Thanks to everyone who attended this morning's webinar, "Integrating Facebook Timeline into Your Digital Presence: Tips and Tools". We had a large group in attendance, two engaging presenters, and some great questions. Here is a quick recap of the webinar:

• Facebook Timeline has brought with it new opportunities for marketers.
• Now, marketers have the ability to tell richer, more visual brand stories, with access to deeper insights and analytics.
• Content planning is essential to taking full advantage of the new format, as it is highly focused on storytelling.
• A Next-Gen CMS like Marqui can be the essential link between your Facebook Timeline presence and your overall digital marketing strategy, allowing you to:    
  • Consolidate and share content across platforms
  • Build custom applications
  • Capture leads on your Facebook page

Check out the full webinar here.

We also had some questions that we couldn't get to during the webinar due to time constraints:

Rachel and Jennifer, you both asked if we could provide some examples of B2B businesses using Facebook Timeline well. Great question: we think that Salesforce.com and Dell Enterprise are both doing some interesting things with their Timeline presence. Have a look at the screenshots below, and their actual pages, and let us know if you agree!





Also, we had a question from Rich about how to build an app with a link to a specific web page. The process for building apps and integrating them with Facebook is excellent question, but was far too complicated to cover in the few minutes we had remaining in the webinar, so we'd like to take a better stab at answering it here.

The process starts with designing an app. Some of the applications we have created are as simple as a single image with a block of editable text. We have also designed apps with integrated video, text, Twitter and forms in a custom designed page, very much like a traditional webpage. The design options are really only limited by the screen real estate provided by Facebook.

Facebook has an API that allows us to push structured information into their app system within an iFrame. As part of the design process for the app, you would specify which aspects of the app you would like to be editable. The Marqui interface then allows users to log in and update the fields through a very simple interface – text boxes and digital asset management for images and video. With a few clicks, users can change the content, and then have Marqui push the changes into the live application or save the changes and send them for approval from their stakeholders.

We hope that this helps outline the process in a bit more detail, Rich - and if anyone would like to know more of the technical details, please contact us so we can put you in touch with an expert from our digital production team.

Stay tuned for details on our next webinar, and thanks again to everyone for attending!

Even those marketers with exceptional social-network-savvy can struggle to keep up with the latest developments in leading social media. Acquisitions, new features and new platforms are a daily occurrence, and it can be easy to get lost in the sea of updates in the social world. Similarly, it can also be easy to lose sight of which are actually of benefit to your business.

The folks at Mashable, Zintro and Quantcast recently gathered research around the different benefits of leading social networks, and compiled them into a handy infographic that can provide a good foundation for your social strategy this year.

Here are some key takeaways from the infographic, and some of our own insight:

• Just because it's new and shiny doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good fit for your business. When you're developing your social strategy, always keep in mind who your target audience is, what social networks they're active in, and what kinds of content you'll be sharing. A good question to ask yourself is: what benefit would our prospects/customers find in visiting our Facebook page or following us on Twitter? If there isn't a clear answer to that, or your target market isn't active on Facebook or Twitter, you need to rethink your use of those platforms.


• Facebook is great for interacting on a more personal level, and it can also act as the "social hub" of your business, centralizing contact information, news, company history, etc. It's great for sharing blog posts, videos and photos, along with Q+A. The drawback? With so many "likes", it can be difficult to make authentic connections with your community.

• Twitter is used for very short news updates, keeping track of conversations about your brand or industry, and for finding new customers. It's "secret weapon" is that it's a prime tool for addressing customer service concerns in real-time. It's a great platform for sharing information of interest/ value to your audience, for finding people that are following topics in your industry, and for interacting one-on-one with followers.

• LinkedIn is best for showcasing professional accomplishments (including company wins and developments) and building connections with professionals in your industry. It's "secret weapon" is its Group feature, which lets you lead discussions and position yourself/ your organization as industry thought leaders.

• Google+ is best used for initiating conversations, and inviting specific people to them. It's unique ability to organize contacts into groups and target messages accordingly is its selling point for many. It's a good platform for sharing blog posts, and insight into your industry.

For more detail, check out the full infographic below.

In summary, our recommendation to you is to do your research before jumping onto a new social media platform. Being aware of the platform's unique strengths and weaknesses, along with your audience's social media habits, will arm your business for social success. It will also ensure that your internal resources are being marshalled to where they are needed most.

