"The new job title of “Growth Hacker” is integrating itself into Silicon Valley’s culture, emphasizing that coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer. Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?” and answers with A/B tests, landing pages, viral factor, email deliverability, and Open Graph. On top of this, they layer the discipline of direct marketing, with its emphasis on quantitative measurement, scenario modeling via spreadsheets, and a lot of database queries. If a startup is pre-product/market fit, growth hackers can make sure virality is embedded at the core of a product. After product/market fit, they can help run up the score on what’s already working.

This isn’t just a single role – the entire marketing team is being disrupted. Rather than a VP of Marketing with a bunch of non-technical marketers reporting to them, instead growth hackers are engineers leading teams of engineers. The process of integrating and optimizing your product to a big platform requires a blurring of lines between marketing, product, and engineering, so that they work together to make the product market itself. Projects like email deliverability, page-load times, and Facebook sign-in are no longer technical or design decisions – instead they are offensive weapons to win in the market."

"Hackathons are how marketing guys wish software were made. 
However, to make good software, requires lots of thought, trial and error, evaluation, iteration, trying the ideas out on other users, learning, thinking, more trial and error, and on and on. At some point you say it ain't perfect, but it's useful, so let's ship. That process, if the software is to be any good, doesn't happen in 24 hours. Sometimes it takes years, if the idea is new enough.  "

"Stop talking about your products and services as objects and items, and talk more about who and how those products and services are used to do amazing things. Build a culture of accomplishment around your offerings, rather than a culture of availability." from: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/book-reviews/the-power-of-consumer-choice-drives-social-media-importance/

"How does it work? It’s actually fairly simple: after you sign up, we provide a custom, unique short URL that we encourage you to share out via email, social networks, etc. When somebody visits that URL and signs up, we can track it back to you and give you credit for it. After 3 people sign up with your link, you make our “priority access list” and we let you know via email."

"MindTouch assembles your organization's genius into strategic content. Using MindTouch for your strategic content you can increase customer acquisition, decrease customer retention costs and enhance your product and services development. MindTouch is also an amazing general-purpose platform for enterprise collaboration and rapidly developing social business applications. "

"As part of their research, women were given bags to carry around a local mall for an hour. Several were given Victoria's Secret bags, while others toted plain pink shopping bags. The study surfaced an interesting connection. Those women who carried Victoria's Secret bags felt more feminine, glamorous, and good-looking. On the contrary, those with the pink shopping bags felt indifferent. These studies represent a harbinger of the importance of personal relationships and how they're fostered in brand experiences. Businesses must bring their companies and products to life. As other studies show, social networking is incredibly emotional. As I wrote in a recent post, "Once More With Feeling," some experiments show that as we Tweet, our levels of oxytocin rise."

nice infographics

"See, I’ve heard a lot of discussion about MailChimp’s success with freemium, but it’s scary that people would want to model their companies around us. I say it’s scary, because they don’t know our history, and they don’t know our motivation. I came across this article recently: Why Free Plans Don’t Work. They actually mention MailChimp in a positive way, but the discussion in the comments show that people really need a little insight into what drove us to go freemium. So here goes…"

"Obviously free plans have worked well for companies like Wufoo, MailChimp, and FreshBooks, so we know they can work. But the problem is that we’re not them. We need to stop blindly copying them and start thinking about ways to bring in revenue. I’ll concede that there are certain types of apps that are more likely to succeed by offering a free plan and going with the Freemium model. But the vast majority of apps aren’t in this category, and the vast majority of people don’t have the resources to make that model work. Taking advantage of word-of-mouth marketing requires more users than most of us will attain. Instead, we end up with a large number of free users zapping away valuable resources for nothing in return. To top it off, most free users will never end up converting to a paid plan."

"we have found a new job for the poor P.S. We started using the P.S. to simply tell the reader what was coming next. For example, in an email where we talked about a series of upcoming interviews that were available for pre-order, a simple P.S. at the bottom that said, “Stay tuned – we’re putting the finishing touches on a new video entitled, “The 20 Habits of Wealthy Traders.” You’ll see it in your inbox in the next day or two.” It was a bit of a fluke actually. It was late at night, I was tired, and couldn’t think of anything more to say about the paid interview series. I was behind on the video that I had promised and decided to mention it there. It was the lowest number of unsubscribes in a pitch email we’d had in a long time. No links, no “last chance” pitch – just a promo for what was coming next."

Nice, clear tips. Cindy rocks.

RT @Scromp: RT @thinktank_ Twitter Visualized I via @HBR #socialmedia #marketing

apparently mailchimp supports a/b testing… recommended for discovering open rates for newsletters and more

great examples and advice

gun control comic, very well done

"The twisted rational of dynamic pricing. Template sold better at 49 than at 39. Raised price to 49.50 and sales drop." see http://twitter.com/iA/status/6449252164

solid tips on achieving better conversions

"It's about a restaurant where at the end of your meal, you roll 3 dice, and if you get the combination 4-3-1 you don't have to pay...I guess what makes it work is that people will tend to eat more/more expensive that what they usually do, thinking that the proba[bility] of not paying is not that small..."

tips for blogging

Collection of blog advice. Most of this is well known, but this collects a lot into one place.

from @azaaza

" how these online scams work on Facebook and other social networks – the mechanics of how the money is made, some of the people involved, and who is actually clicking on ads. If you’re reading this article, there is a good chance that you are not the type of person actually clicking on these spam ads, but are you curious as to who actually is?"

"There’s a classroom exercise that’s a part of the  Stanford technology venture program hits its students with each year: If you had five dollars and two hours, what would you do to make as much money as possible? STVP Executive Director  Tina Seelig discusses the query and how budding entrepreneurs responded."

