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demand generation & marketing operations
Thursday, May 31, 2012 in More from ReadyTalk
Mike McKinnon manages ReadyTalk’s demand generation activities and
is responsible for the tracking and measurement of all
campaign activity. He is also responsible for revenue lifecycle
managment and making sure marketing and sales are aligned.
Mike has 15 years of B2B marketing experience from agency work
doing market research and public relations as well as business
development for various high tech companies. Mike
lives with his amazing wife and two amazing daughters who keep him
busy. When not busy with his family, Mike spends his free
time climbing rock and ice. Connect with Mike...
read more
Monday, July 13, 2009 in Audio and Web Conferencing
Throughout recent years, the use of social media has skyrocketed
(see: http://socialmediaatwork.com/social-media-statistics/).
People everywhere are using twitter, facebook, myspace, linkedin,
and the endless other social media sites to stay in touch with
family and friends, promote businesses, find people, and discover
new information. These tools are intriguing, yes, but the real
question is whether they are useful for marketing, or just a
sidetrack that will put you hours behind in your...Read More » »
read more
Friday, July 10, 2009 in Audio and Web Conferencing
In my last post I explored the slightly (or highly) unpleasant
inconveniences of saving the environment. We can all envision
ourselves as the heroic saviors of our mother nature by waking up
at 4 AM to bike to work and later sorting through the trash to find
items to compost/recycle, but it is actually executing all of these
things that is the problem. Luckily, there is a way to go green
that requires zero self-sacrifice, and will actually save you
money.Let’s think about this new “going green”...Read More » »
read more
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 in Audio and Web Conferencing
What does “going green” mean? Does it mean saving all of your money
for months on end to go out and buy solar panels, an electric car,
or “off the grid” kitchen appliances (when all you really wanted
was that special 60 inch flat screen TV)? Does it mean only taking
a shower every 3 days instead of 2 twice daily? Does it mean only
consuming locally produced food for the rest of you life, and thus
never being able to eat those delicious peaches that only grow in
Georgia? All of these things do,... Read More » »
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Monday, June 1, 2009 in More from ReadyTalk
At ReadyTalk, a growing portion of our business is what we call our
Event Services. Our event services department is responsible for
the scheduling, managing and execution of our customer's webinars.
We have seen this section of our business grow tremendously over
the past year. Webinars are web conferences that usually have a
large number of participants and are used mainly for education or
lead generation. For instance, we have one client in the medical
industry that uses their webinars to... Read More » »
read more
Thursday, March 5, 2009 in Webinars
I am currently working on lead scoring here at ReadyTalk. The first
step for me was to sit down with the sales team and decide on what
constitutes a qualified lead. This in terms of demographic profile
(title, industry, function) as well as behavioral attributes
(visiting web page, attending a seminar or downloading a
whitepaper). Most of the literature I read about lead scoring has
you assume that at a certain lead score, a potential buyer is ready
to be called upon. On the surface, this seemed... Read More » »
read more
Friday, January 9, 2009 in Audio and Web Conferencing
To tell you the truth, I'm getting pretty full of these podcasting
"Ps." Luckily, there are only a couple left, so I'll finish them up
so I can move on to something else like - oh, I don't know -
carrots? Once you've started producing your podcasts, you'll need
to "Publish" them so they're available for listening. Publishing
consists of three main steps: Host: Your podcasts need to be
available for downloading via the Internet. You can either host
them on your own website or use a podcast hosting... Read More » »
read more
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 in Ways to Use ReadyTalk
My podcasting "Ps" are pretty much frozen by now, but I'll reheat
them and serve up another helping. The last "P" I talked about was
"Planning." Once you've done that, you're ready for the next "P":
"Producing." This is where the "Ps" really start to get good.
Producing podcasts consists of creating the content and recording
it. Here are some best practices to keep in mind as you produce
your podcasts: Content is king. Make sure the content is something
your listeners will value. Also, get to the... Read More » »
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Wednesday, November 19, 2008 in Webinars
So far, my blogs on podcasting have served up 3 "Ps" talking about
the "Popularity" of podcasting, the "Pros" of including podcasting
in your communication strategy, and the "Possibilities" for
podcasting topics. Now I'll add some meat to those "Ps", meaning
I'll try to give you some information on podcasting that you can
actually use. In this blog, I'll discuss how to "Plan" your
podcasts (yes, I'm still dishing out "Ps"). One of the most common
problems that plagues podcasting is "podfading,"... Read More » »
read more
Thursday, November 13, 2008 in More from ReadyTalk
No doubt the current economy is forcing some companies to rethink
their travel policies. To make matters worse the cost of travel is
increasing faster than inflation. According to the American Express
Global Business Travel Forecast, the average cost of a domestic
business trip — including airfare, lodging and car rental costs —
will rise 6% in 2008 to $1,110. The average cost of an
international business trip will rise nearly 7% to $3,171. The
projected increases in travel costs are likely to...Read More » »
read more
Wednesday, October 22, 2008 in Webinars
Unified Communications (UC) has been a buzz word floating around
the telecommunications industry for some time now. However, very
few people understand what UC is or what it can do for your
business. As a web conferencing company, we are ultimately
interested in tracking this trend because web conferencing is a
form of communication. Cisco's purchase of Jabber is a strong case
for the emerging presence of UC. So, what is Unified
Communications? According to the International Engineering... Read
More » »
read more
Thursday, October 2, 2008 in Webinars
In previous blogs, I've been discussing the "Ps" in podcasting. The
first "P" was the "Popularity" of podcasting, The second "P" was
the "Pros" for companies to podcast. The third "P" of the peas in a
pod metaphor I'm hacking to death here is the "Possibilities" for
business podcasts. It isn't exactly enough for a meal yet, but hey,
I'm getting there. You can blog about anything or nothing, and many
people do. The same is true for podcasting. But if you want people
to actually listen to your... Read More » »
read more
Friday, August 29, 2008 in Webinars
ReadyTalk is located just a quarter mile from the Democratic
National Convention (DNC) which has been an interesting experience.
