ETMG is a totally virtual marketing firm and a certified green business, so we take being green pretty seriously.

But we had to ask ourselves: what really are the benefits? What real impact are we making? That’s when we decided to take a look at how our green efforts stack up over the course of a year.

With 20 employees working virtually out of their home offices, and a healthy list of green practices in place, we’ve tracked and quantified our green-ness and the results are illustrated below.

Resources:

To learn more about becoming a Certified Green Business contact the Bay Area Green Business Program.

Interested in a green promotion of you own? Or want to help your organization reduce its carbon footprint? Carbonfund.org is a great place to start.

Further Reading:

Work Is Not A Place – The Benefits of Empowering a Virtual Office [INFOGRAPHIC]

The Virtual Office, Episode 1: Work Is Where The Worker Is [VIDEO]

]]> http://www.wedomarketing.com/blog/how-green-can-one-virtual-marketing-firm-be-infographic/feed 4 http://www.wedomarketing.com/blog/book-review-the-fusion-marketing-bible http://www.wedomarketing.com/blog/book-review-the-fusion-marketing-bible#comments Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:25:12 +0000 Jules http://www.wedomarketing.com/blog/?p=2153 Reviewed by Special K, ETMG Writer and Blogger

Realizing that different kinds of marketing ought to be integrated is easy. The more difficult task is figuring out which pieces to fuse and doing so in a way that maximizes revenues.

The Fusion Marketing Bible by Lon Safko provides expert advice to help marketers develop and execute a comprehensive strategy to fuse more traditional forms of media such as print, radio, and television with both digital and social media.

Lon Safko is also the bestselling author of The Social Media Bible and a proven innovator. According to his bio, he is the inventor of the first voice recognition program and has 18 inventions and 30,000 personal records in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

In his latest book, Safko recommends marketers focus on strategy first and then determine appropriate tools – e.g. radio, magazines, Facebook, YouTube. The Fusion Marketing Bible provides guidance on both the strategic challenges of integrating disparate kinds of media and the practical nuts and bolts of execution.

5 Steps to Fusion Marketing Success

While The Fusion Marketing Bible outlines a plethora of approaches for thinking through the challenges of integrated marketing, the overarching methodology revolves around five key steps:

1. Analyze your existing media to establish what is and isn’t working.
The book walks readers through an equation that determines your cost of customer acquisition (COCA) for individual campaigns. According to Safko, this step is imperative as it enables one to determine what is and isn’t working – particularly in regard to your target demographics.

2. Focus on the trinity of social media.
Safko believes 90% of your social media participation should focus on the top 3 – 1. blogging, 2. microblogging (Twitter), and 3. larger social networks (Facebook and LinkedIn). Frequent blogging will improve your position in search engine rankings. Microblogging allows you to stay connected with your customers, leaders, suppliers, and lawmakers in your industry. Social networking drives engagement and lead generation.

3. Fuse your social and traditional media.
Fuse your marketing efforts by eliminating unsuccessful campaigns and adding more promising ones. Safko has developed a marketing tool called the Safko Wheel that allows you to visualize one objective at the center of the wheel with forty different marketing tools on the outer edges of the circle. This tool allows one both to compare effectiveness of different tools and to identify previously unimagined connections between traditional and social media.

4. Identify human and financial resources.
Identify resources that can be redirected to more efficient “tradigital” marketing strategies. Safko points out that management buy-in is the cornerstone to a successful fusion marketing plan. He also reviews the pros and con of hew hires, consultants, contract workers, and interns.

5. Implement and measure your fusion marketing plan.
As with any successful marketing endeavor, the process requires constant analysis, adjustment, and iteration. Safko reviews several tools for tracking and measuring the social and digital pieces of your plan. A few noteworthy options include landing pages, Google Alerts, and TweetDeck.

Safko’s book provides a thorough overview of potential synergies between traditional media and the evolving worlds of digital and social media, including an array of success stories ranging from LinkedIn to New Zealand World Cup Rugby. This book will be particularly useful for marketing managers and entrepreneurs looking to integrate various marketing initiatives and improve competitive positions in an expanding digital world.

