Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

While most of the impact of technology on marketing has been tactical so far, over the next decade or so there will be a major strategic transformation.

Today, however, digital technology has enabled us to retarget consumers when they respond to a message and that has changed marketing forever. In effect, we must make the shift from grabbing attention to holding attention.

That means that brands will have to learn to be more like publishers and develop content skills. It also means that marketers will have to create a genuine value exchange rather than just coming up with catchy ad slogans and price promotions. Like it or not, we’ve entered a post-promotional paradigm....

As marketers tackle the inbound marketing terrain, here's what's going through their brain.... One of my colleagues recently stumbled across this awesome piece of curated content -- compiled from the random thoughts of a guy named Aaron Karo at ruminations.aaronkaro.com -- and it got me thinking about all the random thoughts that cross my mind when I'm knee deep in inbound marketing.

So I tapped into the minds of my fellow inbound marketers to come up with a marketing-themed parody of Aaron's list. Here's what we've all been thinking. I'm willing to bet a few of these have crossed your mind, too. Feel free to share your favorites using the tweet links below and hashtag #mktgthought....

A one-star rated product listed on Amazon.com Inc.’s site sells better than a product with no reviews or ratings at all, said Chad Brandon, key account manager of Amazon for athletic footwear manufacturer Asics.

When it comes to new products on an online marketplace, reviews matter more than price, said Fahim Naim, founder of e-commerce consulting firm eShopportunity. Those insights were shared at the “Amazon & Me” workshop this week at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago.

Brandon and Nahim both suggested that first-party Amazon sellers, which are manufacturers that sell wholesale to Amazon, utilize Amazon Vine. The Amazon service puts products in front of customers to review. Amazon selects customers based on their reviewer ranks, "which is a reflection of the quality and helpfulness of their reviews as judged by other Amazon customers," according to Amazon. Sellers pay Amazon a fee for the service and can't influence whether the rating is positive or negative. Customers aren't paid to write reviews.... 

Richard Levitt, who worked in communications at Oracle for more than seven years, originally published this post on LinkedIn. It started off right

…Around 1984, Rick Bennett convinced Larry to start running ads. Rick’s approach is highly aggressive and confrontational. And, as it turned out, highly disruptive and successful.In an essay about his time working with Larry, Rick wrote, “I once asked Larry if maybe we ought to run some ad copy by legal. His response surprised me. He said, ‘Hell no! I’ve got a litigation department. Let ’em litigate.

’”That relationship lasted until about 1990. Soon Larry started writing his own ads. Larry is a brilliant tech guy, powerful leader and businessman. But he’s not a copywriter. And without anyone to guide or challenge him, that edgy positioning diminished into self-referential statistics. Worse, ads crumbled under extreme legal oversight....

Native advertising, when used intelligently, can work incredibly well -- which is exactly why it's so controversial.

This is the first post in a series on native advertising. An introduction, if you will.

One that states from the start that there is controversy.

Why approach a series this way?

Simple: Native advertising is probably one of the least-known scalding-hot topics in the business world.

In fact, few business people can even define native advertising. And those outside of it are clueless it even exists (we’ve got the data to prove this — will share later).Yet media research group BIA/Kelsey predicts that by 2017, brands will spend $4.57 billion on social native ads....