Can This Product Save Your Business?

Today, I'm doing something I rarely do - talk about a new service being offered by Henry Russell Bruce (HRB). It is our new GROWTH strategic business planning and marketing service. The copy below explains the service and contains a link to the entire brochure.

Growing Brands. Growing Business.

Henry Russell Bruce is the one of the foremost strategic marketing firms in the U.S. It brings five unique strategic advantages to each of its client relationships:

1)insistent that its efforts be measured against a client growth goal,
2)comprehensive and unparalleled client industry knowledge,
3)deeply insightful analysis of client growth opportunities and limitations,
4)intricately detailed, prebudgeted, line by line sales and marketing plans
5)and the gutsy offer to financially share in the risk of following its advice.

This powerful, but simple, understanding that businesses exist to grow and profit, combined with an impressive array of sales and marketing forces marshal this firm into a powerful client ally and a very large support structure for client growth efforts. This is HRB.

ABOUT OUR GROWTH DIVISION

We believe in the strategic growth plan concept so strongly we ramp up every long-term strategic relationship with clients through our strategic growth division, titled simply, Growth. There, we develop comprehensive strategic growth plans for each client, including all details right up to implementation, timing, responsibility and cost. At the point of client approval, our dedicated account managers, branding groups, social and traditional media experts, production group and creative group assume implementation roles with your assigned employee(s), following the plan step by step.

With more than 400 strategic plans crossing 175 clients in dozens of industries, the Growth division has a historical 40:1 financial gross dollar growth for each sales or marketing dollar spent with it.

Read more about HRB's GROWTH Division.


Jim Thebeau
CEO, Henry Russell Bruce
jthebeau@hrb-ideas.com
800-728-2656

Is Your Brand the Most Boring One at the Party?

Today we have a guest post by my partner Steve Erickson, President of Henry Russell Bruce

Unless you spend all day, every day, staring at your computer screen, you probably get out to social events on occasion. For serious Web programming dudes that may mean having to rent a personality, but hey, it’s only for a few hours, right?

So, you’re at the party, your personal brand is polished (i.e., you’re wearing your best threads) and you’re ready to engage the crowd. You scan the room, find the drinks, then the hors d’houvres table. Sweet! Hot nacho cheese dip! You fill your plate, turn around and … uh oh! It’s Rick. He’s seen you and he’s heading your way. You brace yourself because you know you’re about ready to be subjected to his blathering … about himself, his work, his vacation, his investments, his son’s baseball tournament, whatever. 15 tedious minutes later, you’re certain his picture must be under “narcissist” in the dictionary. Read more.


Jim Thebeau
CEO
Henry Russell Bruce
800-728-2656

Marketing Clients Dispute Agencies' Digital Chops

Only 37% of marketers rated “7+” on a 1-10 scale, where “10” represented “Excellent” when asked how they would rate full service agencies’ digital skill set, according to an RSW/US survey of clients. So marketers aren’t all too impressed with traditional, full service agencies’ skills in the digital marketing/advertising space.

Jim Thebeau
jthebeau@hrb-ideas.com
CEO, Henry Russell Bruce
800-728-2656

The Secret to Marketing Today is NOW Media

I'm often asked how companies and organizations can use new media to enhance their visibility and sales. How, they ask, can we use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Mashable and other new media to market ourselves?

The question seems to ignore the role of traditional media and focuses only on new media. Like new media stands on its own. Not so.

Increasingly, marketing success today is based on the integration of traditional and new media and understanding how they work together to promote, enhance, position and sell your organization. And, for companies that care about it, how to help fill the sales pipeline.

One concept, developed in the past year by blogger Jeff Pulver, is to call it NOW Media, meaning that both new and traditional media need to work together to generate maximum results. Jeff and other new media experts believe that traditional media will be around for years to come.

While some of the largest corporations have figured out how to do this well, like Dell's recent Twitter success, smaller organizations are trying to get there.

NOW Media is a good name, as well as a good approach.

To be effective and credible your brand must present a cohesive look, feel and experience to employees as well as customers and prospects. The same is true of your marketing efforts. One-off direct mails, ads, banner ads and not refining the key search terms for your Web site each week are costly and ineffective. Brand is all about the integration of your look, your message and your marketing.

What's the secret to marketing today? Set up company Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (or other social media) pages and integrate them into your cohesive company messages so you are saying the same thing everywhere. But know that you can use these social media sites to promote special offers and calls to action in a way that supplements your traditional media - so everything works in concert.

If you can do that (yes, it does take time, effort and concentration) you will see results. You will get more people to sign up for your email marketing, your catalog, your blog posts.

And, if you never start, you will never get there. There are plenty of "How to" resources on the Web. Or you can contact HRB. We know the secret to NOW Media.

Jim Thebeau
Henry Russell Bruce
800-728-2656

Mobile App Stores to sell $6B in 2010

According to a new Gartner report, "Application Stores; The Revenue Opportunity Beyond the Hype," consumers will spend $6.2 billion in 2010 in mobile application stores while advertising revenue is expected to generate $0.6 billion worldwide. Analysts said mobile application stores will exceed 4.5 billion downloads in 2010, eight out of ten of which will be free to end users.

Read more on this mobile apps story here.


Jim Thebeau
CEO, Henry Russell Bruce

One Third of Adults Tweet and Facebook

A study released Tuesday by Forrester Research found that 33 % of adults update Web sites like Twitter and Facebook once a week. Do you?

Jim Thebeau
CEO
Henry Russell Bruce

Avoid the 15 Biggest Marketing Mistakes in 2010

I've made a resolution for 2010 to be more consistent with my blog posts and to do them more frequently.

Rather than send out two or three marketing mistakes at a time, I've decided it's time to post a link to the article we've developed on avoiding marketing mistakes in 2010.

If you are a reader, thank you.

Download your own copy of our white paper at Avoid the 15 Biggest Marketing Mistakes in 2010.

Happy New Year from the entire team at Henry Russell Bruce.

Jim Thebeau
CEO, Henry Russell Bruce

Email Open Rates Increased in 2009

According to Epsilon, email open and click rates experienced year-over-year increases in Q309 vs. Q308 as the industry headed into the traditionally busy holiday season.
The Q309 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks study revealed that email open rates increased from 19.8% in Q308 to 22.0% in Q309 while 12 of the 16 industries Epsilon tracks had an increase in open rates over Q308. Click rates were 6.2%, an increase of 5.1% from the same time last year (5.9%), the analysis found.

Timely, relevant offers appear to make all the difference.

Jim Thebeau
CEO, Henry Russell Bruce