Despite shrinking budgets and resources, today's marketing teams have the ability to maximize their efficiency, with a critical tool at their disposal: marketing automation. With it, marketers can create complex campaigns and engagements with their prospects over time, priming them for an eventual conversion or purchase.

Marketing automation is not new, but it's now become a common tool for many marketing teams. For any team using a CMS with marketing automation capabilities "baked-in" (like Marqui), we recommend the following essentials to any strategy:

1.  Roll Out The Welcome Wagon

Build a strong welcome campaign, that is. More than just a simple auto-responder email to a visitor who has filled out a form on your website, welcome campaigns present a fantastic opportunity for marketers to keep their business top-of-mind for those visitors who recently engaged with them. Think of this way: have you ever met a like-minded professional at a networking event, felt excited about making a new contact in your industry, and then not heard from them, only to see a random email from them 8 months later, asking for your help in securing a job at your company?

You felt used, didn't you?

Think of a welcome campaign as that contact in your industry who's an exceptionally good at networking and dialoguing. They:

• Send you an email a couple of days after meeting you
• Send you another email 2 weeks later with a whitepaper they found useful
• Call you a month after meeting you, mentioning an event in your city they thought you'd be interested in
• Invite you out for lunch or coffee 6 weeks after meeting you

Similarly, a proper welcome campaign takes advantage of the critical few weeks after your first point of contact to develop a relationship. Not only does the welcome campaign period provide you with something of value (i.e an invite to a local event, or a knowledge resource to help you do your job better), it also provides the other with an adequate guage of your interest. If you don't respond to the first two emails, for example, it's unlikely that you'll get a lunch invitation.

Similarly, marketers can track the behaviour of the recipients in their campaign, expediting those leads that demonstrate a high level of activity to their sales team. If you're using a marketing automation software, or a CMS with MA features, these strings of emails can be automated, and used to segment your prospects based on what their interested in.

2.  Lead Scoring

This is one of the best ways to help sales and marketing in prioritizing leads, allowing them to assign a "ranking" to every contact based on their behaviour (ie pages viewed, email reads, etc) and information. With marketing automation, you can automatically set up rules that assign these scores, instead of having to manually go through each and every lead record in your database. These scores can help determine which leads are ready to be contacted by your sales team, and which ones require more time to "marinate".

3.  Create an Automated Contact Update Program

With marketing automation, you can schedule an email to go out every 6 months prompting your contacts to update their contact information and preferences. Not only does this relieve you of the time burdens of manual data cleansing, it will also reduce your email bounce rates and improve your ability to segment your database and send effective campaigns .

Are there any other tips and tricks that you have for making the most of your marketing automation software? If you're looking to learn more about the benefits of marketing automation, chat with a Marqui Marketing Automation Specialist.

More and more companies today are latching onto the potential of gamification to drive engagement and awareness, and the number of companies delivering gamification-specific services has also increased.

Although many marketers are familiar with the principles of gamification, some still struggle to incorporate these into their overall marketing strategies. Debbie Hemley, from Social Media Examiner, published a useful guide to the 26 elements of a good gamification marketing strategy, or 26 things marketers need to keep in mind when building a strategy.

Here are the elements we found to be most useful:

" Player Types" - understand the different ways that people interact with games

Richard Hartle's theory on the 4 player types is often cited - the types include Achievers, Explorers, Killers and Socialites. Achievers, for example, have the ultimate goal of gathering points and rising in levels, while explorers prefer the journey, or finding new avenues or points-gathering along the way.

Badges are Great Rewards

Particularly since the rise of Foursquare and other social check-in sites, badges have become a very common and useful tactic for engaging with your customers and rewarding them for their participation. How will your company make use of them?

Don't Forget Demographics!

As with any other marketing initiative or activity, it's always important to understand who your target market is. For example, as stats from the 2011 Los Angeles Game Conference indicate, "50% of gamers are reported as being female...and there are over 200 million gamers on Facebook".

Flow Theory

Hungarian psychology professor Mihály Csíkszentmihályi came up with what is known as "flow theory" which for gamification, is the ultimate goal. Flow refers to a deep concentration on the task at hand, over emotions or physical needs. With flow, there can be a distorted perception of time, and a very high degree of concentration.

