Will Davis

I was speaking with a few colleagues the other day about the different benefits of social media as a whole, and blogging in particular.  The folks in the room had varying levels of social media involvement, from no involvement at all to heavy involvement.  Each of us discussed what we hope to get out of social media, why we blog or might consider it, and how businesses can benefit from blogging.  The discussion went on for some time, covering the wide ranging benefits from SEO opportunities to more frequent customer touch points and everything in between.  After a while, it quieted down a bit and somebody asked me if they had missed anything on the list. Skip the First Meeting While our blog serves many purposes, one of them I hadn’t heard mentioned by the group was one of the things that I find most useful.  Having a well planned blog and social media presence, with... (more)

Why Bluebirds are for Lazy Marketers

There’s a phrase in sales that refers to opportunities that fortuitously seem to land in your lap as “a bluebird.” Bluebirds got their name as they appear to “come out of the sky,” a stroke of luck that leads to a sale from out of nowhere. On the surface, bluebirds would seem to be a great thing for businesses, but there’s a problem with this thinking Thinking of Opportunities as Coming Out of the Sky is Lazy and Dangerous   How likely is it that a prospect happened to truly come from out of nowhere and become an inbound opportunity? Remember that time when a prospect accidentall... (more)

SEO for Professional Services Firms

About two months ago, I put together a post on the five ways professional services firms should use Twitter.  From a readership standpoint, that post represents one of the all-time top five posts on Marketing Trenches.  More importantly, we received a number of emails from professional services types praising the content and asking for more. If it’s more you want, it’s more we’ll give.  This time, we’ll address search engine optimization, also known as SEO, and the common mistakes that professional services firms make in an attempt to address this area. One quick note: While th... (more)

RIP SEO, Broadcast, Email, PR and…Wait What?

It’s become incredibly in vogue to classify different marketing channels as “dead.”  Sounding the death knell for traditional media was first, whether that was 30 years ago with the rise of cable TV, or more recently with content streamed online, to multiple devices, on demand. The press release has been metaphorically buried over and over again, only to rise from the grave. More recently, digital channels, such as email marketing, have been called dead (despite data to the contrary), and the latest earnings reports have people putting Facebook (and social media altogether) on li... (more)

Marketers, First Do No Harm

Just as a doctor must follow the Hippocratic Oath, strategic marketing consultants like us must First Do No Harm. All too often we see the unfortunate results of a new, well-intentioned VP of Marketing or CMO coming in bursting with energy and anxious to make an impact try to do everything – and doing more harm than good.  Marketers in a new role, just like doctors with a new patient, first need to take a step back and assess the situation.  Before you change the design and structure of the website, re-engineer an existing pay-per-click search campaign, or make a 180 degree cha... (more)