Archive for July, 2010

July 28th, 2010

Why Your First Social Media Campaign May Have Failed.

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This excerpt is just a short sample of some of the content in “How to Make Money with Social Media,” by Jamie Turner and Dr. Reshma Shah. To download a free chapter, click Free Chapter. Or, better still, buy a copy right now on Amazon (affiliate link).

You were probably pretty fired-up when social media first started came along. It was an exciting new approach, there was a lot of buzz about it and everybody was eager to see if social media was going to be like paid search. You remember paid search — in the early years, it was so successful that it was the equivalent of printing money. Today, it’s a solid, viable medium, but in those early years, it was super hot.

And that’s what social media is today. Super hot. But somewhere along the way, there have been a lot of people who have stumbled. They’ve launched a campaign, sometimes with great fanfare, and failed miserably.

Our point is this – if you’re a company that sells paper or pet supplies or, God forbid, industrial widgets (apologies to the industrial widget makers out there), you’re going to have to reach out to the consumer and get them engaged with your social media campaign.

How can you do this? By creating a campaign that gives the consumer something of value that they don’t currently have. This can be give-aways and other special promotions that are relatively traditional. Or, it can be information that the visitor finds useful. Better still, it could be a tool that keeps the visitor coming back for more.

One of the best and smartest versions of these tools is what a company out of Boston called Hubspot has created. They realized that one of the best ways to create inbound traffic to their website was to create a tool people couldn’t do without. So they created an SEO analysis tool called WebsiteGrader and put it up on their website.

How to Make Money with Social Media is available at fine bookstores around the globe. Click the image above to order on Amazon.

What’s an SEO analysis tool? It’s a sophisticated program that analyzes how Google, Yahoo or Bing see your site. The real stroke of genius was that the folks at Hubspot decided to include WebsiteGrader on their website. By sharing their tool with other people, they created inbound traffic, which ultimately converts to customers.

“A great way to get more customers using social media is not just to engage, but educate,” says Hubspot Chief Technology Officer and Founder Dharmesh Shah.  “We believe in this passionately at HubSpot and it has worked miracles for us.  We’ve learned that more people you make smarter by educating them, the more leads and customers you get.”

How successful has Hubspot’s WebsiteGrader been? So far, it’s generated grades on more than 2 million URLs. So on more than 2 million occasions, potential customers for Hubspot have visited, engaged and interacted with one of the tools it has on their site. That kind of traffic is mind-boggling, especially if you’re a company with only a few hundred employees.

Check out MyStarbucksIdea.com or WebsiteGrader.com next time you’re at a computer. You’ll get a clear sense of what they’re doing to engage people – and keep them engaged – with their companies.

Which brings us back to one of the key things a lot of folks are asking themselves right now, “If social media is such a powerful tool, then how come my first campaign failed?”

It’s a great question. So we did an analysis of the most common mistakes people make when they run a social media campaign and came up with the list below. Take a spin through it and put a check by the ones that apply to you. Don’t be surprised if you have more than one checkmark – the idea is to figure out where you’re coming up short so you can focus on fixing the problem areas:

___ You didn’t measure the results of your campaign: Interestingly, this is an all-too-common problem. We’ll discuss ways you can measure the results of your next campaign in an upcoming chapter.

___ You didn’t set clear objectives: Some companies create a Facebook page or a YouTube channel before thinking through their objectives. Is it to build awareness? To drive traffic to a landing page on your site? To give people a channel to make comments and record their frustrations?

___ You thought social media was only about Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube: Of course, social media is about having many conversations across as many platforms as you can manage. The more opportunities you provide customers to engage with you, the more successful your campaign.

___ You didn’t know how to set up a landing page: One of basic models of social media success look like this: prospect à social media channel à landing page on website à new customer. If you don’t have a landing page on your website designed to convert prospects to customers, then you won’t be able to track your ROI. No ROI, no social media campaign. (Or, rather, no effective social media campaign.)

___ You didn’t re-market to customer prospects: Most prospects who visit your landing page won’t become customers. In fact, the vast majority won’t. But that doesn’t mean they’re never going to buy. It just means they weren’t going to buy at that time. Keep ‘em in your pipeline – you’ll get them someday, if you re-market to them.

___ You didn’t know how to turn a social media campaign into a sales and marketing campaign: Social media isn’t just about building awareness. It’s about turning prospects into customers. Don’t be shy about nudging prospects along the sales funnel. They expect it, to a certain degree.

___ You sat on the sidelines: True story – we were in contact with a creative director at a major advertising agency a while back who said, “this whole internet thing is just a flash in the pan and I can’t wait for it to blow over.” We’re serious. He said that. Our point? You don’t want to be that guy.

___ You downplayed the importance of social media: Some people don’t sit on the sidelines as much as they participate without passion. That’s almost as bad as sitting on the sidelines. You don’t want to be that guy, either.

___ You thought you could do social media in 10 minutes a day: Social media is a little like a marriage – you won’t have a successful marriage if you plan on spending just 10 minutes a day having a dialog with your spouse. The same holds true for a successful social media campaign.

___ You thought social media was like traditional marketing: There are a lot of similarities between social media and traditional media. But there are a lot of differences, too. Your job is to embrace those differences. Don’t be scared. Social media won’t hurt you.

We could go on and on about some of the ways your social media campaign might have failed in the past, but we won’t. Our job here is to show you ways to succeed with social media, not how to fail.

This excerpt is just a short sample of some of the content in “How to Make Money with Social Media,” by Jamie Turner and Dr. Reshma Shah. To download a free chapter, click Free Chapter. Or, better still, buy a copy right now on Amazon (affiliate link).

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July 28th, 2010

Jamie Turner Says Traditional TV Advertising is a Big Fat Waste of Money. Here’s Why He’s Wrong.

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By Scott Corbett, Founder, Cutup Media

I read Jamie Turner’s recent 60 Second Marketer post on television advertising being a “big, fat waste of money” with pleasure. We direct marketers love to look down our noses at silly, untrackable advertising techniques.

But then one of my paid search clients, a large, savvy commercial property management company, told me they were launching a cable television ad campaign. Since I knew they were inclined toward web-based direct marketing (demonstrating their wisdom and good sense), I was intrigued, and I asked them to explain their reasoning.

