marketing
1,028 posts
Attention Deficit
Worldwide ad spending for 2017 is expected to reach $583.91 billion. That’s an increase of 7.3% on last year. We spend extraordinary sums of money and disproportionate amounts of time trying to get people to notice us—often without being specific about the end we have in mind. No business ever died
Three Ways To Sell
If you want to get more comfortable about selling, it’s helpful to consider which of these three sales techniques you use and to assess how they’re working for you. Describing This is the most common way to sell—one you’ve likely experienced or used. Describing the specifications, features and benef
The Art Of Customer Loyalty
How many store loyalty cards do you have in your wallet? How many more will you be offered this week? Do you still carry a wallet? We’ve tried to turn customer loyalty into a data-driven science. A game of, if we do this, customers will do that. In our desire for something to measure, or…
The Opportunity In Shifting Expectations
Your customers are changing. You are changing too. Notice how impatient we get now if we are second or third in a queue. In our world of one-click-ordering, instant downloads and movie streaming, we believe waiting is unacceptable. ‘Why can’t they just open more checkouts?!’ While it’s true that you
What Would The Enlightened Marketer Do?
When the email subject line contains the words ‘urgent alert’ there’s no doubt about the sender’s intention. His metric for success is the number of people who open the email today—the more the better. Instead of baiting people with messages to make them act, the enlightened marketer thinks about ho
How Could We Have Done Better?
Whether things go right or wrong, we instinctively understand there’s always room for improvement. And yet, remarkably, we rarely stop to ask ourselves exactly how we could have done better. Instead, we beat ourselves up about our failures—playing the disappointment over and over in our head. Or we
Anticipating The Next Move
Every successful business strategy is dependent upon making a good decision about the next move. In a commercial world, we spend a lot of time planning to create growth. Often those plans rely on getting the customer to do what we want them to do—so we can make our next move. The businesses that not
Louder Than Words
We’re obsessed with finding the right words to communicate our value. We finesse our LinkedIn bios, agonise over product descriptions and sales pages. Of course, words have enormous power. But they are worthless without the actions that support them. It’s no good describing how great your product is
What Do The Best Salespeople Do?
A young couple spent a while ‘just looking’ in the furniture store before approaching a salesperson to ask about fabric choices on a particular sofa. She showed them the swatches and said nothing. The guy asked if they had anything like it—a large squashy four-seater in leather. They didn’t. “What s
The First Rule Of Standing Out
If you want to stand out, do the thing that’s in short supply. When everyone is fighting for attention, be the one who earns permission. When everyone is looking for an angle, be the one who acts with integrity. When everyone is chasing growth, be the one who deepens connection. When everyone seeks
The Art Of Making Progress
If only your business had more media exposure. If only you could get the materials cheaper. If only all the reviews were positive. If only the website had more traffic. If only your colleagues responded. If only every employee listened. If only more browsers bought. We spend a lot of time thinking a
The Value Of Subtraction
The call centre operator’s power is limited. He can’t bypass the company’s systems and processes. He is employed to apply a band-aid to the wound—buying the company some time until someone in another department (who he has no direct access to) can solve the problem. He should be empowered to delight
What’s Your Failure Strategy?
Everything runs like clockwork when all staff members show up for the hectic Sunday morning shift at the cafe. Customers are greeted at the door, informed about delays and offered a drink while they wait for a table. The whole system falls apart when one team member calls in sick. Waitstaff double a
Noticed Vs. Remembered
For every ten things we do today to get noticed we will do one thing worthy of being remembered. The irony, of course, is what we want deep down is to do work that’s remembered—not just noticed. We only achieve that goal by redressing this imbalance—forsaking the desire for attention today, to doubl
How Much Do The Answers Matter?
Asking questions is a big part of our job whatever our role. We know we can enhance our products and services and improve client outcomes by asking the right ones and acting on the answers. So we send surveys. We listen to what people say and watch what they do. We go to the trouble…
The Transformation Business
When a woman wears heels her posture shifts. How she moves and carries herself changes—not just because of the physics and her altered centre of gravity, but often because of how wearing the heels makes her feel. Both her gait and her behaviour are transformed. Similarly, once the coffee drinker pay
Four Stories Every Business Needs
Every marketer knows he needs to tell his customers a story about what he’s creating—one he hopes will help them buy into his idea or buy his product. The second story is that of his existing customer and her relationship with his product or service. The best business leaders reflect on how using th
The Power Of A Shared Brand Narrative
The doors of the department store are barely open and Chris is setting up for a busy day ahead at Mecca. Most of the sales assistants at the other beauty counters don’t glance up as a customer walks through. They’re expecting tyre kickers this early in the day. Chris is different. He’s aware and att
Mean It Like You Say It
The Sunday ice-cream scooper at the gelato place on Spring Street makes new customers sample every flavour before they buy anything. She knows her gelato inside and out. Her enthusiasm is infectious. She reels off the most popular flavours and tells stories about how pistachio lovers always return t
The Incremental Advantage
Despite what we know about how distracted our customers can be and how endless their choices are, when it comes to our messaging and marketing, we often overestimate our ability to cut through. You only have to spend five minutes watching someone scrolling through a feed on their smartphone (try it)
