Do you listen to what your customers are saying about you and their experiences with your products—good, bad, and ugly? It used to be that listening to your customers was an expensive and clunky process (e.g. focus groups, surveys, etc.), but now, with social media, you have an unprecedented look into the hearts and minds […]

When you hear “Marketing automation”do those two words fill your head with visions of annoying emails sent to you over and over again by marketers desperately trying to push a product but without the slightest clue about how to target their pitches?  Phil Harrell, vice president of enterprise sales at Hubspot, gave a fascinating presentation […]

One of the secrets that PR can teach marketers is that Marketing and PR really are not that different from each other.  Where they do differ, they can complement each other—yet historically speaking, these two disciplines don’t often get along with each other. The relationship within organizations between their marketing and PR departments (where they have […]

Marketing 101 says that customers who buy from you follow a journey of five phases that culminates in a visit (or visits!) to your cash register. The five phases (awareness, engagement, purchase, loyalty, and advocacy) are not new. What has changed however, are the stops your customers make in each of the phases.  You are […]

Recently, I got an invitation to a friend’s wedding and on the envelope was a stamp with a photo of the lovely couple. Time was when you had to be famous and dead for ten years before you made it onto a stamp, but now thanks to Stamps.com a service of the US Postal Service, […]

Remember when the internet was new and people were amazed by the fact that they could do email and shop online while sitting at home in their underwear? Fast forward to today, and that amazement has become an expectation. People have become omnichannel shoppers and they expect full access to products and services at any […]

This week we’re featuring guest blogger, Mary Aviles from Bauman Research & Consulting (www.baumanresearch.com). Today, we are discussing two sides of the same coin: Long-tail Search, a marketer’s secret weapon. BRC’s take is as it relates to secondary research for competitive landscape development. I’ll be discussing its implications on search engine optimization and keyword purchases.] […]

Brand Language Examples: What do Google and Disney have in common?   Ok, before we get to that, let’s play a quick game—I’ll say a word and you say the brand that pops into your mind: Magic kingdom… do it… 15 percent… overnight. Were the brands you thought of Disney, Nike, Geico, and FedEx? These […]

What’s on your marketing to-do list this year? According to a presentation Sheryl Pattek, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, gave at a meeting of the NJ chapter of MENG (Marketing Executives Networking Group) last month, these are the key priorities and initiatives that are—or should be—on every CMO’s 2013 to-do list. 1. Mapping […]

Have you heard the term “newsjacking” being bandied about lately but aren’t quite sure what it is, or if you should be doing it? Newsjacking is a new name for an old PR trick for getting great media coverage for free by injecting your brand or product into a breaking news story. I thought I […]

Watching the Superbowl is an American tradition and this year’s game between the 49ers and the Ravens was no different. What was different about this year’s Big Game, however, was the surprise power outage, which left about half the Superdome in the dark for a half hour. During the blackout, the social media team for […]

Your Social Media Strategy For marketers, social media represents a big change. And as in any big change, reactions tend to be a bit bipolar: I see some of my fellow marketers digging in their heels, clinging tightly to traditional strategies and hoping that the social media frenzy will die down. Others have become evangelists, […]