How To Harness Digital Disruption
How is the internet changing the economy and what does that mean for the Internet-based expertise business?
How is the internet changing the economy and what does that mean for the Internet-based expertise business?
Some things to think about when advice is part of your productized service
The sudden irrelevance of the cult of celebrity, your content marketing just became much more important
Messaging is about telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they may.
Do you want to figure you what you think by writing and speaking about it regularly?
How will independent businesses market themselves in 2021?
There are 4 keys to digital marketing. What do they look like and how do you recognize them?
What do knowledge workers eat, figuratively speaking? Knowledge comes best prepared in a container we call a book. But do we use book summaries?
At the heart of marketing is finding the right words. But how do you do that?
This article is about how and why to use qualification in your marketing
People say that social proof is what others say. No. It’s what you say – publicy – that others react to.
Know your business genre – then create a unique story on top of it
To find out if someone is an expert, ask them about a seemingly insignificant and irrelevant detail
The Rule of Niche-Market Marketing: Agile Monopolize
What if you could paralyze the minds of the people visiting your website – so they do your bidding?
To understand the difference between brand messaging and copywriting, read on
Your messaging has to punch in the gut, not the hip bone, to have power
Business books contain wisdom and perspective, but sometimes it’s hidden. To solve this problem, start thinking about business spectrums
What is the very core a business model?
The expertise business model delivers three kinds of work: strategic advice, implementation work, and creative work
Buzzword-speak is mockable – yet necessary. Learn to master it in your thinking, writing and speaking
Marketing is a way to work on both your product and your business model
How tell whether its’ part of your business model or your marketing plan?
What can you help your prospective customers assess?
How do you capture, “your voice”? You don’t
How do you make your customers more successful?
The most important business decisions deserve a second opinion
Beware of theories
Expertise yardstick: can you elaborate entertainingly in response to trivial questions about your area of expertise?
To prove you have a solution, you must be able to explain it simply
You don’t need multichannel marketing – at least not the technologies or automation behind it
Beware of overlooking advice from amateurs, also-rans, so-called failures, or those who score less than others
The best way to be clear in conversation is to write about it
Instead of finding your passion – learn how to consistently cultivate a flow state
Marketing gurus make things to complicated. Keep it simple.
Value pricing is basically a perception game
How to use the ProfitWell pricing interview matrix to set a good price for productized services
AI can write, yes. But can it think? Not yet
How do you know what to charge for a productized service? How can you raise that price?
Niche B2B expertise businesses have the opportunity to truly partner with clients, by taking on financial risks
Niche consulting firms have to work on tomorrow’s business as well as today’s. In doing so, you can also help prior versions of yourself
One of the valuable by-products of publishing is being more effective at selling
Why is discipline is at the core of great independent consultancies?
What kind of certainty has the most business value?
Use a wireframing tool to create messaging; messaging is partly UX design.
You have to learn to master the push and pull of marketing and use them both simultaneously
Like software products, consulting products need “customer success” treatment
Is your instinctive tone of voice the one that will make your life easiest?
Be careful of over-emphasizing conversion. There’s a balancing act with Churn
For a lean, expertise-drive B2B business, consider using a lightweight cloud spreadsheets as your CRM
Content marketing needs to speak truth – tell your audience to stop doing things the wrong way. How? By infotaining
Tech startups competing with GSuite have billions in valuations because they package their expertise into template libraries
ROI calculators are useful props but they miss the point: that you transform your customers into something better
Use the success of your business to create something apart from it that represents your business well
Websites are the most valuable business asset for 80% of businesses. You should always be redesigning your website.
It is profitable to polarize. But how do you do that?
What can independent B2B businesses learn from Amazon about keeping customers coming back?
A formula for profitable advice giving
Don’t let jargon poison your copy; it doesn’t make you look smart, it makes you look wonky
Plotting change/optimization v revenue/costs – where does your services firm fit?
