Right after Obama was elected for his second term as president, condom manufacturer Durex posted this very cheeky ad on the Chinese version of Twitter, Weibo. Adding to Mitt Romneys post-election pain, the ad shows the two candidates wives indicating, according to the Mandarin caption, The difference between Obama and Romney
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DAM, or Digital Asset Management, is an important part of Marketing Resource Management, as our guest columnist Jan Dejosse from ADAM Software frequently stresses.
While marketers produce huge amounts of assets, ranging from images, logos, to video, copy and templates for new campaigns, they tend to focus on the production process, and forget about the end results. Grant Halloran of Orbis Global, an MRM vendor, explains why its so important to manage and file digital assets carefully they are assets in the literal sense of the word: they represent value for the company. Often, assets are scattered in different locations, and difficult to get hold of. A well-organized DAM system can help to regain control of the digital asset library and make using (and, more importantly, re-using!) assets significantly easier.
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Emedia. The UK-based research firm surveyed 200 businesses from various verticals about their lead generation effectiveness.
While 83% of respondents ranked lead generation as either extremely important or important for their marketing plans, the researchers conclude that an overall, strategic planning of how lead generation and content marketing can best achieve their mutual goals is mostly lacking.
From the report:
This sentiment is clearly visible in the fact that, although lead generation is of great importance to B2B marketers, very few have a separate strategy and/or budget for creating the content that’s going to drive it. Read More
One of the major challenges facing enterprise marketers is to create and maintain meaningful engagement with potential buyers who are more self-sufficient than ever. The proliferation of communications channels and the widespread availability of information about almost every conceivable product and service have changed how both consumers and business buyers learn about products and services and make purchase decisions.
Today’s buyers exhibit two distinctive behaviors that create challenges for enterprise marketers. First, the buying process used by potential customers is less predictable than in the past. A recent survey of over 7,000 consumers by the Corporate Executive Board found that the traditional purchase funnel (which depicts a buying process in which consumers move from awareness to interest to desire to action, while narrowing their options along the way) no longer describes how most consumers actually buy. Read More
2012 CMO Tech Marketing Barometer study by IDC. After three years of slow but steady recovery, this figure means that tech marketing budgets are now back on track to similar figures before the financial crisis took effect.
In 2009 tech marketing budgets suffered a big hit and decreased by 8.3% as a result of the financial crisis. These budgets are still trying to recover from the hit and are slowly making a comeback. In 2010, tech marketing budgets increased by 3.7% in comparison to 2009 and in 2011, budgets increased a further 3.5% in comparison to 2010. Recent figures released for 2012, have shown that budgets had increased again from 2011 figures by a further 1.7%. Read More
Air New Zealand decided to capitalize on their own countrys USP. Not the impressive nature, the wide, open spaces, the mild climate, the indigenous cultures, though. Instead, the airline company chose the countrys alter ego: Middle Earth. With the new Lord of the Rings prequel coming up, the airline has launched a campaign that places J.R.R. Tolkiens creations center stage. Be amazed at the results in the video below: a Boeing filled with hobbits, elves, and wizards, happily folding away their tray tables and switching off their mobile devices.
We wonder what the in-flight movie will be?
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For many marketing organizations, storing and sharing information is a returning issue. Versions of documents, brand guidelines, artwork there is a lot of data to manage and without a specially designed database of some sort, keeping track of the latest developments within the organization can become quite a challenge.
Software vendor
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As we create more content, marketers are trying to understand the role this content plays in the buying process and which components have the greatest impact on generating conversation, consideration and ultimately consumption. So it’s no surprise that marketers are trying to understand how to leverage both marketing mix attribution and optimization models. Recently we’ve been receiving a number of questions about fractional and last-touch attribution. So we thought a brief tutorial on the topic of optimization and attribution modeling might be helpful.
There are a number of sources and tools available today to help create either model. Both attribution and optimization modeling are about improving mix and understanding the impact of marketing investments on customer behavior. Let’s begin by reviewing what these models are, when to use them, and how they are different.
Optimization Needs Attribution Optimization relies on predictive models that track non-linear relationships between specific goals and spend levels in order to predict the incremental changes in conversions based on the relationship between the variables. Many organizations attempt to optimize campaigns via A/B testing, a form of scenario analysis. Unfortunately A/B testing doesnt address the complex non-linear interactions. An algorithmic approach that simultaneously analyzes all possible scenarios is needed to see which combinations produce the best incremental results.
In my last post, I discussed why durability is important for enterprise-level marketing software and why it directly impacts the value of software solutions. I also noted that the durability of a software solution largely depends on its ability to address unpredictable future needs and that this, in turn, results primarily from how a software application is engineered, on the underlying architecture it uses.
This is the first of several blog posts that will discuss the key attributes that contribute to the durability of a software solution. In this post, I’ll cover scalability.
What is Scalability? The textbook definition of scalability is the ability of an IT system to maintain a specified level of performance as the workload on the system increases. So, in essence, scalability is what enables a technology system to meet growing demands without sacrificing performance. Read More
Public cloud services are simultaneously cannibalizing and stimulating demand for external IT services spending, according to Gartner, Inc. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) adoption — the most basic and fundamental form of cloud computing service — has expanded beyond development and test use cases.
Bryan Britz, research director at Gartner, said:
Public cloud adoption is accelerating and public cloud services do, and will, cannibalize IT services spending in the coming years, most notably in the data center. At the same time, public cloud adoption offers service providers the opportunity to accelerate externalization of spending for the non-public cloud workloads and IT operations and service management responsibilities in tandem with clients pursuing a public cloud initiative. Read More
