Matthews on Marketing

Matthews on Marketing

Marketingspeak: Why Are They Called ‘White Papers’ Anyway?

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White papers are a staple of B2B marketing. We write them to explain complicated topics or products to our customers. We read them to try and glean what our competitors are really doing. Did you even wonder why they are called white papers at all? Since most documents are printed on white paper, the modifier “white” would seem redundant, and too generic to differentiate from other documents. The term was coined by the British Government to distinguish shorter informational documents with … [Read more...]

Smirnoff and WOM Marketing Vodka

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One of the best examples of WOM marketing comes not from this century or the last century, but from the 19th century. And, it happened in neither the United States nor Western Europe, but in Russia. As retold in Linda Himelstein's fascinating The King of Vodka, Pyotr Smirnov, father of the now-worldwide Smirnoff vodka brand (rebranded using the more popular French spelling), faced the imposing challenge of making his product stand out among the competition. At the time, Moscow had hundreds of … [Read more...]

Marketingspeak: Who Coined the Term ‘Funnel’?

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The funnel is a shorthand term for describing the route by which prospective customers, or prospects, become customers. The visualization of the process looks like a funnel. A larger number of prospects go in the top and are reduced to a smaller number of customers who come out the bottom. Marketers use the term every day, but who came up with the funnel visualization in the first place? Interestingly, the idea for the funnel visualization was a refinement of a previous visualization, also … [Read more...]

Be the Buyer Day: An Easy New Year’s Resolution

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Every marketer knows they should know their customer, but few truly make the effort. It’s hard and takes commitment. Customers are busy and can be maddeningly difficult to get on the phone. A sales rep may not want someone from Marketing talking to their customer. Marketing teams can be so busy with internal meetings their existing workload that finding the time can be a chore. Like many New Year’s resolutions, putting the customer first is obvious, we know it’s good for us, and yet…Just like … [Read more...]

Marketingspeak: Why’s It Called ‘Boilerplate’?

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Marketing is full of jargon, anachronisms (B-roll comes to mind), acronyms, and new expressions dreamed up almost every week. We use them all the time, almost without thinking. I've done my best in The Professional Marketer to dig in and find their origins. This week, from my chapter on the press release, is boilerplate: "Boiler plate" originally referred to the small metal plate that identified the builder of a steam boiler. The term was borrowed by the printing industry, where plates … [Read more...]