The Mono-Culture is Dead, Long Live the Weirdos So what’s the deal? Why has Facebook’s advertising the last two years doubled-down on hyper-focused groups with such niche audiences as “LGBTQ Crochet/Knitting/Crafters?” This concept is largely the reason for TikTok’s overnight explosive success. TikTok’s “For You Page” (FYP) homepage feature takes the hashtag concept of cataloguing …
Two of the most important aspects of digital marketing strategy development are understanding consumer behavior and how consumers will respond to your marketing communications materials. Have you ever sat in a conference room and decided which ad, brochure, landing page or website design to approve for production? If you have, how did you arrive at …
There is a dangerous dogma that has infiltrated digital sales and marketing thought. One that if left unchecked, will cause numerous content marketing and lead generation programs to fail. Yet, as you read posts penned by lead generation agencies and lead generation thought leaders, listen to popular podcasts or attend demand gen conference sessions, you …
Should solopreneurs, freelancers and consultants focus on becoming famous or the most noted authority in their category in order to drive future business growth?
...Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of spending an hour with a group of men discussing gratitude — its role in our lives, how we should be teaching it to our children, its role in our religion (it was a prayer group) — and that got me to thinking about the role of gratitude in …
Entrepreneurial success hinges on your ability to form connections – not in the opportunity networking sense but in the real human common ground and purpose sense. Here’s more on that subject today.
...In November 2016, CNN plunked down a reported 20 millions dollars to purchase Beme, the video-sharing app started by YouTube star Casey Neistat. CNN hoped to fashion it into an independently operated daily online news program that would appeal to today’s digital centric consumer. By January 2018, Neistat was out and the effort became a glaring …
Everyone loves digital advertising for its tracking capability vs traditional advertising. It’s easier to prove digital marketing ROI vs traditional advertising because digital makes the invisible buyer visible. But is this focus on clicks causing you to miss conversions? Let’s talk about that today. You Can’t Sell To Invisible Buyers In our zeal to prove …
Happy Anniversary to me. Yep, eight years ago this week (May 1, 2010) I re-entered the world of entrepreneurship by starting Converse Digital with a mere two weeks notice, no money in the bank, no investors, no credit line, a wife, four kids, a big mortgage payment and lots of private school tuitions. I’ve learned a …
Most influencer campaigns today are really thinly veiled awareness ad campaigns. Companies are simply renting access to an influencer’s audience on the misguided belief that this access will generate sales by association. But this is a short-sighted and increasingly unsuccessful viewpoint because fame doesn’t equal influence. So, how do you leverage conversations to create a …
Companies spend millions on brand activations and Netflix’s recent CES activation was no different. The super weird booth from fake company Psychasec promoting their “sleeve” product, a spare body you can transfer your consciousness into seems to be designed to specifically create Word-of-Mouth. So did it? Let’s look at the numbers. Online Social Media Discussions Generated …
We all want the Google Juice. We’ve been told it’s the silver bullet to inbound marketing success. But we’re wrong. The only way to truly Google Proof your website, and your online marketing efforts, is Propinquity. Today we’ll talk about why propinquity marketing is a better long-term strategy vs the classic Google/Inbound strategy for most …
According to a 2017 Baymard Institute, an e-commerce consultancy, based in Copenhagen, report “more than 69% of online shopping carts that contain at least one item are later abandoned”. The report analyzed 37 different studies to arrive at the 69% average. Baymard has been analyzing US and EU combined online cart abandonment for seven years. …
Last week Skift posted an article, Business of Loyalty: What the Travel Industry Could Learn From Amazon Prime, suggesting travel brands could learn a lot from Amazon’s famous Prime Service. Nothing could be further from the truth… here’s why. Amazon Prime Isn’t a Loyalty Program According to Webster’s Dictionary, loyalty is an act of “faith” …
Yesterday I received an email from Oculus that really pissed me off. The email invited me (an early adopter of the technology) to share the gift of VR. It went on to inform me that for a “limited time” Oculus was selling a package of one Rift + two Touch Controllers for only $399… almost …
