With the economy in turmoil, retailers are working harder to get business from consumers. They’re making it easier to shop and do research online. And they’re stepping up customer service in stores. (read full article)
Despite how quickly social networking is becoming integrated in enterprises, it still isn’t scaling to meet the most complex problems faced today. The well-known success stories of customer service being made more accountable and responsive are emanating out of how ComCastCares, JetBlue, SouthwestAir and other companies are using Twitter as a means to better solve customer problems. (read full article)
One of the things that a call center organization can do to be more efficient is to integrate the customer relationship management and interactive voice response systems. This can result in optimized prospecting, lead capturing and customer support. (read full article)
Workforce management is one area within the contact center industry that often promises great results but can fail to deliver upon implementation. This gap between perceived expectations and reality is not created as a result of inferior products, but rather a lack of understanding within the contact center as how to fit the workforce management solution to the specific needs of the center. (read full article)
Industry-wide, the protected mail date, long a staple of the charitable list marketplace, is now in flux. And, the process of clearing list usage months in advance of a mail date is starting to be relaxed throughout the industry. The weak economy, pressure for increased revenue and moving to a donor-centric strategy are responsible for changes in how charities market donor files and how they handle list exchanges. (read full article)
Search engines have become more important in the B2B space, and poor visibility may be costing you money. It doesn’t take much for a company to erect a Web site, load it with content and attract some traffic. Nowadays, what distinguishes a top-flight Web site from the rest is how consistently it generates qualified leads to help grow the business. (read full article)
The source of sustainable competitive advantage in the 21st century is such a new idea that the term has not yet entered Webster’s or Oxford’s. You will not find “outbehave” in the dictionary — not yet, anyway. What you will find, just below a definition of the prefix “out” [“in a manner that exceeds or surpasses and sometimes overpowers or defeats”], are dozens of words that describe ingrained habits of how we think and act. (read full article)
There are lots of good examples of integrated marketing campaigns. These typically isolated campaigns leverage multiple tactical elements across channels. I’m not aware of any company that’s truly integrated in its approach to marketing. Why? Well, truly integrated marketing is hard, darn it. (read full article)
Even before the U.S. economic outlook darkened as the gravity of the financial crisis came into focus, companies started to get more aggressive in their attempts to hold onto old customers and attract new ones. Telephone companies’ offers for two months of free service and reduced rates, discounted gym membership renewals and generous gift cards from high-end department stores all underscore a pervasive fear on Main Street. (read full article)
How important is the offer in B-to-B marketing? Answer: Very. I have seen numerous tests in which a simple change of offer has increased the response rate by 25 percent to 900 percent-dramatically improving return on marketing dollars. The best of these B-to-B offers share six common characteristics, and to lift your response rates, your offers should, too. (read full article)
When was the last time you took your brand on a holiday? A real, live "getaway from it all" pause for refreshment and renewal? I don't mean the annual rah-rah sales meeting or the obligatory management off-site. I mean a true time-out. (read full article)
Ask Dan McDonald about millennials—those elusive 12- to 26-year-olds raised among text messages and Twitter—and he'll chuckle emphatically. "They're the perfect customers," says McDonald, 51, who owns seven Jersey Mike's sandwich shop franchises in Nashville. "They travel in packs, they eat like fiends, and they have tons of disposable income." Indeed, America's 80 million millennials (and their folks) shell out roughly $200 billion annually, according to Chicago-based investment firm William Blair & Co.. Yet they're tough to reach through traditional marketing: Despite the prominence of Jersey Mike's billboards, flyers, radio spots, and newspaper ads, McDonald says he struggles to attract teens and 20-somethings. (read full article)
What does it take to be a marketing expert? If expertise is all about familiarity, then just about everybody in America qualifies: We're all so inundated with marketing images that it's only natural that we all figure we understand the language, the rules, the way it's done. This idea has lately been taken to its logical extreme: Why not cut out the middleman and just let target customers make their own ads? (read full article)
It's way too easy to slide into the sand trap of Internet marketing and get stuck there with little or no results. I don't profess to be an online marketing guru, but I am learning from some of the more clever folks out there and putting their suggestions to use in my company's marketing endeavors. It's a trial-and-error process, but here are five strategies that have provided consistent results for me. (read full article)
