Reading Time: < 1 minThis term has been around for a long time, but I hadn’t noticed it until very recently. It has to do with sharing new ideas, and “anchoring” them to something people are familiar with and then “twisting” into how the new product is different. It’s similar to Seth Godin’s concept of putting your new product […]
Marketing
Are your requests scaring customers away?
Reading Time: 2 minWhen we’re developing a website, we work hard to make sure that every single page has a goal. The call-to-action (CTA) might be to sign up for a newsletter, reach out with more questions, or to simply continue on to another article for more information, but you have to have something there. Too often I […]
B2B isn’t really a thing
Reading Time: < 1 minOur marketing agency focuses on serving “B2B service-based companies”, and it’s worked out very well for us. However, “B2B” (business-to-business) isn’t really a thing. For example, we work with a logistics company, but we’ve never spoken with “the company” — we talk to people like Geri and Wade. We work with a land planning company, […]
Selling versus hustling
Reading Time: 2 minFor a while in the early years of our company, I didn’t like the idea of selling. I wasn’t against doing it, but the idea of it just felt kind of sleazy. My experience with salespeople had been for things like cars where it always felt like they were trying to hustle you. Over time, […]
You won’t be discovered, and that’s ok
Reading Time: < 1 minYears ago, many people desired to be “discovered”, particularly in industries like music. Make some great stuff, and then hope that the right person hears it and can vault you to stardom. Those days are long gone, but it’s ok. These days, with sharing so painfully easy, any great talent will quickly be shared and […]
More content doesn’t mean more traffic, except when it does
Reading Time: 2 minIf you’re striving to get your site to rank higher in Google, you often hear two big things: Google loves more content and Google loves fresh content. Neither are necessarily true, though they’re not necessarily false either. For the sake of simplicity, let’s consider “more content” and “fresh content” to be the same thing. If […]
Eliminate to get great
Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve mentioned a few times on here that the more you polish a piece of writing or a speech, the shorter it will generally become. As you refine your points, you can find easier ways to get things across and allow people to understand your point with few words. These great quotes from Blaise Pascal […]
Features aren’t benefits
Reading Time: 2 minSomething I see many companies struggle with, and I tend to fall into quite a bit too, is trying to promote features as benefits. While features of a product should lead to benefits for the customer, they shouldn’t be positioned as such. Custom Post Types For example, a feature that we include on many websites […]
Do you need to buy ads to sell your product?
Reading Time: < 1 minI hope not. That’s not to say that buying advertising is a bad thing, as it can certainly help your product be seen by more potential customers, but if advertising is your only hope then you’re likely in big trouble. Albert Lasker put it this way: “The product that will not sell without advertising will […]
Pitch to get the hitter out
Reading Time: 2 minWhen trying to sell your product or service, many people tend to gravitate toward defending the problem that they would be mostly likely to see. For example, if you work part-time at a Verizon store, the price tags on the phones there likely seem pretty high to you. If someone comes in looking for a […]