As organizations of all types look to reduce overhead while maximizing output, cost-cutting measures have become a key focus at every level of management.  In years past, companies would evaluate organizational tasks and hire accordingly, creating a wide variety of positions that were focused on very specific silos of activity.  For example, marketing departments of the past had a vice president overseeing a group that would include graphic designers, web designers, statistical analysts, product managers and marketing coordinators.  Each had their specific group of skill sets and when working on a project, each would tackle their slice of the whole.  Anything outside their area of expertise was usually assigned to outside hires like consultants or contractors.  This resulted in extended project timelines and exorbitant overhead expenses.

The modern world and its dire economic realities has resulted in many organizations looking for ways to cut expenses of all types, resulting in leaner departmental resources and requiring each individual to wear many more hats than previously required.  Smart managers have embraced this fact and worked to recruit individuals with broader experience backgrounds and then encouraged the further development of these skills.  Additionally, these managers have invested in robust tools to enable these individuals to execute projects to their utmost potential.  This has resulted in payroll and other overhead decreases.

On the individual level, each skill that a worker brings to the table adds value to an organization and the broader their total skill set, the more value they create.  While the old adage “It’s better to do one thing very well than do several things mediocre,” still rings true, having a wide range of capabilities allows a worker to handle the day to day tasks and know when it’s appropriate to pull in outside help.  This gives them the ability to manage consultants or contractors by speaking their language and understanding their specialty.

An example of this is hiring a marketing manager that has basic design and web management skills so that regular updates to site or email content can be executed in-house.  When a larger update is required, this person will be able to evaluate, hire and manage an outside contractor with a solid understanding of what is included in the project.  Another example is hiring sales reps that have a basic background in marketing so that they can use the resources created for them with a minimal amount of oversight or support from other parts of the organization.

Another advantage of a broad skill set is that it can actually make the employee more proficient in their primary role.  Whatever that role may be, there are a wide variety of associated skills surrounding it.  Knowing what to do or at least having a general understanding of those skills can help ensure that they perform their primary function to the best of their ability.  If  a programmer has a primary responsibility of coding in a certain language, for example, it can be very beneficial to become proficient in other programming languages to get a better understanding of the entire ecosystem they’re submerged in.  While it may not be required, learning associated proficiencies will give them an edge over others and add additional value to their role within the organization.

From an organizational standpoint, it again comes down to value proposition.  Any organization would rather someone who possesses a wide range of abilities over someone with a limited skill set.  Someone who can fill numerous voids within an organization becomes much more valuable than someone limited to just one, which also limits their visibility into how the organization works as a whole, and dramatically decreases their value.  Going back to the sales example, a company would much rather hire someone that can facilitate the entire sales process from start to finish over someone that’s just good at making sales calls.

Organizations are constantly evolving and the individual role must evolve as well.  What was an important skill set to have in the beginning might be completely different a few years down the road and smart companies encourage their employees to grow and evolve to fit these needs.  Being ready and willing to leverage additional abilities when they’re called upon is another prime advantage to diversifying your skill set.

In a time when organizations are becoming leaner and more cost-conscious, the required skill set of the organization must broaden to compensate. Smart companies are looking to encourage self-sufficiency as a way to create more capable, flexible and efficient processes.

Why?  Because if you generate the right demand, you’ll generate the right leads.

When you think of growing your business, you typically think about sales.  It doesn’t matter what type of industry you’re in, sales is king!  The question, really, is “How do you generate leads that ultimately convert to paying customers”.  If you answered “lead generation,” you’re only half right.  Generating demand for your business is the Holy Grail.  Lead generation is a subset of generating demand and generating demand requires all the skills of a Zen Master.

While there are numerous ways to generate demand through traditional, online or other marketing tactics . . . so much of your success is based on knowing your audience and using the most effective type of marketing tool to target them.

Generating demand could mean many things, but if you’re trying to build a captive audience that will continue to accept offers from you as your business grows and your products and services evolve, you must master the art of lead gen through using all the right mobile marketing tools for the right audiences.

Generating Demand is all about knowing your audience.  If you’re just keeping your eye on the prize (a.k.a. your lead number) you’ll miss the prize itself: your lead quality, or better yet, your “potential for conversion.”  In other words, if you focus on generating the right demand, you’ll automatically get the right leads.  Generating demand is marketing at its purest.  There are so many channels through which companies make their best efforts to reach the right audience, and choosing the most effective based on your goals should be step number one.

Leads are ultimately generated from demand.  Generating demand is a combination of Ninja skills that utilize the best marketing mix possible while understanding your audience through the process.  Here are some of the most basic skills you must hone in order to bring in leads that will ultimately convert to loyal and paying customers:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Keep the traffic to your site flowing and leverage the power of being contextually optimized for search engines.
2. Display advertising – To keep your “marketing pond” stocked with fresh and eager leads (pay attention to those raising their hand vs. those that simply don’t mind if they’re bothered) place your offers/banners (e.g. webinars or whitepapers) on highly relevant and trafficked 3^rd party sites (not to mention your own).
3. Lead nurturing and tracking – Use a reporting tool that gives you click tracking and click-stream tracking so you can see your conversions.
4. Tiered offerings for early, mid and late-stage buyers.
5. A comprehensive social strategy that allows you to “listen” to your audience.
6. An integrated marketing solution that combines email, SMS and Social Networking tools to target your audience the way they want to be reached.
7. ROI tracking and reporting to know where you’re spending your money.
8. A willingness to be transparent and share your knowledge with your audience (a.k.a. transparency to earn respect and credibility).
9. An auditor’s mind-frame – To understand what’s going right or wrong and why.
10. Less is more – Focus on quality of content not quantity of leads.  If you don’t, you may just end up generating incredible lead volume with far less interest in converting.