Incentivizing Online Activities

Providing incentives for certain activities or behaviours on the site is a critical part of gamification strategy. Going back to the importance of demographics, if you are able to get into the headspace of your users, you'll know best how to keep them in the game and grow their loyalty.

Work and Play are Not Opposing Concepts

As Dr. Stuart Brown states in this TEDtalk, play can actually encourage productivity at work, when done properly. Play is the what lies at the heart of gamification.

To view the other factors to keep in mind with any gamification strategy, click here.

They've each had tremendous financial success,
with significant cultural impact: Groupon, Apple
and Amazon.
 
The secret to their shared success? Some experts narrow it down to one critical detail: they're all great at pulling triggers, or the universal tactics that influence human behaviour.
 
Dan Ariely, a Professor of Behavioural Economics at Duke University and author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality, has provided some deep psychological insights into what makes a company hugely successful in a post on Wired Magazine. The same principles that explain why consumers buy more at $0.99 than at $1.00, and why they don't return as many purchases as they should, also explains the success of consumer giants Groupon, Apple and Amazon, along with others. 

Ariely argues that each of these success stories demonstrates the power of pulling the triggers that keep 'em coming back for more. And more.

Amazon - "Eliminating Small Frictions"

• Research has shown that humans have a tendency to take the path of least resistance. It can all come down to something as simple as a default choice. For example, as a study by Eric Johnson and Dan Goldstein, found, through a survey, that most people will "choose" the default selection. Check out more detail on that study here.
• Amazon takes advantage of this default by storing consumers' credit card info and addresses - the time taken to re-enter the info before every purchase might provide a window for questioning that purchase decision, so Amazon eliminates this barrier.
• Amazon is also very strategic at eliminating the "shipping" cost, which has historically served as a barrier to online purchases. Options like the $25 purchase minimum (to qualify for free shipping) really help to overcome this hurdle.

Groupon - "Taking the Embarrassment out of Coupons"

• Groupon has enjoyed extreme success over the past few years, and have been instrumental in eliminating the stigma or stereotypes around coupon-clipping, making the use of coupons socially acceptable.
• Groupon takes advantage of the sense of urgency created by time constraints, as well as crowd behaviour as motivation for action (i.e "36 people have bought this deal"). To further demonstrate this point, Ariely cites a study directed by UCLA's Noah Goldstein, which aimed to encourage towel reuse among hotel guests. Merely telling people the benefits of reusing resulted in a 35% reuse rate, while adding in a social cue, like "Almost 75% of guests reuse their towels" caused that 35% to instantly rise to 44%. Compelling indeed!

 Apple - Reducing the "Pain of Paying"

• With iTunes and App Store purchases, there is often a time-lag of hours, or even days, between purchases. As Ariely explains, studies have shown that when you pay and consume in the same time frame, the experience is often less enjoyable.
• Apple has done a fine job of overcoming this by separating the two (your credit card is automatically charged and you don't pay until later, making the entire payment process virtually imperceptible.

It's interesting to think about how we can apply some of these triggers or tactics into our own businesses, without being kitschy or cliche. Check out Ariely's full post here, and let us know what you think!

Thanks to everyone who attended this
morning's webinar, "Selecting a CMS: 9 Fears That Shouldn’t Hold You Back".
We had a good group in attendance, and a very thorough presentation from Richard Sharp, VP of Marketing here at Marqui.

Here is a quick recap of the webinar:

• Marketers often express a common set of fears and apprehensions around making a CMS selection for their business, and while perhaps valid, these fears shouldn't hold you back from making a decision. Some of these concerns include:    
  • Fear of change, commitment and the possibility of making the wrong selection.
  • Fear of a lengthy, complex deployment and the financial/infrastructure burdens that occur as a result (i.e the open “can of worms” argument).

• Yet, there are different CMS' in the market, particularly SaaS CMS, that address and overcome many of these concerns, especially with regards to cost, deployment time and complexity. 
• The key is to do extensive research, and ask vendors to provide information/resources that will guide you towards making the best selection for your organization.
• Ultimately, the most signficant failure for a marketer lies not in making the "wrong" CMS choice, but in not being able to bring real results for your business.

