Help to find free images for your communications
Yotophoto | Find free photos... fast
Photo's are such a fantastic tool in communications if you can get your hands on the right ones. These days it is a lot easier to get access to great images to enhance your website, brochure or presentation, but for the average PowerPoint presentation or blog it's just not feasible to spend hundreds of dollars. Good thing there is so much for free on the web.
Yotophoto is the latest one I have come across, particularly interesting because they provide a search from a range of libraries, specifically looking for images that are free to use.
You'll note that a lot of the images come from sites such as Flickr and Stock.Xchng as well as Wikipedia, Morguefile, Pixelperfect Digital and OpenPhoto.
(Courtesy of Matthew Bowden - see more of his work here)
Selection of marketing news and articles – my clippings
I have been reading a broad range of online marketing publications for some time now. Whenever I come across something really interesting I collect these as clippings which I now want to publish.
Because I continually update this file and because everyone is already drowning in email, I've decided to publish this as an RSS feed.
Don't worry if you are not familiar with RSS; just follow instructions below. (BTW: For those not familiar with RSS, its worth having a look at this excellent introducion as it will change the way you will consume and publish information in the future)
Option 1: If you normally use Google as your search engine, simply click on this button. 
Option 2: If you are an experienced user of RSS, simply subscribe to the feed here 
Tapping into global marketing expertise
You don't read a lot about it but I believe that Marketingprofs Know-How Exchange is one of those gems of the web.
The system is based on the exchange of points which you can earn by answering questions, or use by posting questions. With around 200,000 members there is a good spread of skills available.
Subjects are organised as follows:
E-Marketing | Research/Metrics | Strategy | Taglines/Names | Search Engine Marketing | Website Critique | Student Questions | Just for Fun
This is how it works: you're stuck with a marketing question, you find the right category and you post a question. Now all you do is wait for the answers to come in. Whenever someone posts an answer you receieve an email notification.(they could really provide this in RSS to, couldn't they?)
You select the answer most appropriate and you award the points you have offered (the points you offer are based on how difficult/urgent you deem your question to be; the more points you offer the more interest you will naturally generate)
I have both contributed and in turn used my points to ask questions and it really is an example of the web at work.
Does anyone else have experience with this?
Reality check for online advertising?
McKinsey Quarterly has conducted research (sign up for free to read the whole article) that indicates that demand for digital advertising will soon outstrip supply. Result? Higher prices.
On video ads: "Short-term mismatches between supply and demand appear greatest for the
video ads that interrupt or precede online content, such as news clips." McKinsey expects the demand (in the US) to grow from a current assumption of $600 million to anything between $1.4 billion to $3.2 billion...(Not sure about you, but what is the value of an estimate that ranges between 1.4 and 3.2 billion?)
Paid search: "Annual growth in the overall number of searches is slowing, from 30 percent in 2004 to 20 percent in 2005." "but without significant changes in consumer click-through rates or in the prices advertisers are willing to pay, we estimate—using our analysis of the prevailing cost per thousand impressions (CPM) and Nielsen Media Research figures on paid search—that the maximum current value of paid-search advertising is about $7 billion. Meanwhile, our analysis of current and forecast page views, ads per page, and CPM rates suggests that advertisers will want to spend $9 billion to $12 billion on paid search in 2007, up from around $5 billion in 2005. Even without severe supply bottlenecks, there won't be room to handle rapid near-term growth."
This is McKinsey, and I am unworthy but there is no mention of the impact issues like click fraud might have on the reputation and desirability of paid search advertising. Shouldn't that be taken into consideration when you make projections into the future? I am sure that some media companies will find these figures handy in a board room presentation but I question the real value. How about you?
“All Marketers are Liars” – Seth Godin speaks at Google
| Seth Godin is the author of six bestsellers, including Permission Marketing, an Amazon Top 100 bestseller for a year and a Fortune Best Business Book. His newest book, All Marketers are Liars , has already made the Amazon Top 100 and has inspired its own blog. Seth is also a renowned speaker, and was recently chosen as one of "21 Speakers for the Next Century" by Successful Meetings Magazine and is consistently rated among the best speakers by the audiences he addresses. Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, an interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in late 1998. He holds an MBA from Stanford, is a contributing editor to Fast Company magazine, and was called "the Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age" by Business Week.This video is part of the Authors@Google series. | |
A bit of support for Aussie blogging tools
Some of my compatriots from the land downunder got a nice plug from Steve Rubel from the very popular blog Micropersuasion. A nice innovation in blog search engines, wwww.gnoos.com.au, allowing you to tag your own searches. I've done my patriotic duty and will return to marketing matters!
Accenture report : Marketing: Underrated, Undervalued and Unimportant?
Always an interesting topic; what do other people in the organisation think of marketing? According to this Accenture article it is not very good news; marketing rates poorly as a contributor to a companies success.
The article than has this to say:
"So why is marketing getting so little respect or support from top executives around the world? We believe that two principal factors are at the root of the issue. The first factor, quite simply, is that many senior executives do not fully understand the role and purpose of marketing within their company—due, in part, because senior executives tend to have finance or operations, not marketing, backgrounds. According to Chief Executive magazine, just 12 percent of Fortune 700 CEOs have worked in marketing at some point in their careers."
I agree that few people understand the function of marketing, but whose fault is that? Most CEO's do understand the value of sales, even though they largely come from an operations or finance background.
If you are a marketer and you can't demonstrate/communicate your own value in a firm, how are you going to demonstrate your companies value to a customer? The answer Accenture comes up with is a bit self-serving; it's all about CRM of course and it won't come as a surprise that the author, Patrick O'Halloran is a partner in the Accenture Customer Relationship Management group....
Marketers should identify their own performance measurement criteria and negotiate with other senior managers to get access to the tools they need, just like a production manager must argue his case for a new machine. Just maybe, a lot of marketers are not that keen on accountability?
Marketing Information management made easy
I love any tool that turns data into information, that makes it easy to understand what the data is telling you. I had a look at excelsius and it looks very exciting; essentially it allows you to use the Excel spreadsheets you use for your campaign tracking, modeling or sales results and turn them into visual, dynamic presentation tools.
I downloaded the trial version and had some fun with it. Have a look at this sample model. It is interactive, so have a play with the slides to see the impact on increased cost etc.
I really like this sort of stuff; tracking and modeling is essential to good marketing and this looks like a nice step towards making it easier to communicate.
Oh, and as a side issue: I actually found this through an email offer that was sent to me.
Not sure about you, but I delete 80% of email offers I get sent, and those are the ones that pass the spam filter. So that still leaves 20% that I look at; the ones that are to the point, relevant to my interests and allow me to take action right there and then.
Sometimes people deserve a rave
Sometimes you come across websites that just hit the mark. I have been reading John Jantsch's post on his Ducttape marketing weblog for small business marketing for a few months and I really enjoy it. The ideas are fresh, it's easy to read and even if you get one idea out of every five that you can apply to your business it is worthwhile. Credit where credit is due.
Webceo – all-in-one internet marketing tool
If you want to get more out of your website, this is a great tool, and free. You will need to have some technical knowledge, but not a lot. Especially the key word searching tool is great.Web CEO: Web Promotion Software That Maintains and Analyzes Websites
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