Marketing Craftmanship

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Branded Interviews: Your Pathway to “Enlightened”? Thought Leadership

Marketing Craftmanship

Traditional thought leadership – whether it’s delivered through owned media or earned media – most often involves showcasing your own ideas and opinions, those of a client, or of an individual within your organization.

Brand 130
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How To Make Marketing An Invaluable Function

Marketing Craftmanship

In its landmark 2018 Pulse Survey of 220 Chief Marketing Officers, the executive recruiting firm Korn Ferry reported that, although financial results were the most important factor in their performance-based compensation, “52% of CMOs say they cannot make a direct and obvious correlation between marketing efforts and company performance.”

Survey 264
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4 Media Relations Lessons…Learned the Hard Way

Marketing Craftmanship

Tripped up again…by the “When did you stop beating your wife?”? ”? question. Media relations (or press relations) involves risks and consequences that can quickly derail any career, either as a corporate executive or PR agency rep. A misquote can sink a company’s stock price.

Media 147
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Diet, Exercise And Marketing: Self-Imposed Obstacles That Ensure Failure

Marketing Craftmanship

There are practical reasons diet companies and national gym chains spend most of their advertising budgets within two seasonal windows: in advance of the new year, when people make their annual resolutions, and in springtime, when beachgoers face the prospect of wearing a bathing suit in public.

Plan 147
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Best Practices to Boost Marketing Efficiency while Decreasing Cost Per Sale

Speaker: Kristin Hess - Senior Product Marketing Manager, Drift; Will Lyon - Head of Vertical Marketing, 6sense

In this webinar, you will learn how a digital buying experience can maintain the feel of an in-person buying experience, how to leverage first-party data for better brand experiences, and how to achieve seamless marketing-to-sales handoffs at scale.

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Is Your Firm a “Safe Choice”? for Prospective Clients?

Marketing Craftmanship

Prospective clients certainly want to know if you have the experience and skills they need. But before they put you on their short list of candidates for consideration, they first will need some assurance that your company is a “safe choice.”

Prospect 165
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Social Distancing: Marketing’s New Strategic Mandate

Marketing Craftmanship

Long before the fear of contracting COVID-19 entered our collective consciousness, and thanks to modern society’s reliance on electronic devices, many people were already practicing a form of social distancing. Without leaving our own homes, we text or play video games with friends.

Social 130
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Are Pitch Letters The Cinderella Of Content Marketing?

Marketing Craftmanship

Great content can build brand stature and increase market awareness, but in my experience, neither of those achievements necessarily delivers the type of market engagement that results in new accounts or revenue growth.

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Why Clients Don’t Value Your Ability

Marketing Craftmanship

For many decades, in medical school physicians have been taught the “3 A’s” of a sound practice management. They are the 3 qualities that their patients will value most highly, in rank order of importance: Affability. Accessibility. Ability. Regardless of whether your professional field is medicine, law, technology or finance, that same ranking applies to how you will be valued by clients, particularly in B2B businesses.

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Write Effective Pitch Letters to Grow Your Business

Marketing Craftmanship

Over the past 20 years, most of my firm’s new business has been generated by unsolicited pitch letters sent to targeted prospects. These brief, tailored messages – sent either by email or snail mail – have not only enabled us to maintain a consistent pipeline of clients; but more importantly, we’ve built a practice consisting of high-value companies and people that we wanted to work for.

Writing 124
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Contact vs. Company Intent Signal Data

Intent signal data comes in two types: either companies or individuals signaling interest in products like yours. Which kind of data delivers more advantages to B2B marketers? It depends. Get this infographic to learn about the advantages of intent-based leads and how you can most effectively use both types of data.

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Peter Drucker on “The Four Roles of the CFO”

Marketing Craftmanship

In the early 1990s, Highlander Consulting was engaged by Phibro Energy to help introduce energy derivatives to Chief Financial Officers at corporations with substantial exposure to fluctuations in oil, gasoline and jet fuel prices. As part of an integrated marketing strategy, management legend Dr. Peter F.

Allocate 203
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Is Your Client Newsletter a Marketing Albatross?

Marketing Craftmanship

Client newsletters are the most widely used, often abused and hotly debated marketing tactic for professional services firms of any size. Here are three highly subjective myths and realities to help your firm determine whether it’s a worthwhile tool, or how to improve your current newsletter. MYTH #1: Your B2B Firm Needs a Client Newsletter. Marketers want you to believe that your firm needs a newsletter.

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A 9-Step Marketing Success Recipe

Marketing Craftmanship

Marketing 100
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Two Reasons Why Marketing Fails at Small and Medium B2B Firms

Marketing Craftmanship

There are two reasons why marketing fails most often at small- and medium-sized B2B firms. Either or both of these failings may apply to your situation: You view marketing as business triage. Your company uses a collection of tactics (often labeled as a “marketing campaign”) only in response to a problem; typically involving the loss of a key client, or decline in revenue. When business is good, little or no time is invested in marketing.

Medium 100
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Which ESG Topics Get the Most Attention?