Disclosure: ETMG received a free copy of The Fusion Marketing Bible from McGraw Hill Professional in order to review on our blog. McGraw Hill is not a client of ETMG and we received no other payment or incentive in exchange for this review.

Resources:

The Fusion Marketing Bible at Amazon.com

The Fusion Marketing Bible Web Site

Lon Safko’s Web Site

Further Reading:

How to Deal with a Shrinking Marketing Budget

4 Reasons Your Web Site Needed an Overhaul Yesterday

If social media were a high school dance, men and women would be hanging out on opposite sides of the gym. Wondering where and how to reach your targeted dance partners/customers? Or at least get them to visit your punch bowl on Pinterest?

Don’t let your social media marketing effort go to waste. Check out this helpful infographic from InternetServiceProviders.org:

Further Reading:

How to Write for Email vs. Social Media vs. the Web

FTC Takes AIM at Social Media Marketing

April 15, 1998.

It was a cool spring day in San Jose. There were no smartphones. No tablets. Not even any iPods (introduced on 10/23/01.) No wireless to speak of. No Google. No high speed Internet connection. No navigation system or backup camera. When you connected to the Internet, you did so via a modem—four hundred times slower than what we use today. It was a very difficult era.

I had already committed 18 years to “Corporate America.” I had seven- and eleven-year-old boys. Four cats. One dog. Two car payments. A house payment. A fair amount of credit card debt (kids will do that you.) I also had a full head of black hair. I was working for a small networking company called Cisco. They had seven buildings in San Jose.

Employee #13126

I was employee number 13,126 (now well into six digits.) I was in the marketing department, responsible for their new line of dial-up (as in modem) products. I was managing a new product launch for the largest roll-out in the company’s history and was given a blank check for our marketing budget. There were what seemed like hundreds of people on the world-wide team. I was spending money as fast as I could find things to spend it on.

Michael & Connie from 2001

That’s where I met Connie. She was a hired gun, the brains responsible for the messaging of the launch docs. And there was Debbie, she was the project manager that kept track of all the launch deliverables. Collectively, the three of us toyed with the idea of starting our own agency. Each one of us had a specialty. Those specialties are the three core practices we still have today: Writing, Production, and Project Management.

We just did it.

We saw opportunity inside the high tech companies in the valley. They all needed various pieces of the marketing puzzle, but no one agency offered the full breadth of solutions. The creation of a new agency meant that we had no promise of a paycheck. No health or any other type of insurance. We had no experience running our own business. We had only a handful of resources, mostly contacts we’d used or met in our respective corporate roles. We just did it. That’s how Envision was born, and we’ve all lived the rest.

ETMG's original logo from 1998

Grodisms

As you would expect, during my 33 year history, I have learned a tremendous amount about running a business, managing people, and leading a balanced life. I have distilled all my wisdom and experience into 10 simple guiding principles I call Grodisms. It’s these Grodisms that have contributed to our Envision culture and what helps guide our actions today.

1.  Don’t wait for the next new thing—go find it.

2.  Always give people more then they ask for. Always ask for more then you expect.

3.  Don’t be ordinary. Everyone else is, and you can’t stand out if you blend in.

4.  Never be satisfied. Satisfactory is average. Average is C work. No one likes or ever asks for C work.

5.  Take calculated risks. Risks bring adventure, new opportunity, success, and failure.

6.  Give yourself permission to make mistakes but only if you are willing to admit them and learn from them. (Okay, this was my father’s advice.) Admitting means you accept what you have done, learned something new, and now are better for it.

7.  I always twist open Oreos, even in public. There is nothing wrong with being who I am. I prefer Double Stuff.

8.  Make bad decisions if you have to. Just make a damn decision. The stress of “trying to decide” is many times worse than getting it wrong and starting over.

