Marketing Articles About Advice

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Advice and Feedback.
I don't have to do much writing on my current assignment -- the Staffing Plan that I've talked about the past couple of days is my major contribution to the proposal in terms of new writing. Since this is a re-compete, my client has first-hand knowledge of the project and the ability and resources to write most of the sections.

So my role is primarily to provide advice and suggestions to the client, as well as feedback on their written sections. I will likely also be involved in some re-writing and editing as the proposal moves toward its final stages.

So what does this advice and feedback involve? Well, much of it has focused on interpreting the RFP, which contains a good deal of unclear information about what should be addressed in the proposal and where it should go. So I offer suggestions to my client about what the content of the various sections and ways that the information might be presented. "What should we say here?" or "What do they mean by this?" are questions that my client has been asking.

As drafts of proposal sections are completed, my client sends them to me. I review them and check them against the RFP requirements to see if they have addressed what the RFP has asked for. I also provide comments on the drafts using 'track changes' in Word. Some of my comments relate to RFP requirements; others relate to the content -- whether more detail or more specific information is needed, whether there are gaps or internal inconsistencies, etc.

I like this role a lot because I can advise people what to do without actually having to do the work myself. It's a welcome break from the intensity of writing.
(03/12/08 07:31 AM)
How an 8-Year Old Became Co-CMO. I have to share this story…it’s about how my Son got offered the job of Co-CMO for Bazaarvoice. Last week we had kids-at-work day. I brought in my 8-year-old Son Kyle and 11-year-old daughter Haley in for half a day to experience what I do at work. They were very excited, however, I had a number of meetings and conference calls. During these meetings my daughter at colored, read, and ate ice cream. My son, on the other hand, walked the halls and started offering advice to our employees. Soon, our Partnerships Director suggested he interview for a job. So, Kyle typed up an introductory letter and and started interviewing with our recruiter and several Bazaarvoice managers. I of course, still have no idea this is going on. Soon Kyle gets into Brett’s office (our CEO). Brett interviews him and soon realizes that his skills of giving “tips, advice and opinions” on things like pricing and how to sell products align well with marketing. So he offers him the Co-CMO position -- actually senior to me -- paying $50/mo and 100 shares! Fortunately I make a little bit more than that. In the video below I compiled some video that I and others collected that day, showing his interview with Brett and examples of the advice that he was giving me and our VP of Business Development, Brant Barton. None of this is staged for video, we just captured what was happening. He came up with all of this himself.... (08/17/08 09:00 PM)
How an 8-Year Old Became Co-CMO. I have to share this story…it’s about how my son got offered the job of Co-CMO for Bazaarvoice.Last week we had kids-at-work day. I brought in my 8-year-old son Kyle and 11-year-old daughter Haley in for half a day to experience my work. They were very excited, however, I had a number of meetings and conference calls. During these meetings my daughter colored, read, and ate ice cream. My son, on the other hand, walked the halls and started offering advice to our employees. Soon, our Partnerships Director suggested he interview for a job. So, Kyle typed up an introductory letter and started interviewing with our recruiter and several Bazaarvoice managers. I still have no idea this is going on. Soon Kyle gets into Brett’s office (our CEO). Brett interviews him and soon realizes that his skills of giving “tips, advice and opinions” on things like pricing and how to sell products align well with marketing. So he offers him the Co-CMO position -- actually senior to me -- paying $50/mo and 100 shares! In the video below I compiled some clips that I and others collected that day, showing his interview with Brett and examples of the advice that he was giving me and our VP of Business Development, Brant Barton. None of this is staged for video, we just captured what was happening. He came up with all of this himself. It doesn’t stop there. He collected 15 business cards and since Wednesday he’s been emailing my employees... (02/24/09 09:00 AM)
Why Men Shouldn’t Write Advice Columns.
... Read more
(02/17/10 09:01 AM)
How to Battle the Coming Brain Drain. How to Battle the Coming Brain Drain

"How to Battle the Coming Brain Drain
Older workers are retiring in droves. How do you prevent their crucial knowledge from leaving with them?

