In that world, marketing was seen as the engine that drove sales. Clever ideas and memorable brands, expressed through pricey advertising, created business success. Marketing “created demand” and the sales group was simply a means to fulfill that demand.

But now technology has killed Mad Men marketing… by making demand creation measurable.

You may have read the stories about newspapers going bankrupt.  It’s been positioned as part of the meltdown, but in fact such bankruptcies were inevitable, because advertising sales for print publications have been declining for years.

The reason?  The Internet.

When you run a print ad, you have no idea whether or not it has any impact on anyone.  While that impact was taken for granted in the Mad Men era, the truth is that almost nobody reads newspaper advertisements.  They never did.

And here’s another dirty little secret.  Ever since the invention of the remote control, nobody has watched television ads unless they were background noise.  Tivo and on-demand video has made TV ads even less effective.

By contrast, when you run an Internet ad, you know exactly how many people click on it and then you know exactly what they do afterwards. If your ad generates a lead, you can track that lead, in detail, all the way through to the closing.

For years, marketing groups were only corporate organizations allowed to measure themselves.  The Mad Men myth was so pervasive that most firms automatically funded marketing, simply because it was assumed to be crucial to success.

But with the Internet, marketing is now completely measurable.  And as a result, the rest of the corporation is dragging the marketing group, kicking and screaming, into a brave new world where the Mad Men are revealed as naked emperors.

No longer can a marketing group pretend that revising a logo, running an ad, or spouting “brand strategy” has automatic value.  No longer can they pretend that they’re “driving sales” by spending 2 percent of a company’s revenue.

Ironically, back in the days of the Mad Men, there was one kind of marketing that WAS measurable: direct mail.  And direct mail was the armpit of the marketing group, the sad sacks about whom the masters of the universe made disparaging jokes.

The direct mail guys didn’t wear Brooks Bros… they wore green eyeshades.   They knew exactly how many people responded and could track what happened after.  They were accountants and statisticians — the antithesis of the Mad Man.

But now that marketing is measurable, ALL marketing is like direct mail.  The marketeer of the future will be a quant, a scientist, a functionary who actually does what the Mad Man was supposed to be doing — generate leads.

I sympathize with all you marketing executives out there.  You got into this line of work because you knew that your success was guaranteed if you could simply play your political cards correctly and secure your share of the automatic budget.

Now you’ve got to go out and prove your worth, just like the sales guys that you were pretending to “drive” for so many years.  It’s not nearly as fun as flouncing into the boardroom, bloviating about brand, and then blowing the big bucks.

So welcome to the new world, and to your new job.

If you still have one, that is, after the CFO runs your numbers.

By Geoffrey James
http://blogs.bnet.com/

• #1: Discuss politics or religion. Such subjects are almost always a trap into opinionated quicksand that’s hard or impossible to get out of.  Fix: keep the discussion on business or neutral ground.
• #2: Dive into your product pitch. Sure you’ve got something to sell, but if you pitch too soon, you’ll get pitched out the door. Fix: Ask questions to understand needs, before you pitch.
• #3: Arrive late to the call. If you don’t arrive on time it tell the customer clearly that you don’t give a damn about them or their time.  Fix: Always arrive 15 minutes ahead of time.  If you drive to calls, get a GPS.
• #4: Appear flippant or sarcastic. A good-natured laugh at a joke might be taken personally by someone watching out the window, without hearing the context.  Fix: Watch your demeanor at all times.
• #5: Lack requisite product knowledge. The prospect doesn’t want to hear “I need to get back to you about that”…over and over. Fix: make sure you’re trained on your current products and policies…before the call.
• #6: Fail to plan the call. Sounds simple, but trying to close when should be qualifying (for example) is a lost sale.  Fix: Never enter a door without first thinking about what you plan to accomplish.
• #7: Be too business-like at first. Remember you’re building bridges with another human being, not just a notch in your sales gun.  Fix: Smile and be friendly… but don’t get too gushy.
• #8: Show up with a crowd. If you bring too many people, it will draw customer’s comments about why your costs so high  Fix: Use webconferencing when you need to include additional resources.
• #9: Fail to check your appearance. Don’t show up with something amiss that a quick stop in the client’s bathroom could head off.  Fix: Make a quick pit stop – with a look-over – before the call.
• #10: Forget the customers’ names. What could be more embarrassing than actually forgetting whom you’re talking with?  Fix: Write down the names down of everyone in the room with a small table diagram.
• #11: Be rude to the admin. No flirting, of course, but if you act all arrogant and superior, you’ll just antagonize the help.  Fix: Be friendly and respectful of the staff – admin and otherwise.
• #12: Ask personal questions. You may think that the customer is your friend, but you can easily screw up if it gets too personal.  Fix: Keep the conversation focused on business issues, especially the customer’s needs.

