We Don’t Need Better Marketing

When I was growing up in Dublin home baking was the norm. Most families couldn’t afford the luxury of expensive, shop bought cakes, so ironically something like a mass-produced Mr Kipling’s French Fancy was seen as a decadent treat—the kind that was rolled out on a doily when you were having a special guest or…

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Why Strategy Must Come Before Tactics

What’s the best time to send a tweet? How do you develop a content strategy? What’s the easiest way to drive traffic to your website? How do you build a great landing page? If you can ‘Google’ the question and get an answer does that give you an unfair advantage over your competitors? Do you…

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Motivating People To Buy

Imagine you have taken your children on a day trip to the seaside. It’s the perfect day, the sun is shining, the waves are lapping the shore and you’re having a day that you’ll never forget. There is a new gelato shop across the street selling home made ices at $5 a scoop. Clearly as…

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10 Brand Storytelling Lessons In 2 Minutes

Take two minutes to watch this advert from IKEA. Those two minutes are guaranteed to change how you think about marketing your business. This video is more than just advertising designed to sell something—it’s a home run in brand storytelling. Ten things IKEA did to make their story great 1. Understood their customer’s worldview. They…

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The Battle For Your Customer’s Mind

You have no doubt seen the adverts for the Microsoft Surface Pro3….the tablet that’s a laptop. Microsoft goes ‘head to head’ with Apple again in this campaign and that’s the problem. Once you start asking the competition’s customers to rationalise choosing your product over theirs, you’ve misunderstood why people buy. Time and again advertising tries…

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Clever Marketing

Do you remember those TV ads that succeeded in interrupting or engaging us for sixty seconds? That’s what we used to call clever marketing. Today, clever marketing is no longer about creating the best advertising campaign, it’s about understanding your customer’s worldview and how they want to feel—then delivering on that. Clever marketing creates value…

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The Story Behind Your Metrics

Lines out the door. An email list that is growing at breakneck speed. Dozens of five star reviews on Yelp. More users, subscribers or members all adding to the value of your platform. These are the stuff entrepreneurial dreams are made of. Measuring growth and how it happens feels important. But ‘more’ isn’t the only…

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What’s Your Customer’s Narrative?

Why do thousands of people line up outside department stores waiting for the doors to open on Boxing Day? The stock is the same as it was two days before, after all— what’s changed is the story the buyer gets to tell himself. You are in the story selling business, as much as you are…

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How To Find Tomorrow’s Customers

Most businesses, whatever their size are focused on growth. We want more leads, more fans, readers or subscribers, who will become more customers, resulting in more sales and more profits. We usually have a plan to get them, which involves cultivating the people we hope will be tomorrow’s customers. And all the while we are…

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Value Creation And Stories To Believe In

Just 574 To’ak chocolate bars were produced in 2014 using hand sorted, heirloom cacao beans harvested from rare Ecuadorian trees. Each bar is engraved with an individual number, packaged in a Spanish elm wooden box and comes with a specially designed tasting tool (touching the chocolate with your fingers can alter the flavour). A single…

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