Recently, I dealt with two huge face-less corporations. From an objective standpoint, I should have had the same experience with both.

Instead, the first company, of whom I’ve been a customer for 5 years, treated me like a person – a person with a problem that needed to be solved immediately. I got a call back, from a live human being within 10 minutes of leaving a message at an 800 number. This person? Offered to do whatever they could to help the situation – above and beyond his call of duty – even though the problem wasn’t his company’s fault.

The other company? I waited on hold for 30 minutes just to be told that they had no usable information. After conducting a very panicked investigation myself (with the help of the previously mentioned company) and then waiting another 15 minutes on hold, just to hear “Sorry, there’s nothing I can do,” this company lost a loyal customer of 11 years.

Both of these companies have excellent marketing. I’m sure both of these companies have excellent operational standards in place. But, from my experience as a customer, one of these companies was living their brand promise. And the other? After some searching, I think maybe they have forgotten that part of their brand completely.

As marketing and branding professionals, we have to think of all aspects of the marketing process, which include the traditional 4 P’s of the marketing mix – price, product, promotion and place. But in today’s market, those 4 P’s often aren’t enough. You’ve made the sale, now what? Sometimes we have to remind our clients to ask themselves – how do you keep that customer coming back? How do you turn a customer into an advocate? When price and product become a commodity, what makes YOUR company different? The answer is usually another P – people (or employees). And the service those people deliver.

Many companies pour the big bucks into promotion, external marketing and price competition and forget one of their most important audiences – the INTERNAL audience. Their people. You can provide the best product or service on the market – and have the stats to back it – but if your people don’t believe in it or don’t understand your brand, in the end, you lose. Those are the people who are the real face of your product – in their communities, in your businesses and, today, online. What does it say about your product if your own people don’t – or even won’t – buy it or recommend it?

In this day and age of shaving overhead and boosting the bottom line by using automated services – and a website – as your customer service solution, you can stand out by also making the investment in pleasant, informed, service-oriented people. Those people will pay you back in loyal customers – who are passionate about your brand and service (and will tell their friends) in ways that you can never calculate in ROI.

I just came from a great presentation in which Michael Kaufmann, CEO of the Pharmaceutical Segment of Cardinal Health, talked about what they have found to be the keys to success in developing women in their organization. I realized as I listened to him that the keys to success really translate to attaining goals that are tough to reach – any kind of goal.

Let me share the highlights:

1. Start at the top. If you want to get something challenging done, get engagement at the top of the organization. You need them for both their influence and their ability to tap resources.
2. Explain the business case. It doesn’t matter if it’s the “right” thing or if it makes “obvious” sense (to you). Build a business case for why accomplishing this goal benefits the organization and the people within that organization.
3. Involve a cross section from the organization. Don’t just tap the people most directly effected, create teams and advisory groups that represent the full organization (the people who won’t like the idea are just as important as your advocates).
4. Find your “truth tellers.” Build a small group of advisors who you know will provide truthful feedback, who have their fingers on the pulse of the organization and who understand your internal politics.
5. Use outside resources. Borrow everything you can, don’t build what you don’t have to.
6. Track data. Be committed to being accountable and determine what you’re going to track early on.
7. Be prepared to get uncomfortable. Attaining a bold goal is about learning, taking on a new challenge, exploring something that may or may not work. Challenge the status quo, take risks and know it’s okay to be uncomfortable.

Today we all have to be reaching for the next thing to stay ahead in our businesses. I believe these guidelines are sound business advice.

At the beginning of each year, I wonder what will be different? What’s changed? What did we learn? I found a Forbes article with a few ideas that I think are solid and worthy of more thought:

1) Simplicity will reign supreme. Yes! Everyone overcomplicates things. Simplicity will be rewarded. We’re all exhausted from trying to get your point.

2)  Smarter social media. We’re getting over the idea that we have to be using every social media tool. Who cares if you have 3,000 Facebook fans – is it actually going to impact your business?  It has to be strategically evaluated and implemented to show real value.

3)  Marketing will be more tied to revenue. The economic uncertainty we’re all learning to live with means when we spend money, we want to be pretty sure we’re going to see something in return. Marketing has to be more and more tied to performance indicators. I see this every day in my work and think this is a great trend, for clients and for agencies.

4)  Mobile will get its due. Man, there’s been a lot of talk for many years without a lot to show for it. But, no doubt, we will capture the power of mobile, eventually.

So the only trend I don’t buy in the article is: Campaigned-based marketing will take a break. Their point is that campaigns are based on company-based needs, not consumer needs. If that’s the case, they should have gone away a long time ago. But I think that is defining a campaign improperly. Good campaigns, based on resonating with something meaningful to the consumer, will continue to have impact.

Hey, agreeing with 4 out of 5 trends isn’t bad!

One thing I love about working in the digital space is the constant evolution of best practices. What’s effective today to reach target audiences and digital communities might not work as well tomorrow.

Creating just small digital success stories requires constant study, observation, implementation and reinforcement. Simply put – you have to pay attention to what’s happening now or you will waste a considerable amount of time and money that may lead to only mediocre results. And after all, who wants to spend money for yesterday’s stale donuts?

Check out these 9 marketing strategies you may want to reconsider in your 2013 marketing plan.

The idea of a cybernetic organism was fun to think about when “The Terminator” came out. I know I thought about how cool it would be to interact with something so incredible like the Terminator. Of course, on the other side, the horrible feeling of impending doom for the human race wasn’t quite as cool. Either way, it was still good fun to think about.

Well, I think some of the geeks back then mulled over that question more than the few minutes most of us other geeks gave it. Thanks to them, we now have the likes of Siri and the brain-demolishing supercomputer Watson. And who can possibly be scared of Skynet when we have the most horrifying technology of all time — the humanoid robot, CHARLI, who dances to “Gangnam Style” by Korean rap sensation Psy. Oh, the HUMAN-oid-ITY! (No, don’t get up, I’ll punch myself for that one.)

All joking aside, the simple truth is that technology is constantly evolving and becoming “smarter.”

Enter the “semantic search.” What is it, you say? It’s a type of search that tries to improve accuracy by understanding the searcher’s intent and the contextual meaning of the search terms. Here’s a nice description of Bing’s semantic search by Bing Search Director Stefan Weitz:

“What you’re seeing is the transformation of search,” says Weitz, “away from simply a place where you go and enter a keyword and get links back to being very contextual. It means Bing really has to be smart enough to both understand a bunch of different types of inputs and generate results in a way that makes sense given who the user is, what device they’re on, and what they’re trying to get done. Search is going to become this ubiquitous always-there thing that will help you get stuff done.”

How … sensible. That’s the sort of technological innovation you’d imagine the future having.

I suppose whether or not John Connor will be the human race’s savior remains to be seen, but couple things are for sure — (1) semantic searches are going to vastly change how we search the internet, and (2) SEO experts will have job security for some time to come.

Head over to Mashable to read more about Bing’s semantic search efforts.