9.  Decisions have to be what’s best for the family. We are going to be around a lot longer than any business.

10.  Love what you are doing, or do something else, and don’t keep doing the same thing just because it’s comfortable. See #1.

Thank you all for a wonderful 15 years. We could not have done it without you. We appreciate everyone’s contribution to our history.

In their best-selling book, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne propose a bold new way to think about business markets. It’s a useful read for marketers looking for innovative ways to approach business strategy.

The old, standard way of thinking is what the authors refer to as red ocean strategy, where businesses operate within bounded, known market space and engage in bloody competition by trying to best competitors who are basically doing the same thing.

Blue ocean strategy, on the other hand, focuses on creating blue oceans of uncontested, new market space and growing untapped demand in spaces where competition is nonexistent because the rules of the game haven’t been set.

Oceans of Excellent Case Studies

While blue oceans sound lovely, figuring out how to create them presents a challenge. Kim and Mauborgne’s book addresses this challenge with over 15 years of research and data going back over 100 years.

For example, in the early 1980’s, the Canadian entertainment company, Cirque du Soleil looked at the red oceans of the waning circus industry and saw Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey struggling to stay afloat. Cirque du Soleil charted new waters by offering people the fun of the circus and the sophistication of the theater.

The company dropped the expensive components of animal acts, three-ring entertainment, and aisle concessions yet maintained the allure of the circus by keeping the tent, the clowns, and the classic acrobatic acts. Looking across the market boundary to theater, Cirque du Soleil added factors such as a story line, artistic music and dance, and multiple productions. While the red ocean players competed by tweaking traditional acts, Cirque du Soleil developed a blue ocean by changing the game.

The book is full of stories about once unknown industries – such as mutual funds, cellular phones, snowboards, coffee bars, and home videos – which began as blue oceans. The histories of the automobile, computer, and film industries are examined in depth as a series of evolving blue oceans.

Key Blue Ocean Strategies

The authors are keenly aware that successful blue ocean creation requires more than a good idea or new technology, and their book provides several frameworks for the journey from red to blue ocean thinking. For example, their strategy canvas graphs the current state of known market spaces based on competition factors, and it also functions as an action framework to explore ideas for new blue oceans.

Beyond analytics, the authors maintain that the cornerstone strategy for blue oceans is value innovation which occurs when a company’s actions favorably affect both its cost structure and its value proposition. This innovation involves several guiding principles, such as ideal sequencing to determining buyer utility before setting prices.

The authors excel at describing blue ocean strategy, and they provide a thorough overview of the different mindset required. If you’ve been tasked with growing sales and market share in a challenging industry, consider exploring blue oceans. This book will definitely help you chart the waters.

Resources:

Blue Ocean Strategy on Amazon.com

Blue Ocean Strategy Institute at INSEAD Business School for the World
Research for the book was funded by Pricewaterhouse-Coopers and the Boston Consulting Group, and it was conducted at INSEAD Business School for the World.

Blue Ocean Strategy Book Website

Red & Blue Ocean Mind Map – Biggerplate.com

Further Reading:

Book Review-Marketing White Belt: Basics for the Digital Marketer

At ETMG, we’ve been a solely virtual organization since 1998. So it is no surprise we’re big proponents of of working virtually, teleworking, and flex workers. Whatever you want to call it, we think empowering your team to do what they do best, wherever they do it best, translates into big rewards for your organization.

What type of rewards? Take a look at this infographic created by Citrix. It does a great job illustrating exactly why more companies should embrace working virtually.

We’d like to thank the GoToMeeting Social Media Team for granting permission to share their infographic. Citrix is not a client of ETMG, and ETMG did not receive any compensation for posting this content.

Resources:

The GoTo Blog – Citrix Online

Further Reading:

The Virtual Office, Episode 1: Work is Where The Worker Is

Free Project Management Tools for the Virtual Office

The world of social media, mobile marketing and brand journalism is a swiftly tilting planet. Channels and platforms are evolving so quickly that many marketers have accidentally/intentionally blurred the lines between testimonial and endorsement, product review and paid product promotion.

