Corporate blogs can provide tremendous return, such as expanding your market awareness, automatically filling your sales pipeline, and helping you uncover potential product opportunities. But should you resist the temptation or start posting today? Based on our real world experience, we outline the critical steps to follow in order to develop and maintain an effective blog.
Administrator: January 2008 Archives
It's January, and that means every marketing and public relations (PR) expert in almost any industry -- not just the technology and consumer electronics (CE) markets -- must deal with the awe, jealously, and bewilderment of the media frenzy generated by Apple. No other company can expect to duplicate the success of Apple. So outside of being green with envy, the key is to understand what aspects of the Apple PR machine -- and how the media responds -- can be used to your advantage. Learn where you can, imitate when you can, and explore how to improve your PR efforts.
It occurred to us after watching some particularly bad product demos on the Web that marketers at software companies don't watch enough late night TV. And we're not talking about the re-runs of Three's Company or M*A*S*H. We are talking about the ubiquitous infomercials (and no, not the one of they really happy guy who can't stop grinning). If marketers paid more attention to how consumer household products are hawked, they might use that knowledge to create more compelling online demos -- demos that lead to fatter sales pipelines and shorter sales cycles.
We recently received an email from a PR company proclaiming, "Direct Sales Does Not Sell!" While it has a ring of authority, we don't back the call. Direct sales isn't dead -- it's just a different animal today. While it certainly doesn't sound as provocative, the message should really read: "Traditional direct sales tactics are not enough to win over more sophisticated, plugged-in customers."
There are a variety of business reasons to justify a site redesign. Often, two or more reasons will green light a project. For example, an organization may need to update its site with the introduction of a new product. Given that need, it may take advantage of the re-launch to add Ajax-based interactive menus and graphics (for example, a scrollable list of customers) to improve site ease-of-use. With the cost of Web site redesigns often ranging into the tens of thousands for a moderately complex site, having multiple justifications and delivering multiple new, incidental capabilities and features is often the norm.
Welcome to the innerbridge blog. Here the company's founders Nick Allen and Tom Rhinelander will frequently write about topics related to marketing services, with an emphasis on digital marketing (Web site design, email strategy, PR, etc.). While we love our families, pets, and various hobbies (like hockey and surfing), you won't read about them here unless they have some link to marketing.
