6 vital elements of a marketing story that sells.
As everyone will tell you, (including me here) marketing is about stories, stories that resonate, are remembered, that generate empathy, and lead to an action, and hopefully if your effort is to be rewarded, a transaction. So what are the elements that make a...
Intersection of sales, marketing and technology
18 years ago running an ingredient supplier to the food industry as a contractor, I sponsored a project of quantifying a range of ingredient specifications against a matrix of organoleptic, and cost outcomes given a range of processing parameters. Our...
7 tips to improve your marketing.
Marketing has changed very rapidly from the mass outbound marketing upon which all the marketing theory and practice until about 2000, to what is often called "inbound" marketing, or in other words, finding ways to attract customers to you. There is now a...
5 ways small retailers avoid failure
Small retailers see themselves as under siege, and many just hunker down and work harder to survive, for many, it is too hard. For those that survive, some are doing really well, and there seems to be a few common themes. Few are doing them all, but all seems to be...
2 tools SME’s have to have
Most SME's I see are run by a single person, without the benefit of any sort of advisory board beyond those with whom he/she has dinner sometimes, when they get the time. The hats they wear make Josephs coat look bland. CEO, CMO, CTO, COO, CFO, CSO,.... The...
How can you do it to yourself???
I just had another of those really, really annoying phone calls from a call centre, and being a marketer, I cringed with shame and frustration. After I answered, it took probably 5 seconds for the person on the other end to answer me (memo call centre managers:...
7 parameters of a C21 marketing scorecard
Developing metrics to measure the impact and ROI of marketing is becoming a game of choice around competent boardroom tables. Given the level of marketing engagement around many of those tables, it seems sensible for marketers to take the initiative. Following are...
“Design” is a verb
Design is often used as a noun, "I will do a design for you" is common. However, when you think about it, design is not just a thing, an end product, it is a process of moving from an idea, through iterations, to a final form. It is a verb. "To design" should be a...
Design doing
Steve Blank is one of the real thinkers in the innovation space who gets out there into the weeds and gets stuff done. The illustration at the top of this post is one from a recent post on his blog that makes the very real point that everything should start with the...
Flying pigs and the carbon tax.
Last night (July 29) I watched Rod Simms (ACCC chairman) interviewed on the ABC about the price reductions consumers can expect from the removal of the carbon tax. He was assuring us that consumers will receive these benefits because in effect the ACCC had the...