by Daria Kelly Uhlig, Demand Media

Marketing is about influencing people who might buy your product or service, using messaging that conveys value. Old school marketing used traditional channels such as broadcast and print to communicate with the target market. New school marketers have kept the traditional methods that still work, and have combined them with digital technology to communicate with consumers on a different and deeper level. New school marketing relies heavily on such Internet channels as Web sites, blogs and social networks.

Shifting Focus

Constant Contact’s Social Media Quickstarter guide describes a marketing funnel that represents how companies prioritize lead generation and conversion. Old school marketing put prospecting at the widest part of the funnel. The first priority was to find as many consumers as possible, convert some of them into customers, and establish a relationship with a few of those customers to earn their loyalty. In his book, “Flip the Funnel,” author Joseph Jaffe acknowledges a basic tenet of new school marketing: there is high value in cultivating a loyal customer base and keeping it engaged with continued communications. Finding customers now occupies the narrowest part of the funnel — not because finding customers is less important than it was, but because the loyal customers now fill part of that role. Old school marketers were off the hook once consumers made the decision to buy. New school marketers devote significant resources to maintaining relationships with those loyal customers.

Social media is starting to take off its short pants.

It’s becoming all grown up. In fact, Facebook is now over 11 years old and heading towards platform puberty and is still the standout leader of the pack.

Google with its Google+ platform (with a development cost of over half a billion dollars) tried to take Mark Zuckerberg on, but it has become an incidental social network that isn’t taken seriously by many marketers.

They play there but don’t want to work there.

There are even rumours that Google is going to break it up into separate digital products by segmenting the components that got traction… like Google hangouts and photos.

The number of financial advisors who are gaining new clients through social media is growing, according to a survey released by Putnam Investments today.

In the 2013 Putnam survey, 49% of advisors using social media for business indicated that social media had helped them gain new clients. This year that number is up, with 66% of advisors reporting that social has helped them gain new clients.

The size of the new clients advisors are gaining through social media is growing too. This year, 39% of respondents who reported gaining new clients through social media gained new assets of more than $1 million, with an average gain of $5.5 million. The median booking was almost $2 million in new assets, close to triple the level reported by the 2013 respondents.

By April Rudin

By Martin Nana Baffoe Pieterson

Modern day marketing should focus seriously on customer retention, and this implies giving great customer services. This is the because the new marketing economy has become such that it is very easy to lose customers and thus get out of business. The factors characterizing the new economy places lots of emphasis on the consumer. Consider what consumers have today that they didn’t have yesterday:

1. A Substantial Increase in Buying Power: Buyers today are only a click away from comparing competitor prices and product attributes. They can get answers on the internet in a matter of seconds. They don’t need to drive to stores, parks, wait on line and hold discussions with salespeople. They have the comfort of doing all that through the internet

2. A Greater Variety of Available Goods and Services: Today, a person can order almost anything over the internet: furniture, washing machines, Books, etc. Moreover buyers can order these goods from anywhere in the world which helps people living in countries with very limited local offerings to achieve great savings. It also means that buyers in countries with high prices can reduce their costs by ordering in countries with lower prices