Change is coming. For the benefit of our customers and our brand, we’ll all need to get familiar with the Federal Trade Commission’s newly updated disclosure guidelines for digital marketers.

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Here’s what social media marketers and content managers need to know:

– A portion of  social media posts and blog content is not protected by Free Speech and may actually be considered commercial speech and subject to regulation by the FTC.

- If you are acting on behalf of a client, partner, sponsor, or employer or are compensated in any fashion, you may need to include disclosures  in your marketing communications on blogs and social media sites.

Here are the details:

On March 12^th the FTC released “new guidance for mobile and other online advertisers that explains how to make disclosures clear and conspicuous to avoid deception.”

This is an update to the “Dotcom Disclosures” released in 2000 to address online advertising and marketing practices. The updated guidelines now titled, “.com Disclosures: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising,” take into account the proliferation of mobile devices, with advertising messages on smaller screens, and the tidal wave of social media marketing that has occurred since 2000.

The revised guidelines seek to ensure that the same consumer protection laws prohibiting “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” that apply to commercial activities in other media apply online, including activities on social media sites and in the mobile marketplace.

According to the FTC guidelines, “Required disclosures must be clear and conspicuous. In evaluating whether a disclosure is likely to be clear and conspicuous, advertisers should consider its placement in the ad and its proximity to the relevant claim. The closer the disclosure is to the claim to which it relates, the better. “

In reviewing the guidelines it is clear that the FTC uses the term “ad” to describe any and all marketing communications in public settings such as social media posts, blogs, YouTube videos, etc., – not just those print and online ads we typically think of when we say “ad”.

The FTC guidelines describe exactly how marketers and advertisers should include disclosures across various formats, devices, and platforms. In general, the FTC’s position is: if an ad, or marketing communication, is viewable on a particular device or platform, any necessary disclosures should be sufficient to prevent the ad from being misleading when viewed on that device or platform.

Luckily the updated guidelines include helpful visual examples of dos and don’ts when it comes to required disclosures for various social media platforms and viewing ads, communications, and web content on various mobile devices.

The guidelines should be read in their entirely by all online and social media marketers as well as website content managers and developers. But we’d like to highlight those new guidelines affecting social media teams and brand journalists who don’t typically think of themselves as creating “ads”.

Social Media

The FTC advises, “When a space-constrained ad requires a disclosure, incorporate the disclosure into the ad whenever possible. However, when it is not possible to make a disclosure in a space-constrained ad, it may, under some circumstances, be acceptable to make the disclosure clearly and conspicuously on the page to which the ad links.”

While the FTC does not call Twitter out here by name, I think we all can agree that is what they are referring to here. Take a look at the example below provided by the FTC of how advertisers might include disclosures in “space-constrained ads”:

This example appears to be clearly related to this requirement, but apparently a link to the disclosure from a tweet is not good enough to avoid being labeled a misleading ad. Here’s what the FTC had to say about this example of what not to do:

“Even if the link in the message led directly to those disclosures on the Fat-away website, those disclosures would not be adequate if consumers could purchase Fat-away at a brick and mortar store or from a third-party online retailer (a retailer that is not affiliated with the advertiser). In either case, they might not click through to the Fat-away website, and thus would not see these disclosures.”

Regarding Twitter, here’s how the FTC wants marketers to handle disclosures on “space constrained” platforms:

Notice the “Ad:” preceding the tweet and the required “Typical weight loss” disclosure at the end. That’s 24 characters needed for this type of marketing communication requiring disclosure. Which means social media marketers, brand journalists, and community managers now have a renewed need for brevity when it comes to their marketing messages on Twitter. Save space for disclosure.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re not in the pharmaceutical industry. This doesn’t apply to you, right? Well, let’s look at another scenario: If you hire a speaker for an event and he or she tweets about your brand, product, or service, he or she should disclose on Twitter that the tweet is an “Ad:” Likewise, if you post on Facebook about a partner or client product, service, or event, the relationship should be disclosed in the post.

