OK, here’s a straight copy-paste post, but this is so spot on I think it’s fine and Seth agrees. The one’s emphasized in bold are my favorites:
by Seth GodinThree years ago, I published this list, which was very much a riff, not a carefully planned manifesto. It has held up pretty well. Feel free to reprint or otherwise use, as long as you include a credit line. I’ve added a few at the bottom…
What Every Good Marketer Knows:
* Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
* Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
* Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
* Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.
* Marketing begins before the product is created.
* Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
* Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing, though, that’s efficiency.
* Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
* Products that are remarkable get talked about.
* Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
* You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
* If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.
* People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
* You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
* What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
* Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
* Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
* People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
* Good marketers tell a story.
* People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
* Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
* Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
* Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
* A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
* Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world.
* Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.
* Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.
* Good marketers measure.
* Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
* One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.* In the googleworld, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.
* Most marketers create good enough and then quit. Greatest beats good enough every time.
* There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.
* Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.
* You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long.
* You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support and you market every time you send a memo.
* Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.Obviously, knowing what to do is very, very different than actually doing it.
I have only one thing to add: Follow this!
Sphere: Related ContentJEB @ May 12, 2008
Social Media, Web/Tech, Web2.0
according to this presentation by Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker, reported in Tech Crunch
Here are some more figures that show the rapid growth rates of he major social sites:
* YouTube + Facebook page views > Google or Yahoo page views (and may be bigger than both combined)
* 6/10 top internet sites are social (youtube, live.com, facebook, hi5, wikipedia, orkut); none were on the list in 2005
* YouTube has 258 million users, 50% visit weekly or more
* >50% of Facebook users log in daily, 95% of Facebook users have used at least one third party application
* Skype revenue is $1.67/user/year, up 9% Y/Y
* 14 million photos uploaded daily on Facebook
* Google + Yahoo = 61% of U.S. Online Ad Revenue
* Google: $4.4b ad revenue in Q4, paid out $1.4 billion to partners
* Yahoo: $1.6 billion in ad revenue in Q4, paid out $429 million to partners
The impact this has on overall media consumption, social interaction on the web as well as consumer buying behavior seems evident and another clear indicator how important it is for organizations in any industry to pay attention to what is being said about them on these sites. The challenge is to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, break through the clutter to get to the essential stuff impacting their business.
Sphere: Related ContentJEB @ April 30, 2008
Marketing, Social Media, Travel
Looks like an attempt to capitalize on the expanding social media scene that might have led to a decline in traffic to their Concierge.com main site. The two blogs will also give them more media inventory to sell as the article mentions. It’s another move of main stream media in the direction of the social web where the conversation is taking place.
Sphere: Related ContentJEB @ April 24, 2008
is my alternative title for this latest effort by major companies to get their message noticed in a marketplace that is increasingly tone deaf to their traditional one-way marketing speak. To counter that trend PR Giant Edelman Ventures Into Branded Content as reported in Advertising Age - Madison+Vine. It remains to be seen how effective this type of “enhanced” user-generated content will be and how many aspiring producers will participate to sell more burgers to their peers.
Interesting to note, is the participation of Expedia in this initiative. My question here is: Why not enter into a direct dialog with their thousands of customers and TripAdvisor users to provide them with content that they are most likely already posting on the web instead of going the “managed” route by working with their PR company? Looks to me like some kind of an American Idol inspired contest to sponsor consumer produced content rather than having it delivered by ad agencies. Will people buy it? Remains to be seen.
Sphere: Related ContentJEB @ April 24, 2008
I doubt it, after analyzing the results of the study Consumers Use Social Media to Vent about Customer Service reported in MarketingVOX. Key comment:
“These most savvy and sought-after consumers will not support companies with poor customer care reputations, and they will talk about all of this openly with others via multiple online vehicles. This research should serve as a wake-up call to companies: listen, respond, and improve.”
What’s also important is the following:
Search engines are the most valuable online tools for this research. Those rated of no value include micro-blogging sites like Twitter or Pownce (39%), YouTube (27%) and social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace (22%).
Reputations are made at any customer touch-point with your brand but are amplified exponentially online with the tools available to consumers today and the behavior they clearly exhibit. Ignore them at your own peril!
Sphere: Related ContentJEB @ April 24, 2008
is the question asked in this eMarketer article, which also says that UGC is no longer a fad, with 77 million creators in 2007 growing to 108 million in 2012 and the consumers of this content from 94.1 million to 130.1 million. Beyond the advertising revenue question, what these numbers represent is a huge audience of consumers of products and services across all industries engaged in a conversation about these products and services. It doesn’t take too much imagination to understand the power and influence over purchasing decisions this will have. It also shows how challenging it will be for marketers to work successfully in this type of marketplace.
Technorati Tags: eMarketer, UGC
Sphere: Related ContentJEB @ April 21, 2008
can be found in this Marketing to Bloggers piece on eMarketer. Especially useful is this part from Peter Rojas
* Most important, there must be a fit between the product and the subject of the blog.
* Avoid shooting e-mails and press releases to bloggers. It is more effective to become familiar with a blog and get to know the writer behind it.
* Give a product to a blogger as an exclusive and allow the blogger time to work with it.
* Provide bloggers with links to more information, such as product images and updated information.
the old PR agency approach won’t work, although many haven’t realized this yet, judging from the number of emails I get telling me about some travel related news that might be interesting for the traveling public but not industry professionals who are the audience I’m trying to reach.
Interesting statistic included in the story: 49% of “market leaders” are using social networking and blogs vs. 31% and 21% respectively for “non-leaders”. Just shows that some get it and some don’t!
Sphere: Related ContentJEB @ April 21, 2008
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