimisation, Tweet/Like to win, paid placements, contests, viral videos and social ambassador programmes - though PR companies and social media agencies will claim that's their space. (more…)…

A round table discussing approaches to managing customer service today

I recently took part in a roundtable on improving the quality of customer service hosted by ISP UKFast as part of their UKFast.tv Round Table series. An interesting example of content marketing. It was good to hear about the increased focus on customer service and how social listening can be used to improve customer service. The main takeaway for me was the fantastic insight that’s available from customer service teams and their reporting software, but how it’s not always fed-back into the customer care or sales-related content on the website. At this point In the clip you can see me talking about the power of customer feedback tools in shaping online services.

Benchmarks on customer service quality for the UK

I was also interested in the customer service benchmarking that Lynne Mills described. Looking at some of the most recent …

Buyer content preferences in product or service selection

I think everyone agrees that customer-centred content converts better than product-centred content. But which content are prospects looking for when they’re deciding on which products to buy? Marketing Automatation Software Guide did some research on what informs the B2B purchase decision helps answer this question, so I thought we’d provide a summary to help you think about how customer-centric your site in terms of the different types of information available to explain the product.

Content used to inform decisions when researching a market?

During the initial evaluation of a product, these are the factors that are important. No surprise that pricing is at the top of the list since it will often require a phone call in B2B. Proof of features and demonstrations are also popular.

Content…