With the bounty of e-newsletters that fill our inboxes every day, it’s easy to overlook them. It’s also easy to hate them. But rarely do we take the time to forward them to clients or friends who may be interested in the topic presented. Before forwarding, however, take a moment to delete the unsubscribe link from the bottom. We’ve seen all too many clients of our own who have lost valuable subscribers after the subscriber forwarded their e-mail on to someone else, only to have that person click the Unsubscribe link.

So while it’s a great practice to forward e-newsletters just to let people know you are thinking about them, be sure they don’t get the chance to cut you off from those subscriptions you do enjoy.

McKinsey Quarterly has published a terrific survey of companies around the globe and how they are using digital marketing.

“A McKinsey survey of marketing executives from around the world shows that in marketing, things are starting to change: companies are moving online across the spectrum of marketing activities, from building awareness to after-sales service, and they see online tools as an important and effective component of their marketing strategies.”

Read the article here (registration requred). We’ll have more insights based on their survey results and our own experiences soon, but suffice it to say, digital marketing has come of age as an important strategy, it’s just a matter of keeping professionals up-to-date on the changes.

Those of us in marketing communications hate to see a perfectly good organization hand over their website to IT. It’s clearly a recipie for disaster.

But, what if they hand it over to marketing? Who owns it - marketing proper or PR specifically? Should IT still have a voice in this conversation?

Fundamentally, as far as we’ve moved in terms of corporate branding online, we have not reconciled the fundamentally different disciplines which are needed to really make “new media” work. It takes marketing, PR, IT and others (not to mention buy-in from management) to collectively work together to really make a project successful. But we haven’t merged those people effectively. More on that soon…

A lot of these thoughts are the result of something said this weekend at BarCamp Nashville by Chris Houchens, who writes a blog called Shotgun Marketing. While talking about social media (Facebook, MySpace, etc etc) in the context of corporate marketing he said, “It’s about reaching the audience that has already identified itself as your audience; it’s not about sales.”

His premise raises a much deeper question than how corporations should approach corporate marketing. It’s often a given that internally, marketing should own managing the online experience. But is that so? If the online experience is not about sales, then fundamentally it’s not a marketing function. Marketing is all about sales! So social media seems to fit in a different category, such as PR. Or are we back to IT?

Should it be that way? Who owns online?

Oh-oh. This doesn’t bode well for traditional media…

A study finds that U.S. consumers are increasingly shifting their attention away from traditional, advertising-supported media in favor of entertainment such as the Internet, video games and cable TV, which consumers pay for.

As a result, the boom in online advertising is expected to continue, with all Internet advertising spending - including ads on Web sites of traditional media outlets - overtaking print newspaper advertising in 2010 as the largest advertising category, according to a report released Tuesday by Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a media investment firm.

Time to take another look at the marketing mix?

Professionals and prognosticators are always trying to predict the future. What’s next for stocks, fashion, the Web, etc. For online professionals, the question is more narrow. Who will be the next Google? What will be the next trend to take the Internet by storm?

I have no crystal ball, but in keeping with Flat Creek’s perspective that the old rules still apply, even in the face of exciting new technology, I believe the next wave of online success will not be new applications or features but more likely adoption of existing technologies. The ones who make money aren’t the ones on the cutting edge of a brand new idea. They are the second generation who gets the idea right.

Look at Facebook as an example. Friendster introduced the Web to the new concept of social networking, but just now Facebook (and it’s grown-up cousin LinkedIn) are really starting to hit their stride. The reason? There are two steps to every great product success:

1. Introduction
2. Adoption

Introduction happens when a new product or idea hits the marketplace. Think VCRs or PDAs. But it took years for those things to be adopted as an industry. Often the first movers (such as Friendster) were crushed and follow-up companies (such as Facebook) took all the glory. Yahoo was a big mover in introducing “search” to the Internet. Yahoo is now a distant second to Google, who came along with a better product and fast adoption.

Today, we see the widespread adoption of social media - blogs, for instance. The next wave of adoption will probably take place where exciting products are still being introduced - namely, mobile devices. As consumers, carriers, and device makers all step up to the plate, mobile data adoption will follow in a cycle of growth. What will likely not grow are podcasts. Just as with cell phones, quality is key to product adoption. Podcasts just don’t have the quality products or content to make it to the mainstream. Mobile TV, however, is a great new addition and will likely grow as new products are adopted.

Do you know what’s next in your industry? Contact us. We might have an idea or two.

If you work in the world of services marketing, Seth Godin’s blog is a must-read. It’s full of the sort of everyday observations that many marketers overlook from their insider perspective. It is a collection of posts about the forest, so to speak, not the trees.

One of his latest posts, “The Blind Squirrel Problem” retells his observation in a local store recently when a shabby student walked in aimlessly looking for a summer job. The store’s owner politely turned him down and Seth watched as the young man “headed across the street to more rejection at the drug store.”

