In marketing, you often hear about how important it is to stay in touch with the people already in your pipeline. If you are familiar with the Pareto Principle, you know that 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your customers, and that principle is meant to point out that nurturing your best customers [...]
Have you noticed that – with certain types of marketing – there is an emphasis on having a flashy number or a volume of validation, but it doesn’t always translate to a similar increase in volume of sales? The idea of vanity metrics is a polarizing one, so let’s discuss it here. The point of [...]
It has been a volatile time for Twitter of late. With a new leader in Elon Musk, staff layoffs, and feature changes, this is a time of adjustments and new decisions. Whether or not you are actually using this platform for marketing, there is a lesson to be learned here for every small business. Those [...]
When answering marketing questions for clients, one thing I hear a lot is, “Is it better to do _____ or ______?” The blanks are filled with all sorts of comparisons, such as discounting vs. not, doing a free or a paid webinar, sending people to a free resource or one that has a cost, using [...]
No two businesses need the exact same marketing strategy. Clients often go into the process of creating a marketing strategy with an expectation that there are certain platforms or features that have to be included – perhaps because they have felt pressure to do that type of marketing in the past. As someone who believes [...]
One question that often comes up for businesses during a pre-launch phase (for the entire business or for a new product or service) is how to research the market for it. Many business owners have heard of market research and have a general idea that they should do it, but then spend time circling around [...]
An opportunity came up recently for me to write a chapter in a business manual about marketing strategy – particularly how it relates to formal business plans. It was a great opportunity, and I was honored to be considered. As I started to look into it, I realized that the way we often represent marketing [...]
When was the last time you used a Yellow Pages book? Once a staple in every home in the US, it isn’t nearly as easy to find this resource anymore. As the world went digital, new tools became available to find what we needed. Yet, in the last 5-10 years, I have had so many [...]
There is a conversation that has come up a few times this year for me with other service providers, and it is one that I want to share with you today. It is about the concept of marketing ROI. ROI – or “return on investment” – is a popular phrase, but I wonder whether it [...]
Creating automation in your marketing plan is a topic a lot of people don’t realize they have strong opinions about until they think about it in the context of their own business. Today, let’s unpack the idea of automation with all its pluses and minuses, as well as some of the guideposts I’ve settled on [...]