The time is now

Recently I saw a new television show on HBO called “The Shop,” which is about a barber shop in the African American community that Lebron James hosts, and has interesting conversations with other African American celebrities. In African American communities, the barber shop is where people go to have discussions about politics, the economy, family dynamics, who makes the best macaroni and cheese and more. It’s a little known fact in that community that when you walk into “The Shop,” you are likely to be

How Branding Your Company Can Make You or Break You

You may have heard that it’s important to keep your brand in tact when referring to your business. Well, that is true.  You may have also heard that in this economy one wrong move…and your done.

While all of this is very true (and a little scary), there is help! You have to think about your brand and how to keep it consistent over many different forms of media without causing alarm on any of those forums. Make a decision early on as to who you want to be known for and how you can

Can B2B Marketers learn something from Hip Hop Musicians? YES!

Can marketers learn from the techniques that hip hop artists use? I say the answer is emphatically, YES! No, I am not saying that you should start using the technique of using cuss words, don’t be that closed minded, keep reading and see what I am talking about. Take the rapper Drake as my example. He’s got a catchy song called “Over,” which has been on the airwaves for several months and has crossed over to mainstream radio. Why has it done so? Well check out what he’s done. Some of his techniques are similar to what we tell businesses to do on their website everyday! In the second verse, he makes mention of not one, but three

Taking a roll of the dice with social media for business

I have been off the scene for awhile as far as blogging goes, but that is a good thing for me, it means that I have been a busy bee. What I would like to do is share more life experiences with you as I have learned quite a bit about the corporate and private business regarding social media marketing. Have you ever wondered why a particular business isn’t on Facebook? How about Twitter? Well, over the last few months, I have been helping small businesses and a few large ones understand the value of social media and how it can improve their bottom line. The results have been very interesting to say the least.

Case Study #1

Small Business starting off. Wants to get brand recognition and thinks they can do it via email blasts in one of those “Free” services. (I know…this one drove me nuts).

When the president of this company asked me how I could help him with his email blasts, I asked him what he currently is doing. He had subscribed to a free service that allowed him to send email blasts, but only a few at a time. He wanted to know what I thought about paying a service to send his email blasts. First question I had for him was “What’s your website look like?” He had one, but it too was with one of the “Free Services” that offer template style websites. All of this is fine, but when you want to get the word out to the masses and appear to be a viable company, you have to

You’ve got mail, email that is..and there’s a video in it!

Think about this, you have a business and it needs to be marketed to a target audience. It’s quite difficult to explain the benefits and features of your product without sending a 25 page brochure in the mail or getting the prospect to have a 30 minute meeting with you. These things are hard to do in today’s world of limited time. However, everyone has an email account and the more data you can get to a person in a short time frame the better right?

Recession meets angry marketers

Have you ever had one of those days as a corporate marketer when you just wanted to ask, “When is enough enough?” And yes, I ask you this even in a recession. Is it enough when everyone tells you (or yells at you) that you’re not getting enough of your projects done? Is it enough when you can’t hire more help because the budgets have all been cut? How about when your counterpart

The nightmares that marketers face

I was chatting with a good friend of mine yesterday about how she always appreciates all of my marketing advice. She said I was one of the smartest people in the industry she knew. It was a nice compliment, however I told her sometimes I find myself  having a reoccurring nightmare about not being able to

How to get people to your website…and keep them there!

When it comes to a website, sometimes the hardes part is not how to get them there, but how to keep them on your site longer than 2 minutes. Well, for me anyway. So, I thought I would share some techniques that have worked for me.

First things first
Your content should be the first thing you consider during a redesign. You need to make sure that you CALL THINGS WHAT THEY ARE!! Don’t use words like “surrogated-liner impact sealer” when its really just a door knob. If a search engine is trying to help a potential customer of yours find a door knob…do you think they will know your

New ways to reach your customers with an old technique

Let me start this conversation like this…”Do you want your company to be all over the internet with bad press or good press?”  Testimonials are one of the most unique and fastest way to sell and brand your product.  They also happen to be an older method of marketing that is often forgotten. But ask yourself this one question,

Segmentation…even with Twitter and Facebook!

Segment your customers into different markets.  Once you have your customers segmented (this can be extremely detailed or not – depends on what type of life cycles you put toward the segments) you can begin targeting them in a more focused manner or you can broaden your marketing efforts.  Either way, you will understand more about your customers by the process of segmentation. Many of these techniques can be used in social media marketing as well. You can segment your followers on Twitter with the use of lists. You can segment your friends on Facebook through the use of lists through the customize tool in the privacy settings, not to mention all the different tools within Linked In, MySpace, etc. Understanding the importance of segments will allow you to better market! Keep reading to find out how.

Buying Behaviors

Past response is indicative of future response.  The most predictive piece of marketing is the