Consumers are more likely to take recommendations from their friends and family than listen to or trust a brand.  Why not empower your best customers to spread the word about your remarkable product by building a community of advocates.  It’s the most powerful tool on your belt, especially considering Forrester has shown that 80% of all purchase cycles involve a form of WOM recommendation. Take Montgomery Inn for instance. Montgomery…

It’s 8:34am and a man in his early thirties shuffles into his cubicle, then begins checking his email. After a couple of minutes he stumbles across an email with an amazing video embedded in it. Within minutes he’s emailed it to several of his co-workers telling them they have to see it. In an hour it’s spread to half the office, in another half an hour it has spread to…

While it has been centuries since humans have gathered around campfires to trade stories about their feats during the latest hunt storytelling still holds sway over our collective minds and hearts. Perhaps that’s why more and more businesses are turning to storytelling as the vehicle to get their message out to their customers. Why Storytelling? Rather than immediately going into the benefits of storytelling, let’s look at this from the…

Combining Email Marketing, Social Media and Direct Mail to Spread Word of Mouth Challenge Established in 1870, Graeter’s Ice Cream is a family-owned company from Cincinnati, Ohio esteemed by culinary experts around the world for their French Pot small batch process. For the first time in brand history the company is aggressively expanding via grocery stores in 30+ new markets, coast to coast. Despite making such a high-quality product, consumer…

Branded promotional items can often be quirky, exciting and very unique ways for companies and organizations to promote their brand, products or services. It probably wouldn’t take most people long to point out several branded “gifts” that they use regularly.  While pens are probably the most common other items can include notepads, drink cozies, t-shirts, tumblers, Frisbees and more; anything to remind you about that brand. Promotional items have grown…