If you are a change business, you have to define what that means
Everything we make, do, and sell is made of words – so what’s your writing practice.
The eternal challenge is to translate your expertise into copywriting
Ben Settle’s secrets aren’t new – but the way he tells them are.
Go beyond content marketing
What are the five component parts of a business manifesto?
A explanation of why Karl Marx would have discouraged you from hourly billing
A knowledge worker is an independent manufacturer of intellectual assets
We must learn to cultivate surprise if we are to become skilled marketers. Start with the details.
You have at least 50 How-To posts in – here’s a simple roadmap to extracting them from your mind and turning into short blog posts.
Here’s a catch-22 – you don’t get to have ideas until you write about them
Sometimes you just publish huge emojis on accident – hopefully along with some insight
This post is about creating a product line out of your flagship product and when to use an infoslogan
Warm advertising, also known as remarketing, remains a unique opportunity.
There are so many ways to win, every time we play the game of business
How to cultivate business beliefs that fuel your content marketing
What do you do when he half-time show if life is so sad and scary?
Make happy fans, not angry rioters – by noticing what they think and feel
What does a sales call (or calls) actually look like? Here’s a 4-part outline.
Getting started with your own content marketing
Can Edith Eger’s words of mental emancipation message and love apply to your business?
B2B tech entrepeuners and experts belong to many waves – which one(s) do you belong to?
I know, I know – you never thought you’d be doing business with a neophobiac. But is their leader your most important client?
Zoom lets us spread ideas with aid of one-to-one facial expressions. Will that help them travel faster?
The more empathetic you are with your customers, the better the results. Two examples.
You just had an idea. Should you search the Internet to validate that it’s unique – or to validate that it’s not unique?
In Alan Weiss’s world, a consultant earns trust through degrees, credentials, and a whiteshoe resume. Here’s some advice for the rest of us.
Can you categorize all 8 billion human beings into one of 16 personality types? Follow up question: how do those types of people like to interact?
Some people want to see prices before they talk to you. Some don’t want to talk to you at all.
You have an idea for a new product or service. But how do you know if people will want to buy it – before you build it?
People avoid marketing because it’s hard. They pay someone else to do it, or buy ads – with mixed results
MS Excel is one of the most effective business software products in history. But if your clients use it excessively, it becomes logistically defective. Then what – workarounds?
What is marketing? Or what should it be. And is it ethical? Seth Godin’s This Is Marketing addresses those questions, as you can see from browsing its table of contents
A good metaphor for creative enthusiasm is fire. Applying that fire to your product marketing is essential – but do you have any left over if you talk about it?
Every day for the last, oh, 2 million years or so, we name things – places, animals, plants, Gods, each other. But how?
In the short time frame, the most effective marketing ideation approach is holistic prospecting
We might think of positioning as (a) a newer concept, (b) a linear process, with start and a finish, and (c) a matter of formulaic business logic. Here are some alternative perspectives to help you position your business and its solutions
Amazon is putting the squeeze on digital content publishers, reminding us that it’s risky to let Big Tech be your middleman
We’re moving towards leaner, rougher, more authentic marketing materials, combined with more polished (and also more authentic) remote versions of ourselves
Congratulations, you’re part of the world’s largest distributed social network: email.
Andrew Keen and others have decried the massive power and privacy-grab of Big Tech, including in digital advertising. But maybe the pandemic will teach us we don’t need them as much as we think.
We accept the premise of learning through doing. But when it comes to marketing – learning what? There’s too much to learn. Here I explain why you should put prospecting on your learning shortlist.
Make marketing less confusing to you by telling a story. Your story is the main character. Read on to see the role you and your products play.
Schumpeter’s gale is blowing pretty hard and knocking many business models flat. Tech innovators can handle that but what about our customers?
How do you react when our culture starts to all of a sudden use Internet technology in a brand, new way?
