If you’ve found that your outbound marketing efforts are becoming less effective over time, then read on.

You may have noticed that your email blasts to purchased lists of unqualified prospects, cold-calls and direct mailers are no longer generating the quantity and quality of leads needed to fill the top of your sales funnel—leaving your sales team twiddling their thumbs.

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“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” This directive was identified by management consultant, educator and author Peter F. Drucker, whose writings contributed to the practical foundation of the modern business corporation.

Today, marketing plays an ever-increasing role in creating and growing businesses and brands by connecting organizations with current and potential purchasers along every step of the customer-experience journey. The role of marketers is to identify and research audiences, and then expertly reach and inform them about brands, products and services to facilitate the growth of business in today’s highly competitive environment. Marketers who embrace and combine the new tools of digital and social media with traditional and guerilla marketing will have greater success at connecting customers with their business.

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Whether your organization is large or small, it can benefit from greater awareness, more leads and higher sales by unleashing the power of your employees to serve as business-building brand ambassadors. Your employees have their own network of friends and potential referrals with whom they can share your brand and marketing messages and stories. Employees can also act as emissaries on social media and provide a layer of authenticity and internal credibility that builds trust with your prospective and current customers.Read full post...

As marketers, we’re pretty good at defining audience groups within our target market, identifying their pain points and developing messaging that addresses those points. On a good day, we even come up with unique messaging for each audience segment. But there’s one segment that most marketers forget, ignore or consider to be “not our problem”—existing customers.Read full post...

The 2016 Olympics are now history and for a short time this summer we were witness to amazing athletic feats demonstrating perseverance, competitiveness, national pride, raw talent, strength, agility, beauty and grace. Always a marketer, I will remember these Olympics for the athletic achievements of the individuals and teams that competed, and their stories, both on and off the field.

That brings me to the power of storytelling in marketing communications—stories appeal to people and are often more easily remembered than facts.Read full post...

If you asked anyone during the Opening Ceremonies of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games who would be the most talked about U.S. athlete come the end of the games, we can guarantee you no one would’ve answered Ryan Lochte.

Yet, even with Michael Phelps swimming his final Olympic event, winning more gold medals than any other athlete in history, the worldwide stage that is the Olympics belonged to Ryan Lochte. And as everyone knows, the curtain came down on that stage with international criticism, disgrace and controversy.
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Congratulations! You’ve completed an exhaustive RFP process and have a shiny new agency that you can’t wait to take for a spin. I’m sure you asked all the necessary questions, so there shouldn’t be any surprises now that it’s time to get down to solving all of your marketing communications challenges. The only question that matters is, “How do we get started?”
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During my undergraduate years as a geography and economics major, a professor shared his belief that everything in the world can be related to geography, because geography is the spatial science focused on where things are and why they occur there. Geographers seek to answer questions related to location, place, spatial pattern and interaction when studying a cultural or physical environment.Read full post...

Inspiration is defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary as “the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.”

Motivation, stimulation and encouragement are powerful forces for human beings. Together they lead to inspiration, which spurs creativity, inventiveness and brilliance. In my opinion, inspiration can motivate individuals to do things they would otherwise not think possible, to act in ways that allow them to achieve success, and to reach new heights far outside their comfort zone. I believe inspiration can come in many forms, but with a focus on creating something positive, inspiration always drives greatness.Read full post...

By David Brond and Samantha Oscar

Content marketing—the business process focused on creating and distributing relevant and valuable information to attract and engage target audiences with the objective of driving action—is one of today’s business-growth strategies getting a lot of attention from marketers in many organizations, including those in healthcare. And with good reason.Read full post...

June 1 marks the 119th anniversary of Mark Twain’s well-known quote: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

It seems an appropriate time then to report that any rumor suggesting that marketing is dead (and branding is meaningless) is also an exaggeration. Last month, SSRS, a full-service market and survey research firm (www.ssrs.com), completed 1,000 interviews with adults ages 18+ across the United States. The SSRS Omnibus Survey uses a dual-frame model (RDD and cell) with 60 percent of the sample cell-phone respondents. Two of the survey questions suggested by Aloysius Butler & Clark were related to consumers’ current opinions of marketing and branding.Read full post...

What is your personal brand?

“We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.”

—Tom Peters

The term “personal branding” was first coined in 1997 by leading business-management thinker Tom Peters. A personal brand is formed by an individual’s professional reputation and online image, as well as personal characteristics such as work style, community engagement and worldview. It incorporates all the skills, talents and areas of expertise an individual has cultivated over his or her lifetime.Read full post...

When co-branding makes sense the benefits can be high for all involved.

Let’s say you run a successful organization, and you’re asked to co-brand your business with another business. There are several good reasons for doing this, and a few things to consider to ensure you do it right.Read full post...

Have you updated your marketing plan lately?

I’m here to say, it’s 2016 and marketing has changed. A lot. Marketing is no longer centered around your product, but your customer.

Now’s a good time to update your marketing plan (you have a marketing plan, right?). Make it your road map for this year’s marketing initiatives. Use it to set goals that you can check on from time to time—and say, “Oh, yeah, lookin’ good” or “Oh, sh*t, we’re totally off.” If you Google “marketing plan template,” you’ll find a standard outline consisting of about ten things you could include—like a SWOT analysis, USP and pricing strategies.Read full post...

You have three approaches to choose from when deciding on media planning and buying for your organization: centralized, decentralized or a hybrid.

Reorganization. If your organization is going through it, you’re also going to have to deal with reorganizing a very important marketing function: media buying.

You have three approaches to choose from, each with merits and disadvantages: centralized, decentralized or a hybrid.Read full post...