One way to improve your marketing is to visit the websites of your rivals from time to time. Not so you can copy them – but so you can learn from them. Ask yourself what they are doing better than you. Is their design more attractive? Is their website more user-friendly? Is their copy better than [...]
Case studies can be a really effective form of marketing. Why? Because they show potential customers that your small business has helped people just like them solve problems just like theirs. So how do you write an effective case study? One way is to focus on the problem and your solution. For example, imagine you run [...]
Did you know that dating profiles with photos get far more attention than dating profiles without photos? Or so my friends tell me. There are a few reasons why. First, some people are just superficial. Second, and more importantly, when you can see someone’s face you tend to find them more trustworthy and credible. There's a [...]
It's hard to do marketing to strangers, because we don't trust people we don't know. Marketing to old friends, though, is much easier. They know you, they like you and, most importantly, they trust you. The point of marketing is to make sales. It’s much easier to convince existing customers to buy from you than it [...]
I recently had an interesting meeting with a potential supplier. During the meeting – without any pressure from me – he kept lowering his price. It happened again and again. I thought to myself that this was not only bad negotiating, it was also bad marketing. His message to me was that he didn’t believe in [...]
I want to share a really cool marketing idea that we've implemented at my content marketing agency, Hunter & Scribe. It's a 365-day never-ending social media marketing plan. First, you have to write 365 different social media posts that meet three conditions: They should be educational, not salesy They should be no more than 280 characters [...]
Here’s an intriguing fact for you about US presidential election campaigns. Did you know that the vast majority of elections have been won by the taller candidate? So why does your height have any impact on the likelihood of you becoming president? Taller people are seen to be more confident, assertive and attractive – essentially, better [...]
Did you know that honing your marketing message can help you improve your business strategy? For example, imagine you run a camping store. You’ve decided that the best way to market your products is to focus on their benefits rather than their features. More talk about adventure, less talk about tents. What now? Your business strategy [...]
Many small businesses don't realise that the way you respond to customer emails is a form of marketing. Good answers give customers a reason to keep spending money with you, and to refer their family and friends to your business. A bad response has the opposite effect. It’s a generic copy-pasted reply that doesn’t try to [...]
Question: Who does Louis Vuitton target in their marketing? Rich, older people. They certainly don’t bother marketing to university students, working-class families or pensioners. When you go narrow with your marketing, it actually makes it more effective, not less. But if you try to appeal to everyone, it becomes more ineffective as your message now has [...]
