Author Archives: Chris Lucas

About Chris Lucas

Chris is the Vice President of Business Development for Formstack. He manages many of Formstack's marketing efforts with a special interest in discovering how social and online marketing can help Formstack grow. Formstack is an online form-building tool that takes a lot of the headache out of collecting and managing data online.

Stop Building Crappy Software – Integrated Software Still Wins

Posted on by Chris Lucas
69
Using software as a service

Here is something internal CIO’s and your internal tech teams don’t want you to know, the 18-month software implementation that just cost you $500K – $1MM could be done a hell of lot cheaper…and should be.  They are building job security because most C-level leaders and marketers don’t understand how technology can and should work. As marketers we all want the software equivalent of a unicorn. The one that does lead generation, content creation, lead scoring, conversion optimzation… oh, yeah, and has an analytics layer on top of it. And, as … Continue reading →

The Problem With “No Comment”

Posted on by Chris Lucas
97

No Comment has been the protective blanket that companies and individuals have used as shields whenever bad news or public scrutiny arises. In the old world where media took press releases as gospel and where companies were able to control the message No Comment worked to buy the company some time. Today, No Comment doesn’t work. Ask Tiger Woods. Online social media tools allow everyone to comment. It means that if you or your business is not meeting potentially damaging news head on, people on Twitter, blogs, 24-Hour “news” shows … Continue reading →

You’re Not Sexy, Now What?

Posted on by Chris Lucas
126
Not Sexy

We once had someone tell us that we, or rather our form building application, wasn’t “sexy”. In some respects I guess that person was right. Forms, by themselves are not sexy, but to the people who use them and depend on them to gather data, they are, if not sexy, pretty damn important. So how do you, a business owner, marketer, etc, that has a product or service that isn’t “sexy” make it “sexy”? Here are a few ways. Tell Your Customer’s Story: Chances are that you have some interesting … Continue reading →

Dick’s Sporting Goods Driving Social Media with Email

Posted on by Chris Lucas
36

Last week I found a great example of a really unobtrusive way to use email marketing as a way to drive traffic to social media. The email came from Dick’s Sporting Goods. It was a simple, well-designed email that had a very simple call to action: Follow us on Twitter and receive an exclusive discount code: Why it’s good Dick’s did a good job of using a traditional tool, email marketing, to drive traffic to one of those shiny new social media tools.  What a lot of marketers overlook is … Continue reading →

Your Brand Should Be On Social Media

Posted on by Chris Lucas
223
social-media-bridge

Every now and again I come across posts talking about how people don’t want to “engage” with brands on social media and that your brand shouldn’t be there, it should be people, etc., etc. The latest was a post from Mike Seidle, a local blogger and business person. I want to preface that I don’t know Mike and I have nothing against him. I  follow him on Twitter and I think he generally has some good thoughts about business blogging and social media, however I still disagree with Mike on … Continue reading →

What Job Does Your Customer Need Your Product or Service To Perform?

Posted on by Chris Lucas
180

I attended a great event yesterday called the Innovation Summit, which was put on by Indy-based TechPoint. Clayton Christensen, the speaker, professor, and author from Harvard University spoke about Disruptive Innovation and did a remarkable job. One of the points that he made toward the later part of his presentation was about figuring out what job your customer needs your product or service to perform. He gave the example of a milkshake and how, through market research, a restaurant received great input about taste, ingredients, etc., for their milkshakes.  After … Continue reading →