A presentation done for the Charlotte AMA talking about the opportunities and challenges that face marketers when it comes to online marketing and reputation/brand monitoring.

1. Engage Your Customers or Die Bridging the Gap between the Marketers and the Market

2. 76% don’t believe companies tell the truth in advertisements (Yankelovich 2006) 68% trust other people “like themselves” up from 22% in 2003 (Edelman Trust Barometer) Consumers don’t Trust us

4. 100 million+ blogs 120,000 new blogs created today 1.4 new blogs every second 1.5 million blog posts today Adult blog usage grew 163% in 2006 The Blogosphere is on Fire

5. User Adoption is Gaining Steam Consumers with high-speed broadband spend 48% of their spare time online. In Q1, more than 3 mm new broadband customers; 56 mm households total. MySpace grew 163% this year. Facebook grew 1300% this year.

6. Customers , Clients and Employees are Talking 1 out of every 5 adults will comment online 80% of all consumers read online recommendations 75% do online research before making a decision 1 out of every 30 comments online is an employee discussing the company they work for (Jupiter Research)

7. What’s this all about? Community

8. Why is this Important? These discussions can and will become branding issues. Google: 82% of 1 st pages have blog/discussion posts. Yahoo: 63% of 1 st pages have blog/discussion posts.

9. “ When marketers took the life out of the messages , audiences started looking for ways to take us out of their lives .” – Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point

10. Examples: Successes & Failures

12. Dell Hell

13. Dell Hell

20. Where do we Start?

21. Connecting with users causes them to want to engage stimulating demand . Marketers must connect with their target market and be better listeners .

23. Monitor

24. Create something worth talking about . DO SOMETHING REMARKABLE

25. How can we be Remarkable?

26. Where does the target market congregate? What kind of message will resonate best? Online, offline, internal and/or external. The medium is the facilitator not the differentiator. Pick the campaign , not the medium

27. Can only be done online. Only works for B2C. Poor tracking and metrics. Cannot deliver ROI. Requires large company. Needs huge budget. Myths = Misunderstanding

28. Impressions/click-through’s. Purchases and/or leads. Customer behavior. Blogosphere. Chat rooms/message boards. Immediate feedback Tracking and Analytics

30. Thank You Questions [email_address]