I can see that the carnival is picking up in popularity as the number of submissions and the breath of content is much greater than when we hosted it about 6 weeks ago. There are a lot of great stuff out there, and it was tough narrowing our selections. Last time, we only got a couple of submissions that we were comfortable setting out there. This time we got plenty. I decided to stick with the rule of no more than 7 posts to make it more manageable for the reader.
We selected five from the submissions and two wild cards that we felt were compelling and needed to be viewed.
Jim Logan of Direct Response Marketer has some excellent insights for anyone (and that should be everyone in B2B business development) on the key components of a successful sales letter.
Mark Raynor of Search Prof posts another death knell to the world of traditional advertising. Market writes about how ads aren't even seen.
Are product placements just traditional advertisements in disguise? Steven Silvers of Scatterbox thinks so. In The Inevitable Death of Product Placements Steven shows you why. Any marketer should read this to understand the dangers of fake authenticity.
As a fan of one page plans, I was delighted to read Becky McCray's Small Biz Survival as she clues you into writing a simplified marketing plan.
Jason Wheeler of Marketing Is My Middle Name has a fun post that points out how paying attention and taking risk can pay off.
Fred Reichheld, one of my favorite authors, write about the use of Net Promoter Score in B2B markets. Where Does NPS Work Best? if a must read for every fast growth business.
Finally, Rob Marsh's Brand Story has a must read piece called Making Promises. Meeting Expectations. I'm sure you'll be interested in some of the observations made.
That's it for this week. Let me know what you think, just e-mail me at doug@imaginellc.com. Next week, the carnival visits Influential Interactive Marketing. You can submit posts to rohit.bhargava at ogilvypr.com.