Strategy | Argentum Strategy

Make Your Customers’ Lives Easier

Most companies say they excel at saving their clients time, but are all of your touchpoints really demonstrating that you understand how to help them do that? Kids Science Labs’ original voicemail message is a great case in point. Watch this quick 90-second video to learn how to more strategically use your customer...

Execute Tactics More Strategically

Use what you know, or can infer, about your customers’ behaviors to help you make better marketing decisions. Check out this brief video for ideas on becoming more precise in how you execute your marketing tactics.

B2B Content Marketing: Digital vs. Face-to-Face

There’s exciting new research out from my alma mater, the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, about how B2B marketing teams can help drive more quality leads to sales through digital content marketing. The research, conducted by professor Bobby Calder and his team at the Medill School’s Speigel Research Center, explored which...

The Top Reasons Startups Fail

I recently came across some research done by CB Insights about The Top 20 Reasons Startups Fail. They’re data aggregators backed by the National Science Foundation and other heavyweights, and they regularly read startup post-mortems and compile an aggregation of why startups fail. The first thing that really stood out to me was that HALF...

Smarter Marketing for Smaller B2Bs

Background: Earlier this month, I met with Mark, the founder of $100K B2B cabinet hardware company. His five product lines consist of colorful knobs and handles, and he’s just about to launch two new lines in neutral colors. Like most companies in this space, the bulk of Mark’s business comes from showroom sales to interior...

The Difference Between Strategies and Tactics

Many people seem to have a hard time differentiating between strategies and tactics. Here’s a video from one of our Marketing Strategy workshops that lays out our handy rule of thumb and some real world examples.

Have I Got an Opportunity For You! Evaluating an Unsolicited Tactical Opportunity

If you’re like me and the companies I work with, you probably get unsolicited emails pitching goods and services every day. Some are worthy of your consideration, but most aren’t. I’ve seen clients asked to sponsor Bears radio because they’re headquartered in Chicago or to pay to participate in a holiday promotion on an obscure culinary cable...

The Care and Feeding of Your Brand Ambassadors

One of the Techstars companies I mentored this summer, Pak’d, delivers healthy custom lunches to your door. Targeted at moms, Pak’d has had a lot of success using a “Mombassador” program in the Chicago area as part of its launch. I was recently having lunch with Rebecca, one of the co-founders, when she asked me for advice about managing and...

Hiring an Agency

Because Argentum’s niche is marketing strategy, we do not provide creative services like ad design, logo creation or web site development. But we gladly help our clients identify and hire the creative and digital talent they need. As a result, we have been fortunate to work with lots of great creative agencies, not only on behalf of our...

Give Your Sales Force Marketing Flexibility

Many of our clients come to us to help them become more strategic in the way they approach their marketing spending. One of our middle market clients was in the midst of a major geographic expansion when we first began working together to build a comprehensive marketing plan. The plan we developed together included two key tools to facilitate...