Archive for November, 2008

Using Linkedin To Increase Marketing ROI

Friday, November 21st, 2008

In our November E-newsletter, The Reel, we talked about using Linkedin to help build market share for your business. I came across an article in The 60 Second Marketer that provides five specific tips you can use to grow your business through Linkedin. No matter how small or large your company may be, this is powerful tool that will contribute to increased marketing ROI.


Here are the five steps the article’s author Linda Lindsey suggests that you follow:

1. Be the Face of Your Brand.
2. Think of Linkedin as a part of your Loyalty Marketing Strategy.
3. Use Offline Marketing Tactics to Drive Your Customers and Prospects to Join Your Linkedin Group.
4. Advertise on Linkedin.
5. Get Connected to Linkedin.

The importance of using social media marketing to build business is increasing almost daily. It has become an important channel in the marketing platform. B-2-B tools like Linkedin can benefit your efforts. You just have to take the time to leverage their power.

If you’re looking for additional information about social media marketing, I suggest your read my friend Shailesh Ghimire’s blog, Social Media Wiz. He talks about the business of social media and offers great insights that I find very beneficial.

I think the one positive outcome of our current economic crisis is that it’s forcing everyone to find new ways to increase marketing ROI with less dollars. Channels like Linkedin provide a benefit for today and tomorrow.

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Customer Engagement and Segmentation Top Trends for 2009.

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

I read an article on the “B to B” site today announcing top trends for 2009 that included customer engagement and segmentation. Social media was also in the top three.

While I applaud marketers for recognizing the importance of both, it’s not new to me. As a direct marketer, intelligence-driven decisions are part of my DNA.

Read the entire article … it’s worth the read. Here’s a quote from Eduardo Conrado, corporate VP-global marketing and communications at Motorola Corporation. ““We will be increasing interactive, coupled with strong analytics for database marketing and better segmentation.”

It’s a good reminder that if you’re not invested in a data-driven marketing strategy, now’s the time to do so.

Your marketing ROI is dependent upon completely understanding your target and then leveraging that knowledge through imagination to produce results.

That’s not a trend. It’s a fact.

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Posted in Customers, Direct Marketing, Marketing Intelligence, Return On Marketing Investment, Segmentation, Social Media Marketing | 3 Comments »

Obama’s Tribe

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

In my last post I talked about Seth Godin’s new book, Tribes. We Need You to Lead Us. Yesterday’s historic election of Barack Obama was the embodiment of Godin’s premise that, “The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.”

One needed only to look at the scene in Grant Park and from other locations around the country to see first-hand how people followed.

In today’s Ad Age, they summarized it this way: “Nov. 4, 2008, will go down in history as the biggest day ever in the history of marketing. Take a relatively unknown man. Younger than all of his opponents. Black. With a bad-sounding name. Consider his first opponent: the best-known woman in America, connected to one of the most successful politicians in history. Then consider his second opponent: a well-known war hero with a long, distinguished record as a U.S. senator. It didn’t matter. Barack Obama had a better marketing strategy than either of them. “Change.”

The lesson here for all marketers is that capturing the “leadership” position in a market when it is seemingly impossible is very much possible. It takes vision, a willingness to form and shape opinion, and to have a plan others follow willingly and enlist others to do the same.

All politics aside, it was the ultimate case study for achieving stratospheric marketing ROI, and an historic occasion that we can and should learn from.

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Leading The Way, Leading The Tribe, Leading The Market.

Sunday, November 2nd, 2008

In his new book, Tribes. We Need You to Lead Us, Seth Godin makes the point that traditional barriers to leading a movement … a market … a “tribe” have been erased because of the Internet. Geography, cost, time are all non-factors because of the Internet’s capacity to connect us with a few or vast amount of people who have a similar passion, point of view or just something in common.

But, the Internet cannot provide leadership, that is still up to us as individuals. (more…)

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Posted in Brand, Customers, Market Leading, Marketing, On-Line Marketing | No Comments »