“Should I grow my business through acquisitions or organically through marketing?” Sometimes I hear variations on this question – “I would much rather grow through acquisition than through marketing – it’s much less risky”. More and more frequently I am being asked some form of this question so I thought I would share some of my insights. There are a number of considerations to evaluate. This is not a comprehensive list but a few of…
The previous two marketing tools I have written about – white papers and special reports – need to be free of obvious bias, or they lose their strength to persuade readers. But case studies cover some of the same ground, while making your case, entirely. One of the beauties of case studies is that they can be long and exhaustive, short and sweet, or any length in between – it all depends on what you…
I was talking with our copywriter John here at eBridge and a number of years ago he wrote for a marketing newsletter in a natural resource industry. At various times the publisher would approach him to tell him that he needed more subscriptions in order to keep paying the big bucks. These were the days before the Internet, so everything he tried had to be based in direct mail, faxes and phone calls. Not a…
Sooner or later if you do any marketing online, you will hear about using whitepapers. But I wonder how many of the people who talk or write about them really know what a white paper is. The term has been around for at least 100 years and was first used to describe deep background documents or position papers published by the British government. They were called white papers because they were printed on white paper…
The problem with marketing on social media is that the campaigns that work are viral in nature. And you can’t create a viral campaign. You can only put your campaign out there and hope it is catching. Here’s recent example of a Twitter campaign: On a Friday night not long ago, Amanda Palmer, lead singer of the alternative girl band, Dresden Dolls, was sitting at home, alone, when she idly posted the following tweet (without…
If businesses consider creating social media or using the methods of social networking, Professor Piskorski’s research suggests that a good social strategy uses what drives online social networks in the first place, that is: “solving social failures in the offline world”. Helping “people fulfill their social needs online” is at the core of all successful social media sites. Social failure doesn’t mean being socially inept in the real world – it means that a forum…
In a recent episode of The Simpsons, teacher Edna Krabappel confiscated her students’ iphones to stop them from texting. Shakespeare be damned, because the new teacher gave the kids back their iphones and assigned them 20 minutes of Tweets on Twitter for homework. Such is this social networking world – an animated TV show imitating life. The world seems to be one big social network. It isn’t just Edna’s class who are tweeting – perhaps…
Well it seems Hostingcon has taken its toll on myself and our team in the sense that we have been very busy following up with clients since we got back hence my delayed post. I mentioned last time that I would like to explore the airline industry from both a marketing and operational angle. One of my theories, albeit I know next to nothing about the industry, is that I wonder how disappointed an airline…
Many of the Hostingcon sessions have been commented on by various bloggers and unfortunately mine was not one of them. Due to two flights being cancelled, I had an unexpected overnight stay in an airport hotel in Toronto meaning that I didn’t arrive until 6pm on Monday night – 24 hrs later than planned and 9 hrs late for my presentation. I had many people mention to me that they were in the room ready…
In writing about inexpensive forms of advertising or promotion, I asked you to think about “sudden attacks sprung from hiding.” Did the term “ambush marketing” come to mind? It’s a form of marketing or advertising that lets you enjoy the benefits of sponsoring major events, without actually paying big bucks to be a sponsor. I know, I wrote about ambush marketing a few posts back, but it deserves revisiting. Briefly, during the 1990s, a clever…