I have just finished teaching the 29th version of Practical Internet Marketing. As usual, I enjoyed the experience and getting to see how everyone planned to market using the Internet. However, as Chicago gets a little colder I am looking forward to getting home at a decent hour Monday nights.
One of the students shared a picture of her cat presenting the Practical Internet Marketing certificate. Reposting here…
Looking forward to the next class.
Open, and magically a video starts playing automatically.
I received a rather nifty package at work yesterday, one of the the more interesting examples of advertising I have seen for some time…
In the same way that some birthday cards play a message or tune as you open them, this mailer started to play an advertising video. A hidden magnet detects whether the cover is open or closed, and plays the video on a loop when open.
I was impressed.
The mysterious “Ad”
I don’t really have need of the service (stukent.com/special), but I started to experiment with the package. At the bottom of the mailer I could see a Mini-USB port. Connecting a cable allowed me to see that the device showed up as external storage (Ad), with a video directory. Providing I replaced the existing video file there with nothing larger than 97.4 MB, I could play my own videos on the device. Neat.
When I have more time to kill, I am going to cut away the cardboard exterior, and see how I can repurpose this. Possibly in a small frame. Could make for a clever animated wallhanging.
Thank you mysterious stranger for sending me this. I hope you get some business out of this…
I spent this morning at HubSpot’s Executive Playbook, a presentation in four parts focussing on inbound marketing and sales. I was pretty impressed by how polished and prepared the organizers were – all the common mistakes I see at presentations were not in evidence. Registration was handled well, WiFi details were prominently printed in the handouts, the quality of materials was impressive, sessions started and ended on time, sound worked perfectly, etc. I enjoyed the what I saw and heard.
PDF versions of the presentations are available at http://offers.hubspot.com/playbook13
The four parts were:
1: Jessica Meher (Head of Enterprise Marketing at HubSpot) spoke about the lack of love in in marketing, and how to address this. The key takeaway here (and something I have felt for a while) is that traditional interruptive marketing methods are no longer appropriate, and the smarter way to engage with prospects (and ultimately customers) is to be a resource that people want to find and use. The line used was:
Don’t interrupt what people want to consume. Be what they want to consume.
2: Phill Harrell (VP of Enterprise Sales at HubSpot) focused on the tension between Marketing and Sales, and suggested “Smarketing” as a five-stage solution in which both teams cooperated with common goals and understanding:
However, I think one of the fundamental reasons why HubSpot has been able to achieve this close collaboration is that this design was built into the company from the beginning, with automated reporting functionality. This data supports the close collaboration and helps resolve disputes and differences.
3: John McTigue (Kuno Creative‘s Executive Vice President and Co-Owner) detailed a very interesting case study in which a $100,000 investment resulted in over $400,000 sales two months later. He noted that stock photography did not work as well as showing actual images and real people.
4: Erin Wasson (UrbanBound‘s VP of Marketing) shared her experience of creating content for inbound marketing. Her slides are not available online, but the key takeaway of her segment was that:
Create personas! They really work!
and:
Selling through education’ vs. PPC
HubSpot has a follow-up conference in Boston in August. I won’t be there for that, but wish I could be.