http://www.intgroup.com/blog Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:56:04 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en While many of us in marketing are depressed about these slow economic times, media buyers are having the time of their lives! Why? Because it's a Buyer's market! Rates have dropped and opportunities abound. Television programs once deemed untouchable due to high rates are now affordable. Don't ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2009/06/15/marketing-mistake-12-its-a-buyers-market/ Admit it. It’s absolutely depressing to open a newspaper or turn on the television. Every story reinforces the gloom-and-doom economy we’re living in. We’re in a full-blown recession. Banks and Automakers are still floundering even after government help. Consumer confidence is in the tank. Unemployment is up. How in the world ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2009/03/11/marketing-mistake-4-be-a-light-in-the-darkness/ The media landscape is constantly evolving and changing.  Think these changes don't affect you and your media buys because you stay safely in just one medium?  Wrong - change is everywhere! The television world is still trying to recover from the writer’s strike last year that put a dent in ratings ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2009/01/28/marketing-mistake-16-overdependence-on-one-medium/ Very often a branding initiative will neglect to address one of a company’s most important constituents — their employees.These should be the biggest cheerleaders of a company or its product/service. The key word is “should.” Unfortunately, they can’t be cheerleaders if they don’t understand what they are cheering about. Their ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2008/11/12/marketing-mistake-9-not-using-your-best-salespeopleyour-employees/ Focus on your product loyalists. If you communicate with no one else, make sure you stay in touch with the key to your success. Do not take loyal customers for granted. They need more communication, not less — especially if the market is in a state of change. The good ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/21/mistaking-your-target-audience/   As the World Wide Web was pioneered commercially in the early going, the universe of those who used it and understood it and its vast potential was a fairly small group.  We could use terms and create terms to define new, never-before-done activities.  As more and more people gravitated to ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/09/you-say-tomato%e2%80%a6/ OK, so you don’t have a Facebook page and maybe you’ve never blogged. But hopefully, you’ve given some thought to how to use these channels to reach your potential and existing customers. Both are high-ROI ways to stretch your marketing dollars during a recession. Along with numerous other Internet technologies, ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/01/ignoring-emerging-technologies/ All of us have heard the observation that it costs five times as much (up to ten times, depending on your industry) to acquire a new customer versus retaining the one who has already done business with you. Yet many marketing organizations treat existing customers just like potential ones – ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2008/03/19/treating-your-current-customers-like-prospects/ Olive Garden is currently running a contest asking kids to write an essay detailing their favorite family activity.  The winner gets a trip to New York and (gasp!) the opportunity to eat at Olive Garden in Times Square! My son, sweet and innocent boy that he is, has painstakingly crafted an ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2008/01/04/of-advertising-and-youth/ With the writer’s strike in full swing, and everyone within the industry expressing pessimism about how long it will actually last, the rest of us are wondering how long we’ll be forced to watch Jay Leno and his circa 1992 mullet interview the guy that played Dillon on Beverly Hills ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2007/12/10/you-want-how-much/