When I interviewed Mark Levy for this week’s episode of Marketing Smarts, he told me the story of a client named Bill Treasurer, also known as “Captain Inferno.” As Mark recalled, Bill came to him as a management consultant struggling to differentiate himself from other consultants. Bill was unsure of how to sell his services confidently [...]

Thought leadership doesn’t depend on what you think about your ideas and your perspective; it depends on whether other people are in fact following your lead. You don’t choose to be a thought leader, in other words; you become a thought leader. How? By inspiring people to act. And to do that, you need “a [...]

Today, mobile is everywhere. But how can marketers use this powerful force to their advantage? Here are four critical questions every business should consider to maximize its mobile marketing return on investment. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Content marketing. It’s what’s for dinner—or if not, it should be—for organizations, large and small. But successful content marketing requires more than just faithfully writing a blog post or posting a YouTube video weekly. For content marketing to be effective, most organizations need to create different types of content consistently and constantly. To ensure all [...]

A guest post by Robert Wu of CauseVox and Annie Escobar of ListenIn Pictures. From the beginning of humanity, stories have been about how we make sense of the world and explain our existence. A person without a story does not exist. Research even shows that our brains are wired for storytelling. When we are [...]

Lead scoring enables marketers to precisely measure the warmth of leads before passing them to Sales, thereby increasing conversion rates. But that can be tricky. Learn how to smooth out the scoring process–and get results. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Is your business truly innovative? Real innovation is difficult to generate, and even harder to repeat. But Pinterest, a relatively new social network, can teach your business three invaluable lessons about innovation. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

A guest post by David Rabjohns of MotiveQuest. Imagine you are assigned to build a house. You are given a drawing of what the house should look like when you’re done. You have a giant pile of the tools, lumber, and other materials the professionals say you need. You may even have a small team [...]

Behind every successful product, service, or brand lies a powerful concept. Do you have one? Learn what it takes to craft a winning marketing concept, and why having one is critical to the success of your business. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

Need some inspiration for planning your campaign strategies in 2012? We can help! On this Free Friday, we’re giving away a free holiday campaign planner, courtesy of GetResponse. The colorful holiday campaign planner outlines holidays and seasons in the 2012 year—all at a glance—so you can choose the special occasions that matter to your business then plan [...]