What they told me was surprising

First, a little background about my client’s campaign. For this project, an office suites building in Atlanta, their ideal customer is a successful small business owner looking for an affordable office suite with an upscale address. Their best prospects are often upgrading from a home-based office or are looking to attach a “prestige” address to their growing business.

Is traditional TV advertising a big, fat waste of money? No so fast, says marketing expert Scott Corbett

My work with the client is helping them reach prospects on the web, but they explained that they wanted to further capture mind-share and drive leads by reaching prospects using that “other screen” via highly targeted cable television ad spots. An account executive for the local cable TV media ad sales group created exactly the package of media buys they were looking for—and the entire campaign, including ad production, was much less expensive than I would have expected.  In fact, they told me that adding only a few new customers via this channel over a six-month period would result in positive ROI for the entire campaign.

Campaign Details

Specifically, my client wanted to reach local, home-based small business owners with ads that highlighted the unique advantages of their product (affordable, upscale office suites). With this demographic in mind, they first identified the most likely TV channels their prospects would likely watch (CNN, ESPN, and the Golf Channel, for example). Then, they picked specific time slots during the week for their ads to air (mornings, evenings and during the lunch hour). Finally (and this is what surprised me most) they were able to target viewers clustered primarily around the Buckhead-Midtown area of Atlanta using what is obviously voodoo magic where their ad only plays for viewers in specific zip codes.

(Don’t even ask me about the technology behind the cable television company’s ability to serve ads simultaneously to different television networks in different geographic locations because I can’t begin to imagine how that would work. But apparently it does.)

What surprised me most about my client’s approach was that he was able to apply the principle of message-to-market match to TV advertising in a way I hadn’t seen before. To use a hunting analogy, because my client knows his customer’s habits (where his customer “lives” and what he does throughout the day), he is able to “lay traps” for him in strategic locations. Doing this online was familiar territory, but effectively applying the principle to cable TV ads was news to me.

I agree with Jamie that traditional broadcast TV ads are terribly inefficient and costly, but this example showed me that there are exciting new possibilities available right now for grabbing a narrowly defined prospect’s attention with a highly targeted, relatively inexpensive cable TV network ad.

Plus, with the trend toward media convergence, it won’t be long before the web and TV channels start to merge, and then, clients like mine who have nailed how best to reach prospects via multiple channels will be several steps ahead of the competition.

So, this direct marketing snob, for one, will no longer lump all TV advertising into the category of being a “big, fat waste of money.” The new possibilities of demographic-, chrono-, and geo-targeted cable TV ads seem to represent a new territory somewhere between pure direct response TV ads (infomercials) and traditional (wasteful) broadcast advertising.

I’ll keep you posted on how the campaign turns out…

Scott Corbett is the founder of Cutup Media (cutupmedia.com <http://www.cutupmedia.com/> ), an Athens, GA-based marketing company that specializes in helping businesses drive leads and revenue via the web, social media, email and direct mail campaigns. Scott has helped universities, hospitals, online magazines, realtors, real estate developers, infopreneurs, retail businesses, and service companies build better brands, reach more prospects, and achieve bigger profits. Creative, highly effective SEM and SEO are house specialities. You can reach him at scott@cutupmedia.com.

CategoryDirect Marketing, Direct Response, DRTV | Comment6 Comments »

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July 27th, 2010

The Ten Most Common Keynote Speaker Mistakes

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A few years ago, a good friend of mine named Ken Robbins gave me a book by Roger Ailes, who was Ronald Regan’s communications adviser. (Ken runs Response Mine Interactive, a digital marketing agency.)

If you feel nervous giving a speech, imagine the audience naked. The truth is, it won't make you less nervous, but it will give you something to snicker about.

In the book, Mr. Ailes highlights the ten most common problems keynote speakers make when they give a speech. I found it very helpful, partly because the tips were relevant to all businesspeople and partly because I’m a regular keynote speaker for global corporations, events and trade shows.

With that in mind, here are the Ten Most Common Problems people confront when they give a speech or a presentation:

  1. Lack of initial rapport with listeners
  2. Stiffness or woodenness in use of body
  3. Presentation of material is intellectually-oriented; speaker forgets to involve the audience emotionally
  4. Speaker seems uncomfortable because of fear of failure
  5. Poor use of eye contact and facial expression
  6. Lack of humor
  7. Speech direction and intent unclear due to improper preparation
  8. Inability to use silence for impact
  9. Lack of energy, causing inappropriate pitch pattern, speech rate and volume
  10. Use of boring language and lack of interesting material

The solutions to these issues are pretty much self-evident, but here are some additional tips on how to overcome these problems the next time you’re giving a speech.

  • The first step: get to know the audience. That includes before the speech (the host can give you insights into the audience’s pain points), and during your initial 60 seconds (where you can ask the audience questions about who they are and what they hope to learn from you).
  • The second step: create a dialogue. Research indicates that people learn more when they’re engaged in a dialogue rather than a monologue. Given that, it’s your job to create a dialogue with the audience. Ask them questions, encourage them to interrupt, suggest that they write a web address down — do anything to get them to interact with you.
  • The third step: frame the speech before, during and after your talk. This is most famously communicated when you hear people say, “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, then give your speech, then tell them what you’ve just told them.” That statement is as true today as it was 50 years ago.
  • The fourth step: get them involved emotionally. Scientists know that people remember information better when there’s an emotional connection to the information. Your job as a speaker is to get people to laugh or to cry. You can get them to cry by telling a heartwarming story, or you can get them to laugh by showing them a funny, yet relevant YouTube video. No matter how you do it, get your audience to respond emotionally. If you don’t, you’ll be just like every other boring speaker.
  • Finally, use voice inflection to create drama in your presentation. Most presenters forget about the power of a whisper. Or the power of silence. Or … the … power … of … stacatto. All of these tricks can be used to add emotion to your presentation. (Insider’s tip: If you’re speaking from a podium, once or twice during your speech, bend down, get about an inch from the microphone, and lower your pitch to deliver a key sentence. Comedians use this trick all the time and it’s a great way to add impact to a key point.)

Those are just a few of the tips off the top of my head. If you’d like to see a 60-second video of snippets of one of my keynote speeches, then click the link. Sometimes, watching a short video can teach you more than any bullet point list can.

Jamie Turner is the Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine for BKV Digital and Direct Response. Download a free chapter from Jamie’s soon-to-be-published book by clicking “How to Make Money with Social Media.”

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July 26th, 2010

Was David Ogilvy the First Mad Man?

