Straight Talk Blog
Ted Rubin
Web Retailers: Focus on Experience, Not Conversion
Focusing on the user experience rather than worrying solely about conversion rates shouldn’t be a novel idea, but too often the numbers take precedence over how we reach them. Not all conversions are created equal. If you optimize your app or website only for...
How To Use Snapchat To Grow Your Business… Ted Rubin interviewed by @PhoebeChongchua
Snapchat is gaining a recognition as serious platform for brands but will it actually help your bottom line? It will depend on how you use the social media platform and what your goals are. Finding and connecting with the right audience can be challenging. I invited...
How Marketers Are Tackling Social Media In 2016: An Interview With Ted Rubin ~via @Workfront_Inc
How are marketers adapting to changes and challenges in social media in 2016? Why are some teams succeeding in responding to customer needs on social media while others fail? Last week, Marcus Varner and Scott Duehlmeier from the Workfront Corporate Marketing team sat...
Take Advantage of the Social Time Lag…
One of the advantages of social over face-to-face interaction is that it can take some of the inherent nervousness out of the listening process. Digital conversations allow for the type of measured, detailed responses that are rarely possible in a face-to-face...
Why the Wall Between Sales and Marketing Needs to Come Down
That old, moss-covered wall between sales and marketing in the brick-and-mortar world has been showing its age for a long time now. It’s great to see that the wrecking balls are on-site, and they’re clearing the way for the type of collaboration that has long defined...
Marketing: If Content is King and Connection is Queen, Context is the Little Prince
Know your audience. It’s old advice, but still as relevant as ever in a marketing world dominated by content. I’d just like to add that it’s also important to let your audience help you create context. You might be the creator, but your content must “feel” like it...
Three Tips for Small Business to Improve Their Digital & Social Presence
Here are Three Key Marketing 101 Lessons that never go out of style and all Small Business Owners need to remember: 1- You are NOT Your Customer—Do Your Research: One of the most important lessons every marketer should remember is to market to your target audience—not...
Three Tips for Small Business to Improve Their Digital & Social Presence
Here are Three Key Marketing 101 Lessons that never go out of style and all Small Business Owners need to remember: 1- You are NOT Your Customer—Do Your Research: One of the most important lessons every marketer should remember is to market to your target audience—not...
Three Tips for Small Business to Improve Their Digital & Social Presence
Here are Three Key Marketing 101 Lessons that never go out of style and all Small Business Owners need to remember: 1- You are NOT Your Customer—Do Your Research: One of the most important lessons every marketer should remember is to market to your target audience—not...
How Does A Commodity Become A Must-Have Brand? DAVID & TED TALK ~via @davidbrier
Must-have brands. Ooh, just the the thought of having one. Enough to make a grown CEO cry. MUST-HAVE BRANDS. A SHORT HISTORY. Old Spice. Oreo. GEICO. Each of these brands is a household name, the goal and hope of nearly every company or its CEO. So how the heck does a...
How Does A Commodity Become A Must-Have Brand? DAVID & TED TALK ~via @davidbrier
Must-have brands. Ooh, just the the thought of having one. Enough to make a grown CEO cry. MUST-HAVE BRANDS. A SHORT HISTORY. Old Spice. Oreo. GEICO. Each of these brands is a household name, the goal and hope of nearly every company or its CEO. So how the heck does a...
How Does A Commodity Become A Must-Have Brand? DAVID & TED TALK ~via @davidbrier
Must-have brands. Ooh, just the the thought of having one. Enough to make a grown CEO cry. MUST-HAVE BRANDS. A SHORT HISTORY. Old Spice. Oreo. GEICO. Each of these brands is a household name, the goal and hope of nearly every company or its CEO. So how the heck does a...
Most Colleges are Starting-Up this Week…
The benefits of being comfortable with face-to-face interaction are evident in everything we do from family interactions, to workplace effectiveness, to travel... and the ability to work with people in any situation we may encounter. The best time to start developing...
Social Selling Isn’t About Selling
If there’s one marketing mantra that will always be true for businesses, it’s “Know Your Customer.” Whether you sell shoes, dry cleaning services, computer software or multi-million-dollar widgets, that’s the one maxim that will never change, no matter what happens to...