If you'd like to know more, check out the full webinar here.

Stay tuned for details on our next webinar, and thanks again to everyone for attending!

There's no doubt that QR codes has been
a very hot topic for marketers over the past couple of years or so...but the actual use of QR codes still remains somewhat dubious. They're a novel little tool, with fantastic applications in digital marketing campaigns, but naturally, QR codes have their own limitations (for example, you need to launch a QR-reader app each time you want to read one).

What's your experience with QR codes, both as a marketer and a consumer? We came across an interesting reader poll on the Lifehacker blog. We won't spoil the results, but cast your vote and let us know your thoughts on the result!

Many of you have likely heard some buzz around Google's Project Re:Brief, a new documentary/experiment that aims to inspire creative approaches to thinking about digital advertising and marketing. In the film, five leading creatives, who have produced truly iconic ad campaigns in the past 50 years, are called upon to re-imagine their work in light of the digital era. Harvey Gabor, creator of Coca-Cola's 1971 "Hilltop" campaign, and Amil Gargano, creator of Volvo's 1962 "Drive It Like You Hate It" campaign, are just two of the great minds featured in the film.

Overall, the film sets out to take the ideas and principles of early advertising and apply them to today's digital world in ways in hopes of igniting a new form of creativity. Check out the segments below, and let us know what you think - do you find them inspiring?

We've all been there - even the most creative of marketers gets stuck every now and again. In a rut, writer's block, whatever you want to call it - know that you're not alone, and even more importantly, it doesn't have to impede your process! Often enough, the most brilliant ideas are born from moments like these. It gives you a chance to stop, take stock, and try a new approach, one that you may not have attempted before.

With this in mind, the teams at Copyblogger and BlueGlass have put together a fantastic infographic capturing the 22 ways to create sizzling content - when you need it most. Next time you're in that rut, be sure to revisit it:

NOTE: If you find this post useful, check out our webinar on the same topic, "Top Website Design Trends for 2012", along with our blog post, "Top Mobile Website Design Trends for 2012".


2012 has brought with it a wave of web design trends. Keeping up with these constant developments is essential, but it's important to keep in mind that effective web design is more than just a coat of paint; it always needs to support your business goals. Good web design is a necessary part of your larger web marketing and user experience picture.

In keeping with this holistic approach, we selected the following as the top web design trends to implement this year:

1.  HTML5, CSS3 and JQUERY

In the last couple of years, HTML5 has gained quite a bit of traction, and now all major browsers support it. The capabilities of HTML5 are phenomenal; with it, you can create truly interactive experiences vs. simple animations. With CSS3 and Javascript thrown into the mix, the result is a rich playing field of possibilities for web design. HTML5 is now widely recognized and used by big brands like Apple and Google.



2.   Mobile Compatibility and Responsive Layouts

Designers can no longer ignore the exponential growth in mobile usage, and always have to consider how a website will perform on mobile. When designing a site, for example, one has to determine whether a native app, web app or one website that auto-scales to mobile screen sizes will be optimal.

Responsive layout refers to how well a layout responds to the size of a screen. It organizes the content to make it just as visually pleasing on a small screen as a large one. Responsive layouts can be great for those organizations that may have a smaller budget and/or resources.


3.  Typographic Layouts

Typography is an extremely effective and creative way to instantly grab the attention of your visitors. Before, designers would need to build images to create the effect of rich typography, but now, especially with Typekit and Google Fonts, a site's performance and accessibility are no longer bogged down by extra images.



4.  The Grid

The original intent of the grid was to streamline web development by using common dimensions in the design layout. Anything but restrictive, grid layouts can be aesthetically pleasing, and allow for creativity in their implementation.


5.  Large Background Images

In many ways, this trend is becoming a best practice. Large background images are a great way to maximize a smaller marketing/advertising budget to engage a wide audience. Large images work to draw a visitor in, creating more of an immersive user experience.



6.  Perceived Affordance and Metaphoric Design

Don Norman, a renowned psychologist and cognitive scientist, expanded on a theory of perceived affordance in design, and it's becoming more prevalent than ever. To get a sense of what perceived affordance is, ask yourself the question: "When I see something for the first time on a website, how do I know how to use it?"  There are many visual metaphors built into user interfaces, including drop shadows, gradients and rounded corners. These visual metaphors help to create perspective, give the illusion of depth and 3-dimensionality, and ultimately guide the user towards taking a specific action (i.e clicking a button).