Blogs

Blogs come under scrutiny as well in the new FTC guidelines. As Jeff John Roberts points out in his blog post on paidContent.org,

“The guidelines also take aim at bloggers who provide information or reviews in exchange for products or services. In one example, the FTC shows a blog post about house paint in which the writer states at the end that she received a free can of paint. According to the agency, such disclosures must be clear and conspicuous and not tucked away after a series of links or other distractions. The new guidelines may affect companies like Microsoft that have paid bloggers to ‘astroturf’ on their behalf.”

Here’s another example: Given this FTC guideline, we at ETMG will need to disclose that we received marketing related books from McGraw-Hill to review on our blog. They’re not a client. We just received a book. But according to the FTC guidelines, that is compensation enough to warrant disclosure upfront.

Bottom line

The way the FTC sees it, “If you are acting on behalf of an advertiser, what you are saying is commercial speech – and commercial speech can be regulated under the FTC Act if it’s deceptive.”

To avoid appearing deceptive, you’ll need to include those disclosures in your blog and as a marketing communications manager, you should require external bloggers to include a disclosure as well if you’ve provided your product or service or other compensation to the reviewer.

Same goes with social media posts. Including those disclosures to avoid deceptive practices on social media and on mobile platforms is going to be especially tough. But ultimately, we think this practice will help your brand. You’ll be more transparent, open, and honest with your customers and potential customers. And weren’t you looking for authentic engagement in the first place?

Resources:

Federal Trade Commission Release: FTC Staff Revises Online Advertising Disclosure Guidelines March 2013

The FTC’s Revised Endorsement Guides: What People are Asking June 2010

Feds issue rules for social media – Twitter and bloggers take note by Jeff John Roberts, paidContent.org

Further reading:

Social Media Gaffes to Avoid

Finding and Maximizing Testimonials

Entrepreneurs and marketing professionals looking for a primer or a refresher course on marketing basics will appreciate Christopher Penn’s book, Marketing White Belt: Basics for the Digital Marketer. Penn not only teaches Internet Marketing at the University of San Francisco and co-hosts a weekly podcast, Marketing over Coffee, but he also holds a black belt in the martial art of ninjutsu.

The Four Elements of Marketing

Using both his marketing and ninjutsu skills, Penn’s organizing metaphor for the book is a well-run martial arts dojo where white belt students-in-training learn the basics by focusing on four different elements: earth, water, fire, and wind. Penn successfully translates these elements into a fresh approach to thinking about the marketing endeavor. The book isn’t just for beginners. Any martial arts practitioner will tell you that maintaining a “beginner’s mind” is essential to meeting new challenges.

1. Earth – Fundamentals

Penn uses the first element, earth, to discuss the groundwork that makes marketing programs work. This section begins with a review of basic business archetypes (product, reseller, service provider, and media) and the ways in which value is often added or transformed (customization and service). He also discusses setting strategic marketing goals and aligning them with business goals.

2. Water – Science

In the second section, Penn focuses on cool and collected insights that can be gleaned from metrics. Relevant tools here include quantifiable metrics for understanding the difference buckets of people in your marketing funnel and SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analyses. Penn concludes this part with a wonderfully concise yet thorough review of the deceptively simple formula for determining ROI. He explains that this metric is best used for monitoring cost containment.

3. Fire – Connection

Marketing is all about building audience which is a lot like starting and maintaining a fire. Not surprisingly then, Penn’s third element attends to the human aspects of feeding and tending your audience. Growing your database requires identifying hubs of influence to attract large numbers of eyeballs to your properties. Social networks are some of the most important places to build and maintain connections with your audience. Penn explains that once one reaches a critical mass of connectivity, the benefits of a network grow larger than its costs. This explanation includes a formula for the more mathematically inclined.

4. Wind – Service

With the last element, Penn emphasizes the importance of putting knowledge to work by beginning with a basic marketing campaign plan. He provides some structuring questions for thinking through your plan and cautions against common pitfalls such as obscuring the big picture with overly complex details. This last section also walks the reader through a basic competitive analysis.

