marketing – Page 10 – THE SOCIAL CMO Blog

Six Business Mistakes You Should Never Make Twice

February 19, 2013December 21, 2014 by Steve Olenski

Failure. It’s a word no marketer, business owner, entrepreneur wants to hear, but it can be a valuable lesson. Earlier this year, I wrote about the one mistake retail brands make when it comes to Twitter: not engaging with customers on a regular basis.

That’s one big failure.

Alan E. Hall has seen many related mistakes during his 40+ years as a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and venture capitalist. Like most of us, he’s made his fair share of foolish business mistakes along the way. Some even caused the end of a venture.

He’s watched others make mistakes in their businesses as well, some very visible. Fortunately, Hall learned something powerful and vital from each mistake, no matter the outcome. Big lesson learned: Don’t make them again.

Hey CMOs, It’s Time To Get Disruptive

January 16, 2013December 21, 2014 by Steve Olenski

Many moons ago I wrote an article entitled simply Are You Disruptive? In that piece I openly questioned if marketers or business owners, brands, etc., were in fact, disruptive. As I wrote then which is still very true today. I myself am “disruptive” by nature, disruptive not in the breaking mom’s china manner, but rather questioning the accepted norms. Or as Howard Jones would put it, “challenging preconceived ideas.”

I was reminded of my earlier piece while reading something from Forrester Analyst Corinne Munchbach. In a blog post she used the term “Embrace digital disruption.” Now she was using it in the context of something CMOs need to do in 2013 and she was in fact referring specifically to B2C CMOs but I absolutely believe it applies to ALL CMOs – B2C and B2B CMOs alike.

Behold The Untapped Big Data Gap

January 8, 2013December 21, 2014 by Steve Olenski

As we close out 2012, one topic that got a lot of “airtime” in 2012 will surely stay on top of many marketers minds as we enter 2013: Big Data.

The title of my article is a paraphrase of sorts as it comes directly from a study done by IDC which revealed, among other things that in “2012, 23% of the digital universe would be useful for Big Data if tagged and analyzed. However, currently only 3% of the potentially useful data is tagged, and even less is analyzed.”

The “even less” part comes out to less than 1%, 0.5% to be precise.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead – CMOs Weigh In

December 17, 2012December 21, 2014 by Steve Olenski

This is such a great time of the year isn’t it? I mean with all the parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting and caroling out in the snow. This time of the year is also time for fearless forecasts, the ones where everyone dares to boldly go where no man, or woman has gone before.

Or something like that.

What I am referring to of course is it’s the time of year when people make predictions for the coming year about this and that. And while I wanted to pen such a piece myself, I wanted to put a little different spin on it – I am a big fan of spinning, as it were.

What Mobile Marketers Can Learn From The Papa John’s Lawsuit

November 28, 2012December 21, 2014 by Steve Olenski

“With nearly 86 million Americans now shopping on their smartphones, this pronounced shift in consumer behavior is simply too large for retailers to ignore, with the future of their business depending on how well they adapt to the new environment.”

The above quote is from an article I penned back in September titled appropriately enough Mobile Marketing Too Large For Brands To Ignore.

It was said by Mark Donovan, comScore SVP of mobile and I found it so telling I repeated in a column I wrote about a month later Mobile Marketing – The Elephant In The Room For Marketers.

Do Brands Have A Responsibility When It Comes To Packaging?

November 20, 2012December 21, 2014 by Steve Olenski

Last year I wrote a story about The Most Misleading Packaging Design I Have Ever Seen. The inspiration for my article came from a text message my wife had sent me while at our kids’ school.

The text message include a picture and, as I wrote originally “What I thought was one thing turned out to be something completely different entirely and made me want to openly question the motives behind brand packaging design.”

Why vote? The marketing dynamics of apathy

November 6, 2012May 28, 2017 by TheSocialCMO

Here’s what political marketers learn from people who don’t vote:

Nothing.

If you don’t vote because you’re disappointed with your choices, disgusted by tactics like lying and spin, or merely turned off by the process, you’ve opted out of the marketplace.

The goal of political marketers isn’t to get you to vote. Their goal is to get more votes than the other guy. So they obsess about pleasing those that vote. Everyone else is invisible.

Steakhouses do nothing to please vegetarians who don’t visit them, and politicians and their handlers don’t care at all about non-voters.

The magic of voting is that by opting in to the system, you magically begin to count. A lot.

If you don’t like negative ads, for example, then vote for the candidate who ran even 1% fewer negative ads. Magically, within a cycle or two, the number of negative ads begins to go down.

One reason that people don’t vote (a real, usually unspoken reason) is that they don’t want to feel responsible for the person who wins. The other reason is that they don’t want to live with the disappointment of voting for someone who loses. Both of these reasons ignore the marketing reality: not voting doesn’t make marketing or politics go away. It merely changes the person the marketers are trying to please.

Vote today. Bring a friend. If enough smart people start voting again, things will improve, because billions of dollars in political marketing will suddenly be trying to please you.

Seth Godin

American Apparel’s Hurricane Sandy Sale – Brilliant or Boneheaded?

November 1, 2012December 21, 2014 by Steve Olenski

It’s not often I have cause to quote this person but in this particular article in this particular context, something this person said (and in fact wrote a book with the same title) seems quite appropriate, at least depending on which side of the American Apparel Hurricane Sandy debate.

The quote is “There is no such thing as over exposure” and it was of course uttered by one Donald Trump.

Now if you’re in the Trump camp, so to speak, you won’t have any problem with what American Apparel did recently in trying to capitalize on the fervor and interest in Hurricane Sandy. And perhaps the word “capitalize” is the operative word for we do live in a capitalistic society, right?

Why Syndicated Content is Bad for Your Business Blog

November 1, 2012 by The_Social_CMO

While working on a competitive analysis for a law firm client, I came across an alarming trend – many of the competitor’s blogs had strikingly similar content that riffed on local news stories.

When exploring this a little bit further, it seemed that many of the firm’s competitors used syndicated content from the same industry marketing company to fuel their blogging efforts. In other words, these firms are receiving content from the marketing company to publish on their blogs.

The marketing company is smart enough not to duplicate the content for each firm in the same location. However, the formula is nearly identical for each post:

Paraphrase a recent study or news article;
Overtly link to keywords throughout your site;
Cite the source of the information (that way, you’re not plagiarizing); and
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