How being playful can improve response rates

"How we help publishers save time and effort We convert your links into affiliate links for you Access to 6000+ affiliate programs with no admin effort Centralised reporting, showing what your users click on and buy Increased click-throughs by keeping natural links Broadest support for deep-links"

"We tried charging for our API without much success.  Then we paid developers to use it and it took off. It is such an interesting move to make on the market. In the case of TACODA, they initially built a powerful behavioral targeting solution for publishers to segment their audiences and sell them to advertisers. They sold the technology to about twenty large online publishers. But the sales cycles were long and the license fees were smaller than they needed them to be. "

"Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned."

"In fact consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren't really selling it either. If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn't better content cost more?"

With helpful video, supposedly. "Last month we launched a new feature of AdWords called Bid Simulator. Bid Simulator takes some of the guess work out of cost per click (CPC) bidding by estimating the number of clicks or impressions you could have received if you had used a different maximum CPC bid. Today, I thought I would take the opportunity to help you make the most of this new feature by explaining how to use the data from Bid Simulator to maximize the profit from your marketing investment. In general, when you increase your maximum CPC bid for keywords on search you are able to generate more clicks to your site. This may be because your new bid qualifies you to appear higher up in the Sponsored Links on the search results page, or because your higher bid qualifies your ad to appear in new, more expensive auctions. The goal for you as an advertiser is to decide whether or not these additional clicks come at a cost that is still profitable for you."

word on the street is CM > Constant Contact > Mail Chimp

"For 10 years, Columbia professor Sheena Iyengar has been studying choice. For her research paper, “When Choice is Demotivating”, they ran a great test: They set up a free tasting booth in a grocery store, with six different jams. 40% of the customers stopped to taste. 30% of those bought some. A week later, they set up the same booth in the same store, but this time with twenty-four different jams. 60% of the customers stopped to taste. But only 3% bought some!"

"Magazines and newspapers were perfect businesses for a moment of time, but they wouldn't have worked in 1784, and they're not going to work very soon in the future either. We're always going to need writers, but the business model of their platform is going to change. People will pay for content if it is so unique they can't get it anywhere else, so fast they benefit from getting it before anyone else, or so related to their tribe that paying for it brings them closer to other people. We'll always be willing to pay for souvenirs of news, as well, things to go on a shelf or badges of honor to share."

"According to Information Resources Inc., unit sales dropped 20%, while dollar sales decreased 19%, or roughly $33 million, to $137 million between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22. Moreover, several of Tropicana's competitors appear to have benefited from the misstep, notably Minute Maid, Florida's Natural and Tree Ripe. Varieties within each of those brands posted double-digit unit sales increases during the period. Private-label products also saw an increase during the period, in keeping with broader trends in the food and beverage space."

damning indictment of today's advertising situation

"It’s busy in a kitchen. It’s impossible to find the time to tell the world that the best hot rolls just came out of the oven of your bakery. Welcome BakerTweet. Spin the dial to “Hot Rolls” and press the button. A message goes out via twitter to tell the world of your delicious rolls."

competitive creative projects, post details and get back designs, set a price.

post logo requirements, and ppl compete to design it. starts at $250.

"When something that was originally scarce starts becoming abundant, something strange happens. You find that you start making money because of that thing rather than with that thing. That’s the Because Effect."

"a social media search for tracking brand or product mentions on a slew of social media sites, including flickr, twitter, friendfeed, digg etc. It taps into their search APIs directly, so it's much more immediate and comprehensive than say, Google alerts."

big list of corporate presence in sns

It's pretty common, when reading discussion of Apple's “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads, to come across the comment: > Sure, they're great ads but they don't work. John Hodgeman’s PC is far more likeable than Justin Long’s smug hipster Mac. This is missing the point. To illustrate, here are director Chuck Jones’ rules for writing Road Runner cartoons, copied from Wikipedia

List of resources for improving your landing page copy. "A landing page is any page on a website where traffic is sent specifically to prompt a certain action or result. Think of a golf course… a landing page is the putting green that you drive the ball (prospect) to. Once on the green, the goal is to get the ball into the hole. Likewise, the goal of the copy and design of a landing page is to get the prospect to take your desired action."

People buy stuff, but what we all crave are relationships. Payment is an elemental type of relationship. Very primitive, but real... Paying has to be super easy, idiot-proof and frictionless. There can't be hurdles. The easier it is to pay, the more eager

guidelines to help you clearly and effectively promote your Page outside the Facebook site.

email marketing tools. first 10,000 emails free per month for non-profits.

simple flash game to land a plane in european cities

The long tail is famously good news for two classes of people; a few lucky aggregators, such as Amazon and Netflix, and 6 billion consumers. Of those two, I think consumers earn the greater reward from the wealth hidden in infinite niches.

"You give to the reader the possibility of reading your books and choosing whether to buy them or not"

how they're used (in marketing, at least mostly in this post)

Sociology and biology are curiously akin

There are some logo remakes that should be praised, and there are some that should be hazed

"familiarity with functions across the organization and the ability to translate and make connections between them is a much-underrated talent" hear, hear!

an email template to use for a future design tool. Emails, if you don’t know, are not as easy to design as web pages. They are viewed in a wider variety of clients. Some of these clients are downright evil.

create a portable, interactive "little web site" ("Leaflet") using nothing but a web browser.

Essential Elements of a Powerful Elevator Pitch

3D Box Shot Maker accepts a front image and a side image as input, and generate the final image on the fly. It can also include a shadow and a reflection in your box shot.

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies

A short guide to what works and what doesn't when talking to reporters

showcase only the best advertising and design around the globe. But sometimes you have to show the very worst as well in order to know what great ads and designs are.

"Good site copy is concise, short, to the point with absolutely no jargon, but it doesn’t start off like this."