From a marketing point-of-view, it has supplied some great web
conferencing campaign opportunities. We offered Denver businesses
free web conferencing and audio conferencing so they could
telecommute while the DNC kept them out of their offices. There
were also over 15,000 journalists in town that covered the event.
We joked about running through downtown holding a...Read More » »
read more
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 in Webinars
When I was informed that my primary task at ReadyTalk would be
garnering competitive intelligence (CI) for the web conferencing
industry, I was intrigued by the idea but did not know what to
expect. Despite not being very educated on the subject of CI, I
started formulating a plan based on what I knew and a list of
guiedlines to follow. I admit that I was excited about this project
and eager to get started. Over a month has passed since the
briefing on the CI task and I am pleased to report that... Read
More » »
read more
Friday, August 22, 2008 in Webinars
At ReadyTalk, we are constantly thinking about new and creative
campaigns we can run that will help our customers get more out of
their web and audio conferencing or get non-users to start using
our conferencing service. Sometimes these ideas comes like bolts of
lightening and the campaign comes together without a hitch. Other
times ideas are hard to come by and you are stuck with campaign
block. Ideas for campaigns are everywhere;we just need to be
looking and listening for them. I have been in... Read More » »
read more
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 in Audio and Web Conferencing
The Democratic National Convention is in town next week. There is
alot of preparation going on as secruity is being put in place,
routes are being mapped and highways are being closed. The Denver
Post reports that some companies are forcing vacation time while
others are telecommuting for the week. Being located in the middle
of Downtown Denver, we are also feeling the crunch of tightened
security and increased traffic. To help the local companies out
during this week, we are offering free audio... Read More » »
read more
Tuesday, August 12, 2008 in Audio and Web Conferencing
We have been busy here at ReadyTalk over the past several months
putting on some final additions to our new release this Fall. This
release is more of a UI re-design and terminology change to keep up
with the changing demands of the web conferencing market.
Currently, our product allows you to manage on-demand meetings or
web events. The distinguishing feature between events and meetings
being that events required registration. This created two issues
for us. Customers doing on-demand meetings... Read More » »
read more
Wednesday, July 30, 2008 in More from ReadyTalk
Over the past several weeks, our team has been evaluating marketing
automation systems, which will help us have quantifiable
measurements of our campaigns, a more systematic way of nurturing
prospects and scoring leads and a better idea of ROI. I wonder
about the adoption rate for these technologies. Our customers range
from extremely sophisticated with complete marketing processes and
supportive technology in place, to being unaware that these
technologies exist. This sophistication seems...Read More » »
read more
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 in Audio and Web Conferencing
What causes your participant's to drop off of your webinar? Why are
your events consistently losing listeners? Well, MarketingSherpa
might have the answers. MarketingSherpa gives us this nifty little
bar graph to show the to reasons for webinar drop-off. According to
their research, the top reasons are:
Content was not as advertised
Presenter read from slides Webinar was too salesy Already knew the
information Webinar was 1 hour long Presenter spoke slowly
As expected poor content and... Read More » »
read more
Thursday, July 24, 2008 in Webinars
My peas that I planted this summer are really producing
right now. That's more than can be said for my contributions to the
ReadyTalk blog lately, ever since I came up with the peas in a pod
metaphor a few weeks ago to talk about podcasting. In that blog
entry, I introduced the first "P" in podcasting - "Popularity" -
and argued that both the popularity and potential for podcasting
are growing. (Okay - that was 2 "Ps", but who's counting?) Spurred
into action by my garden, I'll continue with the... Read More » »
read more
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 in More from ReadyTalk
I have been at ReadyTalk for one month now and my efforts have been
focused on competitive intelligence. This requires me to perform
infinite research on a number of ReadyTalk’s competitors. In the
past few weeks, web conferencing has become my new best friend. I
can tell you who the market leaders are, what features each service
offers and why a “free conferencing” service is not really free
conferencing. My summer began in Ghana, Africa where I was
on a Social and Economic Study Tour. Three... Read More » »
read more
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Bo Bandy
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Paul Carollo
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Jason Collins
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Dan Cunningham
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Brandon Hess
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James Kenly
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Teresa Lawlor
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Mike McKinnon
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Michelle Nikolayevsky
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Beth Toeniskoetter
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Susan Ulrich
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Kelly Valdes
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Simone Verhulst
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Anita Wehnert