“Marketing with Corp blogs: Customers are willing to talk if you’re willing to listen” at the New England Expo for Business
Speaker: John Cass Director of Marketing at ideaLaunch

Gen Y = Digital natives: grown up with phones, etc.

Transparency: People don’t like hidden messages, reveal who you are and reveal connections

Dialog: Key to building trust through authenticity

Use to connect w Gen Y, also works for other generations. “This is the way the world works today”

Content mktg strategy that combines marketing and SEO

Blogs perfect for SEO, in terms of keywords, indexability, and links
Have an engagement strategy.

Compelling content and engagement

3 types of corp blogs

1.    Columnist: really good stuff that you write, don’t answer comments, don’t do outreach to blogging community
2.    Host write content, write back about comment
3.    Most successful: Social engager: writes content, has strategy for reading what’s going on in blogging community and build relationships

Disclaimer: These are notes, designed to refresh attendees’ memories or to give an idea of what you missed.
This is not in any way final copy.

Designing and Implementing Marketing Analytics Programs for the Multi-Channel Opportunity
Produced by the Boston Chapter of the American Marketing Association, Jan 20, 2009

My first AMA event, this sold-out evening provided lots of networking (hard not to chat it up when the room is really crowded), a FANTASTIC artisanal cheese display, and a fairly advanced topic. Many of the attendees were engaged in marketing analytics programs themselves. Luckily, the panelists did a good job is speaking in grasp-able terms.

AMA writeup @ analyizethis.eventbrite.com
“As more marketing goes digital, we’re flooded with potentially valuable
data. Historically, this data has been used to optimize campaigns and
associated investments within single channels. Today marketers
increasingly are using this data to move beyond single-channel
optimization toward a multi-channel perspective.”

“This shift creates the need for new metrics, tools for measuring and
managing them, and processes for developing and deploying them that
span organizational boundaries in sometimes challenging ways.”

“On
January 20, 2008, AMA Boston will host a panel discussion featuring
senior executives from leading local firms. They’ll share how they
approach these larger, inherently strategic and organizational issues
and synthesize their experiences into lessons you can apply as well.”

Participants included
• Chris Madaus – VP of Marketing, Staples Delivery
• Adrian Sosa – Director, Market Intelligence, CVS
• Manu Mathew – CEO, VisualIQ

Which channels?
PR focus: display search, email. the campaigns aren’t always integrated from the planning point of view, but measured as a whole. When there are two separate agencies doing different campaigns, hard to distinguish where money should be put.

Cross-channel synergy?

Staples: Still retains silos; hard to break away from old retail ways to better way on the web.
Social media: integrated social channel. What’s the impact of this platform that I cannot control?

CVS: Targeted web display, yahoo personal circular and sales for the week.
more opportunistic, do we want to play in social media space? Not very high risk, is economical.

How are organizations working more effectively across channels?

CVS: Traditional retail “stack it, let it fly” isn’t going to work anymore, even if things aren’t budgeted, need to be able to move swiftly and leverage. Which pots to put the money? This is decided at most senior level.

Rick from Hubspot small/mid b2b focus: The conversation is happening, so need to find economical way to engage in it.

Staples: Whatever we do costs hundreds of thousands; is it worth spending that much for something that could be low impact?

CVS: Have “a drawerful of ideas, not enough manpower, management time, plus money to chase experiments. … We’re chasing whales, tuna would be great, but we’re chasing whales.”

Next week’s posts:

• Boston Downtown Womens Club’s “Perfecting your 30 Second Pitch”
• Nonprofit Consultants’ Network “Capacity, Sustainability, and Assessing Outcomes
• “Developing a Successful Online Strategy” at Everycompanycounts.com