Are webinars still as valuable for lead generation as they once were? My thoughts: maybe. One issue of course is their ubiquity. The other is that most folks are on smartphones and tablets all day long and can't attend or access a webinar without experiencing technical difficulties. (I'm sure the Citrix's and Cisco's of the world are addressing this problem as I type this.) Vote on our poll for Does anyone still listen to webinars?! … [Read more...]
What Yahoo Will Do with Tumblr
With the news that Internet behemoth Yahoo will buy blogging and content platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash has many analysts, including this one, wondering what will happen next. Yahoo clearly wants to buy its way into the social media elite. In December 2005, Yahoo bought social bookmarking site Delicious, but it later sold it in 2011 to the founders of YouTube. In September 2006, it offered to buy Facebook for $1 billion, but Facebook walked away. And Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer … [Read more...]
Does Your Website Act as a Lead Generation Tool or Community — or Neither?
I'm happy that most companies, small businesses, and individual professionals are aware of the importance of having a website. But is your or your company's website still nothing more than brochureware -- with only pages for Home, About, Products and Services, Who We Are, and Contact Us? Though the cost of building and running a website today is low -- or even free, thanks to such services as Wix and Weebly -- the attention it deserves usually results in higher costs (time and hiring a Web … [Read more...]
The Power of Adding One Letter to the End of a Company Name
Today's news that Toronto-based press release distribution company Marketwire is rebranding itself to Marketwired -- yes, you read that correctly, all they did was add a 'd' -- had me thinking: how much longer will press release companies continue to sell the traditional press release (i.e, exist)? (Share Clip) Oh, and the company has also poached Stu Ogwa, former VP of business intelligence of Yahoo, to join Marketwire as EVP of product and technology, according to … [Read more...]
Email Is Not Social Media
No doubt, you've spent a sizeable budget on your email marketing programs. You've hired a handful of email vendors over the years. You've bought lists. You've hired email experts. You may have even attended one or more email tradeshows. The days of batch and blast -- or spray and pray -- whichever you prefer to call it -- are thankfully behind us. Your email vendor has mostly likely morphed into a 'marketing automation' or 'demand generation' provider -- showing you ways to optimize … [Read more...]
It’s On: Oracle To Battle Salesforce for Ownership of the ‘Marketing Cloud’
Today's announcement of enterprise software maker and CRM provider Oracle buying marketing automation vendor Eloqua for $811 million has many people -- including this analyst -- blindsided. After all, Eloqua just went public in August, raising $92 million. And a little more than 4 months later, it gets acquired? It was unclear from the news announcements if it was an all-stock deal, but clearly, Oracle is trying to do battle with the other enterprise software maker and CRM provider … [Read more...]
Experiencing Social at Eloqua Experience, Part 2
After attending the Eloqua Experience conference in Orlando last week, I got warm fuzzies that demand generation marketers are getting more social. After all, if the leader in the space is pushing social, then the rest of the industry will be soon to follow. Eloqua is a marketing automation and revenue performance management software provider. The main engine of the platform primarily performs outbound marketing that pushes emails offering webinar invitations or content pieces (whitepapers, … [Read more...]
Experiencing Social at Eloqua Experience
This week, I'll be in Orlando, Florida attending marketing software company Eloqua's annual conference, Eloqua Experience. Over 1,000 attendees are expected to attend. Though not traditionally known as a conference that attracts social media or social business types, I'm keen to see how things may have changed in the last year or so since everyone has been preaching a gospel of 'collaboration' and 'integration' of various marketing efforts that all seek to unlock that all-elusive … [Read more...]
Facebook Has the Audience, But Your Website Has the Content: What To Do?
In a great guest article last week in Forbes, Listening To Social Media Cues Doesn't Mean Ceding Control, Gigya CEO Patrick Salyer discusses the problem facing most marketers: while creating multiple social identities has afforded a company to extend its reach and find new customers, it has become increasingly difficult to keep those customers engaged. Companies have spent billions of dollars in the creation, deployment, maintenance, and measurement of their wholly-owned web properties to … [Read more...]