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
Campaign Testing and Optimization 3  |  Add Yours

The Official Toothpaste of Social Media

Will the Crest Weekly Toothpaste Launch Work? In a sign that the guys who control ad budgets are getting the value of interactive advertising faster than the agencies that place it, P&G announced recently that they are introducing their new Crest Weekly toothpaste almost entirely through the blogosphere. Samples of Crest Weekly were sent to [...]

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Agency Promotion 42  |  Add Yours

Wake Up Agencies – Digital Shops = Trojan Horse

It was bound to happen, and now it has. A big-time digital agency (R/GA) has opened up a full-fledged brand development arm. And whom do you think they will be competing against with this new branding department? Other digital agencies? Nope. They are aiming for traditional agencies and the branding, media placement, and creative budgets [...]

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PR 2.0 5  |  Add Yours

3 Secrets Rock Stars Can Teach the PR Biz

R&B star Jonelle Monae has burst on the scene recently, with guest spots in the Outkast movie Idlewyld and new tracks co-produced by Sean “Diddy” Combs, who says Monae may be the most important new artist signing of his career. In addition to loads of raw talent, Monae (who has self-directed much of her career [...]

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PR 2.0 3  |  Add Yours

The World’s Best PR Blog – Vote Today

To celebrate its 10th Anniversary, PR Week has launched a “Best PR Blogs” contest with YOU the agency community as the judge and jury. PR Week nominated 16 well-known PR blogs, and asked each blogger to nominate another blog for the contest. The result is a 32-blog, March Madness-style blog off. Each week, blogs are [...]

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Agency Promotion 8  |  Add Yours

PitchEngine Takes the Mystery out of Social Media Releases

Agency Advantage Tools – #3 In a Series Since it’s invention by Todd Defren at Shift Communications in 2006, the social media press release has taken root. Combining short paragraphs and bullet points with Web-friendly links, tags, and multi-media content, the SM release aims to give reporters and bloggers the key ingredients for a story [...]

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Agency Promotion 2  |  Add Yours

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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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, [...]

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Agency Promotion 1  |  Add Yours

91% of Top Digital Agencies Not Buying Their Own Brands on PPC

In a shocking (and embarassing) revelation today, AdWeek uncovered that of the 56 world-class digital marketing agencies featured in their Annual Report Card, just 5 are purchasing their own brand names in PPC. In fairness to the firms, most of them appear at or near the top of organic search results for their own brand [...]

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