A Pile of _____, Tips, News and a Complement for You
Friends and colleagues,
I’ve always thought the phrase “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is bovine scatology. Truth is, the things that might end you often leave lingering injuries and unsightly scars. Many traditional marketers who may feel like they’ve been targeted for termination by the oxymoronically named marketing automation community, are likely nodding their heads in agreement. But hear this robots: classically trained marketers, you know, humans, are indeed battered and bruised, but they are most definitely alive, well and increasingly viewed as the key to delivering on the still unmet promise of digital transformation. They know, they’ve always known, that technology is a means to an end, not the end itself.
Ok, that Nietzschean gauntlet thrown down, let me serve up some battle-tested tips curated by our grizzled archers.
Tips and Topics
- GDPR SNAFU. Despite the big pond between us, our European friends have fired a cruise missile of complexity at our shores. If you don’t understand the obligations the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) impose on your marketing efforts, you are at risk of fines as large as 4% of your firm’s revenue. And yes, they can apply even if you don’t do business in Europe. So get thee to your neighborhood data scientist and/or commercial attorney. Or, ask an archer…
- Left brain, meet right brain. We repeatedly get calls from exasperated creative folks (you know, the unruly right brainers) who don’t understand why their gorgeous graphical emails and landing pages don’t look so gorgeous after they are loaded into CRM systems like Pardot, Marketo, Eloqua and Hubspot which are designed by analytical, linear, well-meaning geeks. The fact is, these systems chew up and spit out creative like wolves on a carcass. Ok, some hyperbole there. So let me suggest that BEFORE you design your digital campaigns you get your temperamental art directors into the same room as your finger-wagging systems and marketing operations folks so branded creative can be artfully shoehorned into the templates that enable unicorns to fly (you know, automation).
- Imagine you have one minute to live… What’s the one thing you want to communicate to those you care about? Let me suggest you think about your home page messaging with the same level of apocalyptic urgency. Why? Because there is a tendency to either say too much on your digital storefront or to go with lowest common denominator messaging vetted by committees, filtered down by multiple reviewers, approvers and their respective agendas. But what if you had to communicate the ONE thing that really mattered, the SINGLE thing you want people to remember? What would it be and what language would you use to communicate quickly and forcefully? Not easy is it? But critically important in a world characterized by 24/7/365 messaging overload? You betcha.
- Safe or sorry? Google now requires that all websites that need to be indexed and crawled are on secured servers, prefixed by “HTTPS”. Websites on an HTTP server will be marked as unsafe and will essentially be overlooked by Google’s and other search engines’ crawlers. And no, it does not matter if you are or aren’t collecting credit card information. This algorithm change was instituted late last year, but we still work with numerous organizations – big and small – who haven’t made the change and are wondering why their search rankings have plummeted. So don’t be that guy!
- Make sure your content isn’t an invisible king. Hopefully, your propeller-headed search engine optimization folks are doing all the right things to keep your website on the first couple pages of searches. Meanwhile, your content teams are busy cranking out relevant, compelling material for your clients, prospects and suspects. And often this content is packaged as a PDF. But here’s the rub, good people: too few of us are spending the time to properly optimize these eBooks, infographics, briefings, etc. And as a result, these royal offerings are not being indexed by the Googlers, Bing’ers and their ilk. So may I humbly suggest that at a minimum you 1) choose a SEO friendly filename for each PDF 2) define a good title and description 3) use headings for each page of your PDFs and 4) include relevant links throughout these documents. You’re welcome
- Buy your marketing service providers pastry. This one is obvious, people. Of course, you should be shopping for and shipping the finest cannolis, strudels and cronuts to firms like ours. It’s just the right thing to do. Enough said.
News
- Blockchain, an open, decentralized, shared database, is the new black. Whether it endures beyond the current hype remains to be seen.
- We’ve added four new clients and a couple new team members with some crazy impressive skill sets. More detail on all of this soon when our new website is up.
- Crossbow Group’s pretentiously named SMART supplementary marketing concept is appealing to clients large and small who view it as a way to optimize their marketing budgets and measurably improve their results.
- Our gluten-free marketing unit is really taking hold. And no, I’m not serious.
A Complement for You
That’s us, your loyal partner and boon companion. Oh wait, you were looking for some faint praise, you know, a compliment? Well, we’ve got that for you too: You’re looking tan, rested and you’re clearly on top of your game. That work?…
As always, if I can do anything for you – make a connection, share some experience, set your niece or nephew up with a plum internship at a slick Westport-based agency — please let me know.
Thanks again for your patient indulgence. Have a great day!