Reading Time: 2 minI’ve heard this story a few times and I thought it was worth sharing. Back in the 1700’s, leadership in Paris was trying to get people to be willing to eat more potatoes. Among other challenges, potatoes had once been thought to cause leprosy, so people weren’t wanting to eat them. Antoine-Augustin Parmentier had a […]
Marketing
Strategy is a compass, not a map
Reading Time: < 1 minDefining the word “strategy” can be a tricky thing, and it often gets rolled into “tactics” a bit. In a recent podcast episode with Greg McKeown, Seth Godin laid it out rather well: Strategy is a philosophy of becoming. It is your way of thinking about who you seek to serve and the change you […]
The opposite of authentic is consistent
Reading Time: 2 minI’ve shared about the idea of authenticity on here a few times, both good and bad. Authenticity can be a huge step above automation, but it can also lead to laziness. In a recent episode of his “Remarkable People” podcast, Guy Kawasaki spoke with Seth Godin, and Seth laid out some problems with being too […]
Ruining a good thing by trying too hard
Reading Time: 2 minI remember back in elementary school we had an assignment to draw a map of a fictional city. I worked hard on mine, and it was great! However, I couldn’t leave well enough alone so I kept adding more and more stuff to it until it was a huge mess. Trying too hard created a […]
97% of web pages get zero traffic from Google
Reading Time: 2 minThings are changing quickly when it comes to getting your site to rank well on Google. A big one, as I shared a few months ago, is that 64% of visitors that use Google never end up visiting a traditional website, instead getting the answer from Google itself or from a related Google product (Maps, […]
Satisfying your customers isn’t nearly enough
Reading Time: 2 minSatisfying your customers is a good thing, and it absolutely beats the alternative. In most environments, though, “satisfying” falls far short of where you need to be. In the book “Raving Fans“, the authors argue for this very point: Blanchard and Bowles argue that there’s a clear distinction between satisfying your customers and exceeding the […]
Marketing automation works best when it’s backed by humans
Reading Time: 2 minIf you’ve followed my writing for very long, you know I’m not a big fan of automated emails. There are cases where they are done correctly and can be valuable, but the most common implementation seems to be “cool, let’s blast stuff out!”. If you’re going to automate, I suggest two main rules: It seems […]
But how will we track it?
Reading Time: < 1 minI recently saw a popular post on LinkedIn that said “To kill a great marketing idea in six words or less, just ask ‘how will we track it?’“ Initially, it sounds like a valid thought. If you can’t track it, why do it? Tracking can be quite important, and we track all that we can, […]
Almost all word of mouth is still offline
Reading Time: 2 minThere are a lot of influences in our lives, but word of mouth is still the top reason why people buy products and services. Ads are important, marketing is important, but people buy most often based on what other people have to say. Of that word of mouth, how much happens online? Most people guess […]
It doesn’t matter what you think your customers “should” care about
Reading Time: < 1 minLast month I shared a bit about how I feel the web should be these days. As I pointed out in that post, my “should” is irrelevant. I can push toward that better web to a degree, and I’ll continue to, but I also need to spend most of my time dealing with the web […]