Insights by Justin Downey

November 2010

GREAT Marketing will RUIN a good product

Great marketing can simply ruin a low-quality or even good-quality product or service. Before you dismiss this post on its face, let me offer an example we can all relate to. Banking in the 00s has become a “Gotcha Marketer’s” paradise. Sky-high ATM fees, bank fees, huge conglomerates with no ties or interest in the …

3,092 Views

November 2010

Halloween Consumer Spending Index

These days, the economy is far more scary than ghouls and goblins, but that didn’t stop Americans from embracing the (expensive) delights of Halloween.

997 Views

October 2010

Don’t Penalize Payment!

On the first day of my very first pricing class in college, the professor opened with the following one-line statement: “Never make it hard for customers to give you money!” The lesson was simple. Get as sophisticated as you like setting up pricing structures, but for god’s sake, don’t make it hard to actually pay. So why do so many businesses not just make it hard to pay them, but actually charge a penalty if you don’t pay them in the manner they prefer?!

1,595 Views

September 2010

URL Shorteners Wolves in Sheeps Clothing?

URL shorteners, such as bit.ly and tinyurl, are services that help take longer URLs (which can be over a hundred characters long) and transform them into manageable links that almost never exceed 20 characters.

1,538 Views

August 2010

Aim Small, Miss Small

I’ve never been much for hunting, but I do like target shooting. A friend of mine taught me to “aim small, miss small.” In other words, aim for the whole beer can and you might miss it entirely. Aim for the hole in the “g” on the label and, even if you miss the letter, …

1,854 Views

July 2010

OMS 2010 Social Media Tips

The 2010 Online Marketing Summit was recently held in Dallas. Take a look at a few of our social media learns from the conference.

1,236 Views

July 2010

Sugar CRM, How Sweet it is!

CRM solutions have been broadly recognized and widely implemented as part of any sales-focused organization’s sales and marketing strategy. These days, leveraging a CRM solution as a touch-point between sales, marketing and customer service is 21st century marketing 101. The challenge for small businesses or even medium-sized businesses working with ever-tighter budgets is that a …

2,392 Views

April 2010

Marketers Not Using RSS Should be Fired

Understand the basics and you’ll see the immense value of RSS for modern marketers.

1,763 Views

March 2010

Mobile Marketing Best Practices 2010

There’s been a lot of chatter about mobile marketing but little movement. That is, until you consider that today, the majority of mobile carriers are offering flat-rate data plans leveraging 3G and 4G bandwidth and the vast majority of users never leave home without their sensor-rich, wireless web-ready, palm-top computers that also happen to make …

1,351 Views

March 2010

Report Suggests 10-20% Hiring Increase

Amidst the doom and gloom in the job market, a new hiring trends report, published by our friends at HRmarketer, finds The report, “Trends in HR Marketing: HR Buyer’ Behavior: What to Expect in 2010,” is based on data from human resource and employee benefit buyers collected during October and November of 2009 and has …

1,103 Views

February 2010

Branding Trends 2010

In Robert Passikoff’s, “Top 10 Brand and Marketing Trends for 2010” article for UTalkMarketing.com, he makes a few good points but neglects a larger issue facing brands in 2010. Passikoff writes: Old tricks don’t work/won’t work anymore In case your brand didn’t get the memo here it is -consumers are on to brands trying to …

1,148 Views

December 2009

Scorched Earth Branding

Hot Brands tend to end up in one of two places. Some burn too bright and fade quickly. These are remembered as fads. Some others burn hot and simmer steadily for decades. These Brands become iconic. So, what’s the trick to steering your Brand toward iconic? The good news is, you have more control than …

1,933 Views