Search Our Marketing Resources

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

Since its inception, the Do Not Call Registry has had a profound impact on the telemarketing industry, just as it has on individual organizations relying on outbound telemarketing in their marketing strategy. The challenge now facing these businesses is to find creative ways to still make telemarketing work.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

The sound of the human voice is powerful. It connects to a prospect on a whole different level. Online, it breaks through that liquid crystal barrier and says, "Listen to me, I'm here, I'm human, and I have something real to talk to you about." It's time to bring a human voice to your own site.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Aside from server logs, clickstream tracking and a host of analytics tools, it's necessary to consider customer experience and customer satisfaction. This is the art of peering into the hearts and minds of visitors rather than simply following them around. It's time to ask them for their opinion.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Writing

You're sitting on a hard chair, constantly shifting position, trying to get comfortable. The speaker doesn't keep your mind off your discomfort, since he is reading precisely exactly what's on the slides. Unfortunately, you have to squint to follow along, because he squeezed two pages of content in 10-point type on each slide. Sound familiar? Here's how to avoid the same ol', same ol' boring presentations.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

This is the first in a series of point/counterpoint articles by Bill Babcock and Bill Rozier. Babcock is CEO of a direct and relationship marketing agency. Rozier is on the client side. This week, the pair discuss relevance: How long do you have to convince prospects that your message has importance, value, truth and, most important, personal resonance?

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Few rules are more widely quoted in marketing today than the 80/20 Rule, which states that 80 percent of your sales come from just 20 percent of your customer base. Intuitively, it makes sense. But this marketing interpretation of the 80/20 rule is actually flawed.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Savvy marketing professionals understand that sales and marketing must work together to move prospects through the sales pipeline. This is especially important in the complex sale with long decision making cycles and multiple buyers that need to be influenced. The good news is that Web content drives people through and shortens the sales cycle for any product or service—especially complex ones, that have many steps and take months or even years to complete.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Management wants more leads, but you can't get an increase in your budget. To meet their demands, you have to lower your cost per lead. You have to either increase response rates or cut your cost per contact. There are literally dozens of ways to accomplish those goals. Here are 10.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

You wouldn't go on a date with the next person that walked through your door, and yet, you have no qualms in accepting any client that comes your way. The result? Your customers will push you around; not pay the invoices on time; and end up being the most pedantic, irritating pests on the planet. The way out is to create barriers. Create a system that filters out customers, before they become headache clients. Here's how.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Excite co-founder Joe Kraus has a new venture, and he likens the technology driving his new business to the Internet in the mid-1990s, when it was still "trapped in the land of the nerds." His new venture is the collaborative publishing tool known as Wikis. Just what is a Wiki, anyway? And why should you care?

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Branding is more complicated than it first appears. It is also much more than finding a clever name for something. Here are the key branding points to remember as demonstrated by marketing's branding of a hypothetical company called MidSize.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

So many companies spend $25,000, $50,000 or $100,000-plus on a research study, only to give the results a cursory glance before relegating it to the "I'll get to that later" pile. Research studies usually collect dust because they fail to get the attention they deserve in the kind of format that leads to action. Here's how to change that.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Evangelizing customer experience is easy; in fact, it's almost impossible to argue against. Preaching sermons on how to improve customer experience is also relatively easy. Engaging in case studies and brainstorming with clients about future possibilities is often a charismatic experience. But the biggest challenge for companies is making innovative, integrated customer experience a reality.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

There are millions of Web pages online that represent the "best guesses" of the marketing and Web experts who created them. A large number of these pages appear to be working just fine. Indeed, many are profitable and clearly deliver good conversion rates. But could they do better? Could the same pages have their design and writing tweaked to deliver better results? Nobody will ever know. Unless, of course, the pages are tested.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

You might have the greatest show on Earth, but if no one knows about it, nobody will see it. For marketing many kinds of entertainment — from video games to live theater — here's what works best.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

What makes a successful salesperson? Is it the right product? The right attitude? A certain mastery of a skill set? All those things help. But they don't go far enough to identify what makes for a truly successful salesperson.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

In many organizations, corporate communications doesn't get a lot of respect. Why is that? And more importantly: How can you change it?

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

At its essence, the marketing funnel is an effective tool to use in evaluating what activities you are successfully executing along your closed loop marketing process—branding, targeting, closing deals, and looking for ways to add incremental value to existing customers. Like most framework tools, it can enable you to identify, isolate and improve marketing black holes and/or upstream dependencies.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

A company's name can command a tremendous amount respect and equity with customers. Likewise, employees who possess a great amount of pride in working for a world-class organization can be a greater asset than sometimes realized. If companies can take these ingredients and begin to change the culture to one that "lives" the brand, the market will take notice.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

What do companies like Nordstrom, Jet Blue, Amazon and Dell have in common? They have built their brand value on providing a positive experience for their customers on- and offline. Successful companies match business objectives with customer needs. They combine ongoing testing, feedback and improvement cycles into their daily practices and invest in listening, learning and modifying the user experience to create positive returns in revenue and loyalty. This means user experience is not just a practice or a process—it is a philosophy. Here's how to accomplish the same.