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A few days ago, a good friend of mine named Alison Rinner directed my attention to a Wall Street Journal article entitled “What Real ‘Mad Men’ Did, and Didn’t Do.” It was a recap of what really happened on Madison Avenue during the 1950s and 1960s. (The bottom line — most of what is portrayed in the TV series Mad Men really did happen.)

The article in the Wall Street Journal reminded me of a post I wrote a few months ago about David Ogilvy, the founder of Ogilvy & Mather. Most people know David as a brilliant advertising man. But what they don’t know is that he was also a brilliant manager of people.

Mad Men

Was David Ogilvy the first Mad Man? Here's a story about the legendary advertising guru that's worth passing along.

Here’s the post I wrote several months ago. If you’re interested in finding out what made David such a brilliant manager of people, read on:

“I’m a very lucky guy. When I was growing up, my father worked side-by-side with one of the greatest marketing minds of the 20th century.

I’m talking about David Ogilvy. If you don’t already know about him through Ogilvy & Mather, then you might have read about him in one of your marketing textbooks or in his profile in the book Forbes: The Greatest Business Stories of All Time.

I was fortunate to have been in the presence of Mr. Ogilvy many times and had a number of fascinating conversations with him before he passed away. (I recall one conversation where he asked me, “Am I boring you?” Imagine!)

The most riveting story I know about David took place after he had retired to Touffou, his chateau in France. It’s such an important story and provides such excellent insight into Mr. Ogilvy that I wanted to share it with the readers of the 60 Second Marketer so that it might be etched in a 21st Century version of stone.

By the time David retired to Touffou, he had accomplished a great deal. Despite having started Ogilvy & Mather later in his life (he was nearly 40 when he founded the company), he was able to grow it into a worldwide powerhouse in less than a decade.

The agency was such a force that for seven years during the 1960s, Ogilvy & Mather never lost a new business pitch. Seven years without losing a pitch — that’s unheard of.

By the 1980s, Mr. Ogilvy was working primarily out of his chateau. He would come to New York City for important meetings with clients as well as for Ogilvy & Mather Board meetings. He still had the power to hire and fire, but the Chairmanship had been turned over to Jock Elliott, another brilliant member of the Ogilvy & Mather team.

As the story goes, prior to one important board meeting, a high-ranking member of the Ogilvy & Mather Board of Directors had decided to oust Mr. Elliott from his Chairmanship. (This could be done if a majority of board members voted in favor of a new Chairman.)

Apparently, this person had secretly gone around to several other members of the board to line up votes. He had done this behind the backs of both Mr. Ogilvy and Mr. Elliott.

Now, if you hang around corporate America long enough, you’ll find that this kind of trickery happens more often than we’d like to admit. But it was the kind of thing that Mr. Ogilvy hated because it wasn’t open and honest. He believed that office politics were best left for other companies, not Ogilvy & Mather.

As the story goes, the person who had secretly lined up the votes approached Mr. Ogilvy shortly before the board meeting to tell him what he had done. “David,” he allegedly said, “I’ve got enough votes to oust Jock Elliott from the Board of Directors.” If all went as planned, this person would effectively perform a board coup when the meeting started in a few hours.

But Mr. Ogilvy hated office politics. And he certainly wasn’t about to let them infect his esteemed agency.

After David listened to this person’s plans, he paused, leaned forward and said one thing to him. “You may have enough votes to become the Chairman of the Board, but you no longer have a job. You’re fired.”

In 21 words, David Ogilvy said more about himself and about the company he founded than an encyclopedia full of articles ever could.

“You may have enough votes to become Chairman of the Board, but you no longer have a job. You’re fired.”

I’m sharing this story because it was shared with me by my father, Mike Turner, who not only worked closely with Mr. Ogilvy, but was also a good friend of his. My intent is not to spread gossipy stories, but to share it as an illustration of how a great man did a great thing at a great company.

“You may have enough votes to become Chairman of the Board, but you no longer have a job. You’re fired.”

As I’ve gone through my career, I’ve kept track of the great business stories that have taught me something important about about life. There are some stories that are so powerful and have such clarity that they should live on forever — in the hopes that they’ll teach a younger generation how to lead a life of decency and integrity.

This is one of those stories. Please pass it on.”

Jamie Turner has spent more than 25 years helping companies like AT&T, The Coca-Cola Company, CNN, Equifax and Cartoon Network grow their sales and revenue with innovative marketing programs. He is the Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer, a free resource brought to you by BKV Digital and Direct Response. Jamie’s book, “How to Make Money with Social Media” will be published by the Financial Times Press this October.

CategoryAdvertising, Madison Avenue | CommentNo Comments »

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July 22nd, 2010

How Coca-Cola and Definition 6 Brought Happiness to the World

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I have some friends who work at Definition 6, an interactive agency that creates campaigns for a number of well-known brands, one of which is The Coca-Cola Company.

In previous blog posts, I mentioned how The Coca-Cola Company has gotten its Marketing Mojo back after several years of less-than-stellar work during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Much of the new work was created by Wieden & Kennedy, but a more recent online campaign was developed by the folks at Definition 6.

Check out this spot that’s now making its way around the world on YouTube. It’s a flawless execution of Coke’s brilliant, new “Happiness” strategy.

Great work, Definition 6. Bravo.

CategoryCoca-Cola, Viral Video | CommentNo Comments »

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July 22nd, 2010

13 LinkedIn Applications You Can Use to Become a LinkedIn Rock Star

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At this week’s Integrated Marketing Summit in Denver, Colorado, I had the opportunity to sit down with Mike O’Neil and Lori Ruff, the authors of “Rock the World with Your Online Presence.” Both Mike and Lori speak and travel relentlessly teaching others how to supercharge their online presence.

I had the opportunity to read through their book on my flight back from Denver and came across a chapter that outlined some of the applications LinkedIn has made available on their platform. If you’re interested in supercharging your LinkedIn profile, you’ll want to incorporate some of these applications into your individual profiles or into any of the groups you manage.

Here are 13 LinkedIn applications you should know about, as outlined in “Rock the World with Your Online Presence.”

LinkedIn Events: If you find yourself involved with a lot of events, LinkedIn events is for you. It gives you the option to promote or advertise events to other LinkedIn users. “The product is still in development,” say Mike and Lori in their book. “But you should learn to use it now, so that as upgrades are made, you’ll be able to incorporate them into your regular routine more easily.”

