Frame The Problem, Don’t Mandate The Solution

Many wise managers and agency partners have taught me over the years that when asking for changes to creative work, framing the problem you want the creatives to solve, versus telling them how to solve it will virtually always get you the best results. For example, instead of saying this: “Can you make the label bright green?” Say...

Three Common Marketing Mistakes

Three Common Marketing Mistakes
In my recent TV interview with Rebecca Cooper on Washington Business Tonight, I talked about 3 common marketing mistakes I see pretty consistently with my small to mid-sized clients. These mistakes can be boiled down to three words: Do, Reach, Say. 1. Companies do not know what they are trying to DO, i.e., they have no marketing plan. 2....

Travelers make better marketers – 10 Tips for maximizing your experience

Okay, so maybe I’m biased. After all, I do love to travel. And I just got back from another great trip. This time I spent 2 weeks in Egypt and Jordan with two friends. But I have always thought that the best marketers are able to put themselves in other people’s shoes, and traveling is a great opportunity to practice that. When you...

Using existing tools to do new things

I read an article recently in National Geographic Adventure magazine (link below) about how a team of climbers helped with an archeological expedition in one of my favorite parts of the world, Nepal. The gist of the story is that for years, local residents of Mustang have “reported seeing old manuscripts fluttering out of [an inaccessible]...

5 Questions to Ask When Choosing a Web Design Firm

This month, my friend Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media Studios is kindly letting me repurpose a post he wrote for his own blog a few months ago. I think he offers some great advice here, and I often refer my clients to it. From Andy: Full disclosure: I sell websites. Every day, I meet with companies who are looking for a web-design firm, and...

Social Marketing Is Not Free

Social Networking Isn’t Free. My clients often tell me some variation of “My teenaged daughter thinks my business should have a Facebook site.” Or the client will want to know if they should be blogging or using Twitter. Or they might ask what, exactly, is Twitter. They are typically intrigued that there might be a free way to...

Branding Irrelevance

A while back, I got a call from one of my B2B clients. They said “One of our competitors just came out with a branded product so we need brand names for our products too”. I asked them to tell me a little more about the situation, and they explained: A competitor’s new, branded product met a longstanding unmet need in the...

Permission To Say “No”

The businesses I meet with are often struggling to figure out which marketing tactics they should be using. This is where having a marketing strategy can help: It gives you permission to say “no” to tactics which will not clearly help you achieve your business goals. No matter what the size your business or brand, I am willing to bet...

10-Point Scale Fan Club

This blog post is guest authored by Dr. Anne Beall, President of Beall Research and Training. Anne is also the author of the succinct and very useful book Strategic Market Research. I asked Anne to write this post because I have found that it is sometimes challenging to convince clients that using a 10-point scale for their customer satisfaction...

Defining “Marketing”

It seems like everyone I talk to uses the word “marketing” to mean something different. Often, it’s used interchangeably with the word “selling”. This isn’t surprising, because in the evolution of a company, marketing often begins in the sales department as a tactical support function responsible for generating...