Marketing Blog: FootPrints

by Kari Brownsberger, on August 27, 2010, filed under: Public Relations, Trends

Last weekend, several of my friends and I took a trip to Michigan for a few days of fun and relaxing on the beach.   Before I left, I made sure to pick up a few of my favorite magazines to enjoy on the trip.  Turns out I wasn’t the only one.  As we all sat on the beach, every single one of us had some reading material in hand, and the choice for the majority of us was a magazine.  I’m a big reader, but not all of my friends are, so this really got me thinking.  Despite all the gloom and doom predictions about print media these days, is the magazine industry really dying?

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by Andrew Shykofsky, on August 26, 2010, filed under: Marketing, Web Development

I worked at a company and the CEO often said we just needed more sales. While closing more contracts, getting more orders and such would’ve brought in more revenue, it was not that simple. Lacking powerful, updated marketing materials backed by research and strategy was the underlying problem.

Putting pressure on your sales team to produce more without investigating critical issues like branding, core messaging, positioning and what sort of supportive materials are available can actually end up pushing quality sales executives to look for another job. So, note to top sales producers… don’t take a job unless you have a strong sense that you can sell the company and their offerings. (more…)

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by Kim Lucio, on August 24, 2010, filed under: Marketing, News, Social Media, Technology, Trends, Walker Sands

With most universities going back to school this week, there have been many new trends to keep up with in social media since last semester. Somewhere between May and August, bringing a notebook to class turned from a pen and paper to an iPad, and any question could be answered in 140 characters or less.

Students are realizing that if they want careers in business or communication (or anything else really), that they are going to have to get their name out there. Networking on social media has become the most popular form of resume building, and the fastest and easiest way to get your information out there. But have their college professors been keeping up with the trends?

Practice what you preach

Social media cannot be found in a textbook. With trends that change by the hour, the internet is the best hub of go-to technology information. If teachers in the communication and business fields want to be able to show their students the ins and outs of social media, they better know the tricks themselves. For anyone who finds that they are behind on the times, the best place to catch up is in the blogosphere. Mashable, founded by Pete Cashmore, has become a social media and trend resource for go-to information on all things technology.  This is a great place to watch trends, read the latest news in digital, or see what’s new on Facebook.

But don’t stop there

Social media goes far beyond blogs. To get connected and stay that way, professors should subscribe to RSS feeds of their favorite news sources, web sites, and blogs. This way they can keep up with the ever changing, always growing list of social media outlets and resources.

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by Kim Lucio, on August 20, 2010, filed under: Branding, Social Media, Trends, Walker Sands

Many frequent tweeters know that hashtags make all the difference. Whether you are searching for the latest posts on movies, sports, or anything in between, you can search specific words to find out what the world is saying about that specific topic. Hashtags started as an easy way for brands and people on Twitter to conveniently find thoughts and responses to keywords by putting a “#’ sign in front of the word in the search box. Twitter then finds any posts that have used the #hashtag you were searching for.

Why it’s good for business… (more…)

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by Rachel Wilkie, on August 19, 2010, filed under: Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Trends, Walker Sands

When do you hop on and off the marketing trend bandwagon? This is a question that is constantly ruminating in the minds of CMOs and VPs of marketing everywhere. Oftentimes, marketers wonder whether or not the newest marketing tool is worth the investment.

The best solution is to come up with an overall strategy on how to handle trending in the market place. Trending is extremely time critical. Executives are forced to make quick decisions on somewhat new and unknown technologies. To avoid chaos and confusion, it is good to put a plan or policy in place to help guide decisions on adopting new technologies, as opposed to scrambling and jumping in at the last minute with no strategy or plan of action. Investing in trends requires smart timing and consumer analysis.
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by Robert Chilver, on August 18, 2010, filed under: Advertising, Branding, Crisis PR, Public Relations

The public relations business is all about putting your best foot forward. For both small and large companies, it can mean better brand recognition, more customers and more revenues.

While athletes don’t have customers in a traditional sense, a positive public persona can result in millions of dollars in product endorsements and advertisements. A good reputation can also mean more teams will be offering bigger contracts when a player is on the open market in free agency.

Peyton Manning is the best current example of a PR professional’s dream. He’s a kind, funny, charismatic superstar and it has led him to some big money off the field.  Have you ever tried to go a Sunday in the fall without seeing his face on a commercial? Not possible.

But unfortunately, as of late, many athletes have not followed this course. In fact, there are several recent examples of players basically destroying their reputation in many fans, and advertisers, minds. And I’m not just talking about the usual cast of characters getting busted for drinking or drug related charges. These are full-on superstars shooting themselves in the foot with bad PR.

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by Ken Gaebler, on August 12, 2010, filed under: Advertising, Branding, Marketing, Public Relations, SEO, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Walker Sands, Web Development

Despite what you may have heard, owning a business is unusually painful.

That’s good news for the companies who market products and services to small businesses. After all, pain is a motivator for action. Ask any salesperson how they get deals done and they’ll tell you that it’s all about understanding the prospect’s pain points and offering a way to ease the pain.

In case you didn’t know it, figuring out how to reach small business owners is a niche area that Walker Sands is particularly strong in.

Over the years, we’ve helped a number of companies, large and small, to figure out how to reach small and mid-sized businesses (SMB customers). As a result, we’re very familiar with small business pain points as a precursor to research, review and purchase. In fact, here’s a list of small business pain points that we’ve thrown together quickly for this blog post. (more…)

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by Kari Brownsberger, on August 10, 2010, filed under: News, Public Relations

Last Thursday, the latest installment of “The Real Housewives” franchise debuted on Bravo, this time based in Washington DC.  If you didn’t catch the first episode, you didn’t miss much besides a pretty disheartening depiction of our nation’s capital.  First, the Show opens explaining that money doesn’t get you anywhere in DC, but power and who you know gets you everywhere.  Then we are introduced to the housewives themselves, an interesting cast of characters.  There’s Micheale Salahi, one half of the couple who allegedly attempted to crash a White House party last November.  There’s also, among others, a divorced mother who “consults her astrological chart daily, and couldn’t be bothered to get married again,” and a woman who manages to insult both President Obama and Tyra Banks all within the first episode.

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by Ken Gaebler, on August 9, 2010, filed under: SEO, Search Engine Marketing

Bring web sales leads back to life with the “reverse IP” function in Google Analytics.

Sadly, what I’m about to talk about happens more often than we marketers would like to admit.

A company that is in the market for our offerings does a search engine query, our SEO work pays off, and the prospect company visits our website.

But, lo and behold, much to our dismay, they never fill out a lead generation form and don’t bother to call.

It’s a warm lead for what we sell, but we’ve completely missed the opportunity to sell them something.

Or have we?

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by John Fairley, on August 5, 2010, filed under: Marketing, Trends, Web Development

A recent comic from xkcd has really hit home with marketers and designers of college websites. It highlights how off-the-mark many university websites are when it comes to meeting prospective student needs. The comic highlights the particular problems with common features of university website homepages, but the same issues arise in many B2B and B2C websites. (more…)

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