Marketing Articles About Economics

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8 Tips for Selling Social Marketing to CFOs. Marketers are usually challenged to justify word of mouth social media marketing programs to the finance department. With economic challenges ahead, your job doesn’t get easier. As someone who’s focuses on both creative and measurement, and as Interim CFO at Bazaarvoice, I started thinking more about the question of what marketers need to sell CFOs on the social marketing opportunity. Ultimately everything comes down to the bottom line – drive revenue, margin or costs down – but every marketing strategy has a different familiarity, timeline to ROI, or measurements that have to tie back to the P&L. So the approach to start, grow and sustain social marketing through the eyes of the finance department will differ from doing business as usual. And the justification needs to span beyond the numbers to get the entire management team to understand the ‘ecosystem’ effect of how customers make purchase decisions in a networked world.I posed a question on LinkediN question to my marketing peers and colleagues: With the economic downturn, how will you convince the CFO that "social" marketing is a priority?I’ve summarized the 25 answers to the question into these 8 tips: Provide financial leaders with hard facts—give numbers representing the anticipated dollar value of social media marketing compared to its cost (ex: anticipated ROI) for your company, cite research on the proven effectiveness of social media (ex: reviews/testimonials turn potential customers into actual customers, which is crucial, especially during an economic downturn) and emphasize that a company should always aim to... (02/24/09 09:00 AM)

New Event! What's Your Marketing Stimulus Plan?.

I've just launched the first of a series of marketing, thought leaderships and social media events that I'll be running in Wisconsin in 2009. If you're up for some 'marketing stimulus', I recommend that you check out this program!

The MarketingSavant Group invites you to attend the Marketing Stimulus Plan Boot-Camp, a one-day in-depth workshop that will jumpstart or revitalize your marketing efforts in these tough times. The best companies don't cut marketing spend in a downturn, they do the opposite. They know that even the toughest market conditions still provide plenty of opportunity.

Attend this one-day workshop to refine and revitalize your marketing strategy to help you swim upstream during the recession and position your company for long-term success.

Who: The MarketingSavant Group
What: What's Your Marketing Stimulus Plan? Workshop
When: January 27th, 2009 from 8:30 to 4:45
Where: De Pere, WI at the F.K. Bemis Center - St. Norbert College
How Much: $295 early reg / $395 after 1/9/09
Where do I Sign Up: At the Eventbrite website

Marketing managers, sales professionals, business owners, and executives within small to medium sized companies responsible for sustaining profitability and striving growth in a downturn will learn how to:

* Develop a road map for putting frugal, ethical and effective marketing strategies in place immediately
* Understand how new approaches in digital and social media marketing can catapult your company into new market opportunities
* Adapt your marketing spend for today's unpredictable economy
* Adjust prices and promotions without sacrificing market share or brand image
* Focus on accountability and obtaining measurable results from your investments
* Improve strategic and tactical planning with marketing ROI techniques and tools
* Manage your marketing budget and collaborate CFO and CEO

It's been said that "Every adversity carries a seed of equal or greater benefit." This program will help you and your business find the silver lining in those dark clouds by adopting creative, compelling, and low-cost/high-return marketing strategies. We'll discuss and learn new ways to devise new strategies to overcome economic turmoil, and execute new tactics to win, sustain and grow new business.
Bonus Item for Attendees:

All attendees will receive a copy of Marketing in a Downturn: Recession-Proof Strategies for Smart Marketers, a 90-page e-book featuring over 25 interviews with leading marketers, consultants, managers and business owners sharing their most effective marketing strategies for remaining profitable and sustaining growth during a downturn.

Who Should Attend?
* Marketing and communications professionals
* Small business owners
* Channel and brand managers
* Entrepreneurs and start-up managers
* Advertising and public relations professionals seeking new client solutions

You'll Walk Away With:

* Dozens of low-cost and effective ideas that you can implement immediately to jumpstart your marketing in the recession of 2009
* The tools, templates and action plans you'll need to succeed in the world of digital and social media marketing
* An idea packed e-book, Marketing in a Downturn: Recession-Proof Marketing Strategies for Smart Marketers, on how to make the most of your marketing in a recession

Register Now at Eventbrite

(02/24/09 09:00 AM)

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New Event! What's Your Marketing Stimulus Plan?.