Presentation – be it an ad in Times Square, a business card, a website, or an interview suit — is crucial to success. In marketing we often say “perception is reality.” Without adequate preparation, the perception is never going to be what we want it to be. Without stopping to check our plan against reality, we risk perpetually being a blind squirrel.

Seth concludes his parable with a word to the wise:

“Even a summer job is 400 or more hours of work. I wonder why he didn’t bother to invest three hours in advance, looking for a job worth doing?”

If your target audience is young, rich, and well educated, you need to advertise where they are watching TV online. According to Nielsen Analytics:

“Gerbrandt’s report states that Americans with access to broadband video are younger, richer and more educated than the rest of the public.

“Of all U.S. adults, almost a quarter (24 percent) have a college degree or greater. But the number increases to 35 percent among adults with broadband Internet access at home. And while only 17 percent of American consumers have an annual household income of $100,000 or more, that wealthy contingent accounts for fully 28 percent of those with broadband connectivity.

“They’re young, too. The 18-to-34 demographic represents 34 percent of those with broadband connectivity in their households, and the 35-to-54 demographic makes up 45 percent of those with home broadband access.”

The work we have done with online video has been incredibly exciting. It’s a new frontier for both audience and advertising. Those willing to take the leap will reap the benefits.

Too many times, as small businesses, we fail to think about paying for marketing services. As Forbes points out, sometimes that can be a fatal flaw in our planning.

While keeping a lid on marketing expenses is critical, at some point you have to pay up if you want to drive sales.

While competitors invest in online and traditional marketing, some business owners insist on doing it themselves — especially at professional firms. If you fall into that trap, consider this analogy.

You and your wife are building a new house. It’s your dream home and you’ve spent months drawing the plans yourself without assistance from an architect. You then start pouring the foundation, one bag of concrete at a time without a cement crew. The foundation is a little crooked, so building the frame yourself gets complicated quickly. Plus the rooms don’t quite line up right since you changed the floorplan at the last minute without updating the architectual plans.

This scenario doesn’t make sense does it? Doing your own marketing doesn’t make sense either. As professionals we think we can do it all ourselves. Architects think they can do their own accounting. Accountants think they can do their own legal. Lawyers think they can do their own marketing. And while yes, in theory anyone can spend $95 and build themselves a website, it’ll look just as ugly as the house you built on your own.

So whether you hire Flat Creek or one of our clearly sub-par competitors, bring a marketing professional to the table as you talk about your organization’s future or as you look for ways to sustain growth. It will be well worth the investment.

We’ve all seen the ads online that pop-up when you try to go to a new page. It’s a clever advertising ploy to essentially create a roadblock so you have to look at the ad before you go on to the page you really want.

When I see one of these pages, I immediately look for the “Skip this Ad” link, usually hidden at the bottom. But today I was going through Forbes.com and found myself at one of these roadblocks. As I instinctively looked for the “skip this ad” shortcut, I found instead “Skip this Welcome Screen” next to a “Thought of the Day” from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Skip the Welcome Screen? Why would I want to do that? I skip ads, not welcome screens. They’re welcoming me — heck, they’ve even given me a pithy quote — I should take a look here.

So while your day probably doesn’t begin and end with creating clever new advertising tactics for your website, or digging up quotes from Emerson, your day does involve interacting with your clients, coworkers and peers. So before you fire off that e-mail or wrap up that proposal, take a moment to think about the words you’re using. Put yourself on the receiving end of your message. The difference can go from disgust to warm reception.

While we see it most often with our political clients, any individual or company is exposed to the risk of getting trashed online. In politics, it means votes. In business, it means dollars. And as comment after comment piles on, each one nastier than the last, panic can set in. As BusinessWeek pointed out:

When the Web turns against them, executives are faced with the problem of how to manage the blowback. They have two choices: ignore the smaller furies and hope they won’t metastasize, or respond outright to the attacks. It’s rarely a good idea to lob bombs at the fire-starters. Preemption, engagement, and diplomacy are saner tools.

There are options. Flat Creek offers a blog clipping service that consolidated blog posts about our clients to give them a heads up about the online conversations that could affect their business and enable them to plan proactively in case an issue does pick up steam.

As an issue begins to heat up, we look at a range of options, but never ever ever is no response a good response. No response immediately gives off the scent of fear and only drives the conversation. Who knows? Most of the time, you have supporters online who are afraid to stand in the way of the mob. But if someone else does it first… it’s just as easy for a positive comment stream to get started as it is for a negative one.

As BusinessWeek advises though, preemption is always the best policy. We make prominent bloggers who write on topics of interest to our clients part of their media relations contacts. Often a blogger will want a lively comment thread but will not allow it to get out of hand with personal attacks.

Ultimately, as with any brand, it comes down to whether or not the experience matches the expectation. If you as a politician or company have not lived up to the expectation you sell, then honestly the online fury may be well deserved. The key is to stockpile goodwill through great customer service, a great product, or a principled message. So when - not if - you are attacked online, your supporters will be there for you and the issue can be neutralized.