SlideShare: This is one of the more popular applications that LinkedIn provides. If you haven’t checked out SlideShare, but sure to take a spin through the site. If you’re trying to position yourself as a though leader, you’ll want to upload your presentations to SlideShare so that people can see your thinking and incorporate your data into their own work (giving you credit where it’s due, of course). SlideShare also has a plug-in for Facebook.

Google Presentation: This is similar to SlideShare, Box and Huddle. According to Mike and Lori, “this application does not have the awesome Google power one might expect. However, there is one thing that it does have above and beyond all the rest: You can actually create a presentation in your LinkedIn account and insert video within it.”

Tripit: This application is designed mostly for business travelers. It lets you enter your travel schedule with a great level of detail (which requires you to visit the TripIt site directly). With this application, you can add connections and share travel information with them. This is really valuable when you want to keep abreast of the itineraries of business associates, or when you want to make plans to meet some of the connections you’ve made on LinkedIn as you travel to other cities.

Company BUZZ: This is a tool that lets you see what other people are saying about you, your company or your brand online. It grabs the information from the Twitter world and plunks it right down for you to check it out. In some ways, it’s similar to Google Alerts or TweetDeck.

Box.Net: You can use this application to share and collaborate on documents or PDFs. If you have a white paper, a brochure or some other document that you want to share, people can easily click on the document and download it right from within your LinkedIn profile or account.

Huddle Workspaces: This is an application that’s highly collaborative, just like Box.Net. They provide 1GB of space in the free package, which is more than enough room for most visitors. It also allows online editing of files, so you don’t have to have the standard word processing or spreadsheet applications on your computer.

WordPress: This is the world’s #1 blogging platform. If you have a WordPress blog and you’d like to incorporate it into your LInkedIn account, you can do so using this application. I use this application so that the 60 Second Marketer blog shows up on my personal LinkedIn page.

BlogLink Powered by TypePad: WordPress may the the world’s #1 platform, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other platforms, too. BlogLink supports TypePad, Moveable Type, Vox, Blogger, LiveJournal and many more.

ReadingLIst by Amazon: This is one of the more popular applications on LinkedIn. You can use it to put lists of books you’re reading (or simply recommending) to others. You can use it to promote business books that would be relevant to your business connections. Or you can use it to promote non-business books you’re reading, which helps give people a sense of who you are outside of the business world.

LinkedIn Polls: This can be a fun tool you can use to find out what people in your industry are thinking about and concerned about.  When people come to your profile and answer the poll question, they can see the results of the poll. “The poll can stay up as long as you like,” say Mike and Lori, “although it’s good housekeeping to change it every couple of months at the least.”

Tweets: Are you interested in including your Tweets in your LinkedIn profile? Then Tweets is for you. The interface is pretty straightforward, providing a snapshot of the Tweets of our followers or the Tweets of your main Twitter account. From both of these tabs, you can update your Twitter status.

SAP Community Bio: Huh? What’s this doing in here? It seems as though it’s an application that belongs on the island of misfit toys. That’s not a slam against SAP, which provides some amazing enterprise solution software. It’s just that this application — which caters to SAP developers, analysts, consultants and administrators — would appeal to a very narrow audience, unlike the other applications.

That sums up the 13 LinkedIn applications you can use to become a LinkedIn rock star. If you’re interested in taking a deep dive into LinkedIn, be sure to buy Mike and Lori’s book, “Rock the World with Your Online Presence.”

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer, the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response. Click here to download a free chapter from Jamie’s book “How to Make Money with Social Media” which will be published by the Financial Times Press this fall.

CategoryLinkedIn, Social Media | Comment9 Comments »

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July 20th, 2010

Four Free Social Media Monitoring Tools You Can Use Immediately

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I’ve spent today having a great time at the Integrated Marketing Summit in Denver. There have been several terrific speakers, one of whom was Chris Kovac of Nicholson Kovac in Kansas City.

Chris conducted a session at the IMS event that discussed some of the best practices for social media marketing including social monitoring, blog development, social news releases, Facebook/Twitter development, multimedia and more. He also discussed how to integrate social media into traditional marketing communications strategies and tactics.

I was impressed with what Chris had to say, so after his presentation, I asked him to recap some of the free social media monitoring tools you can use to track and analyze what’s going on in the social media-sphere. Chris discussed several tools in the short, 60-second video embedded into this blog post.

If you’re interested in finding out what the top 4 free social media monitoring tools are, then grab a pen and watch this 60-second video. And let us know your favorite social media monitoring tools in the comments section below!

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer, the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response. Click the link to download a free chapter from Jamie’s upcoming book, “How to Make Money with Social Media.”

CategorySocial Media | Comment14 Comments »

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July 20th, 2010

How Colgate Toothpaste, Valvoline, A-1 Steaksauce and Pepsi Grew Sales Without Spending a Dime of Their Marketing Budget

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If you’re like most marketing directors, you’re probably asking yourself, “How can I grow my sales and revenue without spending an arm and a leg on a new, expensive marketing program?”

Well, the good news is that companies like Colgate, Valvoline, A-1 Steaksauce and Pepsi have, in some cases, grown their revenues by simply putting their thinking caps on.

Pepsi marketing

You don't need a big marketing budget to grow your sales and revenues. Sometimes, all you need are a few good ideas.

What follows are some anecdotal case studies I’ve heard over the years. They illustrate that it’s entirely possible to grow sales and revenue without spending a dime.

(Please note: These are stories I’ve heard at conferences and events. I haven’t been able to independently verify them. Despite that, they illustrate a valuable point — that you don’t always need money to grow your sales and revenue. Sometimes, you just need a brain.)

Here are some new and innovative ways some of the Fortune 500 have grown sales just by being innovative and inventive:

Colgate Toothpaste did what all good brands do and analyzed the needs of their target market. They realized that even though dentists encourage us to brush three times a day, most people only brush twice a day. Based on that, they re-positioned their toothpaste as “The toothpaste for people who can only brush twice a day.” By re-positioning the brand, they were able to differentiate themselves from their competitors who, in the consumer’s mind, didn’t have the “twice a day magic formula” that Colgate had.

