Posted September 15th, 2008 by Brian Cavoli
We are excited to announce today that Michael Smith has been hired as President of the Digital Influence Group. Michael joins us from Publicis Modem Media where he was President of the Western Region. Michael has been leading interactive agencies for almost ten years working with some of the biggest brands in the world. His extensive experience in all aspects of interactive and social media marketing has led to award-winning campaigns for clients that include American Express, Microsoft and Wyeth. You can read more about Michael’s background in our press release.
For a closer look at Michael and what his addition means to the future of Digital Influence Group, check out this new podcast. W2 Group Chairman Larry Weber sat down with Michael to discuss his thoughts on DIG and on the increasing importance of social media in marketing today:
This is an important step forward for Digital Influence Group and we are very excited to have Michael on board - please join me in welcoming him to the team.
Posted September 3rd, 2008 by Brian Cavoli
We are excited to announce that we’ve won an award from the Inbound Marketing Summit for our work on the Fanista “Burma: It Can’t Wait” campaign.
“The Inbound Marketing Awards recognize innovation and achievement in the use of inbound marketing techniques. Submissions were evaluated for completion and clarity, inbound marketing usage, business results, and creativity. Three winners were selected that exemplified a great use of inbound marketing tools and techniques to market a product, company, or brand.”
We worked with Fanista to create this campaign to raise awareness and support for the US Campaign for Burma. There’s more details on this project here and here.
The award will be featured at the Inbound Marketing Summit on September 8 in Cambridge, MA. The event featuring keynotes from Seth Godin and David Meerman Scott is sold out, but you can still participate on the event’s free live web conference.
Posted September 2nd, 2008 by Brian Cavoli
A recent report from eMarketer offers a lot of optimism on the use of social media in BtoB marketing. They found that marketers will spend far more over the next few years to create and manage their own social networks for business customers, partners, suppliers and vendors.
As important as social media has become for consumer marketing, it will be even more important for BtoB companies. Social media is all about developing and building strong relationships, and with so many people involved in the typical BtoB sales process, the quality of those relationships are critical to long-term sales success.
Unfortunately, many B2B marketers have had a hard time with social media. Forrester nailed it in their “How To Derive Value From B2B Blogging” report this summer. They found that the number of new BtoB blogs has dropped dramatically this year. The corporate blogs they reviewed read like warmed over press releases, they struggle to sustain any level of conversation and the overall user experiences are awful.
Where are they going wrong? Not only are they are treating social media like just another push channel, but they are not thinking big enough about how they can use social media tools. For most BtoB companies, social media means a blog. When done right, blogs can be a great way to create personality for your company that customers and prospects can get to know and trust. But as eMarketer referred to in their study, the real opportunity is much bigger.
It is about building a community around the company with the people that have the customer insight and deep product knowledge that customers want to interact with. For many companies, the seeds for this type of community are already planted. All those slick
whitepapers companies use to support their value proposition can be a great start to a community.
A community can make whitepaper content come alive with discussions, multimedia and responses to timely industry issues. Use it to draw prospects deeper into your company faster and give customers a way to share their ideas, successes and recommendations. Markets move fast so adding your insight to the community as news breaks might gain the attention of some high-profile bloggers/journalists looking for a point of view on emerging story.
It can also be used as a complement to your direct marketing efforts. Instead of driving search visitors to an inquiry form landing page, a community would capture their contact information and give them something deeper to explore.
These communities won’t attract millions, but they’ll get more of the people that matter the most to you. You know exactly who your audience is and you can create an environment that is catered specifically to them at their stage in the buying process.
Don’t forget that a little entertainment can go a long way. Just because this is BtoB marketing doesn’t mean it has to be Bland and Boring. A short video lets you rise about a page of text and stock photos to entertain your audience and deliver a point that illustrates your value and supports your call to action. Check out what we did recently for Newoware.
Posted August 26th, 2008 by Brian Cavoli
The Digital Influence Group is excited to be a part of the New Marketing Summit coming up at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA on October 14 and 15.
This conference is all about the knowledge, tools and strategies marketing and PR professionals now need to be successful in an economy driven by social technologies. They’ve got Chris Brogan, Paul Gillin and David Meerman Scott organizing the sessions so this should be the biggest event on social media and emerging marketing technologies in the Boston area this year.
I’ll be speaking on the panel “Selling Up - Convincing Senior Management about Social Media” at 12:30 on the 14th. Also, DIG will be sponsoring the networking cocktail reception at the Showcase that evening. (Nothing’s been announced yet, but there is talk of a possible appearance of one of the Patriots players) This will be a great event and we hope to see you there.