Intuitively, viral marketing makes sense. It’s free exposure. People like it. They tell their friends. It gets covered in USA Today. With thousands of people aware of your business, how can it not turn into clients?
How indeed.
The problem with this thinking is the same problem with traditional marketing. It’s the belief […]

Most businesses and marketers have an almost dogmatic faith in the power of “Awareness.” It’s one of those self-evident truths that if lots of people know about you, you’ll get lots of business.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.
Awareness is just the critical first step. But on its own it counts for nothing. […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about blogs lately. At first I was skeptical about their use as a marketing tool. But then I did my own informal research and now I’m convinced… you need a blog.
Ok, not everybody needs a blog. Just the ones who have something worth talking about. But […]

Today I read some marketing advice that made me cringe. This “traditional” marketing firm (which shall remain nameless) recommended that when entering a market you study the most successful of your competitors so you can become just like them. The presumption was that if they’re successful they’re doing something right, so what they’re […]

The marketing world has an unhealthy fixation with creativity. Billions of dollars and countless hours are spent to develop and disseminate witty words and fancy graphics. They labor and they spend as if it actually worked; as if their creative genius somehow subverts our will and compels us to buy.
Look at the […]

The marketing world is struggling to understand the new marketing landscape. The old ways are crumbling as a new marketing order emerges.
Maurice Levy, chairman-CEO of the venerable Publicis Groupe, summed it up nicely:
“The way the consumer is changing is something that has never been seen before. It’s not just a change in […]

Here’s an exercise to give you clarity on your business and how you market it.
Start by creating a vision of the kind of client you want. Write down a profile, complete with a name, a background, likes, dislikes, lifestyle, etc.
Then, write a storyline about how they would come to find out about you. […]

Here’s another one I see every day. I call it the Small Goal Paradox.
The small goals are the easiest, right?
Dead wrong.
Big, really big goals are actually the easiest. Why’s that? Because big goals excite people. They’re something people want to be a part of, to support, to talk about. In short, […]

Seriously now. “Ingredients for Life”
Safeway! What were you thinking? Or more precisely, how could you let your ad agency get away with that?
Imagine that breakthrough meeting. The “creatives” struggling deep into the night. Wringing their brains over Chineese food and Red Bull. In the absence any “Big Idea”, it comes in […]

For a business, targeting is the absolute most important thing you can do.
There was a time, in the halcyon days of marketing, when targeting was simple. All you had to do was pick the demographic characteristics you wanted then push your ads in front of them through the media they pay attention to.
The old […]

Pundits have proclaimed the “death of the mass market”, everybody’s telling you to niche and you’re wondering what happened and what to do about it. What happened was, in the last five years, the world changed. The culprit? You guessed it: the internet.
The internet fundamentally changed the competitive landscape. Sure, the internet gave the world […]

The Referral Paradox results from the belief that happy clients should logically lead to lots of referrals.
But the reality is that happy clients rarely lead to referrals.
And to make matters worse, the typical response to this is to offer the happy client a referral bonus. And that doesn’t work either!
Perplexing, yes?
Actually, no.
Here’s what’s going […]

Why would a person choose your business over the competition? Is there something that makes you really stand out? Something that makes people say, “Yes, that’s for me”?
If not, you’re not alone. In fact, you’re running right with the pack. And that’s a problem.
It’s a problem because today, finding someone better for […]

They’re everywhere. Leering insurance agents… who can save you “up to 40%.”
State Farm Insurance put them there — on busses, on billboards. Creepy looking insurance agents, complete with their phone numbers.
This is a case study in irrelevant advertising.
First of all, is anyone impressed by the “up to 40%”? That just means, “You […]