Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Most marketers say traditional advertising is the most effective means of influencing buying decisions, yet consumers say advertising is one of the least-trusted influences, according to a recent report from Experticity.

The report was based on data from a survey of 217 senior marketing executives in North America and 300 North American consumers.

The marketers surveyed rank advertising, public relations, and content marketing as the most effective tactics for influencing buying decisions (83% rank each as effective); moreover, 78% of marketers plan to increase their investment in those three areas.

In contrast, less than half (49%) of consumers say they trust advertising from brands.

The buying influences that consumers say they put the most faith in are recommendations from friends and family (83% trust), online reviews (76%), and third-party experts (70%)....

The last 48 hours of my life were total madness. This is what I did.

Since I’m involved with startups on a daily basis, working on product development and (business) strategy, I’ve always been keeping lists of interesting tools and resources that could be interesting to use. Thinking of something I could create, I thought it would be fun to build a simple and useful site that could help makers find resources and tools while building their startup.

The first thing I did was writing down all categories I could think of that would suit a startup’s needs. I ended up with 50, and made a huge Excel sheet where I entered all the stuff I’d already saved. From there on I started collecting more resources and filling up the empty spaces....

Lead generation, lead nurturing, lead scoring, lead grading. The bountiful terms we have to describe different actions we can take with leads show how incredibly pervasive the lead is to sales and marketing. Salespeople are trained to pursue the them, convince them that their product is better than the competition’s, and close out the deal.

But according to Forbes.com’s Amy Morin, that’s where the problem lies. Too many salespeople are spending their energy on trying to get the consumer to choose their product. What they don’t realize is that most consumers are not even at the stage of choosing any product – the prospect of them changing their product is not even on the table.

She says, “About 60% of qualified leads fall by the wayside because the customer doesn’t find value in purchasing something new and therefore, they decide to forgo any type of change.”...