Nancy Rathbun Scott is a writer, editor, marketing strategist, film producer, and entreprenuer whose prolific career has encompassed work for a variety of organizations, both commercial and nonprofit. Nancy has authored five books, written weekly columns for USA Today, produced numerous print and online publications, and regularly pens articles for executive clients. Nancy’s company, Liberty Communications Group (www.libertycommunicationsgroup.com), provides editorial, public relations and marketing consultation. Contact: nancy@nancyscott.com

Three months ago I conceived homeinvasionnews.com. The content strategy was three-fold: 1) demonstrate my ability to create content for any topic, including one with which I had no experience; 2) demonstrate the added value of content displayed in a dynamic format; 3) demonstrate the various formats in which content can be presented. I was able to take Home…

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“Get near any group of marketing professionals and you’re likely to hear a chorus of ‘mobile.’” In fact, mobile is pretty much all we think about, according to a press release announcing availability of Mobile Marketing: Plans, Trends and Measurability: What Do Marketers Think? Some 560 respondents, split between corporate management and marketing/sales management professionals, spilled…

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Amanda Moshier’s “How To Write A Blog Post in 30 Minutes or Less” hit home for me – and not because it has anything to do with writing a blog in a half hour. In addition to being organized, opinionated, and authentic, Amanda makes the point that good blogging involves dogged, persistent background work. She says, “Get outside….

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 In February, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council released results of a study that show today’s marketers struggling to innovate while keeping up with exploding technology. Dubbed Unify to Multiply Marketing Ecosystem Effectiveness* [whew; that’s a mouthful] the report shows chief marketers scrambling to centralize data, while extracting meaningful knowledge from vast volumes of transactional, behavioral, and attitudinal information. The…

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• Google News now features automatic personalization. “Last summer we redesigned Google News with new personalization features that let you tell us which subjects and sources you’d like to see more or less often. Starting today — if you’re logged in — you may also find stories based on articles you’ve clicked on before.” • Wrangler asked…

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Production Solutions in Vienna, VA, did something interesting. They took a current mail piece and calculated how much it would have cost to produce the same piece a decade ago (in 2001). Guess what? The cost to mail a test package today appears to have fallen 17% below the cost to mail the same package…

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Fifty percent of new marketing leaders are hired to fix broken marketing organizations, according to the Chief Marketing Officer Council (CMO). So, how are these new corporate change agents going about the difficult and complex process of transforming global teams? “In essence, a new CMO has to become a “super-bonding agent,” helping disparate elements in…

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“Augmented Realty” (AR) may be the next big move in marketing, say observers. Sound implausible? Inc. magazine reports that the” Visit St. Petersburg/Clearwater” marketing folks are already doing AR via an application that lets users put themselves – or at least an image of themselves – at a hot ‘n wet location via mobile phone….

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What exactly is “marketing automation” and what can it do for today’s B2B marketing operation? April Brown, president/CEO, Rubicon Group, offered her views at the April 6 Marketing Automation 101 webcast sponsored by DM News with Eloqua. Brown explained that marketing automation is fundamental to four practices common to B2B marketing – data management, lead…

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Evidence is mounting that mobile may be the marketing medium in the next two years. Everywhere we turn, new, fun, and ever-more-creative adaptations of mobile marketing are being reported. Groupon is launching a mobile app – Groupon Now — that opens up a list of time-specific daily deals, coordinated to the user’s location. Mashable notes…

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While he was tramping around Peru, Peter O’Neill, a web analyst from Australia, dreamed up a blog about achieving excellence in “joined-up” marketing. Peter concludes that the marketing management tools and web analytics that measure revenue at various online touchpoints don’t reflect the contribution of offline activities like friends’ recommendations, using multiple computers when ordering,…

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Real life stories are the best examples, so here are a few that tout the value of QR codes. Perfect for social medial: TDN recently featured a post by Heidi Tolliver-Nigro, “What Are You Doing To Compete with Email?” Richard Munoz, one of the commentators, noted that “more and more personal messages are reaching me…

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Bare Deal likes to describe its coupon service as “Groupon meets Netflix.” Its founders are a couple of Northwestern grads who mail (yes, mail) coupons to consumers who’ve asked for them, requiring payment only when consumers use the coupons. Bare Deal co-founder, Glen Andrianov, explains through an example. ”This week, we are  featuring the company,…

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I received a press release from Pitch PR touting a Chicago-area company that’s got “a new way for business to market their services electronically/paper-free.” For $199 a year, Pitch says a business can go green, go mobile, and “stay in touch.” It can create “electronic brochures, flyers, messages, schedules, electronic business cards, and more.” I…

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Some would argue that significantly successful copywriters are born not made. I suppose you could say the same thing for long-distance runners or sculptors. The talent is there, but the perfecting is in the practice. With that in mind, perhaps the rest of us can learn from these classic, time-tested copywriting tactics employed by some…

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