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January 17th, 2011 by Joel Goldstein
As I watched Lovie Smith’s Chicago Bears beat Seattle during this weekend’s NFL playoffs, I thought about where he started the season. He was on the watch list of coaches who might get fired this year, after finishing just 7-9 last year. So what did he do differently? There was no magic bullet, as there never is, but there is something unusual about this year’s Bears compared to other seasons: the coaching staff. In fact, Smith had the confidence and wisdom to hire three former head coaches (Mike Tice, Rod Marinelli and Mike Martz) on his staff, believing as most business execs do that hiring the best people you can find will ultimately make the boss successful.
And in fact, there are some who point to the coaching staff hires made during the offseason by the Kansas City Chiefs as a reason for that team’s 2010 turnaround – hiring former Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weiss to run the offense and former Browns coach Romeo Crennel to run the defense. Top talent on the coaching staff led to better performance by the team.
Lesson learned for any owner/marketing exec: as you build your team, top talent produces top results.
Tags: business executives
Posted in Uncategorized |
January 12th, 2011 by Joel Goldstein
Our agency has always been a big fan of a great idea, whether it’s ours or someone else’s. That’s the role of a good agency  — to act as a harvester of “best practices,” to share great ideas that work in one company with others who could benefit from them. So here’s our latest great idea from one of our clients, Diamond America. By locating a highly shortened lead form right on its home page, this company immediately multiplied its lead flow by five. The form’s no different from what might be found on the “Contact Us” page, but its new front-and-center visibility makes it a far more effective lead generation tool.
Tags: Website
Posted in Web Design |
December 21st, 2010 by Joel Goldstein
Agency President Joel Goldstein and Ron Gilbert of Keithley Instruments co-presented at the annual COSE Small Business conference in October on “Lead Generation & New Media Advertising.” Email jgoldstein@ggcomm.com for a copy of the talk.
Tags: Advertising, lead generation
Posted in Marketing |
December 15th, 2010 by Joel Goldstein
Steady budgeting and a priority on lead quality over quantity highlight the results of this year’s Marketing Budget Trends white paper, an annual study of business-to-business marketing trends conducted jointly by Goldstein Group Communications and Hearst Business Media.
Those are two of the trends identified in the study, conducted during November, 2010. Survey authors said the survey respondents pointed to fewer dramatic changes in their approach, and more to 2011 activities that seek to take advantage of the changes put in place during the recent economic upheaval.
“The past few years have seen once-in-a-career shifts brought on by the global economic collapse and the emergence of new tools such as social media,” said GGC President Joel Goldstein. “So it’s not surprising that prior surveys reflected rather significant changes in marketing against this backdrop of uncertainty and new media. Now, though, based on opinions from those who responded, 2011 may just be a year of steadied progress rather than wholesale re-configuration of marketing. From steadier budgets to more uniform responses to questions about future initiatives, marketers seem to be in a mood to implement recent decisions rather than searching for new answers.”
Survey highlights included a variety of key trends for 2011 marketers:
- B-to-b marketers expect consistency or improvements in budgets for 2011. When asked how spending would change next year, 44% reported no change to budgets, a full 11 points higher than a year ago. Continued recovery is still forecast by many, with 27% projecting an increase and just 6% pointing to budget decreases.
- The ratio of online-to-traditional spending settled in at 51% traditional to 49% online; two years ago, 60% of budgets were spent on traditional tactics such as literature/catalogs, direct mail, trade shows, print advertising, etc.
- Web development, online advertising and search engine marketing will consume 38% of budgets in 2011 and are the clear priority of decision-makers as they’re crafting spending plans for the coming year. “Marketers seem to recognize that Google, Yahoo and Bing have become the front door for purchase decisions today, and that search engine presence is a key driver to getting their company’s fair share of sales,” Goldstein noted.
- Even in the face of complaints marketers hear about email fatigue, spending on email is predicted to maintain the same share of budget (7%) in 2011 that it occupied in 2010; 21% of marketers even plan to increase email spending in 2011.
- Quality trumped lead quantity in this year’s survey, one of the more dramatic changes seen from last year. While last year the need for greater lead volume outpaced improvements in lead quality as a top priority, that order was reversed this year.
For a copy of the results on 2011 Marketing Budget Best Practices, with results of the complete survey, contact Joel Goldstein, Goldstein Group Communications, at jgoldstein@ggcomm.com, or at 216-509-3119, or visit www.ggcomm.com.
Tags: Lead Quality, Marketing, Marketing Budgets
Posted in Marketing |
December 2nd, 2010 by Cyndi Friedel
Congratulations to Goldstein Group client Radisphere, whose new web presence (www.radisphere.net) took top honors in the web category of the “eHealthcare Leadership Awards.” The new web site (can you guess which agency created the site?) is part of a total rebranding and name change effort for the company as it crafts a new identity and platform to appeal to the hospital market.