Valvoline Oil took a similar approach by creating a line extension for “people who can’t change their oil every 3,500 miles.” The new oil, which probably cost about 5% more to produce as their regular oil, was twice as expensive. Valvoline figured out that the person who couldn’t change their oil every 3,500 miles would probably be willing to pay a premium for an oil that protected their car for 7,000 miles. The result was that Valvoline got to charge twice as much for a product that only cost 5% more to produce. Brilliant!

A-1 Steaksauce grew their market share by changing 1 line of copy on their label. How did they do this? Their research indicated that consumers open their refrigerator door 8 times for every 1 time they open their pantry. So what did A-1 do? They added “Refrigerate after opening” onto the label (even thought that wasn’t necessary). By doing this, A-1 Steaksauce was seen 8 times more frequently than it had been in the past. The more times customers see a product on their shelves, the more times they use it. Bravo.

Pepsi grew their sales and revenue by convincing restaurants to offer free refills. Remember in the old days when you had to pay for every soft drink you ordered? Well, the folks at Pepsi decided that one way to grow sales was to encourage restaurants to give free refills. The more refills, the more Pepsi sales. How did they do it? They convinced one restaurant chain that providing free refills was a way to increase customer loyalty. Once the first restaurant started offering free refills, they just went to other restaurants and said, “Hey, your competitors are offering free refills. Why aren’t you, too?” The result? More sales and revenue for their brand.

Again, most of these stories are anecdotal, but they illustrate a point — you don’t need big bucks to grow sales and revenue. You just need new ideas.

With that in mind, here’s a technique you can use to generate new ideas to grow your sales and revenue:

  • Get your team together for a brainstorming meeting. All the regular rules apply. In other words, any idea is a good idea (initially). Keep track of the new and innovative ideas on a white board.
  • During the brainstorming meeting, get inside the mind of your customer. Figure out what it is they’re really buying. (Remember, people don’t buy Porsches because of their German engineering. They buy Porsches for their sex appeal. Keep that consumer insight in mind as you analyze what people are really buying when they purchase your product.)
  • Analyze some of your competitor’s marketing ideas. There’s nothing wrong with borrowing an idea from a competitor and using it for yourself. Jot these ideas down on the white board.
  • Ask yourself, “How would a physicist solve our problem?” Jot those ideas down. Then ask, “How would an artist solve our problem?” Keep asking that question from different perspectives to see what you come up with.
  • Interview your customers. Find out if they have any new and innovative ideas on how to grow your sales and revenue. You’ll be surprised at some of their outside-the-box thinking. Keep track of those ideas, too.
  • Interview people who didn’t buy your product. You’ll learn more from people who don’t buy your product than from people who do buy your product. Interview them. Find out why they didn’t buy. Then leverage that information in new and innovative ways to grow sales and revenue.

At the end of the brainstorming session and the interviews, you should have a bunch of new and innovative ideas floating around. Most of them will be bad ideas. But about 1% of them will be pure gold!

Here’s an example of putting this technique into action. I came up with it this morning while on a business trip.

Customer Insight: Regular sized tubes of toothpaste aren’t allowed through airport security. That means many travelers arrive at their hotels without toothpaste.

Opportunity: Approach hotels about providing  travel-sized toothpaste in the complimentary bathroom kit that’s in most major hotels around the globe.

Result: By adding a new sales channel to a toothpaste brand’s network, sale will increase accordingly.

We’ve covered a lot of ground in today’s blog post, but if there’s one thing that you should remember coming out of this post, it’s this — you don’t need a big budget to grow your sales and revenue, you just need good ideas.

Post by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer at the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response. Jamie’s new book, “How to Make Money with Social Media” will be published by the Financial Times Press this fall.

CategoryGeneral Marketing | Comment7 Comments »

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July 13th, 2010

Learn About Social Media, SEO, Mobile Media at the Integrated Marketing Summit in Denver

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Next week, I’ll be the lunchtime keynote speaker at the Integrated Marketing Summit in Denver. I’m flattered to be part of the event because there are some really terrific speakers there.

Chad Mitchell will be there. Prior to working at IBM, he was a Principle Analyst at Forrester Research. I’ve had the opportunity to co-present with Chad on several occasions and I can tell you, this guy is smart. He’s also very down-to-earth, which makes his brilliance even more appealing.

Garrett Fuselier will be there, too. He’s an Integrated Experience Designer at T2 in Kansas City and was one of the first people to fully explain the power of augmented reality to me. He’s a bundle of energy and a gifted teacher, so you won’t want to miss his presentation.

Integrated Marketing Summit

This globe has nothing to do with the Integrated Marketing Summit in Denver. But it is a nice image, no? Click on it to go to the IMS website. Like magic!

There are a ton of other great speakers at the event, too. They include Alan Kuritsky, Laura Patterson, Craig Meurer and others.

But the real reason you’d want to attend isn’t just because it has a lot of great speakers, it’s because of what you’ll learn.

To wit:

  • How to write blog posts so they get seen by Google, Bing, Yahoo and others
  • How to effectively measure a social media campaign
  • How to use mobile media to drive people to your website
  • How to improve the conversion ratio on your website
  • How to avoid the most common mistakes in social media
  • How to develop a marketing plan that can be measured on an ROI basis
  • How to get started with mobile media
  • How to use QR codes and 2-D codes to increase engagement and interactivity of your mobile media campaigns

The bottom line is that if you’re anywhere near Denver next week, you’ll want to take part in the Integrated Marketing Summit. It’s a terrific event, which plenty of great speakers and in-depth workshops all throughout.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer for the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine for BKV Digital and Direct Response.

CategoryGeneral Marketing | CommentNo Comments »

July 12th, 2010

How to Use the Magazine Rack Test to Get a Psychographic Profile of Your Customer

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The other day, I was standing at a magazine rack when I figured out a neat little trick you can do to gain insights into your target market.

As you know, most marketers use demographic data to define their target market. So, for example, they’ll break target market information down into categories like age, sex, income, education and geographic location.

Sometimes, companies will define a primary target market and a secondary target market. If you were selling a VW Bug, for example, your primary target market might look like this:

  • Sex: Female
  • Age: Between 25 and 34
  • Household Income: $50K to $125K annually
  • Education: College graduate
  • Geographic location: Metropolitan areas

Your secondary target market might look like this:

  • Sex: Male
  • Age: Between 18 and 34
  • Household Income: $35K to $125K annually
  • Education: College graduate
  • Geographic location: Metropolitan areas

But as you dive deeper into your target market, you’ll want to start using psychographic data. Psychographic data includes information on personality, values, attitudes, interests or lifestyles.

