I bet you answered “profit,” but ask yourself if that’s really what you’re focused on. The siren song of growth is powerful and it wrecks many a marketing plan. Too many companies establish goals like “doubling sales in five years” without thinking through the profit implications. Would greater economies of...
A face can launch 1,000 leads…
B2B marketing Rule #4: If you need a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to engage your audience visually, add a face! The vast majority of people find other people fascinating, or at least impossible to ignore. So capitalize on that when considering B2B marketing graphics. Remember that before you can...
Marketing without good content is an emperor without clothes
Marshall McLuhan famously declared “the medium is the message” way back in 1964. Fifty years later, we still seem to focus on questions like whether LinkedIn is a better social media platform than Twitter — Even in business-to-business marketing. Maybe that’s because it’s much harder to figure out how to...
“Something” beats “nothing” every time
Every marketing challenge is different and therefore deserves thought and a creative solution. But I still find it useful to consider a few rules of thumb, the first of which is: “Something” beats “nothing” every time. In other words, it’s always better to do SOMETHING to promote your product. On...
What’s in it for YOU!?
If this headline grabbed you, you’ve revealed the power of psychology without substance. Ultimately, closing the sale in a business-to-business transaction depends on offering substance that addresses real self-interest, even if that self-interest is more emotional than logical. You can’t win with psychology alone. But you need to understand how...
Which buzzwords would you ban?
The Wall Street Journal just asked CEOs to answer this question and they got some interesting results (see them here). Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza offered “push the envelope,” though I think his reason is wrong. (I suspect most people do understand the phrase’s meaning, even if many don’t know...
Are you working with an overconfident gorilla?
A recent book argues persuasively that we can’t be terribly sure of our perceptions, memory, or self-assessment (The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simons). But I think my favorite insight was learning that although confidence is a trait that varies from person to person, it actually has little...
