The case study as an element of marketing communications has outlived its usefulness. It’s one of those things that exists as a short-hand for ‘how xyz company benefited from using our product/service’. We’re used to case studies from text books we read at school or university. We’re drawn, to like moths to a flame, to…
I’ve long been a fan of guerilla marketing. Maybe it’s my parsimonious nature. Or maybe it’s just the fun aspect of it. The original book on Guerilla Marketing is 27 years old but its central concept is more relevant with every passing year. Real-time is this year’s buzzword and makes it into the title of…
As a marketing graduate I read with interest David Meerman Scott’s views on how many marketing professors could be guilty of malpractice in the way they teach the subject. Part of me agreed, I remember in a tutor group session explaining Chasm Theory to my fellow students and the lecturer. But then I thought ‘how…
Keeping with the theme of email marketing (see this post about spam from a couple of days ago), this time from the customer’s perspective. Every year or so I order a few IceBreaker and Bridgedale items from Sierra Trading Post, an outdoor clothing outlet store. Over the course of a year they email me pretty…
Email marketing is both one of the most cost effective methods of reaching your customers and the most loathed. Email marketers have to contend with over zealous junk mail filters, spam crusaders that seek to destroy them and list subscribers who forgot they gave permission. It’s so much easier to ‘report as spam’ than it…
A few weeks ago I sat an exam for the first time in many years. It was the online certification test for Inbound Marketing University, a project driven by Hubspot, providers of a web based software solution that is designed to assist SMEs with, well, inbound marketing. The ‘professors’ of Inbound Marketing are all high…
I’m wondering when the tide is going to turn on the matter of requiring users to fill in lengthy forms in order to download a software demo, an e-book, a white paper or in some cases even a brochure. You’ve gone to all the trouble of getting someone to your site – whether that’s by…
I’ve had my head down working and absorbing information this week, reading books and blogs. Here are five helpful/useful/relevant and informative posts from the past week that I recommend – much more worthwhile than anything I would have written this week! Christopher S. Penn: How powerful is your social media? A warning not to drink too…
We’re all guilty of sticking to what we know; whether it’s in our choice of where to eat, or which brand of breakfast cereal we buy, and the way jobs and careers go we often find ourselves ploughing a very similar furrow. I’m all for specialisation – that’s how you get to be the…
Sparked by a comment on twitter recently by Justin Levy, co-owner of a restaurant and social media proponent. I own a restaurant and we’re doing great due to SM. But I see a lot of restaurants closing which sucks to see happen he was replying to this question by Dave Ferrick: Last few local restaurants…
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