Act Like a Local – Enterprise Advertiser Wins

Your investments in branding and national advertising will only be impactful if customers can consistently find you online and at your doorstep.  Too often brand campaigns result in missed opportunities, frustrated customers and lost trust in the brand because of bad location data and missing information.  To compete successfully in local markets—and to avoid wasting marketing resources—national advertisers must adapt their digital marketing strategies to better align with consumer search behaviors, emerging geo-location technologies and competitive imperatives.

While consumers do seek opinions on brands from friends, family or reviews, when they want a specific product, page or brand web site they use natural search.  In fact, according to Forester Research, more than half of all consumers use natural search when they are looking for a product, service or brand.

1 Continue reading

Is Yelp hanging out on the bleachers with the dirt bags now?

1330643768-yelpWhen you were in high school, nothing was more important than your reputation. What others thought about of you meant everything. Many people learned a very important lesson in high school about reputations. Once soured, it’s almost impossible to overcome it. Once given the title of class floozy or dirt bag, that’s it. Four years would not be enough time to overcome it.

I got into a conversation today with a lovely independent consultant at the SMX conference in NY. She was a mature savvy marketer and she had a nice rolodex of small and mid-size customers. The conversation was largely about local data management and the overwhelming amount of effort required to clean up the ecosystem for her clients. Dirty data – one of my favorite subjects.

While talking, she brought up the topic of consumer reviews and how she believed that reviews are the next big data issue that needs to get tackled. We talked about Google reviews and, of course, we talked about Yelp.  Continue reading

Ownership (OYS)

What you stand for as a leader, member of a team or as an individual is about ownership.

What is ownership?

Ownership is about owning your shit. Plainly speaking.

Ownership means holding yourself accountable for what you say and what you do, regardless of whether that thing is good or bad. Ownership is about honor and humility.

Ownership is about dependability and maturity. Your value to yourself and to others can be a testament to your ability to own your shit.

To me, ownership is the most important characteristic of every employee at a successful company. Continue reading