By Anne Fisher

If you scan the reams of "best advice" in the preceding pages, you'll notice a pattern: Many of the key advice givers are older and wiser bosses. No surprise there. It's the managers in their 50s and 60s who have had time to develop the most valuable knowledge and experience. But few large companies seem to prize that wisdom anymore. Intent on cutting costs, many employers are trying to get rid of people over 50, despite rising age-discrimination litigation. That's an exceedingly shortsighted policy. By forcing out the employees with the most experience, companies may be inadvertently pushing critical knowledge out the door before it is shared with the next generation. They'll probably regret it before long, since demographics suggest that business is facing a dangerous brain drain from voluntary retirements alone. And those folks' lost smarts can cost an awful lot to replicate. "

- I have personally seen this 'brain-drain' occurring. When money becomes your only factor for deciding whether or not to employ someone this is what happens. -ed. (07/29/06 02:29 PM)
[Fortune] They Best Advice I Ever Got. http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fortune75/articles/0,15114,1035151,00.html [28 big biz people share the best advice they ever got; you need a subscription to get past the excerpts -t.s.]... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)
Free Advice for the Litigious…. http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/what_we_did (05/17/07 09:00 AM)
Guest post: A marketer's advice for job hunting. Wow, seven years of B2Blog.com, and my first guest post! One of my regular readers, Adam Oakley, was recently downsized out of his B2B marketing position. As much as I was concerned for him, I was also curious as to his experience looking for a new job. Now he has a new job marketing software, a [...] (11/23/09 09:01 PM)
Good advice for growing your company from industry experts. I wanted to pass along a great new resource for any company looking to grow revenue or expand. The book is Professional Services Marketing, and you know it’s good stuff because it’s written by Mike Schultz and John Doerr, the... (08/03/09 09:00 AM)
Unblievable But True.
A few days ago I received an e-mail from a woman who said she was a professional grant writer. She wrote that she was very upset because the website that she had developed last year was not showing up in Google searches and she wasn't getting any new work. She said a lot of very nice things about my site and asked if I could take a look at her website and give her some feedback about it. She has been paying a monthly fee to an SEO company to submit her site to search engines and increase her ranking, but it wasn't working.

Well, I'm no website development expert, but I've learned a few things along the way in the 10 or so years since I've had my site. I thought maybe I could help. So I went to her website. I'm not sure what I expected, but to my surprise it was nicely done -- well laid-out, attractive and well-written. There were maybe 5-6 pages about her and the various aspects of her grant writing services.

I didn't have a lot of time to spend on this, so I was clicking through her site kind of quickly and scanning what she had written. It looked pretty good to me, although I noticed that there were a few things that were lacking. Then I go to her FAQ page and...BOOM! -- staring me in the face are five of the questions and answers that I have on my own site. She had taken them verbatim and just plopped them into her page along with a bunch of other questions and answers. I just could not believe my eyes.

I sent her an e-mail right then. I told her that I thought it was pretty strange that she would ask advice from someone whose work she had plagiarized, and I asked her to remove the material immediately. A day later I hadn't gotten any response and my questions and answers were still on her site. So I had to send her the nasty threatening letter (sigh). That pretty much did the trick. A few hours later she wrote back and said that she had removed my material. All she said was "it has been removed." No apology, no excuses, nothing.

I had a hunch that maybe I wasn't the only one whose stuff she had stolen. So I put an unusual phrase from her site into Google and sure enough, up popped another grantwriting site. She had taken nearly two whole pages of material from this other site and used them on her site. At first I thought I should maybe contact the other site and tell them. But then I decided not to. I don't want to get in the middle of someone else's plagiarism problems.

I couldn't resist e-mailing her once again to tell her that I knew she had plagiarized extensively from this other site and that eventually they would find out about it. Then, since she had asked for some advice, I gave some to her: don't steal other people's stuff.

Is this unbelievable or what? Either she was playing some kind of sick joke or she had totally forgotten that she had plagiarized my material. My money is on the latter, but I guess I'll never know.
(03/14/08 09:01 AM)
Lovely E-Mail.
I get quite a few e-mails each day. Some are from people asking about my services, others want me to answer their questions, and still others write rather lengthy stories about various hardships that they want to overcome by getting grants that don't exist. Then there is the e-mail I received yesterday asking for a donation so that the sender could attend a conference in Las Vegas, which she can't pay for because she doesn't have any consulting work. Hmmm, I would like donations so that I too could go to Las Vegas.

But every so often I receive an e-mail that just plain makes me happy. I got one of those yesterday too. Here it is:

I am 30 yrs old with little to no experience in writing up
proposals. I am currently working in a middle management position in a
small company. I feel I have an idea that would greatly benefit the
company I am currently working for. After approaching one of the senior
management with it, he told me he liked it and to write up a proposal.

