Everyone is your Customer?
There is an old saying widely used by marketing professionals: ‘If everyone’s your customer, then no-one is your customer’. This saying makes the point about being able, as precisely as […]
Hitting the Target
How do you get your message across when you are in a client meeting? Do you use PowerPoint? Explain a brochure? Deliver a pre prepared speech? This post is about […]
Three Commercial Love Stories
Advertisers know the phenomenal power behind telling a story. Indeed the reason we call Coronation Street and East Enders ‘soap operas’ is because washing soap advertisers used to sponsor TV […]
The 2015 Highlights
Gosh, I feel like a butterfly emerging from the caterpillar chrysalis of 2015. Well! That may be a little hyperbolic but I quite like the imagery. There was so much […]
The Attention Economy by Devonport & Beck
The problem of information overload has a serious impact on economics. In their book, The Attention Economy, Davenport & Beck speculate that attention will replace finance as the focus of […]
Business Network Meetings – What’s Your Strategy?
Just imagine if you had a phone call when you were still half asleep telling you the breakfast meeting you were planning to attend that morning was cancelled due to […]
Winning Awards is more than Great Publicity
Forget winning for a moment (although that would be great) I’d like to focus on three other real benefits of entering your business for an award. Focus Credibility Network Focus […]
Get the Message Across – promotional material
The lords prayer has around 100 words, the declaration of independence around 300 and a recent article on the pricing of cabbage boasted some 29k words. WOW! Nowadays your potential clients are subject […]
Sex Sells – promoting your business
The Flake phallic classics were designed to appeal to a target audience of 16 – 34 year old women. They see Flake as a way of escaping normal life – […]
Keeping in Touch – email marketing
You need to identify what your target customer wants to hear to ensure that your messages have pulling power not pushing power. Your brand needs to come across not only […]
Perfect Public Speaking
I love TED Talks! I will often click on ‘surprise me’ on my TED Talks app and watch something I’ve not considered before. Few people willingly commit themselves to speaking […]
You Had Me At Hello – WOM marketing
Word of mouth marketing for most businesses is the single most effective part of their marketing plan. It’s why most of us go networking. However, it takes time to affect […]
Customer Satisfaction
A ‘just’ satisfied customer isn’t really good enough, only delighted ones will spread the words that encourage others to have the same experience. So how do you know what your […]
Message on a Banana – what would you like to see?
This year FairTrade Fortnight started Monday 23rd February. The FairTrade campaign asks the BIG Question – What would you like to see? It’s quite interesting how the laws of attraction work, as […]
What’s a Smile Worth?
50 years ago, Harvey Ball designed the iconic Smiley Face. Its aim was to ease the acrimony following a merger of two insurance companies. The graphic supported a friendship campaign […]
SMILE – If You’re Exhibiting
Why would you even consider exhibiting when, according to Robert Craven, in terms of generating sales it ranks 8th out of 10; marginally more effective than direct mail and email? […]
When You’re Smiling … Marketing
“Smiling is infectious, you catch it like the flu, When someone smiled at me today, I started smiling too. I passed around the corner and someone saw […]
Made Me Smile
68% of clients leave due to indifference or lack of attention … sometimes it only takes a smile to get them and keep them coming back. This New Year’s Eve […]
Voice Power for Presenters
During a weekend last year, I had the privilege to facilitate the lecture series at the Good Funeral Awards in Bournemouth. Five fabulous and worthy speakers on a variety of fascinating […]
The Credibility Factor
When you have worked hard and have done a fabulous job for a client and they voice their appreciation; do you just blush and say thanks, or do you turn […]
Is your Business Niche Enough?
The essence of attraction marketing is creating a niche with your ideal client in mind. This ‘customer driven’ sales strategy means you must have a good idea of your ideal […]
Portal Projects – Getting through the Door
For most of us in the service sector we can be all things to all people and can advise on myriad subjects. The ideal position in our target organisations is […]
Marketing Harmony
The impressions that readers gain from advertising campaigns are as varied as musical notes. The true value of marketing material is not the quality of the paper, the print […]
Zones of Perception
It is possible you can learn a lot about communicating by checking out some of the big brand success stories. We receive somewhere in the region of 3000 commercial messages […]
The Low Down on Slogans
The art of assonance adds poetic rhythm and medial rhyme to the words that you use. Unlike alliteration when the reader is aware at the start that there is a […]
Every step you take …
So how do you emulate the shoe retailer, Clarke’s superb strapline – “enjoy every step”? It is not easy – your strapline needs to convey a combination of customer awareness; […]
Boost Your Business
Everyone knows that a good testimonial can work wonders for your business reputation and encourage prospects to buy from you. But customers rarely know how to write a testimonial that […]
The Killer Question! – Market Research
I seldom see people tackling primary market research, which is, probably the most important piece of work they will ever do when setting out on a business project or idea. […]
Love Changes Everything
Ask any designer, worth his/her salt, what a brand is and they will tell you that it is so much more than a logo and its colours. Sure, they are […]
Want v. Need
Don’t think, because people might need what you want to sell, that they will want to buy. Being needy is not attractive and none of us wants to feel unattractive. […]
Making a Living
This weekend I was invited to attend a group think at an Eco-Lodge in the New Forest on how we might ‘teach’ sustainability in the business schools. With duly packed […]
