Interesting results from a survey of 766 small business owners conducted by Manta. Note these were truly small businesses with 86% being 10 employees or less. Most notable: 77% plan to increase spending in 2011. This, despite the fact that 85% of them had implemented wide ranging cuts during 2010 and 67% don’t believe the [...]
If you’re really serious about Social Media. If you want understand the business value. If you want to hear 3 preeminent experts provide great examples. If you have a spare hour. Watch this. In it, you’ll find Martin Giles, U.S. Technology Correspondent from The Economist moderating a discussion with Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs, Charlene Li, [...]
So I bought a new Mac on Monday. For at least a decade, my tech team at Erickson Barnett tried hard to get me to convert from the PC world. I steadfastly declined claiming that various critical pieces of software just didn’t work on a Mac and this, that, or the other excuse. Today, I’m [...]
Another interesting article from the folks at eMarketer. It summarized some of the findings from the recent TNS Digital Life survey. A few interesting takeaways from this worldwide survey: Email, by far, is the most common activity – 72% of Internet users check email on a daily basis. Social Media on the other hand edged [...]
My daily newsletter from the folks at eMarketer talked about how small businesses perceive social media. Their article referred to an American Express study conducted in Fall 2010. Small business owners saw the leading benefit of social media marketing was increasing exposure. While that certainly can be the case in retail, I see a slightly different benefit [...]
I was visiting a new client the other day. As I pulled into their parking lot, I saw one of the owners taking out the trash. Of course my first comment was, “You can always tell the owner of a small business by who takes out the trash.” Perhaps not the best way to kick [...]
A survey by Marketing Sherpa shows that B2B marketers will be focusing much of their effort on web-centric and inbound tactics in 2011. Results show a majority of marketers are increasing investments in web-centric tactics such as their web presence, social media, virtual events / webinars, SEO, and email marketing. Spending on more traditional tactics [...]
This most recent Chart of the Week from Marketing Sherpa just confirms what we all know from experience. B2B sales can take a heck of a long time! Taken from a survey of over 1000 B2B marketers, it shows general trends. Of course, typically, the higher your price point, the longer the cycle. As the [...]
OK, not really. Apologies if you’ve already seen this (it has been been making the rounds). A fine example of…oh, let’s just skip the analysis part. Just check it out. It’s pretty funny, especially if you’re a designer. Be sure you read the entire post. More
A new study by the Kauffman Foundation shows that essentially all of the net job growth in the U.S. is due to startup firms. Studying a newly available Government dataset that provided new business and job creation data from 1977 to 2005, they showed that on average, startups in the U.S. added 3 million jobs [...]
We all have it. Information pours in from all angles – email, RSS, Twitter, Facebook, TV, radio, and about 100 other sources. What do you pay attention to? How do you prioritize? Brad Dawson of LTV Dynamics wrote an interesting piece in American Executive this week about just that. Key takeaways: Establish Information Objectives – [...]
I had 3 very interesting customer service experiences this week: Cuisinart – My daughters gave me a mini food processor for Father’s day. Used it to shred some parmesan cheese and after finishing noticed the bowl had cracked. I honestly don’t know if it came that way or the hard cheese busted it up. Called [...]
How’s this for targeted advertising? You want to get the attention of uber-marketer Paul Dunay. What would you do? Email? FedEx? Billboard? Interactive agency G.1440 took a novel approach and created a Facebook ad directed exclusively at Paul. Fascinating concept – do a bit of research, learn as much as you can about the target, [...]
Marketing Sherpa’s Chart of the Week this week shows percentage of gross revenue allocated to marketing. Smaller companies – under 100 employees – are spending 11% on average. Interesting “benchmark”. What are you spending? More
Here’s an all-star cast discussing why giving content away makes sense for marketing these days. Check out the video on David Meerman Scott’s blog – it’s well worth a few minutes of your time. In the comments on David’s post (yes, I always read the comments) is a quote from Seth Godin: The enemy of [...]