Outbound Marketing is basically the traditional way of doing marketing (push) via print, radio, direct mail, cold calling telemarketing etc. Its objective is to get the customer to take action; spend money on a product or service.

Conversely, inbound marketing (pull), could be claimed as relatively new since it is a style of marketing that gets its inspiration from Web 2.0. The method is focused on getting found by customers using tools such as search engine optimization, blogs, social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and viral videos (YouTube).

Its objective is to be able to foster relationships with customers and prospects by offering them what they are looking for at no cost whatsoever or by just simply giving them something they want, period. Once this relationship is established usually the consumer tends to open up and be less skepical about information, messages or promotions being sent to them.

The idea is for inbound marketers to share useful tools, info, resources with customers to attract them to their websited while also building relationships and encouraging interaction.

A recent study published by eMarketer revealed that inbound driven companies report significantly lower cost-per-lead than outbound. In other words, social media, blogs, seo, content publishing, social networks, etc are proving to be more cost-effective than other traditional methods of advertising/marketing.

In fact, respondents claimed they spend 37% of their lead generation budgets on inbound marketing-related techniques. Additional information from the survey suggested inbound marketing is less expensive than outbound.

Some of the respondents in the survey came forward and revealed their cost/lead, those that spend 50% of their lead generation budgets on inbound marketing averaged $84, whereas those who spend 50% or more on outbound averaged $220.

Other significant results from the survey indicate that more than two-fifths of companies using various social media marketing channels had acquired a customer from those channels. As shown on the graph above, the channel that generated the highest results for B2C businesses is Facebook (68%) and LinkedIn for B2B (43%).

Some positive results produced by inbound marketing  to keep present include:

*the relationship aspect which leads to client conversion
*the loyalty factor which leads to more sales
*less expensive compared to traditional outbound methods
*the various tools/channels are easy to use + user-friendly

A recent study by Forrester Research revealed that because the market is maturing, many marketers are reevaluating their marketing strategies and turning to digital agencies overall to manage their interactive communication initiatives.

However, many are still skeptical about handing over the reigns to a digital agency and instead choose to play a more conservative role while sticking to their traditional agency.

The ’state of interactive agencies’ survey conducted by Forrester, interviewed 100 global interactive marketers and found that only 23% of respondents preferred their traditional brand agency to plan and manage interactive marketing activities.

Most significantly, about 46% did not consider traditional agencies of being capable of handling the interactive work. The rest had no opinion.

According to Forrester, there’s a ‘great race’ between those traditional agencies which are investing in becoming more digital-savvy and digital marketing agencies that don’t want to be seen as just the banner creators and sem marketers.

One thing to keep in mind is that if marketers want to stay ahead of the curve, whether with one or two or more providers, they must shift their marketing efforts online in order to survive in this fast-moving industry we’re living in today.

Emerging media such as mobile and social will also force marketers to change their approach and require an agency that adds more competent capabilities that comply with its client’s interactive needs and requirements.

Truth is e-readers, iPhones, smartphones, the Kindle and other portable screens are changing and revolutionizing consumer reading habits, and the more new, fancy models continue to be introduced in the market, the more they will draw readers into the e-paper enviroment.

Although newspapers and magazines have been around for hundreds of years, and despite the fact that some people keep buying and reading them because of conviction and loyalty to a particular publication– today they are losing ground to a generation of consumers embracing digital and mobile alternatives.

According to a study by TargetCast tcm, gender and age differs in type of media and way media is being consumed. Some key findings said that to men, printed news is a less relevant source of news and information. Also, men and young adults 18-34 showed the biggest usage decline in newspapers, magazines and radio, while TV and radio ranked as the most important media.

To sum up, men are more willing to adapt their usage habits and shift to online platforms as replacements for traditional media. On the other hand, women are more likely to keep using traditional media and think twice about adopting newer media.

Some significant aspects that mark the main difference between the two types of media is that one opens way for more precise and more effective targeting, as well as, the option for performance measurement and analytics. Print publications, in order to survive, need to come up with alternative models of accountability and measurement together with faster delivery of news.

While many are still using traditional media or new media as much as they have in the past, it is important to understand the difference between men and women’s approach to media consumption in order for the industry to evolve accordingly in a way that is impactful and engaging to consumers.

