Honestly, I doubt it.  Let’s face it, Coca-Cola did what most of us could only dream about- unleash a monster NEGATIVE word of mouth campaign, and live to tell about it.  Ironically, they even did one better- they profited so much from their failed campaign, the Chicago Tribune actually credited them with planning the entire strategy in advance.  Nice try, but even the executives acknowledged their flaws.

So what do we do as marketers today?  What do we learn from our…

...continue to read "Could you overcome “new coke”?"

Don’t miss out on WOMMA’s Word of Mouth vs. Advertising event. To make us look good with our friends; Andy Sernowitz who always takes care of friends and friends of friends; WOMMA arranged for us to offer a $50 discount code , it is: futurenowisawesome

...continue to read "Pssst…Spread The Word"

Recently, I talked with someone I’ll call “Artie.” Artie works for a mass-market retailer, a brand everyone’s familiar with. He told me his company uses two sets of product names and descriptions. Thus, a product in both the on- and offline stores can have two different names.

Need I describe the chaos that erupts when an online visitor comes into the brick-and-mortar store and requests a specific product she saw online?

Another company’s offline sales forces carries so much clout in the…

...continue to read "Multichannel Marketing Challenges, Part 1"

Will someone help me understand?

Coming from an OFFLINE marketing background this article has got me scratching my skull.

Only one in five respondents indicated they have a complete handle on their conversion, marketing ROI, and revenue metrics. Twenty-three percent reported they don’t currently have any metrics, and 29 percent rely on clickthrough rates alone. Read the entire article at ClickZ Stats.

When I worked in the offline marketing world, every business I consulted was obsessed with marketing effeciency and measuring and optimizing their advertising…

...continue to read "Flying Blind On The Web?"

What are you doing right now? 

Reading.

What are you reading? 

Words

Reading is the primary activity people perform on the web, so why do so many folks spend so much time on design and so little time crafting the words on their site?

In our Persuasive Online Copywriting Seminar you will learn how to maximize results from persuasive copy and how to save your customers time, satisfy their needs and increase their pleasure by writing persuasively and laying out content in a way that works…

...continue to read "Words Words Words – Learn Persuasive Online Copywriting"

 You can get anything online. Against my better judgment I’m going to try this out:

The David Burke Flavor Sprays™ contain zero calories, zero fat, zero cholesterol, zero carbohydrates and FDA-approved flavoring.

The website is truly awful but I’ll be proving that a person’s motivations can trump bad conversion practices.

The silly Paypal shopping cart confirmation page told me that I’d get my order in 2-4 weeks (sheesh!); so If you have tried them already; please let me know what you think.

...continue to read "David Burke Flavor Sprays™"

Mass marketing, a product centric approach, in this increasingly fragmented media market is  showing even more evidence of becoming like pushing on a rope.

Here’s what I read in the NY Times (requires registration) this morning:

At Anheuser-Busch, which sells roughly half of all the beer in the United States, executives acknowledge they need to do a better job of making a "personal connection" with the customer.

 "It’s no longer good enough to be a mass media brand," said Bob Lachky,…

...continue to read "Rethinking Mass Marketing"

Structuring your site to answer the questions your individual vistors ask dramatically increases your conversion rate

Dan Trump, Felicity Green, Vida Blue and Michael Matters are taking a business trip to Chicago and need to book a room for four nights, from September 25 through 28.

The task each of these four individuals is trying to accomplish is the same. But, hey, these are four individuals! Think they’re going to solve their problem the exact same way? Think they define “comfort” the…

...continue to read "Use Personas to Increase Conversion rates"

Seen CPB’s new viral campaign for the Gap yet?

If not, you should definitely pop over their site, and prepare for quite a laugh. The campaign is a spin-off of the popular online retailing "Virtual Me" 3D technology. It’s not exactly well tied to Gap’s inventory or catalog, and actually provides nothing more than a few links to Gap.com, and a few appearances of the Gap logo. Then again, it’s designed to be a viral campaign, not to aid in the…

...continue to read "Gap’s WatchMeChange viral campaign – spreading the virus"

Many small/ local business owners, knowing I’m a marketer who focuses on Internet, have told me that their businesses "don’t sell on the web". As long as they believe that they’ll be right. Nevertheless, their customers are  comparing them to Internet competitors, using the web to find them or simply trying to engage with them in a meaningful way online. In those cases a poor website is worse than no website.

The tragedy is not that small business owners are…

...continue to read "Small Business Beware of The Internet"