Marketing and IM

9 Reasons Your Marketing Communication Lacks Credibility

Before I get too far into this article, I’m going to come right out and say something: I believe Marketing Communication is quickly becoming a lost art. In fact, I would go as far as to say that at many companies, the quality of marketing-related communication is not only devalued, but coming dangerously close to being completely ignored. I will save ...

4 Pricing Strategies That Work for Small Companies

As many of you know, this article is Part 2 in a two-part series on product and service pricing. And I am happy to say that so far, Part 1 (4 Pricing Mistakes You Need to Stop Making) has generated a surprising number of comments and spurred some interesting debates among Marketing people. One of the more heated Twitter conversations ...

4 Pricing Mistakes You Need to Stop Making

Of all the things I was asked to do early in my career as a marketer, one of the most intimidating was determining the price of my company’s products and services. To this day I still remember the first time I was asked to come up with a go-to-market pricing strategy, and will never forget the stress I felt and ...

What Does a Social Marketing Manager REALLY Do?

When it comes to Marketing, every decade has had its ‘hot’ careers. During the 1980s, catalog marketing and direct mail houses were the place to be. In the 1990s, web design firms and ad agencies were overloaded with job applicants. And from 2000 to 2009, any career related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) seemingly turned to gold the minute it ...

Twitter for Small Business: An Interview with Shannon Evans

When you spend as much time networking as I do, you meet some pretty interesting people—people with things like motivation, ideas, experience, and a strong desire to help others become better at what they do. Shannon Evans (@shannonevans on Twitter) is one of those people: a development editor, literary coach, book reviewer, and author of the brand new small business ...

5 Free Twitter Tools for the Busy Small Company Marketer

As I have mentioned several times in previous posts, there are few things in business more challenging, more stressful, and more frustrating than being asked to market your company’s products and services on a shoestring budget. Those of us who have carved a career out of small company (and small budget) marketing know the secret to success lies not in ...

5 Ethical Ways to Grow Your Corporate Email Database

When it comes to marketing, one of the most essential ingredients for success is time. Over my 18 years as a marketer, I have never heard the words “Quick . . . market this!” nor have I uttered them to someone else. People who market for a living understand the concept of time, and realize things like web hits, social ...

Inexpensive SEO for Small Company Websites: Part 4

Given the current state of the economy, the days of being able to afford professional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) help are gone. As website traffic struggles with the economic downturn, small companies need the services of market-leading firms like Bruce Clay, SEO Inc. and HighRankings.com now more than ever. Unfortunately, we have no hope of affording their five-figure start up ...

Article Marketing on Twitter: The Art of the Retweet

By now, most of my regular readers have a pretty good handle on the ‘business model’ of this blog. In a nutshell, my strategy is simple: I write one article per week, post it, then spend the next six days trying to get people to actually read it. This recurring series of events can be a grind for an article ...

4 Ridiculous Myths About Small Company Webinars

A few weeks ago I was catching up on my industry reading, when I came across a consultant-generated white paper called 9 Management Practices for Exceptional Webinars. For someone who conducts a marketing-related Webinar at least twice per month within my own small company, I thought this article would be a quick way to pick up a few pointers. But as ...

Why Customer Input Doesn’t Always Matter

Over the years I have worked for several small companies that were firm believers in customer surveys. In the eyes of these particular businesses, there was nothing a company could not ask a customer. Whether it was an idea for a new product, an improvement to an existing product, a search for marketing advice or a simple customer satisfaction exercise, ...

Strategic Self-Promotion: 8 Rules for Marketing Yourself

On occasion, the workplace can be a confusing and frustrating place for a small company manager. Have you ever volunteered to lead an upcoming high-profile initiative, only to see someone else be selected for no apparent reason? Have you ever interviewed for an internal position higher on the organizational chart, then not been selected even though you meet 100% of ...

Is it a Lead or Not? Getting Marketing and Sales to Agree

Being in charge of filling a Sales pipeline is a tough spot for any Marketing person. Not only are legitimate sales opportunities difficult to find, but when it comes to actually defining what a ‘lead’ looks like, beauty is often in the eye of the beholder. There are literally dozens of ways to classify incoming inquiries generated by outbound marketing ...

Four Marketing Technologies That Are Ruining the Internet

As I look back on my 17+ years as a professional marketer, it occurs to me how far we have come. Once popular marketing methods like direct mail, trade shows, cold-calling, and print advertising have been completely replaced by Internet-based technologies—technologies which are not only less expensive, but much easier to use. Today, anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can become a ...

12 Essential Sections of a Great Marketing Plan + Template

I’ll never forget the combined feeling of excitement and panic the first time my boss asked me to create a Marketing Plan for a new product. While part of me was excited by the fact I had finally ‘arrived’ as a professional in my field—much like a doctor being asked to treat a first patient—the remainder of me was scared ...

Internet Marketers: The New MVPs for Small Companies

As recently as ten years ago, Marketing Departments were widely viewed as little more than service bureaus for most organizations. In the eyes of many businesses, marketing existed only to perform low-level tasks like generate marketing collateral, assemble presentations, and coordinate trade shows. I know this not because I read about it, or because someone told me, but because I was there. During ...

The 5 Biggest Lies in Internet Marketing

Being a full-time blogger comes with a lot of baggage. Actively maintaining two websites, six email accounts and memberships to a dozen social networking sites is definitely fun, but certainly more work than I ever imagined it would be. Although these tools are great for keeping in touch with readers and fellow bloggers, they also come with a catch: I receive more than my share of incoming junk messages. Not ...

A New Definition of Marketing for Small Companies?

Although the textbook authors at Prentice Hall, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin might not agree, the definition of Marketing is not a static, catch-all descriptor that can be indiscriminately applied in any situation. Marketing is a sliding scale; a moving target that changes based on industry, audience, and most importantly company size. While larger firms can spend ridiculous amounts of money simply throwing their ...

6 Reasons to Stop Using Direct Mail

This past summer I spent three days at DMA 2008, the world’s largest annual marketing conference. Due to the expense involved in attending (a $2,000 registration fee + air and three nights of hotel) this was actually my first DMA conference. Being a professional marketer since the early 1990s I have seen a great deal of change within my profession, and expected the nearly ...

Pay-per-Click (PPC) for Small Companies: Still a Bad Idea

Back in early November I wrote a short post titled When Pay-per-Click (PPC) is a Bad Idea. As of this morning, about five months later, this article is still the most popular page on my site. One of two things is likely the cause: 1) many small companies are considering investing in Pay-per-Click and having doubts, or 2) many small companies are already investing in PPC, and second-guessing ...

New Rules for Direct Email Marketing

Since the middle of 2001, I would estimate I have booked, written, sent, and evaluated over $8 million in B2B and B2C direct email campaigns—promoting everything from enterprise software to educational services to retail products. Over this eight year period many things within the direct email landscape have changed, thanks in part to laws like The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (which laid out enforceable rules ...

Tips for a Tough Economy: Marketing on a Small(er) Budget

When the economy worsens and the term “401″ more accurately describes my account balance than the retirement vehicle itself, marketing services firms across the nation try to get their finger on the “our method is most cost-effective” scale. If you read their self-promoting white papers and newsletters, you will find that nearly every sector of the marketing services world is claiming their method is tailor-made for tough economies. But which marketing ...

9 Signs You’re Involved in a Pyramid Scheme

By virtue of owning a website created to help small companies, people trying to launch their own businesses are regular visitors here. Many of these soon-to-be entrepreneurs have the drive, the knowledge and the plans required to become a great success someday, which makes running this website one of the more fun and rewarding things I do with my time. But over ...