If you put effort into your work, there’s something in it to salvage. But how to do so?
How many times – and over what time period – does someone have to meet you before they’re comfortable with you?
People are fond of saying that financial crises present opportunities. Here’s a small one I’m seeing.
When a recession is coupled with widespread changes in norms and behavior, marketing strategies will change too.
Business pundits say a crisis a great business opportunity. Maybe. But careful using it as marketing opportunity.
Testimonials now take much more work and authenticity than in the past. Which is good news for you.
How do we do a better job (than our septuagenarian politicians) at audio-visual marketing?
In retrospect, this week was all about Coronavirus and its impact on our businesses. Digital sales and marketing just got way more important.
COVID-19 or not, we’re all going remote and Internet-based. This post is about the invaluable art of listening to and seeing others on video conference calls.
Producing valuable marketing materials costs us money, effort, or both. But what does that effort look like?
Make your footer a large, thorough map of your entire business and marketing operations
In the wake of coronavirus, I want to talk about two types of viruses that I think are at odds with one another. One attacks the immune system, the other attaches itself to human enthusiasm.
Beware of marketing by committee. Instead, use an expert to edit marketing decisions, ideas, writing, and other creative work.
I’m issuing a correction on how to create copy and UX for your homepage
Garbage in, garbage out, they say. And so on. I want to share with you the daily publishing influences that shaped and inspired this list.
How do you create an original, valuable product? By asking the right questions about who it’s for and the problem it solves.
This article synthensizes “About us” advice from Peter Drucker, Simon Sinek, David C Baker, Seth Godin, William Strunk Jr, Donald Miller, and Derek Sivers
As our world gets more complex more rapidly, is it time to deepen our “demographic” positioning with psychographics?
It’s worth it to try to understand the size of your market. One approach is the addressable market theory, aka TOM, SAM, SOM. A nice compliment is psychographics
Your content marketing strategy should strike a balance between letting new people discover you and letting those already familiar with you deepen their relationship
If someone asks you for a free trial, sample, pitch, or consulting, you can ask them another question, “Why us?”
We’re all lexicographers now. Everyone needs to write their own dictionary of the ideas that are most important to their business – and their marketing
In the future, most of us will perform at least some of our sales and marketing online and less and less in person. Can we exploit that fact?
A content marketing strategy and a business strategy might look different. But in one respect they should be identical: lifespan.
Without curiosity, your marketing lacks fresh ideas. So it’s a shame that McKinsey put the kibosh on the world’s most impactful curiosity test.
If you can’t stand the idea of marketing, try teaching instead
Can you challenge your customer’s thinking on what they need to buy – while still building warm, empathetic rapport?
You hold tremendous quantities of familiar, business-related information in your mind. Is there value to looking at it in a new way?
Most B2B marketing advice fails to recognize the economic value of (a) positioning, (b) the cultivation of expertise, and (c) content marketing. All three are continuous processes fueled by new information and ideas.
A deck confers several advantages that a document/report or website do not. It’s become the ideal format for your sales and marketing collateral – and the perfect compliment to your website.
If marketing is about creating trust AND changing your tiny corner of the Universe, then we should cultivate expertise. I wouldn’t want a non expert trying to change my corner of the Universe.
How do you create brand messaging – and simultaneously set product strategy?
What does your business do? You get that question, right? What if you could answer it in an easy-to-consume (but detailed!) way by responding with just a link.
I hope your marketing makes a difference for you this year – but also over the next 5 years.
Creating a pricing page is an ideation tool for refining the design of your products and services
A reader asks about ideation and I end up talking about doing research – and Graham Wallas
It’s one thing to craft a positioning statement. But they usually read like cardboard tastes. So how do you express positioning in a way that’s effective and readable?
How do you decide how to position your business in the market?
