Marketing in a new economy. The Web.

Utilizing on-line activities to drive traffic to your site can result in euphoria or death by a thousand cuts. What do I mean by the death part? Well… every tactic feels inexpensive but in aggregate, the costs both in terms of money and time can “kill” you (or at least kill your marketing ROI!).

My recommendation for all activities – especially on-line investment is to: (1) Identify the prize. (2) Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that will get you to the prize. (3) Put systems in place to monitor the prize. (4) Focus on using your key performance indicators to optimize your program.

Let’s first look at ORGANIC OPTIMIZATION:

Before you engage an SEO firm, do the basics yourself. You will save time and money. Here are 5 things you can to tomorrow.

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Marketing in a new economy. PR 3.0

For publicly traded companies, the current rules dictate that information can be made public by a press release or telephone conference but not simply on a website. This ruling has enabled agencies rooted in traditional PR outreach to stay in business. In 2006 Sun Microsystems asked the SEC to change the rule. Perhaps with the advent of the current President giving his weekly address online and completely bypassing traditional media – there is an indication that the rule may evolve.

 

As I shared in a previous blog- the fact is most Agencies are really not evolving. PR agencies both boutique and large are still basing the foundation of their plans on traditional media. PR pitches provided to me years ago feature the same tactics as pitches I received just last week.  The foundation of the plan features press release, by-lined article placements, press tours, events, promotions …

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Steps to Shifting Out of the Price Death Spiral

Compete on the benefits side of the value equation – not on the price side. Ever stay at the Ritz Carlton? My husband and I do, once a month. Why? Because when we have our one night away from our wonderful children we want to ensure that we stay someplace where we feel special.

The Ritz hits the mark. When we drive up to the entrance the valet opens our car doors and greets us by name. When we walk through the lobby the receptionist does the same – every time and without fail. (Good start.) The concierge books us in giving us our complimentary upgrade Then she reminds us to take advantage of our $85 “restaurant voucher” (great way for them to get us to dine at their restaurants and spend more money). Jim, the bellman, always brings our bags up to the room and during our stroll, he points out what’s new in the gift shops, the specials on the restaurant menu and highlights something wonderful about the spa (nice up-sell.). Each time he welcomes us into our room, he reminds us …

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Filling Seats!

In May of 2007 during a relatively strong economic environment BusinessWeek  reported that on avg. 60% of a typical company’s office space was sitting empty. Can you imagine the financial burden that vacancy rate places on a company? And, it will be quite some time before we begin to uncover the impact on current vacancy rates from the recent layoffs.

The bottom line is in boom times and bad, the current Logic of Commercial Real Estate doesn’t work.

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