Can people tell what your company does in just a few seconds after getting to your website? And why they should care? It’s important that they can.
The home pages of many websites suffer from diffuse messaging. This is often the result of internal political struggles over that most valuable of Internet real estate. Continue reading
I can’t tell you how many times SMB owners and senior executives have said to me, “We can’t afford to do marketing” as if it were a cost center. Marketing done right returns many times in revenue over what it costs.
Companies aren’t always willing to share their marketing ROI data, but here’s a greenfield example I ran across in the annual report of AFA Protective Systems, a $70 million company that installs fire and burglar alarms and other types of security systems. In their 2014 annual report the CEO wrote: Continue reading
The majority of marketers who adopt the agile methodology report that their teams are more productive, get campaigns to market faster, and improve their business results. Employees also often report significant satisfaction with the agile method. A key organizational principle of agile marketing is the sprint. Continue reading
As marketers we should be talking with customers ourselves and bringing research to sales. But whether it’s an enterprise sales rep closing $1 million deals or a retail salesperson in the clothes section helping people buy something that looks good on them, salespeople have orders of magnitude more customer contact than we ever will. So be close to your salespeople and learn from them about your customers. Continue reading
Around Christmas it’s not uncommon for companies to send consumers small product samples in the mail. And if you’ve ever owned a small business you’ve probably gotten sample company pens from promo companies. Done more creatively dimensional direct mail is a good way to get the attention of a prospect who has otherwise been ignoring your other marketing. Continue reading
A few weeks ago a senior executive of Facebook predicted that it would be all video in five years with no text or photos. That seems highly unlikely to me, but it does reflect the rapidly growing importance of video for storytelling and engaging with audiences. There’s a good reason why brands will pay so much for TV ads. Continue reading
If the overnight success of Pokémon Go means anything, it’s that augmented reality has entered the mainstream and will be understood by many more people. And augmented reality (AR) has many applications in marketing.
For those who haven’t heard of AR, it’s adding data or images to images of the real world. While it can be done with a special headset it’s far more accessible if it’s done with a smartphone camera and app. Continue reading
When people see your messages multiple times in multiple places they are typically more effective. One cross-channel opportunity is to advertise to your prospect or customer list with Facebook’s Custom Audience feature.
Upload your customers’ email addresses or phone numbers into Facebook Custom Audiences and it will match them with its members (for privacy reasons it deletes immediately ones that it doesn’t already have). Continue reading
Before women could vote in national elections they got a shoe specifically designed for them: Keds. It’s a classic example of marketing: identify a market segment (middle class women) with a need (a more comfortable shoe), and create a product specifically to meet that need. Keds didn’t try to be everything to everyone, and that was central to its success.
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Influencer marketing involves getting key industry influencers to promote your products. Every industry has influencers. They can include reporters, analysts, VCs, etc. In this tip I’m talking about social media influencers.
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