As you can see, demographic data doesn’t provide insights into the emotional being who is buying your product. The problem is that in order to take a deep dive into the psychographic information, you’ll often (but not always) have to hire a research firm to get inside the mind of your prospect.

But the other day, I came up with an inexpensive way to get inside the mind of your prospective customer. I call it the Magazine Rack Test and, while there’s no science around it, it can provide a fun, easy way to gain insights into the psychographics of your prospects and/or customers.

What’s the magazine rack test?

I was standing in an AMTRAK train station and noticed that the magazine rack was set up to appeal to certain interests going from left to right. So, for example, Modern Bride was on the far left. Moving to the right, I found things like Cosmopolitan and Allure, both targeting young, sophisticated women. Then I found magazines like Women’s Health and Shape, again targeting women. Those were followed by Yoga, Fitness and Natural Health, targeting both men and women interested in working on their inner and outer being.

The 60 Second Magazine Rack Test

By using the 60 Second Marketer Magazine Rack Test, you can gain insights into the psychographics of your prospects and customers.

As I moved to the right, other publications focused on things like healthy cooking, outdoor living and home decorating. Then I found magazines that focused on science, business, travel and music. The further to the right I went, the more I found things like sports magazines, computer magazines and stereo buying guides.

On the far right, I found magazines like Wrestling Today and Paintball Weekly which I’m pretty sure are read only by cavemen. (No offense to any of the cavemen reading this blog post.)

Before you assume that all men would be on the right side of the magazine rack and all women would be on the left side of the magazine rack, let me confess and say that I found myself standing in front of the magazines that were left of center – smack dab in front of the Yoga, Natural Health and Whole Living.

Which brings me to a key point – just because your primary target market is female or male doesn’t mean you can assume they fall into stereotypical categories from a psychographic point-of-view. I’m sure there are plenty of women who love sports magazines, computer magazines and stereo buying guides. In fact, there may even be a woman or two who reads Wrestling Today, which will please the cavemen to no end.

Putting the Mazaine Rack Test to Use

So, what does all this mean? And how can you use it for your benefit? The next time you’re trying to gain insights into your target market, imagine where they’d be standing in front of a magazine rack.

Is your primary target market 35- to 44-year old women who spend more time in front of Fortune and Business Week than they do in front of Women’s Health or O Magazine? If so, that gives you insight into who they are from a psychographic point-of-view.

Or, is your primary target market 45- to 54-year old men who spend more time in front of Yoga, Natural Health or Whole Living magazine? That will tell you something about their psychographic information, too.

What’s more, you can imagine that your target market might spend some time moving around a little bit, gaining insight into the complexity of the human psyche. Or, depending on a person’s mood, might spend read Martha Stewart Living on one day and Wrestling Today (God forbid) on another.

In our early example for the VW Bug, you can see how the Magazine Rack Test might help VW understand their customer’s mindset. Most of the women who buy VW Bugs would be in front of a certain set of magazines. And most of the men who buy VW Bugs would be in front of Wrestling Today.

(I’m kidding when I say that the men who buy VW Bugs would read Wresting Today. If you fell for that, then you’ve missed my point completely. But if you think men who buy VW Bugs might spend some time in front of Traditional Home, Health and Fitness and Bon Appetite, you’re getting the picture.)

The Bottom Line:

  1. Your prospects and customers are complex, multi-faceted, emotional beings.
  2. Not everyone can afford expensive psychographic research into their prospects and customers
  3. For those of us with limited budgets, there’s the 60 Second Marketer Magazine Rack Test, which can help you gain insights into the psychographics of your target market.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer. Jamie, who is a male, confesses that he spends more time in front of Martha Stewart Living than he does in front of Wresting Today.

CategoryBranding, General Marketing | Comment2 Comments »

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July 12th, 2010

Reader’s Digest, Blockbuster, T-Mobile and BP Among Brands That May Disappear in 2011

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A website called 24/7 Wall St. has created a list of brands that may disappear in 2011. It’s a well-written report and if you’d like to read the entire post, just click Brands That May Disappear in 2011.

For a 60-second synopsis of their report, read on:

Reader’s Digest was once the most widely read magazine in the world. According to the company, it still may be when its overseas editions are taken into account. Last August, the company took its U.S. operations into Chapter 11 to decrease debt. It would have been unthinkable just a few years ago that a magazine as old and famous as Reader’s Digest would be shuttered. However, Reader’s Digest as it is known in the U.S. will be gone.

Brands that may disappear in 2011

Blockbuster is one of many brands that are predicted to disappear in 2011, according to the website 24/7 Wall St.

Blockbuster was the national leader in the video rental business for nearly two decades. Now it is contemplating Chapter 11 to eliminate debt. The company lost $65 million last quarter. Its revenue continues to fall rapidly as firms such as Redbox and NetFlix (Nasdaq: NFLX – News) siphon off its revenue. Blockbuster may still be around as a company that has movie kiosks and a small mail and Internet-delivered content business. But its brick and-mortar business is dead.

Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, the car rental company, is for sale. Hertz (NYSE: HTZ – News) is a potential buyer, as is Avis Budget (NYSE: CAR – News). Each of the larger car rental firms would use the Dollar Thrifty business to expand their market share. That does not mean that they would keep the brand. The current company is not much of a business. It made only $27 million last quarter on revenue of $348 million. It has more than $1.5 billion in “debt and other obligations.” The number of vehicles that Dollar Thrifty operates at any one time is only 95,000 compared to 420,000 for Hertz.

T-Mobile, the U.S. wireless provider, is owned by telecom giant Deutsche Telekom (DTEGY.PK – News). It is the No.4 cellular company in an American market that only supports two really successful firms — AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless. T-Mobile only had a profit of $306 million in 2009. That was down from $483 million in 2008.  As it now stands, T-Mobile has no future in the U.S. A merger with Sprint-Nextel has been mentioned several times. The combined company would have a customer base about the same size as AT&T or Verizon. And the transaction would probably make Deutsche Telekom a large owner of the combined operation. Another alternative would be a merger with Virgin Mobile. Maybe Deutsche Telekom will just change the firm’s name.

