Friday Five: Marketing mix edition

Some recent news and views of interest to marketers:

1. The ad-supported internet: a $1 trillion impact. A recent study commissioned by the Internet Advertising Bureau takes a look at how the ad-supported internet contributes to the U.S. economy. Marketing Dive reports that it supports 10.4 million jobs and had an economic impact of $1.121 trillion in 2016, or 6 percent of gross domestic product. That’s double the economic contribution since 2012. “This study makes clear how crucial the ad-supported digital sector is to the expansion of the broader U.S. business landscape,” said John Deighton, who directed the current and earlier versions of this research. “The internet fills an ever-widening role as market-maker to the U.S. economy, first as a retail platform, next complementing traditional advertising media, then becoming a mobile platform to reach people on the move and now as a platform to make markets in on-demand services.”
2. What change agents can learn from marketers. In most organizations, marketers aren’t typically seen as founts of wisdom for leaders. But this two-part series (part 1 | part 2) from Change Management Review offers six lessons to change agents from the marketing world. “Traditionally, change management and marketing are distinct functions and rarely cross paths,” writes Theresa Moulton, editor-in-chief of Change Management Review. But both rely on “psycho-demographic insights,” and because “change management professionals rely on motivational factors to implement change effectively, they can learn significant lessons from their marketing colleagues, starting with the basic tenets of marketing best practices.”
3. A good resource on social media resources. Last April, Liz Gross (@lizgross144) put together a great list of social media resources — books, blogs, podcasts, Twitter chats, etc. — designed to assist the social media neophyte. But it’s a helpful site for anyone involved in social media marketing or management.
4. For social success, think like a television network. More than six years ago, I wrote a blog post about the importance of thinking like a media organization for marketing success. Now, marketing maven Jay Baer (the author of two books listed in Liz Gross’s aforementioned social media resource list) suggests that thinking like a television network will lead to social media success. “[I]nstead of thinking about a ‘social media’ strategy,” Baer writes, “you really need to adopt a Twitter strategy, and a Facebook strategy, and an Instagram strategy, and a LinkedIn strategy, and beyond. This is also how television conglomerates operate. … For each social platform where you are active, identify the distinct strategy, audience, metrics, cadence, and programming that makes sense for that platform.” Good stuff from a smart social media marketer.
5. All the experiential SXSW marketing things. Via AdWeek, a collection of experiential marketing from the recently concluded SXSW event in Austin, Texas, modestly titled “The Ultimate Roundup of This Year’s SXSW Experiential Marketing Activations.” It’s always worth taking a peek at some of the latest marketing fads to be tested at this annual event. And even if, as Fast Company says, SXSW is dead, and marketing overload killed it, you can expect the event to come back from the dead a year from now, with even more marketing overload.

Happy weekend. And if you’re celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, be careful.

Photo via Pixabay.