Category Archives: Articles

Here's an easy question – if you send an email to a corporation do you expect a response?  I do.  In 2002 86% of the corporations on my database replied to my email and gave me an answer (not the same).  This year it's 31%, actually 34% for the Financial Times' Most Respected Companies, Fortune's Most Admired Companies and The Reputation Institute's Most Respected Companies.  It was 20% for Business Insider's Most Hated Companies.

Here's the bad news, and the good news….

I am a believer in social media, in its potential to create conversations, which create happier customers that stay longer, buy more and bring all their friends.

I am also a realist, and I know that social media will not achieve its potential unless we embrace three basic truths, which are detailed in the attached article, which I hope is interesting and informative.

Webinars serve a dual purpose:  to educate or impart specific value; to further the customer
conversation, and, as a by-product, generate high-quality leads.  To achieve all this, we’ve got to generate high-quality registrants, convert as many as possible to attendees and identify high
priority leads for sales – follow-up.  Here’s how to do it in 7 steps (without a lot of romance).

To dramatically increase your marketing results and ROI, I suggest a change of scenery:  move from an open market to a closed market.  The climate is very different.

I don’t get it, but there seems to be a line of thinking that customer care is just about the call center. You know,
the trolls who sit under the bridge – the lowest paid employees who spend the most time with customers. I think that everyone from the cafeteria to the C-suite has got a lot to learn from these trolls. Especially if corporate goals involve powerful differentiation, and maximizing long term profitability.

I don’t get it, but there seems to be a line of thinking that customer care is just about the call center. You know, the trolls who sit under the bridge – the lowest paid employees who spend the most time with customers.

I think that everyone from the cafeteria to the C-suite has got a lot to learn from these trolls. Especially if corporate goals involve powerful differentiation, and maximizing long term profitability.

In real-life i am a customer, and as a customer I’d like to suggest a strategy that will have you prospering in these crazy times while everyone else is scrambling.  This strategy offers stability, greater profitability and increased referrals.

The tectonic plates of the marketplace are slowly and inexorably altering the landscape. Customers’ sense of
individuality, demand for privacy and technological empowerment are the driving forces, and they are unstoppable. It’s time to build a house where the new coastline will be.

The poster child for this change is the mobile phone.

I hold one and I feel the ground shaking – or is that the vibrate mode? No one, but no one, leaves home without
it. For the 18 to 34 age group, the mobile device is becoming a remote control for their lives – a tool
that links the physical and digital worlds, giving each of them the power to turn on or off their own private
network of information. They have created “the network of me.”

I am convinced the thing we understand least about mobile marketing is the individual actually holding the cell phone in his hand. I’m equally convinced we need this knowledge if we’re going to make mobile work, just like the rest of the world has.

Mobile is the most personal medium ever invented, giving each of us the ability to instantly decide what we want (or
don’t want) on our device. So, what does it take to get on this network of me?