The Marketing Sandpile...

In reading The Age of the Unthinkable by Joshua Cooper Ramo, one of the central themes of this book is Per Bak’s Sandpile effect. In an overly simplified explanation, the sandpile effect draws an analogy between the unmappable and invisible interconnections between global events and the complex relationship between individual grains of sand as they are piled on top of each other.  Each time a grain is added to the pile, the relationship between each grain is altered.  The experiment tries to determine how many grains will it take before the sandpile collapses. ...

IQPC’s Exchange Group Wins Award...

Normally I wouldn’t self promote my own company, but my last couple posts discuss creating disruptive technologies and challenging yourself and your business. One of our divisions at IQPC is the IQPC Exchange group. This is a very specialized division offering invite only executive networking events.  In early July, they attended the Conference Awards were Corporate Counsel Exchange™ shortlisted for ‘Best Networking Event’. I am happy to report that they won the award in this category with competition from Informa Life Sciences and Glasgows.  Features of the...

When your customers are wrong...

Credit: Beverly & Pack's Flickr Photostream Now we’ve all heard your customers are always right. Well, sometimes, your customers are just plain old wrong.  Sometimes, your customers just don’t know what they want.  Don’t try to use this as an excuse to force your product, service, or event down your customers’ throats, but as an opportunity to give your customers what they really want. Sometimes, your customer just doesn’t know what’s out there and what’s good for them.  They don’t know what possibilities exist to...

5 Ways To Make Your Members Feel at Home...

Christopher Uschan of Omnipress and the main force behind Engage365.org, an online community for using social media at events, wrote a great post outlining 5 ways to introduce new members to your online community.  Many of us that run online communities often times forget about some of the basics.  And one of the reasons this post caught my attention is David Meerman Scott makes the analogy that the internet is like a city, and social media sites (among many others in his analogy) are like bars or cocktail parties.  Christopher’s post dives a bit deeper into the...

5 Ways to Leverage Your Event Content...

Credit: woodleywonderworks' Photostream How valuable is content generated at your events? How do you use that content? Nowadays, if you’re generating live content and not using it for something else, you’re leaving money on the table. There is this fear of cannibalization, or this concern that if you put your live content online that no one will go to your event. That’s crazy talk! Here are 5 ways to use your post event content. Sell it. If attendees are willing to pay for the content live, there is no reason why you can’t find customers to consume that...

What is the Human Element?...

For my last post, we had a great conversation in the eMarketing Association group on LinkedIn, and Jaime V. pointed out something overlooked often by marketers. The Human Element. It is somewhat contrary to my last post on metrics and measurement, and what you can’t measure is the sentiment of a post. Credit: Okko Pyykkö on Flikr Nomad Marketer just wrote a post on 6 tips on Twitter that talked about some of this. Specifically, point 4, 5, and 6 deal with this type of sentiment [4. Look for user experiences, 5. Learn why negative words are coming up, 6. Learn about...

Help Me Find a New Job Title Challenge...

So, as online and social media marketing continue to evolve, so should I and my role.  I was brought into IQPC as the Director, Online Community and Portal Development.  The leadership at IQPC had a vision and I was fortunate to take part in the development of this new division. In just shy of 2 years we’ve launched 8 portals and reached over 2 million people. An example of one these portals is in the customer management and call center space where we cover industry leaders such as Zappos. But now I feel my role has evolved from launching these online portals and...

What do the RIAA and Trade Shows have in...

So yesterday, The Pirate Bay sent a message to the RIAA, a pretty loud and clear message. Regardless of how you feel about the freedom of online information, online piracy, or downloading music, the RIAA is going about this all wrong. This isn’t about piracy…it’s about offering the consumer what they want, and how companies try to control how the consumer consumes. Pre the internet, it was easy to control what the consumer consumes. Ultimately, then and now, it’s all basic economics…Supply and Demand.  The supply was limited, so demand was...

7 Ideas to Boost your Email Marketing Ca...

As B2B media companies, we are pretty much the experts when it comes to direct email marketing.  But over the years, we’ve seen the performance of our programs decline year over year, ever so slightly. A wise man once said, “the sign of true insanity is to repeat the same thing over and over again and expect different results.”  Looking at email campaigns over the years, they look different (pictures and buttons), but are they really? The one constant on mine when I first started was Register Here! Here are 7 things you can try and not go...

Reinventing Yourself Means Starting from...

It was announced that Reed Business was closing down Trade Show Week (TSW).  I’m sure it was a dollar and cents decision, more money out than in.  But was shutting down a necessity? Did it have to be an all or nothing decision? It is very difficult for organizations as large as RBI to truly innovate and reinvent B-to-B marketing, themselves, or their brands.  I’m not implying I have the answer to all publishing woes, but in this particular case, is there anything they could have done differently, yet still be profitable? Would going only online have helped,...