Reading Time: < 1 minJay Acunzo recently shared a great new marketing metric that I want find a way to measure. How often do people reach out to you, unsolicited, because of something that you wrote or said? Worded a bit better, from Jay: Without gaming it, without asking for it, once you “get in front of” others, do […]
Marketing
Draw attention to the flaws
Reading Time: < 1 minTrust is one of the most valuable assets you can have in a business relationship, and a great way to build trust is by pointing out some of your own flaws. This can happen a few different ways. First, as I shared a few years ago, is the idea of sharing weaknesses that the audience […]
Asking “how did you find us?” almost never works
Reading Time: < 1 minIt’s common in business to ask your customers “how did you find us?”, as it can be very helpful as you work to understand where to put your future marketing spend and effort. The problem is that the answers you get are almost never accurate. It’s not that people are lying, but they simply can’t […]
Where do your customers form their opinions?
Reading Time: 2 minGoogle is increasingly becoming a place where people go to find a specific website or company, but not where their journey really begins — it’s more often where their journey ends. However, the data can make this seem a little confusing. As shared by Rand Fishkin, this chart shows which sites drive the most traffic […]
How your brand can grow
Reading Time: < 1 minMost companies are looking for ways to grow their brand, and options for doing so are nearly limitless. However, some strategies will work much better and have longer-lasting results than others. In his book “This is Marketing“, Seth Godin lays out his overall philosophy on this: The truth is that most brands that matter, and […]
Word of mouth only matters if people know what they’re sharing
Reading Time: < 1 minWord of mouth remains one of the top ways that people hear about a business, and that’s unlikely to change. However, word of mouth is only valuable if people understand what they’re sharing. In the book “Contagious“, they share this idea: When trying to generate word of mouth, many people forget one important detail. They […]
Guarding the potatoes
Reading Time: 2 minI’ve heard this story a few times and I thought it was worth sharing. Back in the 1700’s, leadership in Paris was trying to get people to be willing to eat more potatoes. Among other challenges, potatoes had once been thought to cause leprosy, so people weren’t wanting to eat them. Antoine-Augustin Parmentier had a […]
Strategy is a compass, not a map
Reading Time: < 1 minDefining the word “strategy” can be a tricky thing, and it often gets rolled into “tactics” a bit. In a recent podcast episode with Greg McKeown, Seth Godin laid it out rather well: Strategy is a philosophy of becoming. It is your way of thinking about who you seek to serve and the change you […]
The opposite of authentic is consistent
Reading Time: 2 minI’ve shared about the idea of authenticity on here a few times, both good and bad. Authenticity can be a huge step above automation, but it can also lead to laziness. In a recent episode of his “Remarkable People” podcast, Guy Kawasaki spoke with Seth Godin, and Seth laid out some problems with being too […]
Ruining a good thing by trying too hard
Reading Time: 2 minI remember back in elementary school we had an assignment to draw a map of a fictional city. I worked hard on mine, and it was great! However, I couldn’t leave well enough alone so I kept adding more and more stuff to it until it was a huge mess. Trying too hard created a […]