People are focusing on how companies are responding to the headline issues of the day, says a report from 3BL Media on evolving interests in ESG subjects, which also found a mismatch between the stories brands publish and topics audiences want.

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Five Life Lessons from Doc Martin

Marketing Craftmanship

Entertainment Craftsmanship: What’s Missing from American Television. Although a similar-sounding name brings footwear to mind for most Americans, “Doc Martin” is a British television series that follows the fictional life of Dr. Martin Ellingham, a brilliant but extremely grumpy (dog-hating) vascular surgeon whose medical career is sidelined after he develops a fear of blood.

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Tennyson Delivers Skyfall’s British Bulldog Moment

Marketing Craftmanship

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. In her 7th and final role playing “M” in Skyfall – the latest in a series of 23 James Bond movies produced over the past 50 years – Dame Judi Dench appears before Britain’s Intelligence and Security Committee to defend her record as head of MI6 – the government agency which supplies Her Majesty’s Government with foreign intelligence.

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PR’s “Big Lie” is Alive and Well

Marketing Craftmanship

Nearly 5 years ago, I wrote a LinkedIn blog post ( The PR Industry’s Dirty Little Secret ) that called out PR practitioners who use their “close relationships” with journalists – along with the implication that those relationships will generate media coverage – to sell their services to prospective clients. The “Big Lie” in this sales pitch is that no journalist will ever cover a topic because they know your PR rep.

PR 100
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What Your Doctor Can Teach You About Business Growth

Marketing Craftmanship

For many decades, physicians have been taught the “3 A’s” of a sound medical practice. They are the 3 qualities that their patients will value most highly, in rank order of importance : Affability. Accessibility. Ability. Regardless of whether your professional field is medicine, law, technology or finance, that same ranking applies to how you are valued by clients, particularly in B2B businesses.

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Marketing Through Storytelling: The Secret to Building a Unique Brand Identity

Speaker: Amanda Wener, Award-Winning Content Strategist and Brand Storyteller

In this exclusive webinar with award-winning content strategist Amanda Wener, you’ll learn the benefits of a strong editorial content strategy in building a brand identity, why functioning like a newsroom works, and how a structured approach to content creation and marketing can bring your brand to life.

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Make the Short List…Or Die Trying

Marketing Craftmanship

For most B2B companies, there’s no reliable way to predict when a prospective client will purchase their product or engage their services, regardless of what their “marketing automation” expert promises. This is particularly challenging for professional services firms – legal, accounting, investment advisory, technology, management consulting, recruiting or marketing – where top-of-mind awareness (getting people to remember you) is a critical part of business development.

List 100
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Why Public Relations Does Not Sit at the Senior Management Table

Marketing Craftmanship

In his keynote address two years ago at the Institute for Public Relations (IPR) 50 th Annual Distinguished Lecture and Awards Dinner, Richard Edelman – President & CEO of the world’s largest independent public relations firm – echoed the PR profession’s long-standing goal: “…to elevate public relations as a management discipline that sits as a full partner aside finance, operations, legal, marketing and strategic leaders in the C-Suite.”.

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The Herb Schmertz Era: When Public Relations Had Some Balls

Marketing Craftmanship

The recent passing of Rawleigh Warner, Jr., former Chairman and CEO of Mobil Oil Corp., brings to mind what many consider to be a golden age for Public Relations; the period from the mid-60s to mid-80s, when the PR profession had the mandate, the skills and the balls to stand up to criticism leveled against the organizations and people whom they represented.

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Page’s Seven Principles of Public Relations Management

Marketing Craftmanship

Arthur W. Page (1883 - 1960). Although Edward Bernays is often characterized (largely through self-promotion) as the “father of public relations,” most serious PR practitioners consider Arthur W. Page to be the first and most influential apostle of modern-day public relations and corporate communications. From 1927 to 1946, Page served as a vice president and director at AT&T, and his many contributions to the profession are recognized today as namesake of The Arthur W.

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Maximizing Marketing Efforts: Benefits of Personalizing Online Experience

Speaker: Kate Marx, VP of State Street Global Advisors; Tara Quehl, Marketing Director at Demandbase; Lee Zucker, Global Head of GTM & Revenue Strategy at Drift

In this webinar, financial services marketing professionals will teach you how to refocus your marketing efforts on a digital-first client experience by humanizing visits to your website, boosting the effectiveness of your client-facing teams.

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A Road Rage Lesson from my Dad

Marketing Craftmanship

Faster is not always better. Yesterday I buried my Dad: 87 years-old, of Scottish descent, first generation American, decorated war hero, husband of two deceased wives, sibling to two brothers he outlived, father of 4, grandfather of 16, great-grandfather of 7, Cubmaster, Scoutmaster, hospital administrator, sail-boater, dog lover, cigar smoker and certified duffer. The gathering to mourn Dad’s passing provided a rare opportunity to reconnect with friends and family.

Marketing 211
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Skip the Marketing Plan. Try this “Easy-Bake” Recipe Instead.

Marketing Craftmanship

The first question we ask prospective clients is, “Do you have a Marketing Plan?”. Most prospects sheepishly acknowledge that they don’t have a formal Marketing Plan. This group earns big points with us for honesty. Some less forthright prospects will claim they do have a Marketing Plan, but when asked to show it to us, this group responds with, “Our plan isn’t written down,” or “It’s being updated,” which really means that they don’t have a plan.