I have been searching the internet for the past week and a half
attempting to gain insight and advice into how to create a quality
proposal. I am not the type of person how expects, or even wants, to
have someone else do my work for me. Most of the sites I found offered
to create a proposal for a fee. It is my belief that unless
circumstances require otherwise that a person should learn to do things
for themselves. It was a nice surprise to find on your site a starter
list of sorts that I could use to begin to make a proposal on my own.
Your "Proposal Preparation Checklist" and Proposal Pointers and
Pitfalls" are wonderful tools and I wanted to take a moment to thank you
for freely distributing them. It is a welcome relief when someone sets
forward information to allow people to empower themselves. The links
you have provided to other websites are also wonderful. Just skimming
over the Checklist and Pointers, I have already noticed some points I
would never have considered.

So again, thank you so very much. I really appreciate the effort you
have put into your site and also the information you have offered freely.

What a beautifully-written thank-you note. And to boot, it expresses my own mantra -- "do your homework" -- just perfectly.

It's just so nice when something like this pops up in your mailbox!
(03/01/08 09:01 AM)
Lovely E-Mail.
I get quite a few e-mails each day. Some are from people asking about my services, others want me to answer their questions, and still others write rather lengthy stories about various hardships that they want to overcome by getting grants that don't exist. Then there is the e-mail I received yesterday asking for a donation so that the sender could attend a conference in Las Vegas, which she can't pay for because she doesn't have any consulting work. Hmmm, I would like donations so that I too could go to Las Vegas.

But every so often I receive an e-mail that just plain makes me happy. I got one of those yesterday too. Here it is:

I am 30 yrs old with little to no experience in writing up
proposals. I am currently working in a middle management position in a
small company. I feel I have an idea that would greatly benefit the
company I am currently working for. After approaching one of the senior
management with it, he told me he liked it and to write up a proposal.

I have been searching the internet for the past week and a half
attempting to gain insight and advice into how to create a quality
proposal. I am not the type of person how expects, or even wants, to
have someone else do my work for me. Most of the sites I found offered
to create a proposal for a fee. It is my belief that unless
circumstances require otherwise that a person should learn to do things
for themselves. It was a nice surprise to find on your site a starter
list of sorts that I could use to begin to make a proposal on my own.
Your "Proposal Preparation Checklist" and Proposal Pointers and
Pitfalls" are wonderful tools and I wanted to take a moment to thank you
for freely distributing them. It is a welcome relief when someone sets
forward information to allow people to empower themselves. The links
you have provided to other websites are also wonderful. Just skimming
over the Checklist and Pointers, I have already noticed some points I
would never have considered.

So again, thank you so very much. I really appreciate the effort you
have put into your site and also the information you have offered freely.

What a beautifully-written thank-you note. And to boot, it expresses my own mantra -- "do your homework" -- just perfectly.

It's just so nice when something like this pops up in your mailbox!
(02/20/08 09:01 AM)
Lovely E-Mail.
I get quite a few e-mails each day. Some are from people asking about my services, others want me to answer their questions, and still others write rather lengthy stories about various hardships that they want to overcome by getting grants that don't exist. Then there is the e-mail I received yesterday asking for a donation so that the sender could attend a conference in Las Vegas, which she can't pay for because she doesn't have any consulting work. Hmmm, I would like donations so that I too could go to Las Vegas.

But every so often I receive an e-mail that just plain makes me happy. I got one of those yesterday too. Here it is:

I am 30 yrs old with little to no experience in writing up
proposals. I am currently working in a middle management position in a
small company. I feel I have an idea that would greatly benefit the
company I am currently working for. After approaching one of the senior
management with it, he told me he liked it and to write up a proposal.

I have been searching the internet for the past week and a half
attempting to gain insight and advice into how to create a quality
proposal. I am not the type of person how expects, or even wants, to
have someone else do my work for me. Most of the sites I found offered
to create a proposal for a fee. It is my belief that unless
circumstances require otherwise that a person should learn to do things
for themselves. It was a nice surprise to find on your site a starter
list of sorts that I could use to begin to make a proposal on my own.
Your "Proposal Preparation Checklist" and Proposal Pointers and
Pitfalls" are wonderful tools and I wanted to take a moment to thank you
for freely distributing them. It is a welcome relief when someone sets
forward information to allow people to empower themselves. The links
you have provided to other websites are also wonderful. Just skimming
over the Checklist and Pointers, I have already noticed some points I
would never have considered.

