If you Google the term, you find different results ranging from company names, book titles to people who attempt to define it… including Biz Stone, Co-Founder of Twitter, who says what it means to him in more than 140 characters.

At this year’s DMA Conference in Boston, Stone was one of the Keynote Speakers. His presentation, titled: Open, Informed & Engaged: A Changing Communication Landscape, covered what he believes is the “Meaningful Market.”

In a time when consumers’ expectations are higher than ever before, it is important for brands and companies to be human. 

This means “Dropping the PR shield,” as Stone noted, and using social media to interact with consumers. The Meaningful Market happens when you invite consumers to be a part of a conversation by asking them what they want to see or hear, creating calls-to-action and deepening the relationship that a consumer has with a brand or company online.

This also involves listening in social media networks.  Find out who is talking about your brand, or just as importantly your brand’s competitors, and reach out to them.

Create two-way communication. Social media isn’t just a way to reach out to more consumers.  It’s also a way for more consumers to reach you. In the Meaningful Market, the terms B2B or B2C Marketing are irrelevant.

We are entering the age of B↔B and B↔C Marketing. Because in the end, the Meaningful Market is all about being thoughtful, meaningful and creating a unique experience for your consumer.

Check out Stone’s entire speech and the Q&A afterwards, or jump to the 10:30 mark to hear Stone talk about the Meaningful Market.

What an inspiration to reinvigorate our own blog and our LinkedIn page!  Please share your thoughts with us, so we can make our conversation more meaningful to you and your business.

Tell us what’s important to you and what challenges you’re facing.  Tell us what you need to know to make your marketing job easier and more profitable. 

We can even give you examples – via the blog and INTouch, our quarterly newsletter – of how to integrate and apply traditional and digital marketing tools. 

When we hit on something meaningful to you, share it with a friend.  No matter how experienced, every marketer could use a little help in growing their business!

I’m back from my West Coast trip spent visiting clients in LA and, of course, attending the DMA 2010 in San Francisco.  

For me, the biggest take-away from this year’s conference was a big affirmation that ICS is on the right track with our product/service mix and integration of online and offline marketing tools… and that we’re probably leading the crowd when it comes to integration. 

It seems to me everyone agreed that integrating your online marketing and traditional marketing is critical to growing your business.  But, not everyone had a clear understanding of HOW to do it – especially when it came to social media. 

The most insightful thing I heard presented on social media was this:  “Think of social media as a friend.  If you can’t communicate back and forth as you would with a friend, then social media is not for you.” 

Now don’t get me wrong.  I think social media has its place in our marketing toolkits, but the successful marketer will be selective on where and how to use this latest, shiny new tool. 

In fact, we’ve had great results in integrating social media as one online element (in conjunction with paid search that is driven by keywords and is geo-targeted and targeted online advertising).  We’ve combined these online tools with offline tools to target qualified prospects and motivate them to register online for automotive ride and drive events.  Results have been excellent. 

So, I’m just saying that social media makes sense in some situations, but not in all… and maybe all of this attention to the new shiny tool is a bit out of proportion with the real-world.

My advice:  Stay on the forefront.  Know the latest, cutting-edge tools available to you.  Clearly understand your customers, potential customers and your business challenges.  Then, decide which online and offline tools within an integrated strategy make sense for you.

Check-out these 5 pitfalls to help you to…

• drive qualified prospects to your site
• improve click-through rates
• be more strategic about your bidding
• lower your costs-per-click

We’ll show you how easy it is to set-up behaviorally triggered email messages that deliver the right message to the right subscriber at the exact moment he or she is most engaged and likely to respond using Listrak’s automated event triggered messaging solution.

You will learn how to:

- Add a powerful, automated email responder system to your integrated marketing mix

- Trigger specific email responses according to your customer’s behaviors or targeted events

- Have one-on-one conversations with each of your customers and prospects

- Increase your email’s relevancy, open rates and your sales

Participation in this webinar is free, but space is limited. So, reserve your seat today.

While we’re putting the finishing touches on our webinar, here are five tips from Target Marketing Magazine for Triggered Communications success.

• Thoughtfully defining your triggers – this is the heart of your program
• Prepare your sales team to handle these leads – without making customers feel like “they’re being stalked.”  You want to your customer to be loyal to your brand and feel, “Hey, this company really gets me and understands my needs.”  That’s a big difference from a creepy, “I’m-being-watched feeling!”
• Put contact frequency in your process so you don’t bug your best customer and burn-out your sales team
• Continually improve your triggered-based program using feedback from your best sales people

I’m excited about what Triggered Communications can do to grow our clients’ businesses and I’m looking forward to meeting you online on April 15 for the Webinar!  I hope you can join us!

I like Target Marketing Magazine’s research summary overviewing the growth factors in SEM, SEO, online advertising (a.k.a., Pay-Per-Click) and Email Marketing which are among the listed 16 online marketing trends.

More than 80% of marketers are using paid search and SEO and plan to expand search into more segments. As consumers search more online, Google’s AdWord inventory continues to grow.  All music to marketers’ ears as you expand your paid search and SEO efforts. 

Online advertising, “performance-based” media buys and integrated email marketing are also slated for substantial growth through 2014.

What’s the Difference? As marketers, we can get into a rut with our buzz words and even use some words interchangeably. This can inadvertently affect our strategies.

For example, you’re going to tackle your Web site very differently if you’re thinking about attracting qualified leads and how to manage those leads versus trying to get the most possible “hits” to your site.

More Leads, Better Qualified, Now What? Well, if you were opening a storefront, you would make sure that everything was organized and setup properly before flipping-on the “open” sign. The same is true for your Web site. You need to make sure that you’re ready to handle those online leads once they’re in your “door.” Make sure your sales funnel structure is ready to handle the leads properly – or you can loose that prospect forever.

Also, I can’t say it enough – INTEGRATION. To get the most out of your Web site and online marketing, you need to integrate across all of the channels that touch your customer – both online and offline.

• How to use online paid search to generate qualified sales leads
• How you can :

                 –         Target geographically
                 –         Control your budget
                 –         Qualify Website traffic
                 –         Pause, resume and edit your campaign anytime

• Tricks for choosing the right keywords, ad text and URLs
• How to track your traffic and ROI
• How to put it all together and ensure success                

It struck me that the author overlooked some important points to keep in mind when setting-up a profitable paid search budget.

In many cases – including ICS’s – the company has a diverse product / service mix.  So when thinking about what to spend on key paid search terms, don’t just look at the price tag of the search term and the profit margin of the product / service you’re marketing.  Consider search terms that may provide cross-over sales opportunities as well.

Also, ask yourself if you’re using the best possible search term that would provide the highest quality sales leads at the best price… and if you can get some cross-over marketing into other areas of your products and services, then even better.

Chances are there are some lesser cost (and higher sales value) alternatives to that high price search term that could blow your budget’s profitability.

And don’t forget to keep a close eye on your paid search program.  Don’t just set it and forget it.

The great thing is… if your initial keyword selection isn’t giving you the results you thought it would, then you can always adjust your program immediately based on what your response data is telling you.

http://www.dmnews.com/Set-your-search-budget-to-be-based-on-its-profitability/article/139312/