Although perceived affordance and metaphoric design have been used for some time, designers have found more strategic and thoughtful ways to apply it recently.
 
7.  Social Media Integration

Having social media integration on your website is now as crucial as having basic navigation. Although the practice of including social media links on your website is anything but new, designers have recently begun to devise more thoughtful ways of integrating social media into a website's design, giving these channels prominence instead of just relegating them to the footer.



8.  Illustration

Illustration has been used for years now, and it has added a humanistic dimension to design. However, it has evolved and become more popular over the past few years. It was previously used for buttons and select interface elements only, but has now become more integrated with the full user experience.



9.  Single Page Websites

Previously, the concept of the "fold" guided web design. The fold refers to the imaginary barrier on a web page, above which all important content sits.

This concept, alongside the misperception that "users don't scroll", became very ingrained in web design practices, and it often led to visual clutter. However, with the recent explosion of single page websites, content layouts have morphed to more of a story-book format, and the fold doesn't have as dominant of an influence on web design. It's important to note, though, that key company/product messaging and calls to action are still best to place closer to the top of the page.



10.  Parallax

Parallax has become more popular over the past year or so. What parallax refers to is the design of two parallel objects moving at different speeds. When built correctly, it really helps to disrupt the linear paradigm of scrolling. However, the drawback to this fresh and engaging technology is that most current browsers cannot support it, so we can expect to see this gain even more traction in the next few years.



11.  Elegant Modal Boxes

Gone are the days of the annoying pop-up (well, for the most part!) Modal boxes have become widespread in interface design, particularly for contact forms, login windows, and tool/help windows. Modal boxes are much more elegant and unobtrusive, working to layer information without frustrating or driving the user away from key pages.



To sum up, not every trend is worth adopting just for the sake of it being a trend. You need to ensure that when you're redesigning your website, you're aware of the latest trends and best practices, but are only applying those that support your marketing objectives. Ultimately, web design needs to work in conjunction with a solid content strategy, SEO, and conversion optimization to be fully successful.

If you found this post useful, check out our webinar on the same topic, "Top Website Design Trends for 2012", along with our blog post, "Top Mobile Website Design Trends for 2012".

For those who may not already know, Jakob Nielsen is one of the
founding fathers of the science of usability, and his work has been instrumental in shaping how we understand the interaction between humans and technology.

We came across an interesting recap of Nielsen's discussion with Melinda Krueger (blogger at ClickZ) on the topic of desktop vs. mobile user experience. Nielsen maintains that usability takes on an added importance in situations where user commitment levels are low (i.e someone stumbling upon a mobile website). The commitment level is slightly higher for those users who download apps, but the level is still minimal. For mobile users in general, attention is typically divided between other simultaneous activities, like watching TV, commuting, or shopping, and this only helps to decrease their level of commitment.

When asked for detail on the "biggest" mistakes that organizations make in their mobile website/app designs, Nielsen noted the following blunders:

• Touch screens that are difficult to navigate. Think of it this way: mobile experiences are incredibly tactile. In many ways, a finger functions as an extension of the eye, so it can be incredibly frustrating to design a page that has sections/links recognizable by the eye, yet un-selectable by the finger.

• Trying to do too much. Many mobile websites and apps are guilty of information overload. Keep it simple and pared down, with an eye towards what is most important. Build the experience gradually instead of trying to offer up all information up front.

Nielsen goes on to state, in this article on The Wall Street Journal's iPhone app makeover, that "user experience is branding in the interactive world", which is an interesting way to approach mobile marketing and design. For more details on Nielsen's discussion with Krueger, click here to read the full post on ClickZ.

As social media usage continues to rise, it's always useful to check in and see exactly which social sites are being used by whom.

We came across a great infographic today from Online MBA, and it captures a range of demographic info around social media users, including gender, age, educational level, income, etc.

Some highlights:

• College and university students comprise the majority of users for sites like Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and Digg.
• There is also a gendered slant to Facebook, with women forming the majority - for example, 59% of Twitter users are women, with Facebook falling in at 57%
• Young, tech-savvy males seem to prefer Google+, with women leaning towards Pinterest (82% are women!)