Hone these skills or partner with someone to help you hone these skills and you’re sure to see traction in your lead generation efforts.  Your demand will flow and leads will follow, but don’t stop there.  Continually monitor your results and optimize your strategy accordingly.  What works in the beginning may not work continually, or one tactic that works on one particular audience may not work on another.  Mastering the art of lead generation through generating demand requires a multi-level strategy, but the end result in terms of the leads placed at your disposal is well worth the effort.

We’ve just added some new features to mobileStorm that our users have been asking for and here they are:

• You can now view Delivery Confirmation Receipts for all carriers in your SMS delivery report

• Any failed MT (Mobile Terminated) SMS Messages will now show in your SMS delivery report

• See the exact date and time that SMS messages have been sent when you export your SMS Inbox

• You can now expand parent email events in “email campaigns” to see the individual “recurring” scheduled events

We’ve also broadened our carrier reach adding Cellular South and nTelos to the list of carriers our clients can text through. This increases potential audience reach by over 5 million people.

We continue to upgrade our product on an ongoing basis to ensure that all our client’s needs are met.

If you’re a client you can benefit from all the most recent updates now. If not, we encourage to go one-on-one with our marketing professionals and take us for test drive at http://www.mobilestorm.com/pro/schedule-demo/.

Until our next update . . . it’s back to the kitchen to keep perfecting our recipe.

All the best,

The mobileStorm Team

It’s that time of year, again, when the biggest names in the gaming world converge on Las Vegas for the Global Gaming Expo from November 17th – 19th and, you got it . . . we’ll be there.

Casinos in general have taken a pretty hard hit during the downturn in the economy which, not unlike any other industry, has forced them to pursue new cost effective yet results driven and engaging solutions to revive the lure of the casino life.  mobileStorm has been working with Casinos for years to help them make better decisions and lay out new marketing strategies for targeting their audiences and bolstering their brand.

At G2E, mobileStorm and some of the biggest Casino’s in Vegas will show how mobile marketing will change the way Casino’s do business. We’ll be blanketing the Strip, A large Casino and the show with a “real-time” demonstration of our mobile marketing platform doing customer acquisition for one of the largest Casino’s in Vegas. We’ll be tackling one of the biggest challenges facing Casino’s today:

“how to turn people into players”

So between November 17th and the 19th, keep your eyes peeled up and down the strip and come visit us at Booth #858 in the Central Exhibit Hall.  Come visit with our team of mobile marketing team that will make 2010 your year of growth.

We’re looking forward to showing you how 2010 will be a year of growth.

Directions to our booth:

1. Enter through any entrance at Central Exhibit Hall
2. Immediately walk to the right
3. Follow the signage to the Technology Pavilion
4. At the Technology Pavilion turn left on the first row
5. We are booth #858 on the right hand side, just before you turn the corner at the back of the Pavilion

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Hear it from the experts on Jeremy’s Desktop, Saturday, September 26, 2009 at 2pm PST.

CEO and founder of mobileStorm, Jared Reitzin, will make a special guest appearance on Jeremy’s Desktop, to demo mobileStormGo, and answer questions from the audience about how to get the most out of e-mail marketing.

Log on to www.technewsla.com to see the live demo, and to learn ways to optimize the performance of your e-mail marketing campaign.

Register for Jared Reitzin’s guest appearance on Jeremy’s Desktop today – space is limited. Click here to register now: http://bit.ly/DPz3p

* Jeremy’s Desktop is the online edition of Tech News, powered by Make It Work, which airs on KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO every Saturday 1pm – 2pm Pacific. It is hosted by Jeremy Anticouni, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Make It Work, Inc., and renowned radio talent, Tim Conway, Jr.

No one knows this better than the one person who knows more about dogs than dogs do. Cesar Millan learned the hard way, that email delivery is a skilled practice that demands effort and attention and persistently laying down a solid routine (not unlike training your pooch to stay off the couch).

When you take your eye off the ball for so long . . . things start to get out of hand. There are fundamentals to email marketing that will help you avoid a perfect storm that causes email delivery to go into a tailspin.

The biggies are:

• Collecting email addresses without verifying them

• Letting your email database go stale without updating your addys

• Old databases create the perfect climate for “spam traps,” which can ruin a sender’s reputation and cause delivery issues at ISPs.

If any of this sounds familiar . . . know this: The fixes for these types of situations are rarely found in a fire & forget solution. It’s more likely that you need an expert ear to hear you out and, then, an expert hand to roll up the sleeves and do some digital marketing plumbing. While there are no “quick” fixes, lousy delivery rates can totally be turned around. For instance you can:

• Identify all subscribers who had never opened or clicked on an email message

• Segment the data using certain specific time criteria

• Remove obvious non-engaged subscribers from your list

. . . but there’s a lot more.

Cesar’s case isn’t much different than others trying to ride the bucking bronco of email marketing, which rarely promises instant results and, more often than not, requires skill, patience and an expert helping hand. In Cesar’s case delivery went from a paltry 81.29% to a screaming 99.7% (now that’s more like it!).

You can find out more about how stop your email delivery from eating your wallet by reading the Cesar Millan case study.