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CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: None

Since public relations isn't done "to" a company, it's done "with" the management team or owners, there's an essentially different nature to how this kind of professional service is successfully delivered. It's much more akin to legal or medical services with the "defendants" or "patients" (read management team members) having to be deeply and consistently involved in an on-going process. As the now famous slogan coined by tech PR guru Regis McKenna goes, "PR is a process, not an event." Without that, it generally goes nowhere and the agency won't be working with that client for long.

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Should SMS be used for every marketing message? No, definitely not. Your company must consider whether or not your intended message is urgent and determine if subscribers will appreciate receiving it in a mobile form. With that said, there are certainly are two major reasons SMS should be on your shortlist.

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Love 'em or hate 'em, politicians are some of the most effective marketers out there. Let's break down how they achieve their ends, and how we marketers can cop their best moves to win the vote—for our products and services.

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Marketers have recognized the immense creative talent that resides outside of Madison Avenue. They've recognized that, with Consumer-Generated Advertising, properly executed, they can generate quality, consumer-relevant content at a fraction of the cost of conventional agency productions. And these commercials break through the clutter with their "real" feel and relevant messaging.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

Social marketing techniques such as blogging, wikis, podcasts, twitter, and virtual worlds have given marketers an extraordinary range of opportunities to reach out to audiences. But do these techniques really pay off—or are they just trendy alternatives that offer no measurable return on marketing investment?

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If you are an email marketer who is doing traditional "batch and blast" email marketing, now's a good time to start segmenting and sending triggered emails. Doing so allows you to send more relevant emails and achieves better response from your subscribers.

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Think of it: There are many businesses that offer similar products or services. Prospective customers can purchase goods or services from any competitor, literally anywhere in the world if they choose to, thanks to the Internet. Net result: effectively marketing a business, which translates to owning a slice of customer mind-share, is more challenging than it ever was. It takes something more to market successfully now. And it certainly takes something more than a one-time strategy and a couple of marketing tactics to be effective. That "something" is relevance.

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Companies have been scrambling to figure out how to leverage Web. 2.0 applications, but are they doing so for all the wrong reasons? With all the buzz about blogs, wikis, widgets, and other forms of user-driven Web interactions, the question your business needs to answer is, "Is this what our customers want?"

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Why are "mirror neurons" so relevant to marketers? Because they reveal why we're hardwired to imitate, cradle to grave. Mirror neurons explain why we sometimes do things that we can't explain. They can also be a source of valuable instruction for product marketers, able to turn a brand from a moderate success into runaway success that no-one can live without.

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If you're like us, you probably have one of those piles on your desk that keeps being moved from one corner to another. You know, that pile you need to get to but avoid because it will take some real effort to tackle? For many marketing professionals, marketing accountability, analytics ,and ROI are in this pile. Marketers must stop avoiding this topic and tackle the pile!

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Marketers responsible for lead generation are all too familiar with some common challenges—getting closed-loop feedback from the sales organization, measuring marketing effectiveness beyond just lead quantity and cost per lead, and building strong alignment with the sales organization. As presented in the MarketingProfs' research report, "B-to-B Lead Generation: Marketing ROI and Performance Evaluation Study," effective lead-generation marketing is very much tied to overcoming these challenges to prioritize lead quality over lead quantity.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

Kodak has invested people, energy, and two years of dedicated effort into building its social media program, and has met with great success. Here, Amber Naslund talks to the people behind Kodak's efforts to find out why their social media program is so valuable to their business, and how they've defined success.

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Good email design is a critical part of ensuring a high response rate. A major frustration within the industry is the lack of standards to guide designers when creating HTML email. Though there isn't one email-marketing design bible, there are fundamental design rules that should be applied. This article reviews some of the high-level design principles as well as more in-depth rules affecting some of the most common issues email marketers face.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

There's a new kid on the social media block that's starting to garner a lot of attention from companies. Microblogging sites, such as Twitter, are increasingly becoming a companion to an existing blog—or a standalone strategy for businesses that are using social media to connect with their customers. But many companies aren't sure what the microblogging "rules of the road" are. This is where Connie Reece comes in.

CONTENT TYPE: Article | TOPIC: Social Media Marketing

Rohit Bhargava is a well-respected marketer and blogger and frequent speaker at conferences, including the upcoming MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer. Here, he shares advice on how to get the most from the conference experience and discusses where social media is headed, as well as how businesses can make the most of it.

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Although more than 80% of high-tech marketers say they have a lead-nurturing strategy, 64% say their strategy needs improvement, according to a February 2008 survey by TeleNet Marketing Solutions. As for which areas of overall lead-generation strategy tech marketers would like to improve in the next year, nurturing of long-term leads was the No. 1 response. Nurturing shortens the sales cycle and improves return on investment from lead-generation activities, so it is important to reconsider your nurturing strategy frequently. Consider the following three recommendations to enhance your strategy.

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The top 10 challenges facing the interactive marketing community are very much the same as those facing the entire marketing community... in that almost every marketing professional must address the interactive/online marketing medium. When they are asked about top challenges, many marketers say things like "social media" or "search engine optimization" or "integrating online and offline." But I think the challenges are much more fundamental to the individual and the organization. Here's my list of the top challenges, and my recommendations for dealing with them.

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Many people think the power to restore our environment—to curb greenhouse gases, to clean up our air and water, to cut down on precious resources' ending up in landfills—lies in the hands of scientists and engineers, or lawyers and legislators. But the real power of green lies in the hands of marketers.

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Within the grand taxonomy of consumer touchpoints, e-newsletters hold a sorry position. They're the longwinded busybodies who never get invited to the cool parties. Porcelain-skinned print campaigns turn up their perky, sans-serif noses at e-newsletters' frumpy templates and canned copy. Super Bowl spots kick sand in e-newsletters' bespectacled faces. Yet, these boxy embodiments of mediocrity move product and build loyalty. Marketing people are aware of this—they've proven it with charts and everything. You need an e-newsletter and you know it. So to that end, please review the following six bromides from a recent how-to article phoned in by a reigning email-marketing magnate... and then read why you should ignore them.

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Everyone wants brand equity. But building it, when you are more likely to qualify for the Inc. 500 rather than the Fortune 500, can be a puzzle. Particularly when the role models for brand equity are global icons like Coca Cola, Volvo, or Sony—hardly your peer set. The good news is that the path to building brand equity is clear. Here are six simple steps you can take to get started.