Fishing for leads.
Lead generation has always been a real challenge for marketers, an obsession for many. Billions have been spent on misguided, irrelevant and wasteful activity in the name of lead generation. So, the question remains, how do you find and engage leads through a process...
Marketing suicide
The stupidity of the functional silos that deliberately separates an organisations capability to deliver value and service to their customers, and the way the customer experiences those services never ceases to amaze me. A friend of mine has a mortgage on his home,...
6 things you must do to get your email opened
Much of Email marketing has become a bit like the electronic version of the letterbox stuffing junk mail. Marketers are aggressively and creatively finding ways to collect email addresses, then directing traffic to the addresses in the expectation that a few...
7 characteristics of the successful leaders I have seen.
Reflecting on the behaviours of the best people I have seen in leadership positions over my 35 years of playing in this area to a friend a while ago, it seemed to come down to a small number of discrete behavioural characteristics. I know there are libraries full of...
8 simple ideas to navigate social media.
For many small business people, Social media is a mix of mystery, distraction, and something that at some level they feel they should know about. However, they have seen too many stupid cat videos, observed the stream of consciousness that can be...
Marketing’s new middleman
In the 35 years I have been practising marketing, absolutely everything has changed. Well, almost everything. What has not changed are the foundations. The recognition that delivering value to a customer is the "raison d'être" of marketing, and that seeing everything...
Unravelling the mysteries of Social Media
Believe it or not, Social media is a mystery to many, particularly those of us of a "certain age", many of whom are running their own small businesses. They know it is important to their businesses, know that their competitors are probably using it too beat them over...
What really adds the value?
What is the difference between a cookbook of recipes and tips/secrets by a top chef, and the stuff you turn out at home using the book? Usually a fair bit, surprising really when you have all the information necessary to create and present the dish to hand. The...
10 strategies for SME’s to beat the supermarket gorillas at their own game.
Any business that has done business with the supermarkets knows that they are not there to do you any favours. They have shareholders to keep happy, customers to sell to at the lowest prices possible consistent with their margin objectives , competitors to beat, and...
Marketing Plumber
You know the old story, the plumber who goes around fixing other peoples dripping taps, but has a houseful of leakers himself. This site has been my home since march 2009, and it has been full of leaking metaphorical taps. All the things I admonished my clients to do,...