Plan 124
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Marketing Craftmanship - Untitled Article

Marketing Craftmanship

Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Zweig recently called out “marketing services specialist” Clint Arthur for selling speaking opportunities at the Harvard Faculty Club and the West Point Club, as a means for his paying clients to leverage the credibility associated with those two respected institutions. As Zweig’s article points out , however, the schools neither sponsored those events, nor endorsed the program in any way.

SME 100
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Checklist Marketing: Too Many Shoes in Your Suitcase?

Marketing Craftmanship

Many companies view marketing simply as a checklist of items they believe to be essential: Website…check. White Paper…check. LinkedIn and Twitter Accounts…check / check. Client Newsletter…check. Trade Show…check. Blog…check. Publicity…check. But marketing strategy is not akin to packing for a trip.

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7 Trends in ESG: What PR Pros Need to Know in 2023

What does the evolution of ESG programs mean for communicators? As it turns out - a lot. New challenges are coming into focus, driven by the increasing attention to corporate sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) programs, and the evolving state of ESG reporting regulations. This new ebook from 3BL Media explores seven trends in detail and unpacks what they mean for communicators. Access your copy for free today.

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Do Most CEOs Lack Social Skills?

Marketing Craftmanship

Do CEOs need charm school, rather than business school? According to a new study sponsored by Domo and CEO.com , CEOs at Fortune 500 companies are participating in social media channels significantly less than the general public. The study claims that 70% of them have absolutely no presence on social media. On the major social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and Google+, the participation of Fortune 500 CEOs was minimal, with only 7.6%

Social 199
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Next Year’s Boston Marathon: Mark Your Calendar

Marketing Craftmanship

Make a Statement in 2014. If the cowards behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings believed they would forever strike terror in the hearts of Americans…then they picked the wrong country, the wrong city and the wrong sport to make their point. The wrong country? Americans don’t back down from threats. As Afghan Taliban fighters learned the hard way, America’s armed forces “run toward our bullets.”. The wrong city?

Marketing 178
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Marketing Your Fund to Zombie Investors

Marketing Craftmanship

Gaining the attention and interest of investors and their advisors has always been a challenge. In our online world, it’s become even more difficult to cut through the constant volume of noise. Our growing reliance on electronics has also made it less likely for people to remember anything, because their devices do it for them.

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Preserving Brand Equity in a Corporate Turnaround

Marketing Craftmanship

With rare exception, companies assign very little planning or resources to proactively managing the effects of a restructuring on its brand equity. While financial and legal considerations will always be the primary focus, a tangible sophistication gap has long existed between workout arrangement skills, compared with what’s required to preserve a company’s goodwill among internal and external audiences during a corporate restructuring.

Brand 100
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Intent Signal Data 101

Intent signal data helps B2B marketers engage with buyers sooner in the sales cycle. But there are many confusing terms used to describe intent data. Read this infographic to better understand three common areas of confusion.

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Two Living Reasons Why Scouting Still Matters

Marketing Craftmanship

Boy Scout Honor Medal with Crossed Palms. Last night, my 16 year-old grandson was awarded the Boy Scout Honor Medal with Crossed Palms for saving his younger brother and himself from drowning in a sudden squall and rip current in the Pacific Ocean. The Boy Scouts of America gives this award only “in exceptional cases to a youth member or adult leader who has demonstrated unusual heroism and extraordinary skill or resourcefulness in saving or attempting to save life at extreme risk to self.”

Marketing 178
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Hedge Fund Marketing: From Oxymoron to Best Practices

Marketing Craftmanship

Published in January 2015 Edition. This past September, the well-respected marketing firm, Peppercom, conducted in-depth research involving nearly 300 of the hedge fund industry’s largest firms, to measure how those funds are currently applying standard marketing tools & tactics including websites, social media, the financial press and advertising, one year after the JOBS Act.

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Why Your Company’s Blog Doesn’t Make the Phone Ring

Marketing Craftmanship

All of the hours devoted to blogging, at some of the nation’s largest and smartest companies, does not appear to be time well spent…if the goal of a blog and other forms of content marketing is to generate new business. If there’s a disconnect between your firm’s blogging and new clients related to your content, here are 8 possible reasons why: Your topics are boring.

Companies 100
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10 Ways to Market Your Brand’s Integrity

Marketing Craftmanship

Regardless of whether your company is an established leader or an upstart, brand integrity matters. And it’s a corporate asset that needs to be marketed. Unfortunately, simply telling target audiences and opinion leaders that your company is smart, honest, unique, innovative, creative, cutting-edge, trusted, etc. never succeeds. People require hard and soft evidence to support their own conclusions about your brand attributes, notably its integrity.

Brand 100
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Aggregage Intent Signal Service

Aggregage Intent Signal Service helps your sales team reach more active buyers sooner. You’ll get names and contact information of specific in-market buyers plus all companies and job titles signaling intent for your product or service. Get the overview to learn more!