Measurement, Personalization, and Why the Future of Digital Marketing Isn’t Obvious
As marketers and brands evolve with increasingly sophisticated technology, everyone wants answers to the same question: What will digital marketing of the future be like? In contrast to many blog posts, I won’t pretend to give any definitive answers because I don’t think they are available yet. But there are some hints about which through-lines […]
Click-throughs, Privacy, and the Trust Economy
There’s a dirty little secret in advertising: for all the talk of targeting and personalization, the average click through rate of an online ad hasn’t changed that much in the last 10 years. The traditional banner ad set the bar low, around .03%, which was considered successful for a long time; even now with rich […]
Control and the Social Business
Companies are afraid of a world where customers control the messaging around their brand. This is understandable, since whether you’re a corporation with decades long history or a smaller business the idea of having a customer compare you to Satan on widely available channels like Twitter or Facebook is unpleasant. That all too common possibility, […]
Rethinking Customers, Value, and How Brands Express Their Humanity
With the hype around personal branding in full swing, something unexpected has started to happen. Though there is a fair amount of criticism of individuals acting as brands (some justified, some not), one of the unintended consequences is that brands have begun to act like individuals. Some of this is a good thing – people […]
Finding Insights in the Space Between Traditional and Big Data Research
Working with large data sets is difficult. One of the hidden challenges when you’re digging for insight is that in larger, more open data environments the practices that accompany traditional research can be less than helpful. Think of it this way, you create a web page dialogue with a question and three buttons, one that […]
Why Community (And Not Scalability) Matters For Most Brands
Brands are obsessed with scale. Part of the obsession comes from a dependence on quickly evolving marketing technology – there’s a platform or app for nearly everything these days, whether it’s optimizing titles for blog posts and online videos, measuring and tweaking growth levers for inbound traffic, or finding exactly the right time to publish […]
How Social Data is Changing Marketing Research
There is a good news / bad news situation that has been growing for marketers. The good news is that collecting data on customers and general audiences is more sophisticated and accessible than it’s ever been. On the other hand, that’s something of a problem. It’s not hyperbole to say that most marketers are drowning […]
The Relationship Between Generational Marketing and Insight
The headlines keep coming. MILLENNIALS WANT ONE THING ABOVE ALL ELSE BOOMERS ARE BRAND LOYAL GEN X IS LAZY AND DOESN’T CARE ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT GENERATION Z IS GOING TO BE THE MOST INFLUENTIAL GENERATION EVER These stories all have one thing in common: they’re full of it. The truth is that using data and […]
Millennial Think Tank: The Contract Employee Workforce
This week’s broadcast found us taking a deeper look at how Millennials work, in particular their experiences with contract work and at will employment. The think tank included: Kelsey Pollack, a middle Millennial and project manager in Palo Alto, both a contractor and manages contractors Albert Qian, a middle Millennial working in product marketing, has […]
Being Customer-Centric Isn’t Just About Brand Reputation, It’s About Insight, Too
Customer-centricity is a misunderstood concept. Often, people see it as a way to increase brand reputation but, as evidenced by frequent, unsolicited product feedback and customer service queries on social channels, it can be the source of a whole lot more, including better, more focused marketing and product development insights. One component is personalizing your […]