By Geoffrey James
http://blogs.bnet.com/

Far from thinking that “all marketing is bad,” I’m a big proponent of effective marketing.  However, before we can talk about effective marketing, we need to examine some basic business principles.  Otherwise, we’re not talking about the same thing.  Here four basic truths about business from my perspective:

1. Any business activity that can’t be measured quantitatively and objectively is a waste of resources.
2. The point of commerce is to generate profitable revenue, so all measurements should tie back to sales.
3. Everyone’s compensation should be tied to their ability to help sales generate profitable revenue.
4. Employees who object to being measured quantitatively and objectively are running a scam.

Does anyone disagree with these four principles?  If so, you’ve got no business in the business world.  By all means don’t bother reading the rest of this post, because you won’t understand it.

Now, for those of you still reading, it’s pretty obvious what defines effective marketing: activities that can be objectively and quantitatively measured that make it easier and quicker for sales to take place.

So, based on all the above, there are five marketing activities that are potentially effective:

• #1 Direct marketing. Whether snail-mail or email-based, direct marketing is completely measurable from top to bottom.   You know exactly what response you get, and exactly how many of those leads convert to customers.
• #2 Internet advertising. Because click-throughs can be measured, and the leads generated through those click-throughs can be tracked, you know exactly how effective your ads are, and what financial impact they’re having.
• #3 Lead generation events. Regardless of whether these events are in cyberspace or meat-space, you can track the leads and figure out the impact.  That allows you to winnow out events, like most trade shows, that cost too much.
• #4 Call-to-action advertising. Non-Internet advertising that has a specific call to action, like a discount code, phone number, or a coupon that’s unique to the ad, is measurable.  This is very different from “corporate goodness” ads.
• #5 Identifying qualified leads. There are a number of packages out there that troll through the Internet to gather data about individuals, job titles, firms, industries and news report that, when munged, produces a qualified prospect list.

This is not to say that every instance of these activities can generate a reasonable ROI.  But all of the five provide the necessary measurement to determine whether the activity is worth pursuing or whether it’s just a money-wasting marketing boondoggle.

By Geoffrey James
http://blogs.bnet.com/

The world’s first mass-produced home robot (1981). The Heathkit Hero Robot was originally released as a build-your-own kit. Equipped with an articulated gripper arm, an on-board computer and multiple sensors, the Hero could connect to your PC, react to your commands, speak thousands of words, move around, turn its “head,” follow a light, and even act as a smoke alarm. And, unlike the Aibo and the SDR-3X, the Hero was fully programmable (it had an on-board PC) and could be customized to your heart’s content. Why it failed: It was a kit that required considerable expertise to assemble. It was also complicated to program and had no useful built-in functions. They should have offered it assembled, with some function to make it practical (like the RoomBot vacuum cleaner).

The world’s first “Internet” access device (1983). The Sceptre Videotex Terminal was a wireless keyboard-controlled system which delivered news, weather, sports, stock reports, banking, shopping, email, and other information to an ordinary television. The Sceptre was about the same price as today’s broadband connection ($39.95 a month) but it never seemed to catch on, although it was eventually marketed in a dozen cities. The interface was a bit crude by today’s standards but, hey, it did pretty much all the Internet-type stuff that we’d want to do today. Why it failed: The idea of interacting with a computer was simply too “odd” for the public at large, and without an audience base there was no reason to advertise on it. They should have bootstrapped it by offering it for free for the first year.

