If the response you’re driving for is a chuckle, or just a pass-along to another consumer, no wonder the gurus don’t want you to measure it.  Given a nanosecond of time to interact with people, the best most of us can do is waste it?”

Jonathan Salem Baskin
(via AdAge)

I propose that Internet marketing agencies and internal departments do away with the job title ‘Web analyst’ and instead take time to establish and conduct cross-training programs with all personnel to help them understand what the figures mean and how best to use them in order to meet or exceed a campaign’s stated objectives. In the end, marketing departments will have a much easier time showing a quantifiable return for the investments made.”

Charles Wiedenhoft
Red Door Interactive

Social media can save money.. how much did it cost the Obama campaign in time and money to raise $500 million? Extremely little....

People like to get involved and contribute, when you can frame the activity as important and you provide the tools to facilitate meaningful action. Engagement raises profits and can decrease costs. Engaged customers, for example, tend to leave less often than apathetic customers…

Social media presents many new possibilities for revenue, but to see them, look outside existing product silos. Focus on customer experience by engaging customers, not with your organization, but with each other...”

Chris Rollyson
The Global Human Capital Journal

... and then create great customer experiences by meeting those wants and needs at the right time and the right place, which are when customers contact us and wherever they do so.”

Lewis Green
L and G Business Solutions

Sales are a chronic affliction for businesses, and a constant reminder to consumers that all the imagined promises of branding don’t necessarily connect to the reality of prices.  This week’s sales aren’t price discounts; they’re proof that efforts to sell stuff the remainder of the year will be attempted at inflated prices.”

Jonathan Salem Baskin
Author
Branding Only Works on Cattle

“... our industry (catalogers and direct marketers) hawks the standard ‘Multichannel Customers Are The Best Customers’ line. We encourage people to read the paper and consume information online. We homogenize the overall user experience by trying to make the look and feel of each medium appear the same—instead of capitalizing on the unique differences between channels, we try to force people into doing things the way we want for them to do things, causing both channels to fail.”

Kevin Hillstrom
President
MineThatData

“... when we reach the point where we’re writing massive amounts of content that’s designed only for computers to read, we’ve reached a tipping point where marketing becomes a parody of itself. In the name of cutting through the clutter, we create more clutter. In the name of building customer relationships, we develop content that customers would never want to read. Instead of putting our resources and creativity into actually connecting with customers, we focus instead on trying to engineer some immaculately efficient engine to boil the ocean and spit out customers ready to buy our product with the least amount of input or effort…

I’ve discovered that about 70% of the splogs (content posted for no other purpose than to game search traffic) we’re filtering out are posted at Blogspot, a free blog service owned by Google. That�s right. Google. The company whose mission it is to help you cut through the noise and clutter on the Internet also happens to be one the biggest enablers of noise and clutter on the Internet…

We’re on a quest for clinical efficiency, but all the while we keep talking about customer intimacy. And then we wonder why consumers themselves are so drawn to social media, drawn inexplicably to connect with other consumers to share experiences that belie all the marketing bullshit their lives are flooded with every moment.”

Chris Kenton
SocialRep

The catalyst for true search/media integration and a breakdown of operational silos may actually be business-threatening times like these; breakdown, break-through as they say.”

Gerry Bavaro
EVP, DidIt.com
(via MediaPost)

Joe Pulizzi
Z Squared Media LLC
Author, Get Content Get Customers