Nastasia Vasconcells, insight180’s new digital marketing coordinator, shares three ways the practical experience of college internships were instrumental in preparing her for work at insight180. Are internships important? Nastasia offers an emphatic, “Yes, absolutely.” Read about how her on-site internships enhanced her college learning experience better prepared her for her new, full-time position.
Personal and professional connections can be powerful forces in promoting your business. People who know you, know what you do and believe in you can be your company’s greatest advocates. With more than two billion users across the globe, social media is one place that professionals, friends and family gather to stay in touch. If you’re not using social media for your business, you may be missing a big opportunity to connect with more people in your business community.
“If you’re competitor focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer focused allows you to be more pioneering.” – Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
Although a potentially “hot topic” in content marketing, Influence marketing has been around since the days of greek curators and royal or celebrity endorsements of soaps and beverages in the late 1800’s. Today, we’d defind Influence Marketing as the act of engaging with current and potential leaders in your industry in order to gain ranks as a leader yourself, to increase meaningful activity on social media platforms, as well as to build your digital (and face-to-face) community of brand advocates.
Hey, Wendy:
I’m reading a book and insight180 came to mind. The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do what They Do and How They Do It So Well, by Camille Sweeney & Josh Gosfield. The book features interviews with respected, high profile professionals about how they do what they do. I heard the authors interviewed on two different radio programs during their book tour.
One of those professionals was Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. He joined the company in its infancy as an investor and now it’s a billion dollar company. One of his 10 principles is: Build your brand one interaction at a time.
“When you think about a brand, you don’t mentally pull up a list of bullet points; you either think ‘I love this company’ or ‘ not’. Ultimately a brand is a short cut to a set of emotions … One of the best branding opportunities is the telephone … We don’t script our reps … If he or she gets the interaction right … the customer is going to remember us for a very long time.”
In the old days, my sales manager called this “belly-to-belly selling.” Face-to-face might be a better term, and today it might be Skype-to-Skype.
As you know, this is the sales model for advisory services — personalized interaction. Yesterday, I had a lunch meeting and I wanted to share how insight180 helped.
Scott Adelman, from
Next Level Technology
We’ve all experienced it at one time or another – that uncontrollable urge to spend time or money on the latest gizmo, app, online tool, trick or offer. Remember Dug, the adorable talking golden retriever from Pixar Disney’s movie, Up, who in the midst of conversation would become distracted and exclaim, “Squirrel!?” You may chuckle, but Shiny Object Syndrome (SOS) occurs all the time, including in our marketing.
How often have you set out a marketing plan, only to be lured by a special advertising or sponsorship offer that you just can’t refuse (even if it doesn’t truly fit your strategy), or the next app that promises to develop leads, or the next social media outlet that you just can’t “not participate in?”
As branding advisors to advisory firms, consultants and nonprofits that market “the invisible,” we’ve seen it all. And there is so much new in marketing, that sometimes it’s difficult to stay grounded. So we offer some guidelines that will help you stay focused throughout the coming months.
Digital technology is here to stay and has changed the rules of the marketing game. Organizations have to work harder to reach these fragmented audiences who are already inundated with product, service and marketing clutter. There’s no denying that it’s important to track your marketing progress through hits, clicks and tweets. But even in the digital age, the essential rules of marketing remain – at the end of the day it’s about how people interact with your product or service (dare I say, brand) emotionally. Once your potential client does find you, does the look, feel and content of your landing page welcome them in? Is your brand defined and represented? Does it tell your story, draw them in, make apparent your style, culture or brand personality? These factors are more important than ever. It’s your responsibility to make sure they connect emotionally – that they like what they see, can navigate easily and want to come back again. Remember, how the potential client or consumer feels about a brand will ultimately determine whether they are willing to engage and what price they will pay.
— Wendy
In medicine and science, measuring an experiment and the return on its investment is pretty easy. You conduct two identical experiments with only one variable that’s different and measure the results. Whichever provides more of what is desired leads the way for what you do next. The return on investment increases with each piece of knowledge. Its very logical and systematic.
Is measuring ROI in a marketing campaign similar or different? Can we fairly expect marketing campaigns to be successful without similar control comparisons? The big cahuna’s in advertising do it.
Well, I think we can and we also can’t. We can, because marketing is about human behavior, which is not as consistent as the responses of an omoeba to a chemical, and because experience in marketing one thing can provide knowledge and guidance in how to market other things.
But we also can’t expect marketing campaigns to be successful without control comparisons because measuring marketing ROI can only be fully successful when it is objective and based on the numbers. Am I suggesting that companies should start running simultaneous marketing campaigns to essentially have them compete with each other? Maybe. The data would be invaluable, but, admittedly, it would be out of most company’s financial range to do so. On the other hand, wouldn’t the information learned save a good deal of money for years down the road?
What do you think?
Here’s the full article: http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=137521
-Chris
