“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I don’t know which half.” John Wanamaker, famed department store magnate and difficult advertising client, is reputed to have said this around the turn of the 20th century.
No doubt Wanamaker spent plenty of money on advertising to drive traffic to his store, and he used the best techniques of his day─target as best you can, hope your message connects and get corresponding results if you’re lucky. Ironically, this basic marketing approach lasted from Wanamaker’s day until just a few years ago. But times have changed and so has the opportunity to target and measure marketing with precision. You’ve heard of Google right? Paid search is the most fundamental change in ad targeting in 100 years. And now Facebook enables ad targeting with arguably even more precision.
But here’s the thing: Using these remarkable new marketing tools is not enough. To get the most out of them requires a new marketing approach that lets you benefit from the precise targeting and measurability. We call this approach Marketing Intelligence.
Marketing Intelligence is a way of using data-driven decisions to guide the planning, implementation and adaptation of marketing campaigns.




Five Ways Pinterest Can Benefit Your Business
After nearly a year of meteoric growth, Pinterest has become the third most popular social network after Facebook and Twitter. For those who haven’t already jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon, the site is a virtual pin board that lets users save, categorize and share images from around the web.
According to Mashable, Pinterest receives an average of 1.36 million visitors each day, 68 percent of whom are female. While Pinterest’s traffic has declined in recent months, it still presents a huge opportunity for companies to expand their reach.
Business Benefit #1: Traffic
One of the site’s most obvious business benefits is referral traffic. The third-party measurement company Shareaholic recently found that Pinterest referred more traffic to sites than Google Plus, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.
To harness Pinterest’s referral power, first make sure your content is pinnable. You can test how well your content transfers to Pinterest by installing a “Pin It” button to your bookmark toolbar and using it to pin images from your own site. You can also install a “Pin It” button directly on your site. read more