Paul Cheney says, “Twitter is a tough place to be for anyone; large brands are no exception. But in addition to the cynicism, they have to balance pleasing their customers and their shareholders – a fine line to walk when you’re trying to grow an account. But what if you were a large brand that sold toilet paper? What if all you had to tweet about was little pieces of paper that people use to wipe their asses with? For Marie Bonaccorse Hackman and her small editorial team at Charmin, it was a playground of nutrient-rich material for tweeting. “I was there from March of 2011 until... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “Think about how hard you work, how much time and resources you put in to get a customer’s attention. It may be that you have methodically built up a content marketing powerhouse that pulls in new and returning customers. Or you invest a big part of your budget in social media advertising or print advertising. Maybe you’ve spent hours and hours scrubbing your list squeaky clean and creating valuable newsletters and a finely tuned, marketing-automation fueled drip campaign. Whatever your marketing focus, you realize that getting customer attention for your marketing... [...]

Courtney Eckerle says, ““Brands suddenly realized, 30-second spots aren’t working. There’s got to be a better way for us to tell a story,” Morgan Spurlock, Academy Award-Nominated Director, Super Size Me, said in our MarketingSherpa 2016 Media Center interview. “That’s when they started looking at creative ways to make content tell stories.” Since making POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Made, where Morgan worked with brands to finance the entire film, he’s realized that there are a plethora of compelling brand stories to tell. It’s just a matter of recognizing... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “Skeptical Millennials (defined as ages 18-34) are a notoriously hard-to-reach demographic for marketers. But a new social media outlet can help – Snapchat. For experienced marketers unfamiliar with Snapchat, it’s like direct mail, in that you can send messages to potential customers with images. But it’s like weird direct mail that disappears after 24 hours. Because it was sent by a magician or something? No one knows for sure. But we do know that means you should send heaps of snaps to your customers when you chat. Send snaps constantly and without pause, so... [...]

Courtney Eckerle says, “MarketingSherpa has always been about customer-first marketing. Those are the stories we love to tell, and the marketers we love to talk to. That’s why, in this year’s judging process, we made customer focus a pass/fail criteria. It has always been more heavily weighted than other aspects, but we still considered and discussed submissions that were lacking in, or ignored how customers were actually affected. This year, no matter how otherwise intriguing the campaign was, it was dismissed if our seven judges unanimously agreed it was not customer-focused. On top... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “When we ask marketers about their biggest challenges, budget issues are usually at or near the top.Ecommerce marketers say size of marketing budget is the biggest challenge to their companies’ ecommerce operations. B2B marketers say lack of resources in staffing, budgeting or time are the biggest barrier to overcoming their top challenges. Everybody is challenged by the budget in some way. So to give you a business leader’s perspective on key budget questions: What should you prioritize in your budget? How should you work with the rest of the organization? How do... [...]

Courtney Eckerle says, ““We knew that the content was there, but [customers] weren’t sure how to interpret that. We used very industry-specific terminology,” said Abby See, Director of Online Marketing, Sunrise Senior Living. Visitors to the Sunrise Senior Living website are often looking for immediate senior care options or are researching senior care providers for upcoming care needs. The issue was, that research wasn’t coming as easy to them as it should have. In the Media Center at MarketingSherpa Summit 2016, Abby told me that through user experience testing, she and her team... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “If you’re an entrepreneur running a startup and begin to find some success, you will likely face a crossroads: Should I bootstrap, funding the business myself with personal savings and/or ongoing revenue? Should I procure funding and give away ownership interests to a venture capitalist or private equity firm? To help you make this decision, we interviewed Brian Fricano, Founder/CEO, Sustainable Supply. He is an entrepreneur who has weighed the pros and cons of each option and made this decision for his own startup“. Startups 101: How and why a green retailer... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “What do you include in your social media marketing budget? Most marketers focus on elements like software and tools, paid advertising, social media management, and content creation. But let me introduce a radical idea – the physical customer experience is a worthwhile investment as part of your social media marketing budget. Sounds crazy, right? That’s in someone else’s department. It’s someone else’s focus. But I bet you would have thought I was crazy if I told you just a few months ago that two men would fall off a cliff chasing a pretend monster on their... [...]

Courtney Eckerle says, ““We have a pretty small market at Intronis, it’s manage service providers, mainly in North America,” said Richard Delahaye, Senior Director of Marketing, Intronis in his interview at the MarketingSherpa Media Center at Summit 2016. He explained that the sales staff wasn’t able to get many conversations going from that group with traditional methods like phone calls and emails. They needed something special to differentiate them from all the other phone calls and emails their prospects were likely getting. Inspiration came from an old school method: a direct... [...]