So again, thank you so very much. I really appreciate the effort you
have put into your site and also the information you have offered freely.

What a beautifully-written thank-you note. And to boot, it expresses my own mantra -- "do your homework" -- just perfectly.

It's just so nice when something like this pops up in your mailbox!
(02/21/08 09:01 PM)
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Proofreading Or Editing For Your Bestseller or Company Policy Document - Advice to Help You Choose. So you have just finished a year's hard work and completed your first novel. But is it ready to be submitted to a publisher? Perhaps you have spent your weekend writing and rewriting an applicatio... (09/30/09 09:01 AM)
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[Ajarn's SQL Corner] Top 15 Myths About Business. http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/markc/articles/4280.aspx There are a lot of misconceptions, myths, bad advice and outright lies about what it takes to be successful in business. And most of those are continually spread by people who have never gone into business for themselves.... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)
Small Business Fundamentals - The List. When I went through business school I wasn't taught the fundamentals of small business. It wasn't until I started researching online business after graduating that I came across practical advice regarding the core facets of successful small business. There was one thing in particular that was continually hammered into me as I read more and more about building profitable businesses - the targeted mailing/contacts list is vital - and the web is the perfect vehicle to collect and maintain a list whether your business operates on or offline. List Based Direct Marketing As I delved further into online marketing I... (04/06/07 09:01 AM)
Decker's 15 Career Tips. This concludes my series of career tips, which was prompted by a few friends reaching out to me for advice. I'm sure I could think of more, but these are the first 15 that came to mind...and 15 is a good place to stop. Here's the list with links: Find and Follow Your Passion and Strengths Create Soundbytes for Your Personal Brand It's WHO You GET TO Know Choose Who Your Work For Take Initiative Outside Your Triangle Inform Others Connect to a Visible Brand Learn, Challenge, Fun Feed Others Go Where There's Margin Growth Always Can Do Take Bigger Risks Answer First Show and Know Metrics Never Eat Alone... (02/03/07 09:00 PM)
Career Tip #5: Take Initiative Outside Your Triangle. If there’s one piece of advice I’d give anyone in any job who wants to be considered a ‘rockstar’ it is to take initiative. Be entrepreneurial. See opportunities to improve before you’re told to improve them. Look for new opportunities. Think outside your responsibilities. Mistakes are easily forgiven when you have an employee that is going to be ‘making plays’. Think about the expectations of your role and responsibilities as a triangle. Now, if you put a circle inside the triangle, representing what you accomplish, then there are some unfilled spots, and your performance is below expectations: If you fill the triangle you are meeting expectations, and are a “good” employee: But if you take that circle of accomplishments outside the triangle, outside what’s expected, outside your responsibilities, you are exceeding expectations. You become a rockstar, potentially an A player, and someone who will be considered to take on more responsibility: So what should you take on? Think about it this way: “do your boss’s job”. Consider taking initiatives in areas your boss has focus. Make sure these initiatives that will clearly make an impact, are measurable, are visible and helpful to others as well (they should if your boss is focused on the right things). In other words, if you go outside the boundaries of your responsibilities, choose to work on things that matter most to your company: your boss, your customers, and impact to the PL.... (01/13/07 09:00 PM)
Learn Word of Mouth Marketing -- WOMM-U, May 8-9. This year the Word of Mouth Marketing Association is doing something completely different (disclosure: I'm on the board). It will be WOMM-U (Word of Mouth Marketing University), the first training-based conference full of case studies, operational cookbooks, and practical advice to make Word of Mouth Marketing work in your organization. The tracks will include topics on Managing a blog program Activating WOM in Social Networks Building a Sustained WOM Program Measurement: The ROI of Fans Selling into the CEO ...and much more. Keynote presenters includes my friend Joseph Jaffe (author of "Join the Conversation") and Jeffrey Graham, who leads research for NYTimes. Join me at this unique conference, May 8, 9 in Miami. Register here. (02/28/08 09:01 PM)
Why Writing Blogs Just for SEO Will Inevitably Fail . Search engine optimization (SEO) remains critically important for B2B marketers doing lead generation online. And it's pretty common advice to hear: launch a blog because the relevant content will attract links and improve your search engine visibility. Blogs can offer... (02/25/09 09:00 AM)
7 prospecting rules that produce leads. Need to improve your teleprospecting efforts? Check out my guest post for ZoomInfo, a blog that offers advice on all aspects of sales and marketing. The site features industry news, analysis, and surveys. And, from time to time they let... (09/10/09 09:00 PM)
The Simplest Secret To Business Growth.
The Simplest Secret To Business Growth

