http://www.intgroup.com/blog Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:33:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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/ The first time I heard the term Android was on an episode of Star Trek--not the Next Generation--The first generation.  Robots that walked and acted somewhat human--albeit with very limited personality. They mostly created havoc for the crew whose mission it was to explore new planets and boldly go where ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2007/11/13/and-i-thought-androids-were-all-about-sci-fi/ The big story on talk radio lately is the Fairness Doctrine.  I can certainly understand why talk radio has launched a crusade against it.  The Fairness Doctrine, a law being reconsidered that dictates that any communications outlet that utilizes the public airwaves present balanced coverage within the political realm, would ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2007/11/01/marginalizing-our-most-basic-freedom/ Has the time come for marketers to kill the consumer? Not the actual person who buys the marketers’ stuff.  That would be a little self-destructive (not to mention illegal.) But the concept of “consumer.”   And by that I mean "the usual suspects."  Women 18-34.  Adults, 55+ who live in B Counties.   Men ... http://www.intgroup.com/blog/index.php/2007/10/22/kill-the-consumer/