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CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Why do brand leaders wait until their brands are at the breaking point, at risk of joining the likes of Radio Shack and 7Up? Instead, renovate your brands while it is strong and growing. Spot changing market dynamics and address them as opportunities... before they have time to develop into threats.

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At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the Consumer Electronics Association announced it expects mobile phone unit sales in 2009 to grow some 31 percent in North America, with global unit sales reaching approximately 1.2 billion. The announcement validates the mobile market as a wellspring of untapped potential, but it also poses the challenge of how to effectively engage audiences increasingly selective about how, when, and where they buy.

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Many companies already recognize the value of translations for reaching that vast worldwide audience. They've been having product information, press releases, and marketing and advertising copy converted into the languages of their current and potential customers for years. But smart companies realize that to strike a chord with more buyers, they'll have to "localize" their messages so that audiences will feel that everything about an electronic or printed communication has been produced by someone just like them. Not only is the text in their language (with proper idioms and slang), but the graphics, navigation buttons and user interface are familiar. In short, nothing hinders the flow of information—or elicits a chuckle.

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Not all customers are alike, and what appeals to one may not interest another. Therefore, it is important that you connect the message you are sending to your customers' differing interests. Email messages that are segmented, targeted, and relevant to the recipient are much more likely to be opened and acted upon.

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How do companies reap solid advertising ROI from email newsletters? They incorporate four key marketing tactics into their campaigns: relevancy, list quality, design, and tactical landing pages. And then they apply them, like this....

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

If you are on Twitter to represent your company, your boss will probably soon ask you to prove the value that your tweets have to your business, if he or she hasn't already asked. So how do you know whether your followers are listening or whether you're just tweeting in the wind? How do you know whether tweets about topic X have more or less value than tweets about topic Y?

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Where do marketers turn once all the fat has long since been trimmed and all that's left is muscle and bone? And how do we break the downward spiral of cut, cut, and cut some more? Here are some ideas on what to cut... and (just as critically) what not to cut.

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For most CEOs, good marketing is a bit like pornography—it's hard to define precisely, but they know it when they see it. Still, it's clear that one of the problems is that most CEOs cannot put their finger on what Marketing isn't getting done—but they can envision that nothing much would likely change if the whole marketing team were to disappear. So, what's a CMO to do?

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Hyundai took the bull by the horns in this bear market and scored big. It used behavioral segmentation to identify what was keeping prospects from buying and then developed a strategy that made it easier for customers to part with their hard-earned dollars. What can you learn from its example? In every market change, even a downturn, there is an opportunity to use the power of behavioral segmentation to make your product or service stand out.

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One of the most dangerous trends emerging is that B2B marketers, and their extended search-marketing resources, are regularly making bad decisions based on "solid analytics data." All too often, marketers are deciding to spend either more or less money based solely on the conversion rate of how a certain search phrase, ad creative, or banner ad performs: in other words, the percentage of people who visited the site and requested a whitepaper, a demo, etc. While conversion rate, in the context of an analytics report, is one way to measure the effectiveness a search phrase, it can be extremely misleading.

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GM's CEO, Rick Wagoner, has opined that the automaker's biggest blunder was to walk away from the electric car. But GM's biggest strategic blunder might have been its failure to view Saturn strategically—and as a consequence not allowing it to fulfill its destiny as a domestic competitor to Toyota, Nissan, and Honda that could actually win. As the company makes hard decisions in the struggle to survive, the challenge to GM will be its ability to learn from—and not compound—that mistake.

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Every day we are bombarded with bad news about the economy: dismal corporate earnings, budget cuts, advertising gone dark, clients and agencies and people coming and going, and a sense of turbulence, malaise, and timidity. What can marketing do? Today's brand leaders should follow these 7 Ps of branding as a guide during the recession, and beyond....

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When the going gets tough, the tough get... cheap. Today, a good marketing idea has to be as inexpensive as it is clever. In this first of a two-part series are five inexpensive suggestions that can lead to productive results.

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People succeed together because they share a unified sense of purpose and a common vision for what they need to do. This unified sense of purpose comes from core beliefs. Core beliefs help a team to create together because they share a common worldview that helps people filter their observations, establish values, and hold certain things in similar high esteem. Such a worldview also acts as a guiding beacon, orienting people regarding who they are and what they can do together.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

There's been a lot of brouhaha of late about Facebook's ill-fated attempt to change its terms of service to maintain licensing rights of terminated accounts—and understandably so. The issue of customer data ownership is an important one. However, many businesses with an active presence on the social site are now fearful of getting caught up in any ensuing consumer backlash, and they are wondering what to do—keep our Facebook pages or move on to someplace safer? The short answer is, Right now, just keep focusing on connecting with your customers wherever they are (and they are still, absolutely, on Facebook, in droves).

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

As part of the research I did in preparation for my recent book, BrandDigital, I interviewed some of the best and brightest people in the fields of marketing and digital technology, and they provided incredible insight on how digital tools and tactics can be used to not simply increase operating efficiency but also increase customer loyalty. Here I share some of those insights, with specific focus on my conversation with Bob Pearson, Vice-President of Communities and Conversations at Dell. Though Dell is a computer manufacturer, the ideas that Bob discussed can be adopted by any organization, no matter what size, industry, or level of technological acumen.

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Email is a medium for economically and effectively marketing your small business. But most everything out there that provides guidelines, best-practices, and advice on the application of the channel to your marketing efforts are largely geared toward bigger businesses. Until now, that is, because here are 10 tips you can leverage and implement easily and quickly—while still having a positive influence on your bottom line—without having to worry yourself with multivariate testing, dynamic content development, and data integration.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

As companies tighten their ad spending, inexpensive social media is clearly the next marketing frontier. As with any new craze, there are enormous opportunities. And with them come giant pitfalls that must be avoided.

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What's your Return On Sound? Budgets may be tight and long-term planning may feel out of reach, but a few simple principles can help lay the groundwork for long-term brand value for "sonic identity." Music and sound create significant long-term brand power. That effect comes by design, and it starts with a few questions.

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Sears performed a courageous email-marketing act in mid-December. Like every retailer, Sears was surely eager for additional sales and revenue as the worst holiday season in memory reached a crescendo and the sale window started to close. Despite that pressure, the Sears team had the discipline to hit the pause button on the hard sell in attempting to make a connection with subscribers. Instead, it sent a co-marketing email with Heroes at Home, promoting a national gift registry for returning US soldiers.