Read more about the findings by TargetCast here.

RSS feeds have never been sexy. The name itself is not a line you will drop at a romantic moment and even as an avid internet user the idea of something sending you automatic content from websites or blogs has always sounded terribly efficient but not very glamorous. So, it was not surprising to hear that RSS are dead following the emergence of Twitter or any other form of microblogging. Unfortunately, I have to disagree on this one.

First, Twitter is a lot more than a simple RSS feed and if you use it only for that, well, I am not sure you have understood the concept. Of course some companies use it like that, especially in the news industries. But to be honest, who would like to have a conversation with Rupert Murdoch through their Sky News Twitter account? It is true that RSS feeds are used by a minority of users, but is it not the same with Twitter; 36 million out of 1.5 billion people who have access to the internet, does not seem that much to me.

So let’s try to rehab the RSS feed and to give them some good PR. First, RSS feed enables you to save a lot of time. I know some people like to go from one site to another, but it is better to receive everything in the same place: you can quickly spot what you are interested in and start reading.  And this makes particular sense as many websites, especially news websites, can be incredibly confusing: more content, more sections, more links. To sum it up, more ways to get lost and not necessarily finding what you are looking for. With RSS feeds, everything is quite straightforward and you do not miss anything.

Now, I know that you are going to strike back at me with the information overload problem. As you get all this content sent to you and you keep adding more feeds it might be hard to manage. My answer is that you may not be using the right tools and if you are you might not be using them appropriately. Netvibes and iGoogle are really useful tools to visualize first hand what you are interested in, but personally my favourite one is Google Reader used with the Firefox Add-on BetterGreader.

It has never been this easy to read content this quick and easy. And in case you wish to increase the filtering of your RSS feed, you can use YahooPipes to sort your feeds the way you want them. If you happened to find this too complicated or time consuming you can also turn to Alltop, which offers pages that are already built on different topics, such as Twitter or LinkedIn.

Now, it does not mean that RSS feed are the best thing in the world. Twitter and Facebook have made it really easy to find and share information, but if there is one service that might replace in a way RSS feed, that would be Friendfeed. Of course, it is limited to one part of the geek community, but it is gaining some traction. Friendfeed, however, is the incarnation of real-time with its real-time display and search.

I know what you are thinking: “But Friendfeed is based on RSS feed!” Yes, but in this field it seems that we are more susceptible to progressive change than a revolution: the king is dead, long life to the king!

A new survey by StrongMail Systems was recently revealed by MediaPost explaining how social media has emerged as a direct marketing channel and how both email marketing and social media are being simultaneously used as part of a company’s’ online marketing plan.

Even though many declare direct marketing techniques, as email marketing, to be obsolete due to its lack of engagement, marketers are not entirely excluding such activity from their marketing strategies. It’s been around for a while, longer than microblogging and paid search, however one downfall as we know is that it has a bad spam reputation.

One thing that still holds true for direct emailing is that its cheap, tangible and measurable. Forrester recently estimated that by 2014 we will be receiving 9,000 more marketing mails, this meaning, 24 more emails per day will come into our inboxes.

Back to the aforementioned research, the data was collected through 500 marketers who responded to an online survey from May to June 2009. One of the main findings was that 66% of marketers are planning to integrate the two channels in 2009 and, 48% who have already formulated a strategy for achieving this initiative. Of marketers planning to increase budgets in 2009, 83% will increase spend in email marketing, followed by social media at 62%.

I’d like to leave marketers with a few tips from Forrester on what marketers should do in their future email direct marketing campaigns:

1. Segmentation of mailing lists. Never assume that all email recipients have the same interests. The more specialized lists you have, the better. You send more emails in smaller list sizes, but to more targeted audience.
2. Increase integration with social media. This calls for more integration between emails and say, Facebook, in spreading the whole message. Other initiatives include share to social calls to action links and buttons.
3. Maintain clean lists. It’s always been an email’s best practice to keep mailing lists cleansed from bounce, non-existent, malformed and duplicate emails.

Do you apply both strategies in your company? Which do you consider to be more engaging?

