This is not some form of extreme sport to be shown on the ESPN farm sports channel 650, but rather it is the concept that marketing proficiency going forward is far more about corralling the right components together than one shinning action. This video is a lovely visual that you can use to describe your job in a clear metaphor to disbelieving product and sales managers.
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We have talked about why we need to do it (multiple choices and differentiation for the influencer’s journey) and the vast array of choices in content needed. We have talked about the basic three cement platforms we have to start with (what we send, they find and we deliver in sales; the array of content; and the fact there are multiple influencers).
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This is part two of three simple blogs that we hope will encourage you to take the right steps towards focusing your marketing towards a customer journey approach in our sales and marketing strategy.
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“When are we going to start,” is a line from a great song about making LA a better city (Make it Better – Kelley James). We all know that the combination of the current economic climate and the compression of the immense changes we have been experiencing for the last three years means we have to change the way we invest in marketing. We have written a lot around this subject but we have had constant requests to wrap it into a few blogs. Hopefully each is no longer than a three minute read. Here are the links to the older collections, also available in the second volume of our blog book (in PDF format with bookmarks).
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We have talked before about the flashback to dreaded report cards that start with the ones from junior high school. The best measure of integrated marketing is that there is little to no friction and plenty of power transfer between the sales cycles – I wish my report card would have shown that level of performance. We have had more and more partner clients moving to the journey management form of marketing and in that process they have come to three simple conclusions or questions:
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By now you must have seen or heard about Jon Stewart’s beat down of James Cramer (Mad Money and CNBC fame) last Thursday. This was the culmination of a week of chastising the money maven and his less than frank advice and energy about financial recommendations - recommendations that many citizens took in good faith from a TV channel supposedly known for its expert advice. Though this sounds bizarre, in our opinion it is a symbol for how people want to consume information (honestly and connected to their journey). A large number of the comments on the site talk about trust that was betrayed or expectations being consistently damaged by Cramer, clearly proving that delivering against promises is a big thing right now.
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Integration is especially difficult to do, but is particularly tough when budgets are tight. The pressure to cut often forces us to shrink – and almost robotically - we reduce money so that the programs actually become less and less integrated and increasingly devolve into isolated activities, only tied together in name and not action. There are two simple areas where we get too robotic: content and journeys.
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(Fortune) -- There was a time when the geeks who keep a company's tech systems running could get by without knowing the finer details of corporate strategy. You called the chief information officer when you needed a server upgrade, not a strategic plan. As Paris Hilton might say, “really?” If this is news to you, then your marketing is going to be really out of whack with the new realities we face. The article argues that the CIO now needs to put their business skills into place. Some of this is driven by the need to “tighten belts” and the remainder is a key learning lesson we must think hard about in terms of how we structure our marketing:
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Before you run to measure, sit back and decide what you want to focus on. Read on and see the one chart you should use before you decide on the direction of your social media investments. We have got to put the horse ahead of the “metric” cart. The last blog looked at a simple proposition that we have to recognize that great social media strategies involve a trade-off between how much we listen, intercept in social situations and use social media as a formal media component.
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The film The Year of Living Dangerously was the only film I ever walked out of and within ten minutes realized what a terrible error that was. You just can’t get back into a film in the UK if you leave the theater. I would dread that we look at the end of 2009 and feel the same. We are about to enter a very chaotic year, a year of living dangerously.
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