The most innovative marketers routinely pick up new things, try them out, and succeed or fail. Why are marketers struggling so much to adapt to artificial intelligence and machine learning? In this series, we’ll explore machine learning and artificial intelligence to build a foundation for understanding the field – and how it applies to marketing.…
Disruption rarely occurs because a new technology magically makes everything better. Few creators of software and algorithms build solely for the purpose of disrupting anything. Many creators of companies build to solve a problem they’ve had and they don’t see anyone else trying to solve, or entrenched interests block. Imagine an industry so bad that…
The following is a guest post from the inimitable Jay Baer. The best opportunity to grow your business with customer service is to engage with your “onstage haters,” or customers who complain in public forums. And the best opportunity to engage with your onstage haters isn’t in social media (yet). More than half of onstage…
I was listening during my morning workout to the Marketing Over Coffee discussion that John Wall and David Meerman Scott were having about how wireless connectivity is essential, and why more event venues don’t invest in decent Internet connectivity. When you think about it, this is fundamentally a result of believing that customers are a…
This morning, John Wall and I were discussing the merits and drawbacks of the diner in which we do Marketing Over Coffee each week. One of the hallmarks of good service at a restaurant is that things initially happen at a rapid pace. You get seated quickly and your first order of drinks or appetizers…
The simplest and most powerful customer service secret of all: tell your customers what’s going on. Or better yet, give them the ability to tell themselves. Refer back to my joyful travelogue recently. The #1 thing the airline could have done to make everyone’s wait easier would have been to provide more timely information. If…
The path to becoming exceptional is relatively simple to get started on. In a world that has generally accepted mediocrity, if not outright failure, finding a few parts of your business to improve that will push you past your competitors is simple. It starts with listening to yourself. Consider all of the complaints people have…
While in the airport yesterday perusing a variety of marketing materials (aka billboards as I walked to my gate), I saw a bunch of different advertisements by companies about how much they care, from facility maintenance to oil to the airlines themselves. This inspired a late afternoon tweet: If all your marketing materials insist that…
Starbucks. Apple. Maglite. Dom Perignon. All of these are premium brands, yes? They conjure up certain images, certain feelings, certain associations, all of which their respective marketing departments have worked hard to establish over the years. Premium denotes quality of product or service above average, a product you can aspire to as a consumer… ……
At the recent NASFAA conference, I was wandering around Epcot after sessions one day, and noticed this in the International Gateway: This is on the side of a bridge at the France pavilion facing the boat dock. Maybe 1 in 100 visitors to Epcot will actually see the side of the bridge from this angle,…