The world’s first production WYSIWYG computer (1981). The Xerox Alto had a bit-mapped screen, a mouse and a graphical user interface. After prototyping similar designs in its Palo Alto laboratories, Xerox tried marketing it as an office automation device. Later, Apple Computer grabbed the design for their now-forgotten LISA computer and later (and more famously) for the Macintosh. Why it failed: No marketing and no sales education. Xerox had no idea what to do with the device and were afraid it might eat into revenues of their word processors. They should have dropped the price to gain share and cannibalized their installed base.

By the way, I think the publicity photo for the Hero Robot is a stroke of marketing brilliance, of a sort. (Click on the small photo to get a full-sized version.)  Think of it: a computer, a robot, a chick in a bikini, and a bad haircut.  If there’s a special place in heaven for computer nerds, it would look like that.

Source: http://blogs.bnet.com/

Your gift may not be extravagant, nor does it have to be imported. What’s important is how your recipient feels when he or she receives it. Does she oooh and ahhh over it? Or does she put it aside and remembers it only later? As a giver, you want to know that your gift is received with much appreciation.

- Choose a memorable gift. The holidays and the end of the year are special occasions: They signal a new life, a new slate, a new chance to make things better. Make it a custom to give special, personalized Christmas gifts to friends, family, and business clients. You purchasing decisions should be made months before the end of the year, so you can take your time to review prices, personalizing options, colors, and materials. Find a unique gift that no one else will duplicate. Nothing is more disappointing for a recipient than to find himself on the receiving end of two identical gifts.

- Hand it personally. Make it a custom to hand your personalized Christmas gifts to business clients yourself instead of sending these through a messenger. Not only does this give your relationship a more personal dimension, but doing so will enable your recipient to thank you personally. Doesn’t Christmas feel so much better when you hear people’s thank-you and see their huge smiles?

- Add a personal note. If you cannot give out your gifts personally, why don’t you add a personal note? Your employee are more than just names on your payroll, so why not take the time to make it a yearly custom to craft a personalized note for your Christmas gifts?

- Make the holidays a special and memorable one for friends, family, co-workers, and business clients. Beyond gifts, it’s the thought that counts.

By Remy Lebeau
http://ezinearticles.com/

An annual marketing plan will assist you in figuring out what it is that you need to do, how to do it, and when to do it. This marketing plan should go hand-in-hand with your business plan and development.

In this marketing course we will revisit your marketing goals and determine what it is that you hope to achieve in the upcoming year with your marketing efforts. Often companies avoid this process because they don’t know where to begin the process. That is what I am here for. Over the next eight weeks I will walk you through the steps of creating a solid marketing plan. At the end of our course you will have completed the following:

• Preparation of your mission statement and vision for the upcoming year.
• Discover and define your niche markets.
• Describe and identify your services.
• Develop and plan your marketing strategy.
• Explore and identify your competition.
• Create quantifiable marketing goals.
• Create a marketing calendar that contains a month-by-month schedule of marketing activities and events for the upcoming year.
• Learn how to monitor the results of your marketing efforts.

When we have finished you will have a strong marketing plan in your hand. This will become an important tool that will help you work smarter not harder at achieving your marketing goals. Each year you will want to revisit this marketing course and revise your marketing plan. Your marketing plan should reflect changes and goals based on the previous year’s marketing experience.

By Laura Lake
http://marketing.about.com/

Over three years ago in 2001 the Census bureau alone reported that there were over 17 million U.S. women living alone. This doubled from the year 1981. These women were never-married and childless and between the ages of 25 to 44, but let’s not stop there. Consider the report done in 2000 that showed the percentage of single women in each of the following categories:

• Women Never Married (25.1 Percent)
• Separated (2.4 percent)
• Divorced (10.2 percent)
• Widowed (10 percent)

In a report by the Census Bureau release in July of 2004 it showed that there were over 95.7 million unmarried and single Americans. Over 53% of them were women. This nearly tripled the number reported in 2001. It’s been reported that nearly half of women 45 or older are unmarried.

