Marketing Pilgrim

Marketing is undergoing a major change. Inbound marketing and the shift to online is forcing marketers make changes to their marketing infrastructure.  This means a reduction in agency design fees and trade publication advertisements in favor of marketing software to boost lead generation and lead management.

Marketing Automation tools should be part or a larger inbound marketing tools set. When looking specifically at marketing automation features, marketers should keep these five key features top of mind.

5 Essential Features Of A Marketing Automation Platform

1. Click Tracking – It may seem simple but one of the core functions of a great marketing automation system is click tracking. As a marketer you need to understand the click-through rate for the links in your marketing automation campaigns. More importantly you need the conversion events attributed to marketing automation campaigns if they triggered the conversion as oppose to another source like direct traffic.  

While the world awaits their copy of Steve Jobs’ biography there is still business being done (barely).

Amongst the most interesting stories / rumors / areas of great speculation is the possible sale of Yahoo. Yahoo has been in a tailspin for quite some time now. Things have changed though as the Carol Bartz era ended with her firing by phone and subsequent whining about this and that. The Jerry Yang re-emerged as somewhat of a voice for the company although it is difficult to take that seriously considering it was he who let the property slip from its once high flier status to its current state of “still gets a tone of traffic but no one can really figure out why or what it does” standing.

The other day I saw someone Tweet about MC Hammer starting his own search engine. And I laughed. I mean seriously, who would ever expect this guy as being an innovative tech entrepreneur? I honestly thought the tweet was a joke about silicon valley hype. A little later I went and actually looked at the supposed site, and again thought it was an evolving joke. This is because the site (that hasn’t launched yet) currently consist of a sign up page and a poorly done logo. And then later, I stumbled upon the above video.

Wow. Looks like Mr. Hammer knows a thing or two about tech!

AOL Radio relaunched today with new features, easier navigation, and 50% less commercials.

Bloomberg reports that AOL is cutting back to 3 minutes of commercials per hour. If they were previously running 6 minutes per hour, it’s no wonder they had trouble keeping listeners tuned in.

AOL Radio’s General Manager Lisa Namerow says that too many ads was the most common complaint among listeners. Not surprising, as we’ve learned that consumers have very different feelings about ads in different formats.

For example, TV watchers tolerate, and sometimes even enjoy, the commercials that run during their favorite shows. But surveys have shown that people don’t like seeing ads when they watch those same shows online. Maybe it’s simply a case of not knowing how to complain when it’s a TV or radio ad. With online, it’s easy to hit that contact us button and grouse.

Social / Mobile / Local make up the holy trinity of digital marketing. Each one has its strengths and weaknesses and not all of them will be home runs for all industries. To help you decide what’s the best way to reach your customer, Nielsen and NM Incite, have put together these colorful and informative infographics.

We begin with social.

Social is all about sharing information. When you do your job right, customers share your information with their friends and hopefully, they become customers, too. Social users are also media savvy. They love movies, music and TV and if you can push the right buttons they’ll be happy to tell you how they feel . . . about everything, even when you wish they wouldn’t.

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Are you familiar with the expression “A little bird told me…..” when someone is passing along a not so secret secret? I had one of those experiences recently and it served as a reminder that our Pilgrim Picks had gone away under my watch and that, well, maybe that wasn’t such a good thing .

So here is a recap of some of the stuff we have seen out there that we haven’t had the opportunity to discuss in a post here at Marketing Pilgrim. Doesn’t mean it’s not news though right?

Pilgrim’s Picks October 21, 2011:

Steve Jobs biography tidbits abound:
About Bill Gates
About his cancer treatment choices
About Google’s Android

Google Updates:
Dynamic Search Ads option for search marketers
Google Analytics updates again with Flow Visualization