One fact that holds true in the marketspace whether online or offline, is that before marketers can effectively respond to consumer demand, they must first understand their consumers, but most importantly, their consumer’s behaviour.

A recent research by McKinsey states that consumers are moving ‘outside the purchasing funnel’ and changing their way of going about the selection and buying process. The way marketing has traditionally worked can be narrowed down in a few steps- awareness, familiarity, consideration, purchase and loyalty. In other words, it’s a process that involves directing marketing at the consumer, in the meantime, the consumer is narrowing down his options and eventually choosing the one product that has captured his attention.

McKinsey recommends marketers revisit traditional models of consumer behaviour to find out if these principles are still valid in today’s Internet-oriented world. The firm conducted a study involving more than 20,000 consumers from three different continents across five different industries and discovered some significant changes in the consumer decision journey.

Because marketers are adopting new media strategies for their communication objectives ie: social networks, chats, forums, etc, to reach the potential customer, the shift towards a two-way conversation between marketers and consumers has become a key approach to gauge further interest in brands.

Also, and in contrast to the traditional buying process where consumers have limited amounts of information about the product of interest, today consumers are much more active in learning and finding out more whether it’s through blogs, forums, friends or surfing the net.

McKinsey has therefore redefined the purchase process into the following four stages:

• ongoing exposure- in which consumers continuously hear, see and learn about brands
• trigger- consumer moves ‘towards purchase’ and begins ‘initial consideration’ by first going through an ‘active evaluation’ of options
• moment of purchase- consumers have decided to purchase something, however, they’ve not decided what brand to buy. Decision is usually made in the store
• loyalty loop- is divided into two categories. Active loyalty are those individuals who don’t consider other brands and passive loyalty are those individuals who keep an open mind about other brands and don’t necessarily stick to the same one

McKinsey recommends marketers understand the consumer’s purchase process as to be able to ‘direct their spending and messaging to the moments of maximum influence, they stand a much greater chance of reaching consumers in the right place at the right time with the right message.’

Recession. Downturn. Redundancies. It’s fair to say that the news couldn’t be more depressing – frankly it can make you want to give it all up and live in cave for a year or two! But I prefer to take a more positive view. From an online advertising perspective I honestly believe that the opportunities presented by new technologies couldn’t be greater. Working in the Ad Exchange space I get to see first hand how open, efficient technologies can be used to not only reduce friction in existing business models but also to create (and sustain) new models entirely.

Let’s be clear – fundamentally changing a business model to align more closely with market trends isn’t something that happens everyday. But the world of online advertising shifts so rapidly that those who merely attempt to maintain the status quo are already ‘behind the line’. So often we see businesses whose model is entrenched in ‘the old way’ – in online that could be as far back as 10 years or as recent as last week.

Technology enables us all to change and adapt – eventually the momentum and weight of change forces us to sit up and take notice but it’s those companies who see the trends early and remodel accordingly who will find themselves positioned at the head of the game.

In our market, specifically the trading of display inventory on Advertising Exchanges, this ‘change’ manifests itself in a number of ways. More and more we’re seeing Agencies and Publishers wanting to build Networks, whilst the traditional Networks are increasingly differentiating through a combination of data and bespoke technology. Whereas before the barriers to entry were too high or the inefficiencies too great, the new open technologies of today have created a level playing field where intelligence, data, market knowledge and technical expertise wins out.

The days of winning because you’re the biggest, oldest, most established haven’t died out entirely but increasingly more nimble, technology enabled competitors are gaining market share where before they wouldn’t even have made it through the front door.

It’s still early days and many of the companies who have already made the shift remain ‘under the radar’. However, as the market inevitably evolves it is these companies who are well placed to capitalize, often at the expense of traditional, more well established players. A positive approach in this time of great negativity could be the difference between future success or failure.

There is no doubt start-ups today leverage technology and new media to grow their business particularly in times when people are cutting costs and seeking for the most cost-efficient business-tools.

In Italy, fostering the innovation ecosystem is the mission of the projects which were created to help innovative start-ups meet industrial and financial partners to become known in the marketplace.

