Posts Tagged ‘marketing’

@maurilio:

10

Why Your Social Media Strategy Might Fail

I have lived with an assumption for quite some time that I’m currently questioning. In my mind, digital natives (those who grew up with the internet, mp3 players and smart phones) as opposed to digital immigrants (those of us who had to learn to use such technology) were some of the best candidates to head an organization’s social media strategy. Maybe that’s not so. In the past week I’ve had three different encounters with young professionals who were having a difficult time incorporating social  media into their organization’s marketing strategy. And to make things even more interesting, all three of them were Facebook and Twitter users. I was perplexed by their lack of confidence in the media they seemingly knew so well. What I quickly realized from my conversation with my young friends is that while they  have been using Facebook, Twitter and even blogging as a personal and social…

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14

Churches and the Dangers of Line Extension

Churches cannot grow  strong using a side-door strategy. Side doors are everything else a church does besides teaching the gospel and helping  people grow in their faith. Somehow along the way, church leaders have decided that music concerts, recreation programs, cafeterias, schools, bookstores and even quilting groups were church-worthy pursuits and a proliferation of side-door ministries began to show up in large churches. At the end of the day, none of them, I’m convinced, can grow and keep a church healthy. If the world of marketing, we call this problem, line extension, or the adding of products and services to a brand until it’s diluted and ineffective. A while back I visited a church that reminded me of the dangers of line extension. What started as an outreach ministry of the church years ago, suddenly began to take a life of its own and became a huge resource and energy…

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11

The Death of The Advertising Agency

There’s no easy way to say it. The traditional Ad Agency is not going to stay around for long. As the big guys scramble to survive and as the little guys close shop, marketing agencies find themselves in a major shift. Some believe it’s a difficult transition, if not an impossible one under the current way most of these shops are setup. In order to survive agencies must: Stop being dependent on the 15% media buying revenue and print markup.  The days of clients spending hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of dollars on traditional media are numbered. The new media mix is a lot more fluid and fragmented and requires more thinking than a media buyer can do in one afternoon. A direct mail campaign followed by radio and/or TV is no longer the answer for every problem. I’m not certain it’s the answer for any current dilemma. Make technology…

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12

Church Branding or Marketing? What’s the Difference?

If “marketing” was the church’s buzzword for the ‘90s, “branding” is definitely the new, upstart concept when it comes to communications these days. So what makes the new millennium’s branding better than last century’s marketing strategy? A lot, if we understand the differences between them. Branding and marketing both aim at communicating a product, an institution, even a person to a particular audience. This whole process happens solely in the mind. In this case, perception is reality—for good or bad. Most of what marketing does is build a brand—create a favorable reality in the minds of our target audience. A marketing campaign’s effectiveness is measured in months, but a brand’s strength is calculated in years, even decades. Each marketing effort should help define, position, and strengthen the brand. Recently, the Old Spice campaign featuring Isaiah Mustafa has sold a lot of deodorant to men who want to be more Isaiah…

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10

You Are Now a Global Brand. Yes, You.

I was in Sao Paulo, Brazil at the lobby of a hotel waiting with my client to meet our Brazilian hosts whom I did not know. One of the men looked up from his cell phone and startled me by saying, “Aren’t you Maurilio? I follow you on Twitter.” The same scenario happened a few weeks later in Singapore as I attended TWR’s Asia partners’ meeting. Since then I have heard from people in New Zealand, Europe, Africa and other parts of the world who read my posts. I have come to grips with the fact that I’m a global brand. While that might  sound pretentious and grandiose, I think it’s true of anyone who has an online presence. We all know the internet doesn’t stop at the end of town, ( I had one client who wanted to launch his website in Tennessee first, however), but I’m not sure…

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19

This is How Traditional Retail is Going to Survive

Traditional retail is in trouble. More and more people are buying products online. It’s convenient, easy and, for the most part, cheaper than going on a shopping expedition to the local mall. Retailers have noticed that and are trying to figure out what they need to do in order to be competitive. Unless you are Walmart, the retailer behemoth, you know that you can’t compete purely on price. Not long ago while exchanging some Christmas gifts at The Buckle store at the Cool Springs Mall,  I was reminded that as far as retail is concerned there’s still no substitute for a great sales person. I went to the store to exchange of couple of items with no intention of spending any extra money. An hour and a half later, I left with three extra bags. I was thinking on my way out of the store, “what just happened?” Well, I…

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16

5 Characteristics of a Growing Church

I spent Sunday morning with my friends at the Church on The Eastern Shore in Fairhope, Alabama, a very eclectic artist community near Mobile. I rejoiced with them as hundreds of new faces visited the church on the opening Sunday of their new teaching series. That’s a part of my job that gives me  great satisfaction: watching God bless an entire team’s effort. COTE’s story is one that I have seen happen time and time again, but it never grows old. Here’s what I have seen in churches like COTES that succeed in reaching their community for the gospel. They learn. Growing churches are learning organizations. They are always asking “how can we be better?” They invest resources and in training and helping their staff and volunteers grow. I’m always humbled when I’m asked to consult with a church and help them to stretch beyond where they’ve been. They have…

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8

5 Things You Should Know About Communicating With Millennials

They are the most educated and studied generation on earth. Parents, teachers, marketers and communicators want to figure out how to successfully reach millennials. As a parent as well as employer of Gen Yers, I’m always glad to find new, helpful research. Recently, I read in Advertising Age an excellent article by Thomas Pardee on marketing to millennials that I want to share with you. After all, if you’re reading this, your life is and will be impacted by Generation Y. If you want to communicate, sell, or reach them, then: Be Fast Twitter has taught them to write in 140 characters. If you can’t say it fast, then don’t bother, because they can. Be Clever According to Nick Shore, head of research at MTV, funny is the new rock ‘n’ roll. This generation has had access to the best and most clever footage on earth at their fingertips. They…

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16

Is Self Promotion Evil?

Most Christian leaders I know struggle to find balance in life. They need to find the proper ratio between work and family time, the balance between eating and exercising.  But while most of us would agree that family always comes before work and that overeating and poor exercise habits are not good for anyone, Christian leaders struggle with the elusive, apparently evil, but frequently necessary need for self-promotion. Is self-promotion a symptom of a prideful heart, a necessary evil of ministry, or a simple tool to achieve a mean? Well, it depends. I’m not trying to be evasive when I say, “it depends.” As both a communications expert and a literary agent, I help my clients  develop a platform where their resources (books, videos, blogs, curricula) can be consumed. One of the very first questions publishers ask me about a new author is, “what type of platform does he or…

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29

Is IT Killing Your Organization?

There I sat hearing the same lame excuses I’ve heard for the past 12 months from the staff of a very large not for profit: “we can’t do it because IT told us it would take 5 years before we can have online registration and payments.”  Are you kidding me!? It’s been over 8 hours since our meeting and I’m still outraged at the ridiculous notion that a multi-million dollar organization cannot, let me rephrase, will not figure out how to make something as common as an online sign up forms work system wide. Sadly, in this case,  IT is killing the organization. I sound like a broken record on this issue, but marketing should drive your web strategy and not IT. Really.  Your online presence lives or dies on the end-user experience. If people can find what they’re looking for, if they can intuitive navigate the site and complete…

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