7 Steps to Becoming a World-Class Real-Time Marketer

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Lately, real-time marketing is the buzzword du jour. While the notion of real-time marketing has been around since the mid-nineties, the practice gained steam after Oreo's "Dunk in the Dark" ad was created immediately following the power outage during this year's Super Bowl.

Then, shortly after the Super Bowl -- during the Oscars -- it seemed like practically every brand was developing Dunk in the Dark-like ads. The point I'm trying to make isn't that most marketers are lemmings unable to stop themselves from immediately jumping on the next shiny new object. In fact, a little real-time marketing experimentation is definitely not a bad thing, so in this post I wrote for HubSpot, I'll highlight the necessary steps you should take to be an effective real-time marketer.

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by Steve Hall    Mar-27-13    
Topic: Opinion, Research, Social, Tools



How to Hire the Perfect Inbound Marketer

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Are you a little bummed out at your 0.0000000001% response rates for your online ad campaigns? Angered over Mozilla and others turning cookies off by default in their browsers (so you can't properly target your potential customers)? Or maybe your miffed your "blind buys" result in your brand appearing on questionable sites?

Yea, the current online advertising model in totally broken. You need to check out inbound marketing. Better yet, you need to hire an inbound marketing expert. That may seem daunting if you don't truly understand inbound marketing but, never fear. HubSpot has published a pocket guide to hiring the perfect inbound marketer for your agency.

Get with the program. Inbound marketing is where the puck is headed. Don't get left behind. Download this guide and learn how to hire the perfect inbound marketer.

by Steve Hall    Mar-25-13    
Topic: Agencies, Brands, Tools



How the New Facebook News Feed Changes Your Content Strategy

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Working tirelessly through the night following yesterday's Facebook announcement about its new News Feed, two diligent HubSpotters, Anum Hussain and Brittany Leaning, have published a new report, How Facebook's New News Feed Changes Your Content Strategy. The 35 page (don't worry, there's lots of pictures) report that aims to educate marketers on how they need to approach content creation for Facebook's redesigned news feed.

Download the report now and learn how these changes will affect your Facenbook marketing.

by Steve Hall    Mar-12-13    
Topic: Research, Social, Tools



6 Secrets of Successful Geofence Campaigns

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Your customers all have mobile devices. Most walk around with Androids and iPhones. You have built your killer application, but your customers do not download it, and when they do, they do not use it. So how can you best engage your customers in the mobile channel?

Directly. SMS remains the best medium marketers use today to reach customers. But too many use SMS as an ax and not a scalpel. Marketers are flooding their customers: SMS traffic will approach 10 trillion messages this year, thanks mostly to SMS campaigns.

How do you effectively engage customers without drowning them? Smart marketers build geofences around key physical sites: stores, arenas, airports, schools, even competitor outlets.

These fences create zones that trigger an SMS message or other action when a customer enters or leaves. It is called geofencing, it is new in mobile marketing, and there are some important secrets to getting right.

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by Steve Hall    Mar- 8-13    
Topic: Mobile/Wireless, Tools



How Inbound Marketing Helps CMOs Give CEOs the Metrics They Need

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A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Chief Executive Officers hired Chief Marketing Officers to make sure all their ads looked pretty and their television commercials were shot by really cool Hollywood directors. And maybe they hoped for a few sales leads as well, but that was asking a lot.

Flash forward to today, and CEOs are demanding much more from their CMOs. Both because they need to, and because the tools and services available to a CMO make it possible.

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by Steve Hall    Mar- 1-13    
Topic: Brands, Opinion, Tools



How Oakland A's-Style MoneyBall Can Improve Your Marketing Collateral Content

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Brad Pitt would love this! Just like Brad did in the movie Moneyball, KnowledgeTree says it's time to start taking a different approach to sales and marketing content. Every piece of collateral content that marketing produces and sales uses contains data that is influenced not only by the contents of the collateral but by the approach taken during the sales process.

Moneyball Managers, as KnowledgeTree likes to call managers, must know how match-ups play out. Do case studies generate more interest than white papers? Does an ROI calculator really have any value? Do banks respond to case studies about insurance companies? Understanding this kind of data lets sales and marketing teams match-up their best content with different customers - and get more pipeline.

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by Steve Hall    Feb-28-13    
Topic: Tools



Unruly Launches Tool to Predict Viral Success

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Today, Unruly Media, keeper of the ever popular Viral Video Chart, has unleashed a tool that is said to offer advertisers the ability to predict the viral success of videos.

Unruly's ShareRank promises to help advertisers optimize their content by determining, in advance, how much earned media they can expect to see.

Advertisers who use the predictive tool will gain insight into the psychological, social and content triggers that affect the success of their video content as well as learn the word of mouth potential of their video before they spend anything on media.

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by Steve Hall    Jan-29-13    
Topic: Tools, Viral



Why 'Programmatic Premium' Media Buying Doesn't Work Today

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There's been a lot of discussion lately about "programmatic premium"- using machines to fully automate the purchase of premium advertising inventory. It seems like every conference lately has someone from Kellogg's on a panel saying programmatic premium is GR-R-REAT with very impressive statistics to support their claims.

The Ad Exchanges, DSPs, DMPs, SSPs, and various other TLAs (three letter acronyms) you see on Terry Kawaja's Display Lumascape have certainly been successful at automating the buying and selling of remnant inventory. But remnant inventory represents only a small slice of advertising spending. According to Mike Leo, CEO of Operative, only 18% of digital media advertising budget is spent through exchanges.

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by Steve Hall    Jan-29-13    
Topic: Online, Opinion, Tools



'Eye On' Aims to Provide Proof of Marketing's Financial Performance

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Black Ink, a division of Boston-based Winsper, has announced Eye On Enterprise Marketing ROI Suite, a cloud-based offering that provides brands with empirical evidence regarding marketing's contribution to the bottom line. Eye On reports on more than 50 interdependent key performance indicators (KPIs) across Marketing ROI, Customer ROI, and Business ROI. It is said to work with any database environment including enterprise resource planning (ERP), sales force automation (SFA), marketing resource management (MRM), marketing automation (MA), and point of sale (POS).

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by Steve Hall    Jan-17-13    
Topic: Tools



EverydayActors Aims to Become iStockPhoto For Video

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Toronto ad agency exec Kyle Hosick has launched EverydayActors, a site that ams to change the way video talent is sought. In a way, it's like iStockPhoto for video. Creative types can source talent for their video needs.

Users can browse the database to find exactly who they need (based on location, gender, age, ethnicity, special features and style like "geek chic") and negotiate the gig directly with the actor. The site doesn't take any kind of back-end percentage or charge a fee. Actors pay $20 to create a profile.

For marketers who need an "everyday" person to serve as an extra, a face, or an actor in a video for a campaign, this just might be worth checking out.

by Steve Hall    Dec-17-12    
Topic: Agencies, Tools, Video