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I know. It looks like my blog died. It has been alive in my brain, but my fingers just haven’t had the time to type out my thoughts.

I have been busy launching, managing and editing a major educational blog for professional photographers and illustrators called The Lab, by Agency Access.

I would like to talk a little bit about my experience conceiving, developing, editing and managing The Lab for Agency Access. Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago I attended an extremely popular Marketing Prof’s Seminar featuring the controversial and contradictory Seth Godin-”57 Ways to Connect with Customers”.There really were some opposing ideas in this presentation, but that is only because there are so many cases where different approaches work. Here are some of Seth’s tips (and counter-tips) that resonated with me: Read the rest of this entry »

Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian, Alicia Keys and Justin Timberlake, along with other celebs, recently publicized their “digital deaths” to bring attention to Keys’ charity “Keep a Child Alive” (see the Huffington Post story to see how it all worked out). What does this have to do with “Deciding the Right Mix in a New World of Exploding Choices”, a seminar put on last week by the Marketing Planning SIG of the AMA Toronto chapter? This seminar was billed as the opportunity to: “Learn how senior marketing professionals from Rogers Communications, Astral Media, Aeroplan, M Consulting, Shoutlet and United Jewish Appeal achieved marketing objectives by deciding on the right mix between the world of new connections and old connections.” This description led me to believe that the seminar would focus on how these companies have successfully blended traditional marketing with online and social media marketing. Yet all the panelists really wanted to talk about was social media marketing.

What were some of the key takeaways on the social media experiences of these organizations, and their advice? Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I participated in an AMA virtual conference “Cracking the Code: Advanced Social Media Strategies.”In my mind, I made several comparisons all day between this conference and the few that I have attended through Marketing Profs and thought I would share my thoughts. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently wrote this article for Willow Printing Group’s (www.willowprint.com) BeyondPrint newsletter, and this article is re-published with their permission.

Why You Need a Marketing Plan

In the simplest terms, your marketing plan is your guiding light for achieving your organization’s business goals and vision. Creating it will take you through the process of clearly defining what you do, whom you want to sell your products or services to, and how you will market your brand or company successfully. It will help your organization decide how to best allocate your marketing dollars to maximize return on investment.

The bottom line–your Marketing Plan is your action plan to help you strategically grow your business.

Start with Your Brand Strategy

In our recent BeyondPrint and WeConnect publications, we tackled the topics of research and targeting in our articles: Know Your Audience-Do Your Research, the Secrets of Successful Surveys and Segmenting + Targeting = Profits. These are all part of developing a Brand Strategy that will differentiate you from your competitors and allow you to communicate successfully with your target audience.

If you incorporate the tips and ideas we offered in these articles, you’ll already be ahead of the game. To develop your marketing plan you will build on this exercise and should draw from research you have already completed. Before creating your marketing plan, it is advisable to start with a clearly articulated Brand Strategy. If your company or brand doesn’t have a formalized Brand Strategy, the process outlined below will be helpful for you to follow:

Read the rest of this entry »

I attended another Marketing Prof’s Digital Marketing World Virtual Conference two weeks ago and wanted to pass on some feedback as a follow-up to my previous post.

I participated in 2 seminars this time around: “How to Make Your Website a Lead Generation Machine” By Bob DeStefano of SVM E-Business Solutions and “Driving Leads and Sales with Social Media Marketing” hosted by Kipp Bodnar from HubSpot and Kyle Flaherty from BreakingPoint Solutions.

I think Marketing Profs really needs to consider having different tracks at these sessions and/or identifying the content as Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced Experience. I am sure that more targeted content would lead to higher viewer satisfaction and engagement on an overall basis.

Both presentations contained good content, depending on your level of knowledge and experience. I still found it a little basic but I was happy to see that the presenters focused more on providing value than selling their product or service.

In this post I will provide a brief summary of some key takeaways from “How to Make Your Website a Lead Generation Machine”-Bob gave some good, general sound (although somewhat rudimentary) advice. His tips: Read the rest of this entry »

I have been extremely busy over the summer and have been on a “blog sabbatical” so to speak. Now I am inspired to write on a number of different topics and here is the first-my review of Marketing Profs Digital Marketing World Virtual Conference.

Last week I attended this virtual conference which was included as part of my Pro membership. The webcasting platform used was On24.

I found the virtual conference concept to be pretty cool, with so much more to offer than a traditional webcast. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently wrote this article for Willow Printing Group’s (www.willowprint.com) WeConnect e-newsletter, and this article is re-published with their permission.

There are so many complex academic theories on segmentation approaches and models that we could write an entire book on the topic that would literally make your head spin. However, we are going to keep this brief article focused on the essentials so we will take a look at the reasons and benefits for segmenting and targeting, different ways to segment, how to obtain the data that will help you define your segments and target audience, and a recommended segmentation process.

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently wrote this article for Willow Printing Group’s (www.willowprint.com) WeConnect e-newsletter, and this article is re-published with their permission.
Volume 1.1 of our new BeyondPrint magazine talked about the importance of incorporating research into your business and marketing process – confirming the best decisions are informed decisions.

Why Survey?
Companies who want to achieve the best return on the Marketing and Communication dollars they spend (and who doesn’t?), take time to ask customers for input as they strive to improve their Marketing and Communication efforts.

There are many reasons why you may want to do a survey with your clients, prospects, employees or even possibly other supply-chain partners. Before you begin creating your survey it is important to very clearly articulate what your survey objectives are.

Whether you are in Marketing, Sales, Human Resources, Product Development or Purchasing, your organization can benefit from the insights you gain from surveying. Read the rest of this entry »