A friend of mine told me he likes to do 'consultative marketing'. As he explained, he sees marketing as a back-and-forth conversation with the customer, rather than a one-way dialogue. The idea is to make the customer feel educated, inspired and curious, rather than used. I loved the idea of consultative marketing the moment I heard [...]
Your existing customers know, like and trust you, whereas strangers who aren’t your customers don’t. That’s why it’s much easier to get new business from old customers than it is from new customers. With that in mind, one marketing tactic you can use is to send personalised emails to your existing customers offering them bespoke products. [...]
Here’s a curious thing about marketing. Sometimes, a person will tell me they see my videos everywhere, they really like the videos and they’ve learned a lot from the videos. Yet when I then ask them which videos they’ve liked or which ideas they’ve learned, they struggle to reply. It might seem like my marketing is [...]
There are two big problems with doing inaccurate marketing. First, your reputation always catches up with you, for better or worse. If you talk about how amazing your customer service is, even though, deep down, you know your customer service is sloppy, the market will eventually realise there’s a disconnect between your words and actions, and [...]
Three men were working on a building site. They were asked what they were doing. The first said: ‘I’m laying bricks.’ The second said: ‘I’m blowing glass.’ The third said: ‘I’m building a cathedral.’” You want your staff to feel they’re building a cathedral, rather than merely laying bricks or blowing glass. To do that, you [...]
Marketing costs money, so I understand when small businesses choose to limit their marketing due to a lack of funds. What I don’t understand, though, is when businesses tell me they’ve decided to cut back on their marketing because they’re worried about overexposure. Being less visible does not lead to more sales; being known by fewer [...]
Sometimes, small business owners contact me to ask why their marketing isn’t working. These owners fall into two camps. The first group of owners blame themselves – they know they’re doing something wrong, but they’re not sure what, so they ask for help to identify the problem. The second group of owners blame their customers – [...]
Most marketing is self-obsessed – it focuses on how wonderful the business is rather than focusing on the customer. We've all been exposed to so much self-obsessed marketing since we were children that this kind of marketing has become normalised, and we think this is how marketing is meant to be done. But it's not. Good [...]
Is making sales a priority for your business? If so, you need to make marketing a priority – because marketing is what generates sales. I’m always confused by those business owners that are desperate to make sales, but have no interest in doing the thing that generates those sales. The more marketing you do, the more [...]
There are few things more annoying than needy marketing. Please look at me! Please like me! Please give me money! Instead, focus on putting out marketing you know is helpful and educational. If you publish enough of that kind of marketing, you’ll slowly and steadily build an audience. At that point, you’ll have customers who are [...]
