Blogs

A recent eMarketer article shares insights on how many online retailers are taking steps to improve their websites in 2010. Improvements planned include updating of home, category, and product pages, followed by better SEO. No surprise for any of us in this space who continue to follow the trends of increasing consumer adoption of the online channel as either the beginning of the shopping experience, shop online .... purchase in store; or the place where they actually make their final purchase, shop in store... purchase on line.

 

A report published this week from eMarketer shows that 56% of US Online Shoppers are now regularly engaging on Facebook. Additionally this report also shows that over 61% of these respondents are engaging with 1 - 5 of their favorite brands. 

So what does this mean? The world of marketing is continuing to evolve, it is now incumbent on us marketers to put our brands in front of our target constituents where they are congregating. 

Some basic advice that we all know, but need to be reminded of: 

Mashable posted a great article on the 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence.  Here are the cliff notes for all the Attention Deficit Disorder folks:

1. The Website - When you’re building an online presence, the most important aspect is your website. It’s your hub and your first impression. It should answer "What do you do?", "Why should I trust you?" and "How do I contact you?"

Big Couch recently completed our first ever company retreat. During our fun-filled day of  SWOT and OGSM exercises, we had to wrestle with the question of WHY does Big Couch exist and WHAT do we stand for. While the team instinctively had a gut feeling about the answers to these questions, it proofed challenging to articulate them effectively.

A colleague recently shared with me an article that featured Amazon's Core Values. I thought it was definitely worth sharing.

Customer Obsession:  We start with the customer and work backward.

Innovation:   If you don’t listen to your customers you will fail. But if you only listen to your customers you will also fail.

Bias for Action:   We live in a time of unheralded revolution and instrumental opportunity – provided we make every minute count.

A colleague of mine shared this YouTube video with me by musician, Dave Carroll, who humorously serenades us on his dissatisfaction on how United Airlines handled an issue he had with his guitar. Fun for all of us who have enjoyed (and shared with others as I am now) this entertaining and clever video. Bad news for United Airlines as this YouTube video has now been viewed by over 7 million people and growing. The morale of the story; companies need to continue to have customer satisfaction as a key strategy for long term growth and profitability.

Extremely interesting article today from eMarketer on the latest trends in how companies are planning to increase their budgets in these areas in 2010, and also as important how companies are now integrating their email marketing and social media tactics to improve results.

Google has finally launched one of the most requested Google Docs features — the ability to share folders. Shared folders make it easy for a team of people to collaborate on projects that require multiple documents, spreadsheets or presentations. If you have a group of items you want to share, all that you have to do is put them into one folder and share it. This could be a game changed for the small/mid size enterprise market.