Gini Dietrich

7 Daunting Challenges Facing Marketers

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Marketing today remains a great challenge, in large part because of the consistently changing technology and media landscape. Informational sources (conferences, blogs, etc.) consistently address these challenges yet the issues persist.

It may be time to take a step back on a macro level and look at how education and information sources are meeting these challenges.

Here are the seven daunting difficulties for today’s communicators, each followed by an idea or three on how to address them. Please add your own thoughts.

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How David Blogger Can Beat Goliath with Triberr

Hannover Bridge / Aquarius J

Join me on September 22 in New York City for the Triberr Takeover conference.

Today, media companies dominate the blogosphere. How can a small independent Davina or David blogger compete with Goliath brands like AOL, Gawker and Mashable?

In a recent call about a World Hunger Day campaign I’m engaged with on behalf of Yum! Brands and Razoo, I compared my blogger list with PR firm’s list of preferred social channels. None of the names conflicted, as the PR firm was focused on media company driven blogs.

This picture of which blogs mattered to each party — independent groundswell versus big media — typifies the picture of which type of masthead really gets the majority of attention online.

The task of becoming read has gotten harder with the rise of social network sharing and semantic search. Voices who used to be authoritative receded. While there are still strong independent blogs out there, many have faded into diminished status or have simply stopped publishing.
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Marketing Fundamentals: Blocking and Tackling

Tackle
Image by Infadelic

People want to win marketing and PR accolades, but they don’t even know how to communicate on a basic level.

It’s a failure to block and tackle.

That’s the problem with today’s marketing discussion, and why so many CMOs struggle to integrate new digital media tactics into the larger communications mix: We have many practitioners and thought leaders who talk well about one tactic like inbound marketing, but are clueless when it comes to the dozens of other marketing tactics at a CMO’s disposal.
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What CMOs Want: Better Social Integration & Analytics

The CMO Survey Reveals the Social Media Integration Gap

A few recent studies opened the CMO kimono, offering a glimpse into the top concerns on lead marketers’ minds. Not surprisingly, two primary issues are integrating social in a meaningful way into the larger marketing suite of tools (less than 10% in two studies think they’ve done it), and finding better analytics for measurement.
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Death by Silo

Mad Men has to be my favorite TV show of the past decade, paying homing to the ad agency business in its formative years. It highlights the importance of great creative, ideas and writing that speak to customers while giving… Read More »Death by Silo

Marketing in the Round Infographic: The Tip of the Iceberg

Marketing in the Round Infographic

Today, Gini Dietrich and I launch Marketing in the Round in Chicago with a virtual (1 ET) U-Stream book bomb and a live (5 CT) networking event! Read Gini’s post here about how the book happened.

Immersed in the era of visual media, what better way to start the day than with an infographic of statistics used in the book (also available directly on Flickr and Scribd). The RAD Campaign designed infographic demonstrates how today’s online marketing conversation, actual business expenditures, and business selection of tactics are not in synch.

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Please Help Me

I need your help making a childhood dream come true. I have always wanted to be a New York Times bestseller, and that’s why I’m writing today about my new book Marketing in the Round.

Me and my co-author Gini Dietrich are hosting a virtual book launch party at 1 EST on Monday (register here) that I hope you’ll attend. If you live in Chicago, you are welcome to attend the live launch party. We’re trying to break the top ten business lists on both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble for that hour! If we succeed, Gini is going give me a shaving cream pie in the face.

Ifdy Perez Serves Me a Pie in the Face

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Six for Six

Day 71 - Dreidl Die
Image by slgckgc

Next Monday marks the six year anniversary of my first blog post. As I’m blogging less these days, I decided my final post of this year with six reflections based on my experiences over these years. Here are my observations about social media, blogging and marketing based on my journey:

1) The Idealism of Better Business Through Social

When I began blogging, I believed in The Cluetrain Manifesto. Its raw message that businesses would be forced to act better thanks to social media spoke to me. Cluetrain inspired hope that conversations could change the very fiber of business in favor of people. I was full of passion for that change, and my first book Now Is Gone reflected this idealism.

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