Moody’s Corp. may have the name with the largest negative brand equity in the U.S. Scandals about the company’s rating of mortgage-backed securities and allegations that the firm compromised it ratings process to get business have ruined the company’s image. Moody’s is more than 100 years old, but the reputation it built over those years is irretrievably lost. There is a chance Moody’s could be ruined by civil actions, four of which are pending, and by charges brought by the U.S. government. Overseas authorities may bring a number of actions against the company as well. Part of Moody’s operation may stay alive, but there is not much left to salvage in the brand.

BP: The case against the BP brand is not so much that the company will enter bankruptcy. It is that BP may end up breaking into pieces for its own sake. This may be to put the liabilities for the Deepwater Horizon spill into a company that also holds escrow capital to cover the huge costs of clean-up and suits. BP may also want to separate its successful refining operations from its exploration business, or recreate an American- based company similar to BP America, which existed for two decades. A restructuring of BP would also allow the firm to take a badly crippled brand and give the oil operation a new name — much as it did when it changed its name from British Petroleum. The second time may be the charm.

RadioShack is one of the oldest retailers in the U.S. It was founded in 1921 and in the early 1960s was purchased by Tandy Corp. The Tandy name was used for some of Radio Shack’s retail stores. RadioShack is currently a takeover target. There have been rumors that the company may be taken private via a leveraged buyout or purchased by Best Buy (NYSE: BBY – News), probably for its locations. Best Buy would certainly not keep the RadioShack brand because it is considered downscale and does not have the reputation for quality products and service that Best Buy enjoys. RadioShack has already begun to rebrand itself as “The Shack,” an indication that it knows the older brand is a burden.

Zale Corp. was founded in 1924 by the Zale brothers. It was one of the earliest retailers to offer the ability to buy items on credit. By 1980, Zale had revenue of over $1 billion. In 1992, Zale filed for bankruptcy and by the end of that decade, its revenue was $1.3 billion — about the same as it is today. In the last quarter, the retailer lost $12 million on revenue of $360 million. Zale is also in a very crowded market that includes retailers as large as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT – News). Golden Gate Capital recently put money into Zale to buy it time. New money may defer the point at which Zale goes under, but it won’t prevent it.

Merrill Lynch may have been acquired, but that will not keep it safe. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Banks and other large financial services firms have a habit of buying large retail brokerage houses and then changing their names. Shearson is gone. So is EF Hutton and Prudential. In most cases the parent company wants to put their own names on the door. That is very likely to happen to Merrill Lynch, which was at one point the largest full-service broker in the U.S. Merrill is now owned by Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC – News), and the buyout spawned a number of scandals that kept Merrill’s name in the paper for weeks and did a great deal to harm its name with customers. Bank of America will follow a time honored tradition, and Merrill Lynch will become BofA Investment Management.

Kia Motors Corp. is one of the two car brands of Hyundai of South Korea. It has always been a marginal brand. Its stable mate, Hyundai USA, has a reputation for high quality cars like the Sonata and Genesis. Kia sells “low rent” cars and SUV nameplates like the Sorento and Rio. As GM and Ford (NYSE: F – News) have already discovered, it is expensive to maintain multiple brands and storied car names, including Pontiac, Saturn and Mercury, are disappearing. The parent company will take a page from several other global car companies and dump its weakest brand.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer for the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response. Jamie’s book, How to Make Money with Social Media will be published by the Financial Times Press this fall.

CategoryBranding, General Marketing | Comment4 Comments »

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July 7th, 2010

My Social Media Secret Weapon: NutshellMail

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As you might imagine, I spend a good amount of time on social media networks. It’s part of my job. Not only am I trying to build awareness for the 60 Second Marketer community, but I’m also trying to connect with client prospects for BKV Digital and Direct Response.

(Okay, to be honest, there is a third reason I spend a lot of time on social media networks – I’m trying to build early demand for my book, “How to Make Money with Social Media” which, oh by the way, will be published by the Financial Times Press this fall.)

NutshellMail is a social media aggregator that makes staying in touch with your social relationships easy.

The problem I face — and I bet you face the same problem, too — is that I can’t spend an inordinate amount of time flip-flopping between Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook and YouTube and the blog. Trying to manage that many different outlets can be time-consuming and confusing all at once.

My Social Media Secret Weapon: NutshellMail

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Constant Contact. Those of you who receive our free weekly eNewsletter are familiar with Constant Contact because it’s the platform we use to send out free tips, tools and techniques to our community. (What? You’re not a subscriber to our free eNewsletter? C’mon, get with the program!)

Anyway, the email from Constant Contact introduced me to a new tool they offer called NutshellMail. NutshellMail aggregates all the activity from your social networks and drops them into a single email delivered to your in-box. To be honest, my initial reaction was, “Oh, gosh. One more broadcast email. Enough already!”

Despite my reservations, I decided to give NutshellMail a try. I was reluctant, mind you. What’s more, the first few emails I got I kind of ignored.

But then, for some reason, I took a deep dive into one of the emails. My thought process went something like this: “Oh, look. Nutshell Mail is letting me know that Davis Tucker just got a promotion and updated his LinkedIn profile to let everyone else know. I’ll have to congratulate him via email, given that he’s a potential client. And look at this – 7 people re-tweeted my blog post yesterday. I’ll have to send them a direct message thanking them. And look here – someone asked a question on my Facebook fan page that I should respond to. And what’s this? Here’s another…”

Imagine being able to have all your social media connections dropped into your email inbox every morning and not having to switch applications and poke around different websites to find out what’s going on.

Marvelous.

Does NutshellMail Replace Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook?

NutshellMail isn’t a replacement for your social media channels – it’s really an aggregator that saves you time and improves your ability to connect with others. Oh, sure, I still use Twitter and I still go to LinkedIn and other social media platforms to check in on things. But if you’re looking for a great way to catch-up with people and stay current on what’s happening in your social media-sphere, then Nutshell Mail is what you’re looking for.

Check it out for yourself. You can visit their page on the Constant Contact website by clicking Nutshellmail.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer, the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response. You can download a free chapter from Jamie’s soon-to-be-published book by clicking, “How to Make Money with Social Media.”

CategorySocial Marketing | CommentNo Comments »

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July 7th, 2010

What’s the Value of a Brand? Your CFO, CEO and CMO Need a Consistent Metric.

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By James R. Gregory, Founder and CEO, CoreBrand

Many departments within a corporation will argue the need for accountability in marketing, but none steps forward to take ownership of how to account for brand equity.