Attend this one-day workshop to refine and revitalize your marketing strategy to help you swim upstream during the recession and position your company for long-term success.

Register Now at Eventbrite

(12/17/08 09:00 PM)

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Social Shopping and Getting Your Share of the $600 Stimulus Check.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of social shopping sites. Several times per year our family, just like everyone else, is tasked with purchasing various gifts for relatives, Christmas, birthdays and other such moments. Like most guys out there, I rarely, if ever know what to buy!

Enter social shopping sites. According to a recent AP article on MSNBC "Web surfers buying into social shopping sites":

Social shopping sites with such names as Kaboodle, ThisNext, Wishpot and StyleHive combine two of the Web's most prominent activities: engaging in commerce and chatting with like-minded folks. The sites don't directly sell things, but encourage users to share links to good bargains, obscure finds, products that work and ones that don't.

All of those sites are pretty sweet, if you ask me. While not a 'social shopping' site per se, I'm partial to using Gifts.com as well. I've gotten some solid ideas from there as well.

With Valentine's Day just around the corner (hmm...what should I get this year???), now is a great time to test out all of the social shopping engines to see what kind of goodies they recommend.

Personally, Kaboodle and Gifts.com had the most ideas for gifts I'd likely purchase. However, the others had some good ideas as well. Wishpot is actually powered by results from Shopping.com.

Now, how does all of this have anything to do with the likely "stimulus package" that we're about to receive? (If you've not tuned in to the $150B economic stim pack banter, here's a square assessment from the WSJ[sub]). Well, if you believe that Americans will follow a similar behavior pattern following tax refund time (Tax-refund season helps kick off the spring shopping season. Last year, retail sales jumped 12% to 20% in March), there's going to be a portion of us, 12% to 28% of us, depending on who you ask, who will go out and immediately spend the money, it's a marketer's world and the smartest marketer will win when seeking their fair share of the potential 'windfall' check that consumers are likely to receive this late spring to early summer. Here's where really knowing your customers and their behavior can pay off. A few ideas:

Go back to your customer or buyer profile and figure out who in your customer base will be getting the lion's share of the stimulus monies. For reference, families with <$110K in earnings and individuals with <$75K will be getting the most, while the lowest income and highest income segments of the population will be getting the least. Needless to say, this won't be the time to go after your high rollers who just got a check for $200...
Run a contest or a survey or something to get inside the heads of your customers. If you're doing a regular email newsletter, throw in a survey question or two that takes a fun approach at getting after "what they're going to do with their checks". Segment out those that intend to 'spend it' for a separate marketing effort around the time that checks are distributed.
Be mindful of all of the recession talk. People might not splurge on that big gas grill they've been lusting over, but they might be interested in securing a raft of gift cards or gift certificates to kick off their Christmas or birthday shopping. Now would be a great time to mention that yours have no expiration date and that they're a great way to stretch their dollars for themselves and their loved ones

Whether or not you agree with the efficacy of the stimulus package, if you look at this from the perspective of 'customer behavior' and tap into the most 'likely to buy' segment of your customer base, you're setting yourself up to capture your fair share of the $150B that's likely to be doled out.

(04/04/08 09:00 PM)

Prioritizing Marketers Top Priorities. This morning I got a research brief from Mediapost summarizing the findings from the Marketing Effectiveness Networking Group (MENG) and Anderson Aanlytics study. This study surveyed marketing executives to identify key trends and strategies of effective marketing. The subject line of the email said: "Marketing Execs Say Basics Are Most Important in 2008". By "basics" I thought they meant strategies such as becoming measurement-oriented, shifting ad portfolio, investing in email infrastructure, build operational data warehouse, and improve web site. However the 'basics' by definition from this study were more customer-centric and more concepts and objectives rather than strategies. And unfortunately for most companies, they're not all that 'basic' in achieving success. 60% of marketing executives said the following 'marketing basics' were important: Customer satisfaction Customer retention Segmentation Brand loyalty ROI I have a copy of the study. To be clear, the study asked marketing executives to choose from over 60 concepts or buzzwords (such as the 5 above) which were then categorized. Other categories, in order of votes, included: SEO (by itself) Personalization: concepts include Data mining, CRM, Lead Generation, Personalization, Ecommerce, Competitive Intelligence Green Marketing: Multicultural / Ethic issues. Breakdown of old media Innovative Branding Viral / WOM: concepts include viral, WOM, blogging New Media: concepts include Web 2.0, Mobile, CGM, Long Tail, Social Networking Macro Economics Tech Strategy Outsourcing Social Issues Other Now, as a marketer, if I participated in this study I may have answered the same way. After all, the 'marketing basics' are overarching objectives. What... (01/02/08 09:00 AM)