Tags: eHealthcare Leadership Awards, Goldstein Group Communications, Radisphere, www.radisphere.net
Posted in Web Design |
November 23rd, 2010 by Mark Johnson
Trade magazines are applying new ways of thinking throughout their business, and that extends even to the tried-and-true press tour. On a recent agency tour through the electronics and manufacturing media, we met one group of editors who now call themselves “Content Managers.” We think that’s the right approach, as we’re all in the “content distribution” business today. An article we would have once written just for publication in a magazine now is destined to be re-purposed as content for a wide variety of end uses — as a webcast, a white paper, a blog post, even content directed to Wikipedia.
Other interesting changes: one editor took pictures of the presenters on his cell phone to post to the magazine’s Facebook page; another asked if the presentation could be recorded on video.
Tags: press tours, Social Media
Posted in Social Media |
November 15th, 2010 by Joel Goldstein
It’s marketing budgeting time, the annual discussion we have with all of our clients. Our position has always been that it’s important to surround the “sweet spot” on all sides; in 2011, that remains an online and offline world.
In fact, last year, according to our annual study conducted jointly with Hearst Publishing, 56 percent of budgets were spent on traditional tools and 44 percent were spent online. What decisions are you making for the upcoming year? Share your insights with us, at goo.gl/h4A3.
Tags: Marketing Budgets, online advertising, online marketing
Posted in Marketing |
November 11th, 2010 by Joel Goldstein
I attended a tremendous seminar on “Earning Trust” recently. Seminar speakers made the point that the past two years have been transformative for us as marketers, consumers and employees. The economic upheaval has certainly touched us all. But has it changed us?
In fact, I believe the past two years has presented us as marketers with what will become one of our biggest challenges – re-establishing and re-building trust. We’ve been hit with re-defining moments at every turn – the Great Recession, the Gulf oil spill, Wall Street financial/foreclosure crises, even the Cuyahoga County government scandals here at home. Are the cars we buy safe to drive? Is this new drug safe? Can I believe my CEO when he says our jobs are safe?
Simply put, trust is the front door for business. You can’t make a sale unless the consumer trusts your company and its products. And you can’t expect your employees to perform unless they trust the company to treat them right, and to treat their customers right.
While we intuitively feel that trust has taken a hit (we all have that sixth sense as effective marketers!), survey data bears this out. A study by Right Management in May, 2010 showed that only 20% of 4000 U. S. employees in the U. S. said they always trusted their managers to make the best decisions. Think about that. (The next time your CEO is about to give a speech to company employees, lean over and say, “Don’t be nervous. Remember, only one in five employees here today is likely to believe what you say!”)
Why does trust in the workplace matter? Forget soft concepts of altruism; let’s just look at financial payback. A 2010 survey of 211 companies by Interaction Associates found that companies in the top 10% of its Trust Index showed a price/earnings ratio 28.5% higher than those in the bottom 10%.
Going forward, this will be a time when employees and customers watch how companies and their leaders act as much as by what they say. And as marketers, it’s our charge, our mission, to lead this march. That’s tough duty, but since we’re the only ones at the table – not manufacturing, operations, finance, engineering — charged with the responsibility for listening, it’s our responsibility to make sure our executive leaders are truly hearing what customers and employees have to say. Honesty and authenticity will be key values driving business going forward, not just our usual value-proposition, features-and-benefits discussion. Is your organization up to those standards?
Tags: Goldstein Group Communications, Marketing
Posted in Marketing |
November 9th, 2010 by Cyndi Friedel
Check out our latest eNewsletter for marketing news, ideas and tips at: http://www.ggcomm.com/BrandScan/Nov10/index.htm
Posted in Marketing |
October 18th, 2010 by Cyndi Friedel
When Abanaki developed its “Fuzzy” oil skimming material several years ago, it never dreamed it would prove so effective in what would become the biggest environmental disaster of our lifetimes – the Gulf Oil spill. But getting the message out about its Fuzzy material was important not only to capture attention of those coordinating Gulf cleanup, but for its traditional base of industrial customers that will buy oil skimmers long after the Gulf spill is out of the news. So a PR, video and Twitter campaign launched with Goldstein Group sought to generate not just coverage, but to drive traffic to the company’s site. During the campaign, Abanaki content almost took over relevant Google searches; a search on “gulf oil skimmer,” for instance, yielded Abanaki content, news releases and even a Twitter post that consumed 6 of the 10 page 1 Google listings. As a result, Abanaki drove its web traffic up 120% from April to June. And it wasn’t all casual surfers; during the same time, lead generation conversions (quote requests, lead forms, etc.) jumped 14%. The company’s Twitter followers more than doubled as well during the campaign.
Tags: PR, Social Media
Posted in Search Engine Optimization |
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