Argentum Blog

Top Ten TED Tweets from TEDx Midwest

I was very excited to attend TEDx Midwest a couple of weeks ago. The 1 1/2 days of the event were filled with thought-provoking speakers across technology, psychology, entertainment, business and other disciplines. While it was a little frustrating not to be allowed to tweet from the event, I applaud the device ban in the auditorium. I think it...

Making Marketing Lemonade From Business Lemons

I spent 11 years of my adult life living down the street from various Waffle House restaurants. Granted, if you’re living in certain parts of the south, it’s practically impossible not to live down the street from a Waffle House. Most especially if you’re a college student, which I was for four of those eleven years. The...

How Marketing and Sales Evolve at Companies

I often mention Phil Kotler’s Harvard Business Review article Ending The War Between Sales and Marketing when talking to clients and potential clients. It’s a great piece about the evolution and co-existence of sales and marketing in an organization. Most importantly to me, it lays out the key responsibilities of each function and how...

I Want My Brand To Be Like Intel Inside

If I only had $5 for every time I heard a client say “I want [insert brand/company name here] to be like Intel Inside.” While I wouldn’t be rich, it would certainly buy me a nice dinner or two. In fact, I was hearing this so much, and from one client in particular, that I finally decided to do some research into how much my...

3 Inexpensive Ways To Enhance Your Marketing Efforts

It seems you can’t turn around these days without bumping into another article about why smart companies are increasing their focus on marketing. There are a few easy, relatively inexpensive steps that any company can take to enhance its marketing efforts: 1. SINGLE MESSAGE Decide what the most relevant value proposition of your brand or...

Entrepreneurs Think Differently

Not surprisingly, successful entrepreneurs approach problem solving very differently than do their equally successful large company peers. It all boils down to something called effectual reasoning. In plain English that basically means that entrepreneurs are “brilliant improvisers” and create their goals along the way, based on...

LinkedIn Etiquette

I’m an old-fashioned girl. Because of this, I try to only “LinkIn” to people I actually know. My philosophy is grounded in the spirit of LinkedIn which is all about being a network of trusted connections. How can I trust a connection if I don’t know them? And why would I unleash a stranger on the network that I have...

The Value Of Fresh Eyes

My friend Joe Hallinan has just come out with a new book Why We Make Mistakes, and he has a related Op-Ed piece in the New York Times this past Sunday. He talks about how fresh eyes bring really do see things that others more familiar with the material miss. In the Op-Ed piece he provides some great examples of how experts failed to see glaring...

Three Common Marketing Mistakes

BASICS EVERY BUSINESS SHOULD TACKLE As part of Washington Business Tonight’s Consulting series, I was asked to talk about three common marketing mistakes that small to mid-sized businesses often make. These can be summed up by “Do, Reach, Say.” Watch the interview here and let me know if you agree!

You Don’t Need Marketing (yet)

B2B companies under $2M in revenue don’t need to hire a marketing person, much less a Chief Marketing Officer This is a reprint of a post I wrote earlier this month as a guest blogger for the Entrepreneurial Execution Project run by Professors Waverly Deutsch and Craig Waitmann of the University of Chicago Booth School’s Polsky...

Argentum's blog, Marketing Op-Ed, highlights interesting, real-world examples of marketing with a little bit (okay, a lot) of opinion thrown in. It's written by Susan Silver, President of Argentum Strategy Group, with the occasional guest blogger added to the mix.