Lane Becker of Get Satisfaction delivered one of the best talks at this year’s Web 2.0 Expo in New York. (You can check out my full recap of the conference here.) 

His talk, Customer Service is the New Marketing, has important insights for how any company - startup or major corporation - promotes their product and builds loyalty from their customers. Becker made the case that the best way to market your company is through the customer experience itself. Drawing from the hospitality industry, Becker suggested that the role of a hotel concierge is the new model for meeting customer’s needs. As Brian Solis aplty wrote:

Marketing-savvy corporate executives are working with PR, Advertising, and Marcom teams to explore options and strategies on how to participate in relevant online conversations. This represents a shift in outbound marketing as it creates a direct channel between companies and customers, and ultimately people. It starts to look a lot less like marketing and a lot more like customer service.

Continue reading "Web 2.0 Expo: Customer Service is the New Marketing"

Our September Middle School Marketing group continued the tradition of discussing ways to bridge the gap between old and new school marketing. There were several new faces, but as always the conversation sparked some interesting debate. We initially set out to discuss three questions:

1. What are some examples of social media client case studies? How have mature companies used social media not just to experiment but to really have an impact (beyond just early-adopter “luck”)? How did they do it? (I guess that’s three righ there...oops)


2. What tools and metrics are companies using to measure and demonstrate success?


3. Is email marketing dying, morphing, or re-surging? How does it fit overall?

As usual, time was against us, and we only got to points one and two (mostly two)--leaving us plenty to talk about in October!

Here’s a quick recap:

The question "How do you measure social media?" is getting louder. It seems like everyone is asking, "How do you quantify?" "How do you measure?" or "What defines success?"

Nicholas kicked it off with a live demo of Radian6 capabilities.  Our review of this monitoring tool raised an interesting discussion about "measuring" vs. "monitoring." You "measure" goals, you "monitor" conversations. "Measuring" defines a goal and measures success in fulfilling that goal, while "monitoring" simply reports on what’s happening and does not fulfill a goal in and of itself (KD Paine has a good post on this and also check out Ryan’s post on how Mini Cooper linked buzz to sales). That being said, the two need to work in tandem. With all these monitoring tools it might be easier to keep track of your brand, but many companies struggle with analyzing data, measuring it against a goal, and, more importantly, acting.

Everyone agreed Radian6 seemed like a pretty solid tool, but there was also some talk of other options, including one of my favorite’s Yahoo! Pipes (which is free). Rather than go in-depth on each of these tools, check a few for yourself:

Continue reading "Middle School Marketing - Social Monitoring"

Steph and I just had an IM discussion about corporate blogs, and we thought we’d share it with you. Why? Because it is a frequent topic of conversation in the Viget Marketing Lab.

When a company decides to "get relevant" in the online space, a blog is usually the first thing they think of—which is understandable as the ubiquity of blogs engenders visions of attainability and low risk. The company may already have "News and Events" content, so it sort of makes sense to just transition that content into a blog, right?

Not exactly.

Here is the IM conversation, and I close with a summary in case you want to skip straight to the bottom. Check it out (as a disclaimer I had to remove a few pieces that were client specific, and alter a few lines so it makes sense. And please excuse the grammar, and occasional inside joke):

Steph H: question

Josh C: talk to me

Continue reading "Corporate Blogging Tip"

The digital era has redefined what it means to create and sustain a brand, writes Bob Greenberg, CEO and chief creative officer of R/GA in AdWeek. The challenge is to create engaging experiences across multiple digital touchpoints that cultivate the company’s branding goals and respond to the user’s needs. 

For example, Greenberg notes the role that Nike’s  Ballers Network Facebook app has played in facilitating engagement between the Nike brand and its consumers. The team at Nike looked for opportunities to better serve basketball players, and found the role of facilitator to help connect players and find open courts. Similar to their work to connect runners, it’s a great move by Nike to identify opportunities to build engagement through facilitating connections with their core basketball audience.  

Continue reading "Cultivating Brands in a Digital World"

Ryan and I recently returned from ad:tech Chicago, and I thought I’d add my two cents to Ryan’s summation. As a warning, this post has two parts which, although related, could be completely separate posts. Accordingly, I’ll save you the pain of attempting to create a lame analogy in an effort to connect the two topics and just split it up.

Part 1) Clay Shirky Was Awesome.

Part 2) Case Studies.

Continue reading "“If It’s Being Discussed, It’s Marketing” & Case Studies from ad:tech"