Every marketer is familiar with the funnel - historically, it's been the dominant metaphor used to represent the sales and marketing process. However, with the rapidly evolving nature of mobile technology, fragmented web experiences and new sources for information and engagement, perhaps we also need to revise the visual metaphors that we use to understand the marketing and sales process.

We came across a very useful blog post today from Daniel Burstein on the Marketing Experiments Blog about the need to zoom out on your marketing and sales organization to fully optimize your business in 2012. Before delving into content calendars or marketing planning, for example, Burstein argues that organizations first need to ask 3 fundamental questions in order to optimize their marketing-sales engine:

1. Is the right "ask" served at every stage of the funnel?
2. Is the most valuable content served at every stage?
3. Are we "blocking" and "tackling" right? (Which refers to those QA processes that ensure the proper structures are in place to guide prospects through the funnel).

The power of Burstein's argument lies in his questioning of the funnel metaphor. As Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Managing Director at MECLABS also explains, “people don’t fall into the funnel; they fall out. Gravity does not work for the marketer. It works against the marketer”.

Advice? Take the funnel and flip it upside down. Literally!

McGlaughlin maintains that a better metaphor is that of the tower, because the prospect "climbs it", and the "force which attracts the prospect upward is the force of the value proposition". To move through the tower, a prospect needs to continue saying "yes" to your asks, and even if your ask is legitimate, if it happens to be ill-timed, premature, directed to the wrong person, or not supported by a strong value proposition, there's a strong chance that your prospect will fall right out of your grasp. Thinking of the marketing and sales process helps to emphasize the fact that value and relevancy are driving forces behind a prospect's journey to becoming a customer. Every "touch" with your content is an opportunity for them to move forward or drop out.

On the topic of value proposition, the short video interview below captures McGlaughlin's thoughts on developing the ultimate value proposition for your organization. We hope you find it useful!

So you have a Facebook page - however, getting fans to to engage with your brand and actively participate on the page is a feat that many marketers continue to struggle with. To really optimize your page, you need to go beyond posting simple status updates and only responding to your fan's inquiries and comments. You need to always be focused on rousing your fans to action.

Jim Belosic's recent post on Social Media Examiner shares some useful tips on how to encourage Facebook fan engagement. Here is a summary of the 5 tips:

        1.    Focus on Your Fans in Your Updates

With EdgeRank, the number of comments a status update receives dictates how high it is placed in your fans' news feeds, and even more importantly, how many people that update is displayed to. So, the more comments you can encourage with your posts, the better results you can achieve. Try asking for your fans' opinions or advice on topics that matter to them.

        2.   Relevancy

Don't talk at your fans, or use your Facebook wall as an opportunity for advertising. Tap into the issues your fans care about, and invite them to respond to your updates.

       3.  Share Your Content

Get into the habit of making all of your content share-a-able - this is the best way to ensure that your content is getting the reach it deserves.

       4.  Action-Oriented Incentives

If you're trying to get your fans to sign up for your newsletter, for example, try including an incentive (ie. discounts about your product or service).

       5.  Fan-Gated Contests

The best way to increase your fan base and engagement at the same time is to hold a "like us to enter" type of contest, which then prompts the new fans to provide their information for contest entry. Check out the Neutrogena contest page below - some great inspiration!



For more details and examples, check out the full post on Social Media Examiner.

Inbound marketing is the practice of drawing in web visitors/prospects that already have an interest in your product or industry (as opposed to broadcasting a message out to a sea of largely disinterested consumers). With inbound marketing, your website really serves as the "hub" of your business, attracting visitors from search engines and social media, and serving as a destination for their repeated visits and engagements over time.

A key difference between inbound and outbound is that inbound goes beyond the "interruption" style of traditional marketing or advertising, taking a permission-based approach, by providing potential customers with information of value. Research is continually showing that as more and more consumers turn to the web to research and make purchases, inbound marketing is quickly becoming the most effective and cost-efficient way to reach your audience.

