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

Agencies Need to Embrace Digital Even If It’s Uncomfortable

Excellent post by Bart Cleveland on the AdAge Small Agency blog recently about Comfort Zones. Bart made the point that if you get too careful and comfortable in your agency, you won’t attract clients that are looking for innovative work. There’s no question this is true. His post used “risky” or groundbreaking creative as the [...]

Continue Reading

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

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

Media Buyers Say Internet Advertising Will Grow in Next 6 Months

Market Research firm Advertising Perceptions released a new survey of 1,811 media buyers showing that a whopping 72% of them believe Internet advertising spend will increase in the second half of 2008. This is a shocking finding, considering that no other medium (other than mobile) was expected to grow by more than 28% of the [...]

Continue Reading

What’s Your Word Worth? Measuring Word of Mouth Online

Fascinating article in BrandWeek today about putting a value on word of mouth marketing. BzzAgent, a word of mouth marketing agency (how’s that for a good gig if you can get it), says they figure an online conversation about a brand is worth 50 cents. It’s admirable that somebody is trying to put a value [...]

Continue Reading

Google’s Ad Planner Will Demystify Internet Media Buying

Lots of hand wringing this week as Google launched their new Ad Planner, an online site comparison tool that utilizes data from Google members (pretty much the whole world) to categorize and evaluate Web sites. This comes on the heels of Quantcast’s unveiling of their free Media Planner tool, which offers similar functionality. Until now, [...]

Continue Reading

Head of Giant Media Agency Totally Misses the Point of the Web

Media Daily News reporting from the Advertising Research Foundation conference in NYC says that Lee Doyle, CEO of Mediaedge:cia (who bill themselves as the world’s first global media planners) believes “low-interest” advertisers aren’t embracing the Web. Why? Lee says it’s because consumers don’t use the Web to research paper towels or household goods…. Wow. So [...]

Continue Reading

Are you spending enough on digital marketing?

GroupM (the holding company for all of the WPP media agencies), issued a new report saying that share of spend on digital and interactive media has increased from 8% in 2005 to 14% this year. They project the total to increase to 16% next year as new digital marketing tactics like mobile and behavioral targeting [...]

Continue Reading

Why Social Media Isn’t Marketing At All

What’s the worst thing about social media? The name “social media.” It’s incredibly vague, and that lack of definition has enabled “social media” to become a watered-down, catch-all term with different meanings for each person – like “recreational drugs” and “process improvement.” The Characteristics of Social Media: Duration: Ongoing Target: Current and previous customers Goal: [...]

Continue Reading

The Death of the Deal: Google aims to transform old school media buying

Rerouting inefficient markets is what the Internet does best. Wherever lack of information transparency requires regular folks to use specialists to make a transaction, the Internet will discredit and then cripple that industry. The former travel agents and stockbrokers serving your Bloomin’ Onion at Outback can attest to the Net’s unique ability to eliminate the [...]

Continue Reading