Theoretically, the CEO is responsible for the value of the corporate brand. Unfortunately, it is a rare CEO who understands how brand equity value is created. CEOs would love to see their company prosper but few understand how to take command or utilize the tools available to make it so.

Is it time to arrive at a consisent formula to calculate the value of a brand? Yes, according to James Gregory, CEO of CoreBrand.

The CFO properly challenges the high costs of marketing today because there is no standard for accounting for the profitable return on investment for brand building activities. In the world of the CFO, marketing is ONLY seen as an expense without any direct connection to ROI. Thus,  creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

CMOs would be wise to step forward to take command of brand marketing accountability. Many would argue that they have done so, but attempts to date to create a unified set of standards have been anemic. Most attempts to build accountable ROI bridges to the CFO or CEO have been misunderstood or at the least unrequited.

Procurement officers, whose mandate is to dissect every transaction and shave off another percentage point from the already impossibly tight margins of advertising agencies and marketing communications firms, are reluctant to open their view of the total value of a transaction to include the impact of growth (or potential loss) of brand value. To acknowledge that brand building is a two-way street that creates or destroys value with every communication would open an entirely new avenue for evaluating the performance of vendors.

Investor relations, which could help the CEO add billions in market capitalization, is usually focused only on the next earnings release. While they have the attention of the CEO, it is rare to find an IR professional who is willing to suggest that the corporate brand might need tweaking or that corporate clarity is a bit soft. Shouldn’t this department have its finger on the pulse of the corporate brand?

And, why aren’t advertising agencies and public relations firms demanding accountability? They have the most to gain by understanding consistent accountability measures for valuing product and corporate branding. Yet, the agency industry is too frail due to decades-long cost  containment pressures or too afraid of the results to demand accountability.  So, most seem happy just to survive another year.

Most unfortunately, the accounting profession has ignored the undeniable growth of brand value. GAAP standards don’t account for the value of brands until a company is bought or sold, which doesn’t accurately reflect the changing value of the living brand. Brand value fluctuates daily based on the decisions and communications of management and the impact on key constituencies. It can be easily identified, readily measured and valued on an ongoing basis in comparison to its industry or specific competitors. Accountants should embrace this process and shareholders should demand to better understand and to see brand equity reported on financial accounting statements.

Only one association has come forth ready to take on the issue of marketing accountability. The Association of National Advertisers, under the leadership of Bob Liodice, has been pursuing the concept of generally accepted brand valuation principles. The ANA represents the largest advertisers so it is logical and commendable that such an organization lead the discussion.

A group of academics and practitioners have also been in hot pursuit of brand accountability standards. It is aptly called the Marketing Accountability Standards Board, under the leadership of Meg Blair.

I believe the creation of consistent and reliable standards formarketing measurement is the single most important business issue of this decade. If you agree with me that marketing stands to gain tremendously by connecting the brand to accounting standards then you should join with the ANA and MASB and add your voice to the discussion.

James Gregory is the Founder and CEO of CoreBrand. He can be contacted at jgregory@corebrand.com.

CategoryBranding | CommentNo Comments »

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July 7th, 2010

Five Things to Consider When Including Mobile Devices in Your Web Content Strategy

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By Joakim Ditlev, Director of Marketing, Zmags.com

Remember the good old days of 2003? Delivering online content was a simple choice of optimizing for either Internet Explorer 5 or 6. Combined, these two versions of Internet Explorer had a whopping market share of 95%. If someone asked for Safari compatibility, you would suppress a laugh and give a polite answer. And all data traffic was going to desktop or laptop computers. Mobile devices were used for calling other people, while online content lived on the computer.

The bad news? The rise of competing browsers, the rise of Google, the resurrection of Apple, the introduction of smartphones, the iPhone revolution – we could go on. From a viewpoint of diversity, choice and innovation, the past seven years have been great. From the viewpoint of someone just wanting to get his content online in the best possible way, it’s been horrendous.

The really bad news? For those who just want to get content out to as many readers as possible, the game will be even harder. The complexity will increase in the years to come. Right now smartphones and tablet PCs are on the stage and will continue to grow as devices used for browsing and consuming online content.  Here are five important factors to consider when delivering content to mobile devices:

  • Screen size
    Obviously, the screen size of any device dictates how information can be presented in the best way. Online delivery needs to take into account the entire array from 40-inch desktop displays to three-inch smartphone screens. Until recently, a “mobile solution” would go far if optimized for the three- to four-inch display, but with the introduction of the iPad and its competitors, the span has increased from three to ten inches.
  • Navigation
    Swiping pages and pinch-zooming. The introduction of devices with touch capabilities has expanded navigation to include a tactile aspect. It has a huge impact on how online content is and can be consumed on smartphones and how likely readers are to use their mobile device for browsing the web.
  • Specific hardware capabilities
    Various devices come with various features that content creators must decide whether to support or not. To give an example: location awareness. The iPad 3G can be location aware – the iPad can’t.
  • OS and OS version
    If considering building applications (apps) for mobile devices or tablets, these will not only need to be operating system-specific, but sometimes even OS version-specific. The more apps to support, the more time is needed for updating and maintenance.
  • Browser capabilities
    Even though web standards are mature by now, they are also still evolving. And in order to benefit from phone-specific capabilities, many browsers have special capabilities that are outside the standards. Taking navigation as an example: If you design content as optimized for devices with touch capabilities, you will get a great experience on those phones. However, you will need a back up option for other devices.

In the past years, the speed of innovation has been overwhelming, and it will continue to grow unabashed. Since the expected lifetime of a smartphone is short, the manufacturers are not afraid to launch new features that are unique to a particular phone – and thus unsupported by the rest of the market. So keep the variation in mind when expanding your web content strategy to include mobile devices, and look out for content publishing platforms capable of optimizing your content to multiple formats.

Joakim Ditlev is Director of Marketing at Zmags and is blogging on similar topics on www.zmags.com/blog

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The 60 Second Marketer is a free online magazine brought to you by BKV Interactive and Direct Response. We try to provide quick updates on the newest tools, tips and techniques in marketing. We also try to accomplish that with a dose of humor or levity. As it turns out, we're pretty good at providing tools, tips and techniques, but we're not actually all that funny. Which would explain why people don't call us "funny" as much as they call us "laughable." Bummer. Our offices, for those of you who are interested, are located in Atlanta (404-233-0332) and Kansas City (913-648-8333). We also have offices on Bora Bora, but they don't have the phones installed yet.

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