According to just released data from Pew…. YES… Millennials are far more likely than their elder brethren to be searching for God via the Internet. In fact, they’re almost 5 TIMES more likely to seek the Almighty on the web then Baby Boomers and this might be the most important marketing stat you’ll read all …
What Is A Social Sales Force? Simply put, a social sales force is comprised of motivated, unpaid ambassadors and influencers — what we at Converse Digital call Social Agents. Social Agents introduce you to prospective visitors online through Facebook posts, Instagram pics and Twitter taunts telling everyone how much fun they’re having. And they don’t …
You can’t turn around in marketing today without hearing someone or some company talking about Influencer Marketing. It seems every company wants to figure out how to leverage an influencer marketing strategy to grow their brand and sales. But from what I’ve seen, more are doing it wrong than right and new research suggests new …
What if I told you I could create a 161% change in consumer perception by simply changing the background of a headshot photo? Would you believe me? Would you believe that something so small could cause such a massive improvement in your consumer marketing programs? And not just any perception, a meaningful one — the …
I was reading an interesting statistic this morning that “almost 69% of online shopping carts that contain at least one item are later abandoned, according to the Baymard Institute, an e-commerce consultancy based in Copenhagen which analyzed 31 studies over the past few years. That is up about three percentage points from 2012, says Christian …
On May 1st, Converse Digital turned five — five years of helping clients turn conversations into customers. But as I sit here reflecting on what I’ve learned over the last year, two overriding lessons overshadow everything else. Such universal truths. Such simple rules. Rules that I’ve spoken of before, but yet, it took the events of …
Back in 1950, psychologists Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, and Kurt Back launched a study to investigate how friendships developed among students at the new Westgate Complex at MIT. They found that the strongest friendships developed between students who lived next to each other on the same floor. Where friendships developed between students who lived on …
Mardi Gras has, and continues to be, one of the most well known, interesting and misunderstood free festivals in the world. An enormous content marketing and digital marketing opportunity for brands — think brand activation, content creation, brand awareness, social media opportunities and good old fashioned sales incentives trips — Mardi Gras offers it all. …
Recently the super smart Jeff Rohrs of ExactTarget/Salesforce wrote a great post about the lack of CTA’s (Call to Action) in Super Bowl ads. You can read it here. In it, Jeff makes the argument that Super Bowl advertisers that fail to place a mobile friendly CTA in their ads are guilty of “marketing malpractice” …
My friend Scott Stratten has a great part in his UnSelling keynote. He talks about how the sale is not the end but the beginning of the customer transaction and relationship. This holiday season I had the opportunity to really see Stratten’s theory in action and it reinforced how companies must change their way of …
Instagram’s new Hyperlapse IOS app is taking the tourism content marketing world by storm. Heck, it’s got everyone’s attention. Almost overnight (after its release) my Facebook feed switched from a never ending stream of ice bucket challenges to Hypersnap videos. But here are three reasons I recommend brands, and tourism destination marketers in particular, steer clear of …
Over the last couple of years, a few hundred members of the diabetic community came together for the world’s first, and only, virtual diabetes conference. Registration was completely free and attendees could join from a computer, smartphone or tablet. And this ability to create virtual events is what I firmly believe is the future of social …
So today I want to talk to you about the lies, but I also want to talk to you about the truths of Big Data. I’m giving you my recent big data presentation as a downloadable webinar. My goal is that when you finish the downloadable webinar, you’re going to feel really confident having a conversation …
Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed a handful of articles discussing the devaluation of brands in a world of near perfect information. It has me thinking about the effect such a change would have on traditional marketing approaches. And, more importantly, the implications on brand loyalty programs, product launches, and small businesses vs big …
I’ve always been a big fan of Twitter and specifically Twitter Chats as a way to engage in smart, interesting conversations around topics like marketing, social media, digital marketing and other professional interests. But alas, if you look around Twitter lately, it’s kind of broken (more on that in a later post). It seems like …