Marketing in Real Life

When something called "Ping" showed up in my iTunes a few weeks ago, I have to say I was intrigued.   As someone very willing to engage in social media and a full fledged music junkie, it seemed like something perfect for me.   But as the weekend and subsequent weeks rolled on I could not think of any reason to get involved.   Much like Facebook Places or the Microsoft Zune, sometimes being late to market can make a potentially superior offering completely undesirable.    He r e are three reasons that I think Ping will go the way of Google Wave... A good idea with a short, modest shelf life. 1) I am already up to date on the bands that I love.   Between email lists, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter I already have access to the bands that I love.   I know of advanced tickets from Martin Sexton .   I see live recordings from the Derek Trucks Band .   I see where Guns n Roses is currently playing.   I know when my cousin’s band The Yes W...

I spent two days this week at the Inbound Marketing Summit and have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it.  As an avid podcast/webcast viewer, I am not sure how much new I learned (except the brilliance of unmarketing’s Scott Stratte n), but as someone who works in the market research, and more broadly professional services industry, I had three big takeaways. 1. As an industry, most marketers in the professional services world are behind the times.  Marketing today needs to not only support sales, but bring in leads and play an active role in engaging buyers, partners, and potential employees.  It is no longer enough to simply put out an e-newsletter, stand in your booth at some conferences, and make up some pretty collateral.  Smart marketers are producing regular sharable content, participating in discussions, and using their position as a company learning post. 2. Corporate marketers are talking about measurement, but not market research.  Granted this was a c...

Earlier this week, my friend Jeff McKenna and I released a new Chadwick Martin Bailey Consumer Pulse report about why, how, and what people share content online. As a social media junkie, this was research close to my heart. And I love being able to add a “voice of the people” to the results from the chats iModerate conducted as part of the research. Below are five of my favorite findings from this research. 75% of people are somewhat / highly likely to share content they like online For 18-34, email & Facebook are used similarly for social sharing, for 35+ email is dominant 31% of people who share do it to generate thoughtful ideas or discussion 32% of people have shared coupons and discounts in the past 3 months Only 10% of people who share online content are less likely to share branded content