A sample of these projects is the magazine Innov’azione, a bi-monthly publication produced by the Italian association of technology and scientific parks (Apsti) available in print and online version at www.lobbyinnovazione.it. The business network ‘Imprese e start up’ (www.startupbusiness.it) is backed up by the Milano Chamber of Commerce, the meeting point for the Italian innovation community where entrepreneurs, enterprises, investors, incubators and Universities can share information, opportunities and experiences.

Percorsi dell’innovazione is the area dedicated to Italian start-ups within Smau, the main Italian technology trade show that takes place every October in Milan, which will also be organized in other Italian cities including Bari, Brescia, Padova and Bologna starting this year. These projects are working together in order to offer new entrepreneurs a wide platform to promote their ideas and projects to attract investors and find industrial partners.

In Italy, the number of start-ups has flourished during last few years, I began to follow this ecosystem closely back in 2005 launching the first edition of Percorsi dell’innovazione and since then all figures have increased: the number of start-ups, the number of risk capital investors such as venture capitalists, business angels, seed capital funds and the amount of money available in funds has also grown exponentially.

An increasing number of Universities started to consider the creation of spin-offs and technology transfer offices as a good opportunity. The role of incubators both within Universities and Science and technology parks is considered today as a key aspect of the ecosystem for the innovation that eventually becomes an enterprise. Currently, there are even privately owned incubators and an increasing number of large and medium size companies based in the country are showing a growing interest towards the innovative start-ups phenomenon and their ideas.

Nike has aggregated a new member to the family. It has developed a new gadget that traces, records and displays your running experience. The Nike+SportBand wrist device is the new way to get connected with your run and track your progress all at once. Reminds me a little bit of the FiatEco Drive concept. Part of the idea the Nike+SportBand offers is an alternative for those individuals who find the thumping of their footsteps stimulating while running rather than listening to music on an iPod.

The way it works is, there is a sensor chip you throw into your shoe which is highly sensitive to movement, therefore, it is what will read and record every step you take during your entire routine. At the same time, there is a wrist band that comes with it which will registered all the data taken in by the sensor. Hence you’ve got the sender and the receiver. As part of the data collected by the device, it can also translate speed, elapsed time, distance and calories burned.

Basically, you’ve got your own personal trainer on your wrist. Next step after your run would be to detach the Nike+ Link from your wrist band and plug it into a USB on your personal computer. Go into nikeplus.com and upload the information. This will display your entire routine along with a recommended training program as well as the option to set your own goals. At nikeplus.com you may opt in to sharing your records with the whole entire Nike community and challenge fellow runners from all parts of the world.

In addition, when you’re not running, the Nike+SportBand displays the time of day, together with a review of your last run and total mileage for the week.

After Steve Ballmer made his charismatic speech at the Next Web Now! conference at the Crown Plaza in Milan, a series of complimentary panelists took over the stage depicting various success stories and testimonials. One of the stories presented was Fiat’s new EcoDrive solution.

I have to say I really enjoyed the presentation not only for its overall fresh and jovial tonality, but also for the way in which Fiat went about structuring this new concept. The EcoDrive is a system which collects data from your car in terms of how well you’re performing in reducing CO2 emissions. While you’re driving, this information is simultaneously stored on a USB flash drive which can then be plugged into your PC for further review. Basically, the system watches how you drive along with the road conditions you drive in and once your journey is over, it offers you feedback regarding what you should and should not do in order to reduce impact on the environment.

Simply awesome. The minute you get home or arrive to the office, you plug your key into your PC which will immediately display a carbon footprint of your trip highlighting the points where you could have, for instance- maintained a steady speed by using cruise control instead of increasing your speed- or breaking gently on the curves and not changing gears all the time. The system then gives you an overall performance score out of 100, which you can use to set your goals for the coming day, week, month or year.  Mind you this whole system is also good to help you save up on gas, so you might want to think twice about simulating the ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ on the speedway.

How does this relate to Microsoft? Simple. The technology was developed by the Microsoft Auto platform which was then altered by Fiat in order to adapt it to its entire range of cars through their own technology known as Blue&Me™.

Once again, the two corporations partnered up to create yet another brilliant solution, now available in certain Fiat models, destined to transform people’s reckless driving style into more of an ‘eco friendly’ one. Let’s hope-.