Marketing Pilgrim

Marketing Pilgrim is a real team effort. We have our internal team of writers, those that work behind the scenes to make sure everything works smoothly and we keep our readers informed, entertained and, on occasion, both at once.

While it’s important that we are a well-oiled machine behind the scenes, we simply couldn’t do this without two groups of MVPs (Most Valuable Pilgrim) which are our readers and our advertisers/sponsors.

So to our readers we say thank you. Thank you for coming back every day and encouraging us to continue and keeping us honest when we derail. We only hope that your experience with Marketing Pilgrim is something you will pass along to others (please do often and with a smile ).

It wasn’t enough to help put the newspaper industry in its place was it? Nope!

Now, the online marketing industry has put the US Postal Service on the skids and the Postmaster General, Patrick Donahoe is even predicting a very new look for mail delivery in 15 years or so. The following quote comes from an interview with USAToday

Asked about the long term, Donahoe said, “At some point, we’ll have to move to three” days a week of mail delivery, possibly in 15 years.

Yikes! So why are we reporting this? Well, we are called Marketing Pilgrim after all and it’s important for marketers to consider and fully understand how the best mix of effective traditional marketing techniques and the right online marketing options will help drive sales. Do you really believe that only the online space will be used for the foreseeable future? (Please say no).

Maybe it’s simply marketers doing what they are most accused of when they talk about their products. You know the deal, hype the heck out of some aspect of a product or service to move it even though it may not deliver as promised. Not exactly a trust building way of doing business but if it creates good numbers for a quarter or two it’s a win, right?

What seems to be happening is that marketing executives are talking about creating social media strategy out of one side of their mouth while saying it’s not a priority out of the other. eMarketer reports

This week’s “seriously?!?” moment, goes to the folks at Google who obviously spent some of their downtime listening to the classic Steve Martin stand-up skit, “Let’s Get Small.” That’s the only explanation I can find for this maneuver.

Google has purchased and will soon bring online g.co. Yes, g.co. In the near future, when you type g.co, you will be taken to a Google page. No one knows what page, but it will be a page in the Google family, so you know that you’ll be well taken care of.

Why? Because Google.com is too hard for people to remember. It has too many letters, not to mention that pesky “m” at the end. It’s going to be much easier for people to remember to type g.co (because unlearning to type an “m” after co is so simple) and then from there, they can navigate to where ever they really want to be.

Mobile advertising isn’t a slam dunk yet, but according to a new survey commissioned by IAB, it’s already become an integral part of the plan for 51% of brand marketers.

The study, “Marketer Perspectives on Mobile Advertising” was conducted by Ovum and the results were presented at the “Mobile in the Mainstream…and as the New Main Screen” conference yesterday in NY.

Of the marketers who weren’t completely on the mobile bandwagon yet, 35% said they were “experimenting” with the medium, while 14% are still wandering through the landscape.

Top reasons for going mobile:

• Immediacy (considered of high importance by 57% of respondents)
• Cost-effectiveness (54%)
• Increased engagement (52%)

The downside to mobile advertising:

• Device fragmentation (cited by 72% of respondents as a challenge of medium or high importance)

This one is pretty interesting just due to the sheer scope of the idea. I haven’t seen the latest statistics of what percentage of SMB’s still don’t have a website (used to be in the 50% range surprisingly enough). This kind of effort from Google, however, shows that something must be there. If there isn’t “gold in them thar hills!” it’s not likely Google is getting near it, right?

So check out the Texas Get Your Business Online effort and let us know what you think.

Thanks to Linda Buquet of Catalyst eMarketing for bringing this to our attention.