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

The Death of Newspapers: Poisoned or Suicide?

The evidence of newspapers’ decline as a primary source of information in America is everywhere. My local paper narrowed to a tabloid size yesterday, following USA Today, Arizona Republic, and many, many other papers.  Essentially all newspapers have laid off significant portions of their staff. Some (like East Valley Tribune in suburban Phoenix) are printing [...]

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How Huffington Post and Obama Killed the New York Times Online

AdAge revealed recently that the New York Times reported a steep 17.9% decline in ad revenues for July. Not unexpected, as many print behemoths are getting pummeled in this economy. (See related post “Is Digital Marketing Killing Magazine Ads”) However, NYTimes.com and the company’s other online efforts grew only .9% in July, compared to double [...]

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Why PPC is about to skyrocket – and then CRASH

Times are tough. But one area that is ready to soar is pay-per-click search marketing (PPC). That most measurable and controllable of digital marketing opportunities, PPC looks like a no-brainer in this economy. Have you called a newspaper lately and asked them if they’ll charge you per phone call generated? Even with ad sales down [...]

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The 10 Strengths of the Agency of the Future

Web services giant Sapient recently fielded a national online digital marketing survey of more than 200 chief marketing officers (CMOs) and senior marketers responsible for managing digital budgets (among other things). Survey respondents were asked about the top qualities they sought in their advertising and marketing agencies in the coming year. Sapient’s Top 10 Wish [...]

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Customized Internet Marketing Training for Agencies

Convince & Convert launches new training program series to help agencies improve their digital capabilities Addressing the needs of ad agencies and PR firms to improve their digital marketing competency, Convince & Convert is now providing a series of customizable, in-person training programs. We are offering 5 intensive, all-day sessions to train ad agencies and [...]

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The Alarming Truth About Digital Marketing’s Imperfections

A One Legged Stool There’s no question the Internet has been good to me. The last two jobs I had before getting involved in Internet marketing in 1994 were spokesman for the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections (prison tours), and marketing director for Waste Management (landfill tours). I prefer this gig as it is smell [...]

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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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Internet Advertising to Grow 20% in 2008

A new report from Bernstein Research says online advertising in the U.S. will grow by 20% in 2008, despite weakness in travel, auto, and financials. Top categories for online advertising spend include: Finance, insurance, real estate – 29.6% of overall spend Media and entertainment – 25.2% Retail – 13.8% Other – 12.9% Auto – 8.6% [...]

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Ad Networks Are a House of Cards – But a Great Deal

A groundbreaking study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Bain & Company shows that ad networks’ share of display ad sales soared from 5% to 30% from 2006-2007. (Read the excellent full report here) It seems the rise in Internet advertising (~20% per year, according to eMarketer) is creating a flurry of new sites, and [...]

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3 New Features for Google’s Ad Planner

Google announced on Friday via one of their blogs that they have added 3 new features to Ad Planner.  (note: for more about Ad Planner, and Google’s long-term plan to totally change the ad agency business, read this post from Convince & Convert’s greatest hits) Impressive that Google has made pretty significant upgrades to Ad [...]

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