Posts Tagged ‘brand differentiation’
Making Things People Want
We are buying fewer pairs of jeans and more yoga pants, eating less gluten and more coconut oil. Trends are not simply a shift in behaviour, they are a sign of a change in the story we want to believe about ourselves. When you develop a product, service or platform it’s not enough to consider…
Read MoreNothing And Everything
“Have you got far to go with those?” the assistant asked, while looking me squarely in the eye, as he was deciding how best to pack my groceries. It was the tiniest gesture, nothing much, and yet it was enough to stop me in my tracks, because it’s not what we’ve come to expect. Nobody…
Read MoreThe Business You’d Want To Visit
Matthew Weiner, the creator of the wildly successful TV series Mad Men carried that script around with him for four years, shopping the idea to whoever would listen. During that time people asked him if he was aware of how uncommercial his idea was before they rejected it. The reason the folks at AMC agreed…
Read MoreWhy Did You Win?
Even when our innovation and marketing succeeds, we don’t always take the time to understand what’s working so that we can replicate it. We gratefully welcome and respond to prospective new customers every day, often without knowing how and why they showed up. Five questions to get you started 1. How did your last customer…
Read More10 Ways To Avoid Getting A One Star Review
Dear Business Owner who delivered a one star service experience, Yes, a bad Google review will hurt your business, but delivering the kind of service you’re not proud of and having to keep covering your back will crush your soul. How To Avoid A One Star Review 1. Care twice as much about how your…
Read MoreYour Most Important Customers
The most important customers (listeners, audience members and followers) are not the ones you gain, but the ones you keep. It’s all very well to measure how many people have signed up or walked through the door, quite another to understand who is really listening and what they care about. Numbers and foot traffic are…
Read MoreWhy Most Marketing Fails
It’s hard to communicate your value if you don’t know what the customer’s definition of value is. Most marketing fails because the marketer doesn’t understand the story his customer wants to believe, before he tells the story. So the real estate agent starts describing the proximity to great schools, without knowing if the couple has…
Read MoreHow To Get The Results You Want
In work, as in life we create a sense of balance by understanding what we want and what we don’t. We prioritize by wanting less of one thing and more of something else. Less overwhelm and more progress. Fewer things to react to and more results. Less busyness and more time. Fewer restrictions and more…
Read MoreRe-imagining Your Business Growth Mindset
How is your business going to grow? When we think about marketing we are usually thinking about tactics we can use to attract new customers. Our stories are often designed to make people who don’t notice or care to buy or switch. The other way to scale is to retain a customer—to gain both his…
Read MoreMarketing In The Connection Economy
Traditional marketing, conceived for an industrial age asks us to believe in the wisdom of the funnel. Create something for most people, compete for the interest of some of them and convert a handful to customers. Ironically what works in the connected economy, where our potential customers have access to information and choices, is the…
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