This market is continually growing at a rapid pace, yet how many commercials have you seen speak to these women? Perhaps this would change if more marketing companies realized that over 57% of single women currently own their own homes and live fully independent lives. Single women now equal one-fifth of the nation’s population and 42 percent of all registered women voters.

Do you know that when it comes to politics our politicians are also missing the boat? Without a clear message to this market it is no wonder that statistics show that very few single women exercise their right to vote. In the 2000 presidential election 68 percent of married women voted, but only 52 percent of single women voted.

However don’t think that just because you aren’t running a political campaign that these numbers don’t matter to you. If you are running a company, perhaps it’s time to ask yourself how you are reaching this market.

If I were in charge of a political campaign my first order of business would be to spend time discovering what keeps these women from voting. If I were running a company and I knew I had been missing this demographic I’d be calling a meeting to make sure I don’t continue to make such a costly mistake. How can you market to them? It can be done in three steps:

• Learn what their concerns are?
• Find out what is keeping them up at night?

• Use the above answers to outline how to be more inclusive and explain policies and goals that would improve the lives of these single women, not just “working families.”

This is not rocket science – this is Marketing 101 to an untapped market. Single women have the ability to alter the outcome of an election. They have the ability to grow your businesses and increase your sales. Perhaps it’s time we all began to speak clearly to this market.

By Laura Lake
http://marketing.about.com/

The marketing vehicles that we can chose from include:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Paid Search
• Affiliate Marketing
• Email marketing
• Blog Marketing

Where will you get the most bang for your buck? I wish I could give you a concrete answer or a plan that would get you started and on the path to success guaranteed, but truth is every merchant differs. I can however equip you with the basic strategy that I’ve followed.

With that said in my 11 years of interactive marketing there is a formula that I suggest and a reason for it; let me explain. I have taken the below from my own experience, both in marketing my own companies as well as those of my clients.

Search engine optimization using organic listing within search engines to get your products seen by those who are searching for specific keyword terms tends to have fantastic results. The downside is this method can take up to 3 to 6 months to begin seeing results. Can you wait 3 to 6 months? If you are like most businesses the answer will be resounding no.

There is an option to organic search engine optimization and that is paid search. This is where you use companies such as Google Adwords or Overture to set a budget and pay per click for listing that are at the top of the search page on specific key terms. I would not suggest depending solely on pay per click advertising. This can become costly and if not managed well can be a drain financially. Often companies will outsource their paid search campaigns, not because they can not learn to do it or can not manage it on their own but because they want someone with a great deal of experience to make sure they are getting the most for their money.

Affiliate marketing or often what is referred to as strategic partnerships is the opportunity to present your products or services to experience online marketers and you pay them a commission for the sales that they drive. The great benefit to this marketing option is that it costs you nothing unless they in fact send your sales. The downside is at times its difficult to find the great affiliate marketers unless you have connections within the industry or your hire a company that knows how to go about recruiting effective marketers. I would make one key suggestion be sure to test your landing page for conversion purposes. If you find great strategic partners and your landing page doesn’t convert you will lose them quicker than you can imagine. Test your landing page with a paid search campaign in order to make tweaks, changes, or just increase your conversion rates based on your findings with the paid search campaign.

Email marketing is not dead, but let’s just say it’s a little harder to grab attention with email. We have been bombarded for so long with spam and messages that are not pertinent or of urgency taht we tend to be quick to hit the delete key. I’m not saying that email marketing can’t work with a permission-based subscriber list, but your message will need to catch their attention within the first thirty seconds and have a very strong call to action in order to get your viewer to move on your offer.

Blog marketing exploded in 2006. Search engines love blogs and readers love to read them in their own leisure time. We pull in the feeds that are important to us and we can view them when we want to. A blog will help your viewers stay on top of your current offers, specials and important news. If you don’t have a blog, my question to you is what are you waiting for?

