Douglas Karr's Articles on Martech Zone
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It’s Not Getting Easier for Marketers
Key to many of the links I share and the posts I write on this blog is automation. The reason is simple… at one time, marketers could easily sway consumers with a brand, a logo, a jingle and some nice packaging (I admit that Apple is still great at this). Mediums were uni-directional. In other words, Marketers could tell the…
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Marketing Engagement: Fun with Videos
Building a platform for businesses to blog on is only a success if those customers actually leverage the platform. We know our clients would succeed in getting a return on investment if we could just get them to create and share more posts about their products and services. Platform utilization requires that the software as a service company actually have…
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Appirio Connects Salesforce and Facebook
I was just doing a webinar yesterday and someone asked me to prioritize social networks based on their ability to drive business. Although I don’t believe social networks to be a primary medium for marketing and advertising (based on the intent of the user), I do encourage our clients to utilize RSS and other tools to automate publishing of their…
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How to Select a Web Designer
A friend of mine asked me in an email, can you recommend a web designer for me? I paused for a minute… I know a ton of web designers – everything from brand experts, to local graphic designers, to content management systems developers, to social networking experts, to complex integration, enterprise and architecture developers. I responded, “What are you trying…
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Marketing to Intent, Not Eyeballs
Old school marketers always seem to get hung up on the number of eyeballs. I’ve always been a database and direct marketer, so I liked getting the right eyeballs rather than pushing advertisements in front of all of them. Businesses like the Yellow Pages like to tout the big numbers, too. I read once that 87% of the U.S. Population…
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Who’s Holding Your Oil Can?
All day – every day – folks email me, text me, twitter me, visit me, call me and instant message me with questions regarding domains, capabilities, CSS, competition, keyword strategies, client issues, sales positioning, marketing strategies, blogging, social media, etc. I get invitations to speak, to write, to help, to meet… you name it. My days are busy and incredibly…
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Cappuccino and the Lies of Packaging
1.webp” alt=”McCafe Mocha” title=”McCafe Mocha” width=”215″ height=”337″ class=”alignleft size-full tie-image3382″ align=”left” />Last week I stopped for a McSkillet burrito on the way to work. I could probably write a post just on how much I love those and Qdoba breakfast burritos, but I’ll spare you. While I was at McDonalds, my curiosity got the best of me and I ordered…
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Blogger a Haven for Black Hat SEO
Good friend and mentor, Ron Brumbarger dropped me a note this morning with a disturbing link to a blog on Blogger that popped up on some Google Alerts for some keywords he was following. I won’t repeat the keywords here, as I don’t want my visitors backlinking or visiting the blog, but the findings were quite disturbing. Here’s a section…
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Do You Really Want to Work for a Startup?
There’s not much worse of a feeling in your gut than when you’re escorted out of a job. I was unceremoniously given the boot about 6 years ago when I worked for a regional newspaper. It was a pivotal point in my life and career. I had to decide whether I was going to battle back to higher success –…
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Resources versus Resourcefulness
I happened across a video of Tony Robbins at TED that was pretty inspiring. One of his lines really rang true with me personally: Resources versus Resourcefulness One of the most fulfilling jobs I ever had was being an Integration Consultant for ExactTarget. At the time, ExactTarget had a fairly limited application programming interface (API) but our clientele was growing…
