argentumadmin, Author at Argentum Strategy

Dollar Shave Club’s Viral Video: Behind the Scenes

Google recently told one of the startups I advise, ZipFit, that they should consider adding a YouTube video ad to their online mix to increase their overall click through rate. That’s easy for Google to say, but ZipFit has almost no budget for marketing of any kind. However the ZipFit team figured that if Dollar Shave Club could throw...

Great Creative Takes Time

My clients who are new to marketing (and even some who are not) often want to dramatically accelerate their agencies’ timelines for producing creative whether it’s something like a banner ad, a website or even packaging. This simple but brilliant video was created by the Hungarian marketing communications magazine, Kreatív. It’s...

Three Research Pointers for Beginners

Earlier this year I wrote a three-part series on the Top Ten Entrepreneurial Research Mistakes. One of my favorite market research professionals, wrote to me and suggested adding three additional points: 1) Don’t assume you know how to ask the right questions. Get a book on research questioning or find a friend in the field. That is the...

Favorite Tools: Breakthrough Marketing Plans

While I have little patience for business books, I frequently refer to Breakthrough Marketing Plans, by Kellogg Professor Tim Calkins, and I often suggest that my clients purchase a copy (or two). Both Tim and I spent 10 years at Kraft Foods in brand management, and Tim’s book essentially teaches the Kraft methodology that we learned there for...

Defining Your Target

A lot of the companies we meet have not clearly defined their target customer. Some make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone in the hopes of not leaving any potential revenue on the table. Other companies have a general sense of their target, but have never taken the time as a team to sit down, define, and gain consensus on the common...

Maximizing Your Brand’s Word of Mouth Potential

A few months ago, we went to hear Professor Jonah Berger talk about his book, Contagious. The book is a useful primer on how to make your product/service more likely to receive word of mouth (WOM) advocacy from your customers. Having spent time consulting for Procter & Gamble’s groundbreaking WOM group, Vocalpoint, we know the importance of...

Top 10 Entrepreneurial Research Mistakes, Part 3: Care & Feeding of Your Respondents

This is the third and final part of our series on the Top 10 Entrepreneurial Research Mistakes. Use these links to read Part 1, Which Methodology to Use and Part 2, Asking Smart Questions. The series came out of a workshop we developed to help the entrepreneurs at 1871 be smarter about the market research they were conducting without the help of...

Top 10 Entrepreneurial Research Mistakes, Part 2: Asking Smart Questions

As we mentioned in our Part 1 post in April, being an entrepreneur sometimes feels like you’re playing the guitar while you’ve got a tambourine on top of your head, a harmonica in your mouth, and cymbals between your knees. Because of this, there are a lot of things that entrepreneurial companies try doing themselves, even if...

Best Marketing Job Spec EVER

As someone who has been involved with marketing in some way for more than 20 years, I have seen a whole lot of marketing job specs in my time. Without a doubt the VP of Marketing job spec that GiveForward post last week is the best I have ever seen. And it’s not just my opinion. I posted the job to my LinkedIn network and have never seen...

Top 10 Entrepreneurial Research Mistakes, Part 1: Which Methodology to Use?

Being an entrepreneur sometimes feels like you’re playing the guitar while you’ve got a tambourine on top of your head, a harmonica in your mouth, and cymbals between your knees. It therefore follows that there are many things that entrepreneurial companies of all sizes take a crack at doing themselves, even if they’ve never...