It's not an offer you see every day: "Buy a House, Get a Free Electric Car." But that's exactly why Chris Schneider, owner of Honda Motorwerks, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, decided to use such an attention-grabbing sales tactic. (read full article)
Kathleen Gilroy, cofounder of Swift Media Networks in Boston, eats, lives and breathes Web 2.0. Not only is her latest business venture focused on Web 2.0 services for conferences, but she's also used just about every Web-based tool there is to run her own various startups. With five full-time staff members, she has become a well-seasoned user of blogs, wikis, collaboration tools and just about any other free or low-cost service she can leverage. (read full article)
Easter may be long gone, but the Jelly Belly Candy Company is still producing jelly beans, 300,000 pounds a day. An anomaly in the stagnant $29.1 billion candy industry, the company, based in Fairfield, Calif., continues to grow and increase market share, with sales up 25 percent since 2006. Jelly Belly’s success, industry experts say, is because of wider availability and global expansion. And, according to candy connoisseurs, it just makes a better bean. (read full article)
Jake Nickell stepped to the front of a small classroom on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and looked around. (read full article)
You’ve got a Web site, a blog, and maybe even an RSS feed. Think you’re done with Web 2.0? (read full article)
A survey released today from Microsoft Live Small Business, finds that 61% of female respondents who were small-business owners say they do no online marketing, and nearly 40% say they don’t have a Web site.(read full article)
Andrew Milligan was stuck. He had spent $60,000 on trade-show exhibitions and magazine advertising for the bean-bag chairs made by his company, Los Angeles-based Sumo Lounge International, and sales were still languishing at a couple of bean bags a day. (read full article)
Even as small and midsize companies struggle with Web 2.0, it's time to look ahead at the even newer opportunities and challenges posed by Web 3.0 and the next generation of Web tools and techniques. (read full article)
After Megan Driscoll co-founded PharmaLogics Recruiting, she occasionally rewarded salespeople with $100 bonuses or gift cards. "It never seemed to motivate anybody," she says. In 2006, the nine-person Braintree, Massachusetts, recruiting firm began a new program: Every six months, the top salesperson gets a $25,000 all-expenses-paid week's vacation for six at a luxury villa in Costa Rica. "It was very well-received," says Driscoll, 32. "We've seen people dramatically change the way they work because they want to win this." (read full article)
Has your company's marketing hit the doldrums, with little change from year to year and dwindling responses from customers? Businesses age and grow just like we do, and entrepreneurs often get stuck in marketing ruts. It's easy to be more focused on what didn't work a few years ago than what will work six months from now, and that can lead to marketing paralysis. (read full article)
Small-business owners have monkeyed around with mass e-mail campaigns for years. (read full article)
The desire to beat the competition can lead a company astray--or drive it to even greater heights. Here's how to avoid the former and achieve the latter. (read full article)
Frontline Selling of Oakland, New Jersey, is a consulting firm that trains clients' sales teams to generate and convert sales leads. (read full article)
Trade shows can be a tremendously powerful marketing tool or a tremendous drain on your time and resources. (read full article)
Referral networking is more about farming than hunting. An overemphasis on running from one networking event to another looking for new relationships is a waste of time, money and energy that you should be using to develop the relationships you've already started. (read full article)
Some years ago, I overheard a debate between two friends about the name of a startup business. "It's a good name," said one friend to the other, "but I'm not sure it's the best name." (read full article)
When Devon Rifkin began scouring the globe for a low-cost but reliable producer of hangers for his fast-growing firm, The Great American Hanger Company, he began his search without stepping outside the comfort of his air-conditioned Miami office. (read full article)
Here's the deal. You send me $5 and your bank account details, and I will make you a millionaire within two weeks. (read full article)
By the time Bill Penzey left college, he had spent 13 years working at his parents' spice shop in Milwaukee. It seemed natural that he would take over the family business. Instead, he launched a spice company of his own (read full article)
During the glory days of the dot-com boom, Chip Conley built Joie de Vivre, a chain of 17 boutique hotels in the Bay Area. (read full article)
Humble in design and crude in construction, the pallet is more vital than ever to local and global commerce. Nearly everything rides into the economy on one: sacks of mail, gallons of paint, kegs of beer. (read full article)
Most people consider cutting prices to be a powerful way to attract new customers. But it's not always so simple. (read full article)
You know you need a pitch, a short explanation about what your company does, that you can deliver in the length of an elevator ride you share with a potential prospect. (read full article)