What’s your plan of action in internet marketing? To sum it up quickly begin with paid search while you build out organic search results. Explore affiliate marketing, but only after you’ve run a test campaign using paid search venues. Continue to market to your permission list with email, but don’t wait another moment to start a company blog.

By Laura Lake
http://marketing.about.com/

Viral marketing describes strategies that encourage individuals to pass your marketing message to others. This type of marketing creates the potential for exponential growth in your message’s exposure and influence.

If you’ve studied marketing at all I have no doubt that you have come across articles and resources that strongly encourage “word of mouth” and “referral After all these types of marketing avenues are often called the best thing that has happened to marketers after the invention of advertisements.

With that said you may be wondering “How can these resources, or anyone for that matter, be so sure?”

There is some truth that most marketers simply insist on the universal effectiveness of word of mouth without any concrete data or figures to back their claims. They cannot quote any facts or figures regarding word of mouth simply because there are none available. Even though it’s supposed to be the best form of marketing, it remains the least researched marketing method.

Why is viral marketing not researched more? There are two strong reasons behind this:

• Marketers think that when they are researching peoples’ attitudes, beliefs, intentions, tastes, and preferences, they are indirectly researching word of mouth (since those are the factors which drive it).

• They believe that word of mouth cannot be influenced considerably, so any attempts to research it would be fruitless.

What people have failed to realize is that simply studying the factors which drive word of mouth may not be enough. You need to get down to the very specifics. Such as

What questions are your prospective customers asking and in what way are your current customers responding? The extent of influence certain customers’ comments or views carries can be much more than you think. What your customers say about your product is extremely important as they will influence the future purchase decisions of their families, relatives, friends, colleagues, neighbors, etc. Specifically speaking, tailored to the individual requirements of the product and market, research can be conducted in regards to the following:

• What are potential customers asking those who have purchased and used your product?

• How are product purchasers and users responding to queries like the one above?

• Are questions, suspicions, and reservations regarding your product handled effectively?

• What are the factors which decide whether someone who hears about your product will actually go out and buy it?

• What is your primary source of referrals, i.e., how did customers learn about and decide to purchase your product?

Once you have conducted prelminary research using the above questions, you will be in a position to tell how effective your word of mouth marketing campaign is. With that information you will be able to take concrete steps to further improve its performance and effectiveness.

By Laura Lake
http://marketing.about.com/

If you are in the job market it is important to realize that your resume is your personal marketing tool. Unfortunately very few job seekers treat it as such. Do not fall into the trap of grabbing a resume book and copying your information into a familiar format or just pasting your information into a commonly used Microsoft template.

Take some time and single out the unique qualities and experiences that will make you stand out of the crowd. Remember in today’s market an employer is inundated with resumes on a daily basis. However, do not let this be discouraging. You can use common marketing techniques and strategies to get that potential employers attention and land your dream job.

In the next ten minutes I will walk you through the process of creating a road map that will assist you in effectively marketing yourself in today’s job market. Take a few moments to grab a pen and notepad before you continue reading, so that you can answer each question below as you read it. Do not over analyze the question simply write down the first thought that comes to your mind. YOu can always review later and tweak as necessary.

• Step 1. What is your career goal? What type of job are you looking for?

• Step 2. What qualities have prepared you for this job? Do you possess more education or experience?

• Step 3. Who is your audience? Who are you targeting?
  Make a list of your targeted employers. Keep in mind your message must be designed for your audience. If you are applying for a technical job they are more than likely not interested in a conversational novel regarding your personality, rather they are more interested in your technical expertise. However if you are applying for a marketing position you will spark their interest with a creative and conversational pitch.

• Step 4. Create your personal sales campaign.
  Now that you’ve listed your specific goal, qualities, and your target it’s time to develop your sales campaign. You do this by embedding these components into the writing of your cover letter, resume, and the development of your two-minute pitch.

By Laura Lake
http://marketing.about.com/