The following infographic from Voltier Digital captures some fundamental differences between inbound and outbound marketing, with attention to the considerably higher ROI on inbound marketing tactics:



For those marketers trying to get a better sense of best practices around inbound marketing, be sure to also check out Focus' Q+A session, where a range of inbound marketing professionals provide insight into their "top 3" best practices. Here are the recommendations we found to be most useful:

• "Plan for response: inbound marketing won't do much for you if you don't have a plan for responding. If you can interest people enough to come to you, extending their attention and engagement is a pivotal point for success." - Ardath Albee, CEO and B2B Marketing Strategist from Marketing Interactions Inc.

• "Commit to inbound - one of the core differences between inbound and outbound is that outbound can be like a marketing drug. With outbound, you pay an invoice and instantly can start seeing traffic and leads, but it is costly and not sustainable. However, inbound marketing is like going to the gym, it takes some time to see some results, but once you do, the results keep getting better and better, especially for the time and hard costs required to deliver them." - Kipp Bodnar, Inbound Marketing Strategist at HubSpot.

• "Learn to think like a customer [...]. Because we are constantly in, around, and involved with our business, we all too often assume that our customers understand and see the world the way we do, which could not be further from the truth [...]. May we learn to always communicate with our customers on their level, not ours." - Marcus Sheridan, President at Bizz Buffs Web Coaching.

We stumbled on an interesting video interview with Amber Naslund today. Naslund is the co-author of "The Now Revolution" with Jay Baer, a book which reviews how to develop a "horizontal strategy" around social media. The book goes beyond a social media "how-to" by exploring the structural adaptations that need to take place within an organization for it to take advantage of the real-time business opportunities that social media affords.

As Naslund explains in the following interview with Behind the Brand's Brian Elliott, there are an excess of tactical social media resources out there, but not many outline what to do when you've already established a successful social media presence. Another way to think about it is how you can become a social business vs. one that just "does" social media.

Naslund recommends "slowing down", and taking a more holistic approach. Businesses need to consider the deep impact of social media on all departments, including but not limited to PR, customer service and product development, using these to build a horizontal, company-wide strategy vs. a narrow vertical one.

Naslund goes into a bit more detail in the interview around the concept of "wayfarers" in business and social media, arguing that social media evangelists have a responsibility to question the status quo. She reasons that  "if you want to do something new, the path to that is not on the existing map". She also provides some insights into the ongoing "social media ROI" debate, and argues that the single reason that more companies aren't innovating in the realm of social media is because of fear around the blame associated with failure.

Check out the full interview below, and let us know what you think!

Thanks to everyone who attended this morning's webinar,
"Content Marketing for Lead Gen: How to Get Started". Our presenters, Dan Biggs, Digital Strategist for Station X, and myself, were very excited about the topic, and we had some great questions.

Here are some highlights from the webinar:

• Content marketing is anything but new, but in the last few years or so, the practice of content marketing has gained alot of momentum with B2B and B2C marketers.
• The Internet has enabled marketers to take on the role of publisher and storyteller.
• Content marketing hinges on the principle of a value exchange.
• Relevancy, originality and calue are 3 key principles to keep in mind when producing any piece of content.
• Content mapping is essential to guiding and nurturing prospects through the sales funnel.
• Gating strategies can help to elevate the perception of value around your content, and certain types of content are ideal for gating.

Kickstarting Your Own Content Marketing Program

• Determine what content you already have, and what additional content you need to create.
• Build your content development team and calendar.
• Decide which channels are best suited to your purpose.
• A next generation CMS, analytics and social media tools are all essential for content marketers.

If you'd like to know more, check out the full webinar here.

Also, stay tuned for details on our next webinar on Thursday, March 15. Registration details will be available soon!

Marketers cannot ignore the rising
importance of local search. If you can work to strengthen your organic and local search rankings,
you'll be in a fantastic place relative to your competitors in 2012. To drive this point home, try writing these stats down and posting them in your workspace. 

• Local search is growing rapidly, expected to increase as much as 10% per year through to 2015.
• 80% of all searches on smartphones are for local services and products.

If you're unsure of where to begin, check out these 5 tips and tricks for making your way into the local search game:

1. Review Your SEO

Ensure that your website incorporates long-tail and location-specific keywords that unite your business type and location, with a special location page assigned to each location (if you have more than one).

2. Build Your Local Profiles...and Update Them

This includes Google Places, review sites, Yellow Pages, or any directory or search engines. By ensuring accurate, up-to-date and consistent information in all of your local profiles, you're setting yourself up for increased exposure in local search results. As time goes on, continue to update your profiles (even with information like running promotions, for example).