Two New Yorkers Collaborate to be the Voice for Restless Brands
Anyone who knows me knows I am all about the power of relationships. Every once in a while, something unexpected happens that seems almost too good to be true. So two months and 53,000 YouTube views ago, I had no idea something this unpredictable would happen…. Over...
Habits, Hacks and Mindsets… Ted Rubin and @GarvanCS
Streamed live on Jul 4, 2016 The habits, hacks and mindsets for energy renewal, self management and success from the man who evangelizes the phrase 'Return on Relationship'... TedRubin.com, Straight Talk Via One Percent Daily: Imagine Your Life in 100 Days if You...
Branding Genius: Old School Tactic Crushes a $40 Billion Market ~via @davidbrier
They ignore all the brand rules of retail: Sell nothing online. Encourage touching and interacting with products. A lot. (Even scheduling visits to try out their showers in their stores.) Include no technical information for brands and products. Give away free...
The Store is No More: Capitalizing on the Experience
The dominance of e-commerce has changed what we expect from the brick-and-mortar retail shopping experience, to the point that some major brands are toying with saying goodbye to the old model altogether. Trying to match the convenience, selection and clean navigation...
Smart Brands Have Noticed We’re Moving to a “Connection Economy”
Things ARE changing. Traditional advertising certainly isn’t extinct, but there is simply too much noise out there, and people are sick of it. They’re shutting out the blast advertising that has crept into every aspect of their lives and centering in on the things...
Six Words to Never Utter in Today's Business Environment…
The six words to never utter in today's business environment... “We’ve always done it this way.” Empower your employees to collaborate with each other, float new ideas and try new ways of getting things done. Stop thinking in terms of silos of information and people,...
What is Your Social ID?
Brand identification is changing right along with the other shifts social media has brought about. It is no longer as much about the company logo, the colors, or whether we use our middle initial in visual materials or not; it is now about “Social ID”—our voice and...
Walmart Acquiring Jet.com… #FAIL in the Making
Let’s be clear, in NO way, shape, or form is Jet.com a “rival” of Amazon... it’s like comparing a small market minor league baseball team to the NY Yankees. So let’s hope the media can drop the hyperbole when discussing this acquisition. AND this is also NOT about the...
Instagram Stories, Very Smart Move by Facebook…
Instagram Stories: I have been posting in response to others posts, here's a quick summary... Very smart move by FB. More tools for creating continent, all sounds good to me. Just make sure to play where your consumers play. I believe Instagram will pull a lot of...
Integrated Commerce: Just Hype or the Ultimate Customer Experience?
A clothing retailer’s ideal customer has a recurring nightmare. They’re in a dressing room with the four-to-six pieces the clerk has allowed, staring at themselves in an unflattering mirror. Not only is the lighting awful (is my skin really that green?), but piece...
Build Your Brand Reputation With Kindness
What does it mean to build a reputation? I’m not talking about brand recognition, or even the quality of the products or services you offer. Those things are important; however, a reputation is something more. It’s the little things…those moments of unprompted...
The Power of Social Influence
In 1997 when I joined Seth Godin at Yoyodyne, people were calling the internet new media. But there was nothing really new. It was simply traditional media in a new wrapper — nothing new at all. We are now entering the era of “new media.” Media is now aggregated, not...
3 easy ways to make a personal connection ~via @ATTSmallBiz
Perhaps you’re a small business and you don’t quite know how to make that personal, emotional connection with others. Ted Rubin, acting CMO of Brand Innovators, has some creative ideas for you. Rubin learned one of his earliest lessons about making a personal...
Busting the Myth of Marketing to Millennials
Depending on where you get your marketing advice, or if you pay any attention at marketing conferences or just about every marketing newsletter, you might be reading a lot about a newly discovered species called “Millennials.” We’re not sure what planet they came...
Ted Rubin on Looking People in the Eye ~via @itsjessicann
Welcome to Episode 19 of The Art of Humanity, where we explore creativity + consciousness to allow you and your business to evolve. In Episode 19, Jessica Ann talks with Ted Rubin. Many people in the social media world know Ted for his enthusiastic, energetic and...
3 Important Lessons About Building Your Email List
Growing your list is not simply about numbers... it's about adding value to what you do. In order to ensure that happens, the following are important parts of the process... 1. Permission is a privilege, not a right: Consumers do not owe us their attention, and they...