This is the next entry in our “Best of” series, in which we venture deep into the vault to replay blog opinion and insight that has withstood the test of time. Today’s post hails from June 2011. We welcome your feedback.
By Francis Moran
Marketers are well familiar with the concept of segmenting their marketplace. Segmentation is the process of dividing a broad and undifferentiated set of consumers into ever-smaller segments until you have identified that group of potential customers that is the best match possible for your product or service. My wife is also afflicted with this contagion we call marketing and that gives rise to some strange conversations in our household. One such conversation a few years back resulted in our developing an easy-to-understand explanation of market segmentation we refer to as finding your gay Acadian dog lover. The key to segmenting the marketplace is to identify those traits — some demographic, some taste-based, many certainly geographic — that define the customers most likely to be interested in your product or service. Not only does the process tell you a lot about who you’re trying to sell to, it also gives you a lot of insight into how you might reach them.
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By Jason Flick
We made a very happy discovery this year at Mobile World Congress (MWC) and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES): There’s a $200-billion market out there for the taking. A market in which almost every customer is unhappy with dated products and overall experience, but expected to tolerate regular price increases.
I’m talking about the global TV market (video on demand, cable, satellite, IPTV), which totaled $137 billion in the first half of 2012, according to Infonetics Research.
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By Leo Valiquette
When I worked in the newspaper business, there was a screening practice for job applicants that I wholeheartedly embraced – giving the strongest prospects freelance assignments on tight deadlines.
There is no better way to gauge someone’s abilities. Writing samples are all well and good, but there is no telling how much they have been cleaned up by a third party. The same approach was taken at our affiliated inmedia Public Relations practice, only in this context the assignment was a media release.
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By Leo Valiquette
As Francis wrote yesterday, content marketing is nothing new. It’s the way in which that content can be presented, distributed and promoted that has changed dramatically since the days when we had to use these dusty things called books to do research.
I define content marketing as a process to engage, inform, educate and otherwise woo a target audience with some kind of narrative. This narrative can be anything from a post on your corporate blog to a paid advertising spot that features a client case study (often referred to as an advertorial), or a thought leadership piece that has earned, rather than bought, its way into an influential industry publication.
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By Francis Moran
I gave a presentation yesterday to a new networking meeting, the Montreal Startup Breakfast Club. I talked about developing a content marketing strategy, and reviewed the rigorous methodology we have developed to govern our own internal content-marketing activities as well as those of clients. The novelty of using the term “content marketing” was evident to the people in the room and my presentation was well received, notwithstanding my explanation that I use this relatively new term to describe things I have been doing all my working life.
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