The Last Wall is About to Fall at the NYT. Donovan Building Demolition Originally uploaded by Allan M Some newspapers have tried stubbornly to resist giving away their content for free on the Web. But the New York Times is finally about to give up the ship, according to the New York Post. It already gives away most of its stories for free online—all except select Op-Ed pieces on TimesSelect. In an age of seemingly unchecked growth in online ads, subscription walls don't make a lot of sense. And with Rupert Murdoch thinking about taking down the subscription wall at WSJ.com, the Times would not be wise to become the last holdout. Scott Karp explains the disruption occurring in the media world:The new economics of media make charging for content nearly impossible because there is always someone else producing similar content for free — even if the free content isn’t “as good as” the paid content by some meaningful metric, it doesn’t matter because there’s so much content of at least proximate quality that the paid content provider has virtually no pricing power.News and commentary are no longer a scarce commodity.... (08/07/07 09:00 PM)

Apple Takes Its Bite of iPhone Mobile Service Fees. iPod Originally uploaded by stublog In the competition to carry the iPhone in Europe, it looks like Vodafone (VOD) is balking at Apple's demands; The Guardian reports:Apple is understood to be demanding that its European mobile phone partners hand over a significant proportion of revenues generated by the iPhone and restrict the content that users can access.The portion of network revenues demanded by Apple is believed to have been behind Vodafone's decision not to sign up as the exclusive partner for the iPhone in the UK. ... The iPhone is expected to launch in November in the UK through O2, in France with Orange and in Germany with T-Mobile.So not only does Apple (AAPL) keep all the revenues from the $500 iPhones, but it gets a cut of the monthly service fees as well. I guess even (most) hard-nosed telecom execs have a hard time saying No to Steve Jobs. But if this report is true, good for Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin for sticking to his guns. Update: Another tidbit about the economics of the relationship between Apple and the mobile carriers. Citigroup analyst Richard Gardner models iPhone revenues for Apple to include the entire $500 average selling price plus a $100 bounty from ATT. (This is from a June 28 note of his). Gardner does not model in any cut of the monthly subscription revenues, however. (The $100 bounty would be more like a typical subsidy). So if Apple is also getting part of ATT's monthly fees, not to... (07/06/07 09:00 PM)

How to Harness Word of Mouth (Article from MyCustomer.com). When I got back from London I got a call from Neil Davey from MyCustomer.com, who interviewed me for this article... Quoted from http://www.mycustomer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=133068: Everybody's talking: how to harness word of mouth marketing - 14 Jun 2007 By Neil Davey, editor Word of mouth marketing and customer advocacy have got a lot of people talking in recent years. Studies by the likes of the London School of Economics have found that word of mouth advocacy is a statistically significant predictor of annual sales growth. And this has generated no little excitement in marketing departments around the globe. Nurturing and harnessing this powerful medium has therefore become a growing imperative. As a board member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, and VP of word of mouth marketing firm Bazaarvoice.com, few are more aware of the surge in interest in this field than Sam Decker. Read More --... (06/18/07 09:03 PM)

[Fight The Bull] Sharon Stone Shows Her Balls. http://www.fightthebull.com/blog/2005/01/sharon-stone-shows-her-balls.html In Davos for the World Economic Forum, Stone was attending a panel discussion on African poverty. Stone surprised the crowd (maybe even herself) when she interrupted the proceedings by standing up and spontaneously pledging $10,000 to help buy... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)

[Tom Peters] Last Impressions Come First!. http://www.tompeters.com/blogs/main/007299.phpNobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman (a psychologist who won the Economics Nobel) tells us, as reported in the February 2005 issue of Psychology Today, that our memories are very selective. In particular, no matter how extended an event (party, commercial transaction),... (12/12/06 08:04 AM)

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