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
The Simplest Secret To Business GrowthThis content from: Duct Tape Marketing Everyone wants to know the one thing they can do to get things going, the magic pill they can take, the one bit or advice from a guru that will turn the ship around. (How’s that for some clichés?) Truth is, business is mostly a [...] (01/21/10 09:01 AM)
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Virgin Media Launches Community For Young Entrepreneurs. Virgin Media and Enterprise UK have joined together to launch Virgin Media Pioneers, states UTalkMarketing.com. This creative new community will help connect young entrepreneurs with business experts. By connecting young entrepreneurial talent to a network of peer support, entrepreneurial contacts and expert business advice, Virgin Media Pioneers aims to help build better businesses and close [...] (03/10/10 09:00 PM)
Certified Business Analyst Helps Business Owners Succeed. He may not have the power that Ben Bernanke wields or the kind of money that Donald Trump has, but the advice Bill McKown shares with business owners can mean the difference between surviving the recession and closing their doors forever, says Tampa Bay Online. “Due to current economic conditions, many businesses are looking for help. [...] (03/08/10 09:00 PM)
How to Establish Credibility. How to Establish Credibility

by Michel Neray

"Look up 'credible' in Webster's Dictionary, and you'll find 'Capable of being credited or believed; worthy of belief; entitled to confidence; trustworthy.'

OK, so no surprise there.

Credibility gives you permission to speak, and gives the person you're speaking to permission to listen.

Regardless of whether you are in the service business or sell a tangible product, everyone needs to establish credibility, especially with prospective clients. But if you're a consultant, adviser or coach, then it's harder for your clients to evaluate the value of your advice and recommendations."

- Credibility is what Donald Trump has. It is his most valuable asset. Who else can say, "Lend me $320 million dollars so I can buy a casino with no risk to me." and get away with it. Donald gets people to do this for him because he has credibility. Donald never has to inform people of his credibility, they know. He just brings them solutions. This is what you should be doing and this is what Michael Neray points out so clearly in this article. -ed. (07/29/06 02:29 PM)
Career Tip #9: Feed Others. This is a tip if you are a manager...it’s both a career tip and a management lesson. I learned a painful lessons early in my management career. It is foolish to try to control too much. First, I discovered I didn't have all the right answers (amazing!). But more importantly, the company couldn’t get as much done, my employees didn’t learn, and they became unmotivated when I micro-managed or took over from where they left off. Early in my career I had a web developer working for me who sent me a page he designed. Rather than making suggestions and letting him complete the project, I got into the code, made the changes myself and showed him the final product the way I wanted. I could see the frustration on his face, and a couple months later, he resigned. Perhaps every manager needs a jolting mistake like this to change behavior. It only needs to happen once. A leader needs to seed and cultivate great people who will make their vision of producing something they own. I soon realized that there’s an entrepreneur in EVERYONE and a leader’s job is to create a structure so they can exercise that entrepreneurial spirit. By the time I got to Dell I had learned this lesson, and as I built a team I got better and better at feeding others. I might feed them ideas, advice, tips, perspective, introductions, or whatever to help them accomplish. I put a goal out there and see... (01/16/07 09:00 AM)
Is Your Marketing Head in the Sand?. It seems most marketers, at times like this, are retrenching and burying themselves ‘in what they know’. Or they're being asked to. Managers are afraid to tee up new social marketing ideas to senior execs, since "6 programs just got cut". The CFO is asking to cut any marketing that can not be proven to be accretive to current ROI figures. That’s all understandable, but now is not the time to bury your head in the sand, for your career or for your business. Three reasons why: Assume everyone else is doing that (burying heads in the sand). Don’t you (as a person and business) want to stand out and differentiate? Don’t you want to go where your competitor is not? Don’t you want to be stronger and smarter than competition with social marketing activities as we come out of this recession? Aren’t customers even MORE wary of traditional marketing and advertising, turning to each other more for authentic advice. User generated content is growing at times like this – in both creation and consumption. 8 out of 10 shoppers consulted reviews before buying their holiday gifts. 70% of Twitter accounts were created in 2008. Facebook is expected to grow to 200M (from 150M users) by the end of this year. And I’ve seen no slow down in customers posting user generated content through our clients.Don’t fall back when the rest of the market is moving forward. Take this opportunity to take advantage of sleeping competitors. Be the light for... (01/16/09 09:00 PM)
Help prevent what you treat....
In reading a recent post on Bill's blog in his Monday Morning Motivation series, he offers the advice to chiropractors, or any doctor for that matter, that their highest calling is to help prevent what they treat.