Penn concludes by emphasizing the importance of maintaining a beginner’s mind to successfully adapt and grow with changes and challenges. Whether you are new to the marketing world or a more seasoned manager looking for innovative ways to think about business endeavors, the wisdom (and exercises!) in The Marketing White Belt will breathe new life into your approach.

Resources:

Marketing Over Coffee Podcast

Marketing White Belt on Amazon.com

Further Reading:

Marketing Basics – Branding & Presidential Campaigns

Marketing Metrics – Polling and Survey Tools

Using Brand Journalism to Tell Your Story

Q:  Is digital printing as good as traditional offset printing?

Digitally printed ETMG 2013 Desktop Calendar

A:  Digital printing has come a long way and is now on a par with offset printing, at least to the naked eye. Most people will not be able to tell the difference. Digital printing is an excellent solution and comes in at a lower cost when printing smaller print pieces and quantities.

Here are some things to keep in mind when managing a digital print project:

Not all print jobs will fit on a digital press. In most cases your digital printer will have a press that can accommodate a maximum imprint area of 12 x 18”, so anything larger than 12 x 18” will need to print on an offset press which can accommodate a larger sheet size. Also smaller deliverables with larger print runs, meaning larger quantities, are more economical to print on an offset press.

The good news is that HP has recently come out with the HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press which uses a 29” sheet size. But it may be some time before this larger digital press becomes more commonplace in press rooms.

Discuss inks and finishes with your vendor. Some digital print houses can print spot PMS (Pantone  Matching System) inks or offer special varnish options. Be sure to ask your digital printer if they can accommodate your special ink or varnishing needs before submitting your quote request. It is also a good idea to check if any special services are done in-house or sent out to a trade finisher as that will make a difference in both your cost and timing.

Not all paper options are approved for the digital press. If there is some flexibility with the paper choice for your design, it is best to ask your agency or the printer for their paper recommendation to ensure best quality printing is achieved on a digital press.

Digital press operator performing press check on a proof. Photo: iStockphoto.com

An added benefit of going with a digital print solution is the proofing process. Outputting a proof for a digital print job is less expensive, and often more accurate, than offset print proofing solutions. A digital press allows for a first article proof to come off the press for approval of color and other elements. The proof you receive is actually the first printed version of your design. What you see is what you will get. If your digital print project has multiple pages, folds or special bindery requirements be sure to ask for an assembled prototype proof to review for approval before proceeding with the full print job..

Personalization and variable data printing are perfect for the digital press. This benefit of digital printing allows for added cost savings by enabling mailing labels and postage indicia to be printed directly on your mailer. But the variable data is not limited to text. Brochures or datasheets can be personalized with product information and images tailored to the recipient within the same design template and on the same digital print run.

Digital printing is also a great option if you are short on time. Many web-based digital print houses offer same or next-day turn for smaller jobs and a three-day turn is pretty standard in the business. By comparison, an offset print project can require a few days to receive a proof and then 3 – 5 days after proof approval for print, finishing, and bindery.

Regardless of which type of press you decide to use to output your print project, always review your project specifications with your printer early on in the design process and be sure to review a proof before printing.

Resources:

Moquin Digital

HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press

Pantone Matching System (PMS)

Further Reading:

How Using Print Brokers Reduces Printing Costs

The Proof is in the Proof!

Print Possibilities: Not So Square Anymore

If your top priority is gaining and retaining customers through engaging copy content, you’ll need to recognize that not every marketing channel is the same. As the creator of the infographic suggests, “Your writing should also accommodate each channel and the audience it attracts.” But what tone of voice should you use, how many characters do you include, when should you sell, or simply converse? Let’s take a look…

Resources:

Copywriting Cheat Sheet by Vertical Response

Further Reading:

Using Brand Journalism to Tell Your Story

Good Research Makes Better Blogs

Six Steps to a Compelling Case Study