I grew up in Grinnell, Iowa, a small town in the rural Midwest. It’s not exactly the place you would expect to find the most prolific scoring basketball team in the nation. Grinnell College’s run-and-gun offense is considered unorthodox, even chaotic, but it is fun to watch. Grinnell’s record as of February 22^nd is 18 wins and 5 losses. In the second game of this season, senior guard Jack Taylor scored 109 points, the third highest in NCAA history in a 173-123 victory over Crossroads College. According to Head Coach David Arseneault’s book titled “The Running Game: A Formula for Success,” his strategy is based on five basic principles:

The team must take at least 100 shots in a game. The goal is to attempt a shot every 12 seconds and try to get the ball back within 10 seconds.

Tags: branding, marketing, creativity, social media, Customer Acquisition, service, customers, audience, strategy, organizations, relationship-building, loyalty

Stay better informed as a marketing professional with this monthly series highlighting the latest developments in all things marketing. Get caught up with the February Marketing News Snapshot.

Tags: facebook, Twitter, mobile, marketing, email marketing, social media, charity, instagram, trend, future, centscere, social startups, news, digital, brands, emarketer, direct marketing news, snapshot, local marketing automation

In a world where people spend most of their day (including their spare time) using their cell phones and computers, companies have to use different techniques to reach their target market. It’s not about going door-to-door or making 50 calls a day anymore.

Cold calling is outdated. Social media websites have changed the landscape of sales and are becoming a quick replacement for connecting over the phone. Communication via email and social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (which have millions of user available to connect with) make it easier to reach out to customers. Instead of making multiple calls in one day, it’s much more common for a company to send a message to a company they consider a prospect.

Tags: facebook, google, Twitter, sales, LinkedIn, marketing, social media, WebEx, customers, internet, pinterest, Google Hangouts, connecting, digital, Dropbox

DocuStar is honored to welcome Jim Blasingame to our Marketing Organizational Leadership series. Jim is the president and founder of Small Business Network, Inc., a media company dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs be successful.

Tags: social media, Marketing Organizational Leadership, brain trust, small business advocate, age of the seller, small business network, small business expert, jim blasingame, age of the customer

Stay better informed as a marketing professional with this monthly series highlighting the latest developments in all things marketing. Since this is our last post of 2013, we’d like to wish everyone a happy holidays and happy New Year. We’ll see you all back here on the blog in 2014!

Tags: facebook, google, mobile, B2B, B2C, advertising, email marketing, social media, video, december

Discussing the marketing value of branded online communities with some of the area’s top marketers

Tags: branding, Twitter, messaging, credibility, marketing, metrics, social media, mike dover, wikibrands, communities

As the relationship between businesses and customers continues to evolve, the value of the customer experience has been magnified greatly. Customer-facing social media channels and the general ease with which anyone can find information about anyone/anything online have made businesses and their employees and managers more accessible than ever before. This means businesses – the whole business – must be ready to address customer needs across any number of outlets. But good customer experience doesn’t just mean effectively handling complaints, issues or questions; it means having a real relationship with your customers.

Tags: branding, engagement, marketing, social media, customer experience, service

Okay, so don’t forget about branding, but everyone always talks about social media in the context of branding. So today, we’re going to focus on social media’s role in building your bottom line by closing deals…

It’s very easy in life to embrace an “out with the old, in with the new!” attitude. After all, newer is most always perceived to be better. The problem with this attitude is that it supposes the correct course of action is one or the other; a classic “if not A, then B” scenario. While that’s a theorem that’s important for software developers, mathematicians and philosophers to know, it’s not necessarily a good rule for businesses to follow.

Tags: digital marketing, ROI, Twitter, sales, LinkedIn, direct mail marketing, social media

Stay better informed as a marketing professional with this monthly series highlighting the latest developments in all things marketing. Get caught up with the October Marketing News Snapshot.

Tags: marketing news, facebook, google, LinkedIn, mobile, SEO, marketing trends, B2C, social media

It’s an inevitable point in the life cycle of every great advancement or leap forward: that moment when the exceptional becomes the norm. It happened with phones, televisions, automobiles – things that were revolutionary concepts when they first arrived, but eventually nearly everyone had one, and suddenly owning such items isn’t viewed as remarkable, rather as necessary.

The same holds true for business skills, and that was the focus of a book I recently read by Jay Baer called “Youtility.” New technology has always demanded new skills, but as we’ve seen time and time again, as the technology becomes more prevalent and “the norm,” so too do the skills required to operate it, and that has an impact on how businesses should look for and asses new talent.

Tags: digital marketing, facebook, Twitter, sales, LinkedIn, marketing, human resources, customer service, social media, Retail