...but what are you doing to help make yourself obsolete?
...The highest calling of any doctor (of any ilk) is to help prevent what it is they treat.

That got me to thinking about my philosophy as a consultant and speaker. It's hard for those of us who work on the retainer system to hold the philosophy of "helping to make ourselves obsolete", but that's exactly what we need to do. There is such an abundance of opportunity out there and by working closely with our clients (whether our consultative calling is inside or outside the enterprise) to move them to a higher platform of strategic or digital marketing execution expertise, we're truly offering the service that they need (and not the service, that we need...)

ACTION REQUIRED:

Think about this in your interactions all week. What have we done to truly understand the client and share our wisdom on making them better marketers (or, whatever they are) so that you too can one day be obsolete to them and move on to helping clients help themselves? That is the highest calling of any consultant.

(08/04/08 09:01 AM)
Want more signups/subscribers? Test your forms!.
This from Bill Flagg of RegOnline talks about how he has continuously works on optimizing the account signup page for the RegOnline website to maximize the conversion rate. [via Brad Feld]

What a great post to encounter first thing this morning. I just had this discussion with two separate clients in the past two days on how to optimize their account signup and newsletter subscription forms. Some great advice from Bill:

Here's what I learned to ask myself and my team... 1. Which information is a must-have? Do I have to know where they came from or can my web analytics tell me? 2. Which information could we collect later? For example, we collect billing information when the client goes live with their event. 3. Eliminate the rest. If a piece of information doesn't create a change in action, then I eliminate the field.

I agree with Bill 100% and often ask a couple more questions to get this right. Of course, you're never done asking questions. You should always be testing you forms to achieve greater conversion!

1. What data can you market to? If you're asking for address, birth date, phone number and the like - are you really going to market using all of that data or are you just collecting it because you think you need it (or your CEO thinks you need it)
2. How does the data tie into the rest of your CRM and database marketing efforts? If you're a B2B company you'll want to and need to know different things than a CPG company.
3. What's the "form fatigue" factor and how do you eliminate data point collection to ease up on your customer's patience.

(05/02/08 09:01 AM)
Links for 2007-08-21 [del.icio.us].
- YouTube Initiates Monetization Strategy With Transparent Video 'Overlays'
  No pre-roll ads here. Smart move.
- Dear Palm: It's time for an intervention - Engadget
  Some (much-needed) advice for Palm.
- Microsoft launches Tafiti - Search and Silverlight experiment - LiveSide
  Some signs of life from Microsoft search.
- GigaOM Schmidt: Google will ‘Probably’ Bid on Spectrum «
  Google signals it's ready to rumble for next-gen radio waves.
(08/22/07 09:00 AM)
Should You Consider Buying a Foreign Franchise? . It's a well-known fact that popular U.S. franchise operations like McDonald's and Subway have become as ubiquitous overseas as they are in North America. What many people don't realize is that a wide ...
(08/26/06 09:02 AM)
Is Your Marketing Head in the Sand?. It seems most marketers, at times like this, are retrenching and burying themselves ‘in what they know’. Or they're being asked to. Managers are afraid to tee up new social marketing ideas to senior execs, since "6 programs just got cut". The CFO is asking to cut any marketing that can not be proven to be accretive to current ROI figures. That’s all understandable, but now is not the time to bury your head in the sand, for your career or for your business. Three reasons why: Assume everyone else is doing that (burying heads in the sand). Don’t you (as a person and business) want to stand out and differentiate? Don’t you want to go where your competitor is not? Don’t you want to be stronger and smarter than competition with social marketing activities as we come out of this recession? Aren’t customers even MORE wary of traditional marketing and advertising, turning to each other more for authentic advice. User generated content is growing at times like this – in both creation and consumption. 8 out of 10 shoppers consulted reviews before buying their holiday gifts. 70% of Twitter accounts were created in 2008. Facebook is expected to grow to 200M (from 150M users) by the end of this year. And I’ve seen no slow down in customers posting user generated content through our clients.Don’t fall back when the rest of the market is moving forward. Take this opportunity to take advantage of sleeping competitors. Be the light for... (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

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