YOUTILITY

Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters. But those two letters are critically important to your company’s success.

You’re not competing for attention only against other, similar products. You’re competing for attention against everything. To win in this hyper-competitive environment, you must ask “How can we help?”

If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. This is Youtility.

Includes interviews with dozens of companies practicing Youtility, and provides 6 blueprints for building Youtility in your company.

Available for pre-order soon (get up to 7 exclusive bonuses) at http://YoutilityBook.com
Digital Agency Toolkit 1  |  Add Yours

Agency Advantage Tools #2 – Yureekah

The variety and quality of banner ads online is truly staggering. From the infamous X10 Camera pop-up, to Punch the Monkey, to today’s highly engaging rich media video ads, turning out great banner creative is a universal challenge. For nearly every facet of the creative process, there are libraries that can be used for inspiration. [...]

Continue Reading
PR 2.0 17  |  Add Yours

4 Winners, 2 Losers in SEC’s Press Release Decision

In a major announcement yesterday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) provided new guidance to public companies stating that corporate Web sites and blogs are a suitable means for official information dissemination to investors, provided those sites are a “recognized channel for distribution.” This apparently means that if the corporation has an openly available [...]

Continue Reading
Digital Media 2  |  Add Yours

Automakers Increase Internet Ads – Why It Will Work

AdAge reports that GM has moved approximately 25% of its total media budget online over the past three years. That’s 25% of a $2 billion+ annual media spend. A current focus for GM’s online initiatives is the new Used Car Ambush program, a microsite and online campaign intended to convince used car shoppers to purchase [...]

Continue Reading
Digital Media 11  |  Add Yours

3 Reasons Why Social Networks Are Bad Ad Buys

A recent article by Michael Estrin in iMediaConnection asks whether social media has lost its luster from an advertising standpoint. Traffic and usage of the major social networks continues to soar, with traffic to Facebook and Linked In up considerably in the past 30 days. In fact, LinkedIn which is considered to be the least [...]

Continue Reading
Agency Promotion 10  |  Add Yours

Agency Advantage Tools #1 – Website Grader

Welcome to Agency Advantage Tools, a regular blog series at Convince & Convert that spotlights inexpensive or free digital marketing tools. There are literally thousands of different Web sites, applications, plug-ins, widgets and more devoted to helping digital marketers do their jobs better or faster. Most advertising agencies and PR firms are too busy doing [...]

Continue Reading
Campaign Testing and Optimization 5  |  Add Yours

Agencies Need to be Testing Landing Pages

Average length of stay on a Web site is approximately 2 minutes and 30 seconds overall. Approximate length of stay by visitors coming from search is about 10 seconds. Why the difference? Search users are less likely to know your company and its attributes in advance, and they know there are several other options available [...]

Continue Reading
Agency Promotion 7  |  Add Yours

UPDATE: GoDaddy and the .Me Domain Disaster

UPDATE: Well, the .me registration was a complete and utter fiasco. Speaking from personal experience, and reporting from Mashable (soon to be joined by a lot of other reporting, I predict) – this was one of the worst examples of customer experience in my 15 years online.  It took one full hour to check out. [...]

Continue Reading
PR 2.0 12  |  Add Yours

Social Media – Your Customers Are Talking About You Online

The Roar of The Crowd As appeared in bizAZ Magazine July/Aug 2008 edition Unless you’re selling specialized rivets to the military industrial complex via no bid contracts, chances are your customers are talking about you online. And not just via email, in a “hey mom, I think your accountant totally messed up your taxes” way, [...]

Continue Reading
Campaign Testing and Optimization 10  |  Add Yours

Google to Show Search Volume – Another Blow to Agencies

In a LOOOOONG overdue move that provides some much-needed transparency to the PPC business, Google has added search volume data to their keyword research tool.  This means that when you use Google to research potential search terms for your clients’ pay-per-click campaign, Google will actually give you an idea of how many people actually search [...]

Continue Reading
Integrated Marketing and Media 3  |  Add Yours

Is Digital Marketing Killing Magazine Ads?

A report last week by the Publishers Information Bureau found that advertising pages in the nation’s magazines declined by 7.4% compared to the first half of 2007.  With the stock market down by about 20%, and house prices down at least that much in some parts of the country, a 7% dip in magazine ads [...]

Continue Reading