3. Don't Forget Your Customers

Have lots of satisfied customers? Get them to speak out for you by providing reviews online. User-generated content like reviews affirm your business credibility to search engines, and will help your rank in local search results.

4. Include Visuals

Visuals, including videos, are enticing to visitors and search engines alike, and they help to boost conversion rates. Try including a image of your store, if applicable, or members of your customer service team (if they're willing!).

If you're looking for additional tips on improving your local search rankings, check out Kevin Gibbons' post in Search Engine Watch.

We're joined today by the spirited Tammi Couto, Business Development Executive at Marqui. Tammi's fresh energy and experience in business development over the years have provided her with some incredible insights into how marketing and sales teams can find that sometimes-elusive symbiosis.

M: Tammi, in your experience, what are some of the factors that can cause mis-alignment or "siloed" approaches between marketing and sales teams?

It really comes down to different perceptions. Often enough, marketing teams feel frustrated about having to create a large number of leads and feel that they don't have enough visibility into how those leads are engaged by sales. I also know that some sales teams emphasize the need for lead quality over quantity, which really puts the onus onto marketing to ensure that leads are well qualified before they are handed off to sales.

Also, there really needs to be a common language spoken between marketing and sales. It's often lacking. For example, it's crucial to work towards the same definition of the "ideal" customer, and to have an agreed-upon idea of what a "sales-ready" lead looks like. It's also critical to determine who will be responsible for engaging with prospects at key points throughout the sales cycle, and to identify who will nurture live opportunities.

Don't forget about measurement, either! Sales and marketing teams need to come together to determine what to measure, including lead count, the ratio of opportunities to conversions and the % of sales-ready leads that convert.

M: Great tips, Tammi. Thanks for those. Now, let's switch gears a bit. What can marketers do to help make the sales process more efficient and productive?

Nurture. Nurture!

Lead nurturing is so important; leads that are nurtured typically have a higher ratio of closing, however you need to be prepared to sit back and wait for their readiness to buy, which could take 6-12 months.  When a lead is generated from a campaign, you have an opportunity as a sales person to influence the buying process and provoke them to make a decision sooner than later.  In short, I think it is fair to say that you need to have a good balance of prospecting and lead nurturing, and both marketing and sales teams can help each other out (i.e sales can have a hand in planning lead nurturing campaigns, and marketing can help with prospecting).

M: Thanks for the great tips, Tammi! In closing, what's the one key takeaway here for marketers?

More isn’t always better.  If marketers delivered fewer leads, but they were sales-ready, it would make a day in the life of a sales rep little easier (not to mention the close ratio a lot higher). That is not to say that sales teams are looking for an easy way out [laughs]. It would just allow us to use our time more effectively throughout the day.

In true Valentine's Day spirit, we wanted to share with you today an example of a multichannel marketing campaign that we absolutely love.

Luxury lifestyle brand Michael Kors has recently launched a conversation-starting campaign via social media, email, mobile and e-commerce. The campaign encourages consumers to share what they are "falling in love with" this Valentine's Day, from relationships to vacation destinations to accessories and more. Bridging the gap between social and mobile, Kors began with the #FallingInLoveWith hashtag on Twitter, and followed with the "10 Things Worth Falling In Love With" emails, which feature products and ideas that are also found on Michael Kors' Instagram account and Pinterest board. Facebook posts and blog posts are also thrown in the mix, with in-store displays helping to tie all the channels together.





These kinds of integrated, holistic campaigns really are the wave of the future, and not just for lifestyle or fashion brands either. Even London-based chocolatier Charbonnel et Walker, in partnership with crystal brand Swarovski, has launched a Valentine's Day campaign that spans in-store, ecommerce, social media and email touch points. More than one-dimensional or static, campaigns like these harness the positive and personal experiences associated with holidays like Valentine's Day to drive consumers to purchase.

The great part? Marqui can help bring these types of multichannel campaigns to life, with one platform to manage and measure the success of your campaign. If you want to know more about how Marqui can help with your multichannel marketing, chat with one of our multichannel campaign specialists today.

Have you come across any other inspiring multichannel campaigns for Valentine's Day? Share them here!