The “profile positioning” hack is the most superficial of a half a dozen other ways to express your positioning
Positioning doesn’t mean you have to be a purple cow, or go viral. Or occupy a market niche over the long-term. It means you let someone else define you
Why did I shut off analytics on my website and email newsletter? To focus on marketing metrics that matter
Use productized services to increase the value of your solutions – and the revenue they generate
Here’s some specific, step-by-step advice on how to create a free product, which is a content marketing asset
If you’re still thinking about productizing services, focus on low-touch. And consider offering a hybrid of productized and custom services
Productize your services to make it easier to sell and deliver your expertise – and easier for your clients to buy it
We encounter the word ‘strategy’ too many times a day. How do you evaluate one?
Building the “content marketing bridge” for your customers to find you: not comfortable, not easy, but safe (in the long term… if you do it right)
A reader writes that his purpose is not to sell a skillset, but to create a bridge between where his clients are and where his clients’ customers are
There’s so much bad advice on how to design a content marketing strategy. Here’s some fact-based advice: a case study of the popular chatbot product Drift
It’s easier to sell something specific than to sell the value of your business in general. Here’s a hack: write someone a letter about it
Being as clear as possible in your marketing gives you the chance to think clearly about the value your business creates
There’s a write way and a wrong way to structure the layout and messaging for your business’s homepage
Does SEO matter to your business? Maybe. Is SEO a great ideation tool? Definitely. It is without question an indispensable market research tool; keyword research is a method of understanding your buyer that complements surveys, interviews and other forms of research. What a great ideation tool for a content strategy. SEO research, however, is not …
The creative brief was invented by ad agencies but it can be used for any kind of project work. The key rule: it’s not a specs doc, it’s an ideation tool
When you put your name and your marketing behind your new type of solution.. product, content, service… do you feel like an imposter? Maybe you should
In theory this newsletter’s per diem is one little-but-worthy idea. Hard to pick just one idea when you’re on a “Godin-bender”, because he says things like: “if you think people are paying you for your secrets, you’re crazy”.
Notice the details, figure out how they are connected to the problem you solve, and create originals solutions
The US and the global economy are dominated by a handful of companies with ever increasing advantages. If you are somewhere between 1 and 100 FTE’s, this is a problem
In which “lead pool” does your ideal customer exist? The one you imagine by mashing together known lead pools until inspiration hits
A trigger bundles together your problem and a solution to it, and it does so *just* for you. Learn the difference between a compact trigger and a deep trigger – and why it matters for your business
A marketing campaign runs on good ideas. An idea board is a pretty useful place to incubate emotions, research, and other marketing idea building blocks
When you get stuck replying to an email, use the mirroring technique. And when you get stuck writing anything, just reply
Meetings have been known to temporarily destroy your soul, even brainstorming meetings. Here’s a solution
Marketing has become too cross-disciplinary for one role. If you are a leader in your business, you’re the CMO
One Little Idea: periods are harsh. And other reasons we don’t use them in copywriting
A lot actually. AI is already speaking for us; here’s why, how, and what to do about it
A compelling argument for developing the skill of ideation lies in the 1000 Little Ideas vs 1 Big Idea paradigm
Pricing is more complex than we think. So what happens when you apply ideation to it
^ is the worst slogan possible. The worst headline possible. The worst thing to say and the worst thing to think. But why?
A miniature guide to writing a slogan – along with an illustration of why it matters for small creative tech firms
It’s one thing to “think up something’ and another ideate it, whereby some degree of mind control is exerted
In marketing technology solutions, at least, valuable ideas come from individual labor, more so than a group
Yes. Wait no. Well, you decide.
Ideation isn’t coming up with ideas. Because sention beings do that by default. It’s a method for generating economically valuable ideas at scale.
Richard Rumfelt could have made a case study of modern-day LinkedIn, whose “idea-combination” has made them unique
In B2B consulting, there’s no difference between your problem-solving and our selling ability; they are of a piece
This is relevant to Ideation. Critical thinking is not how to think but what to think, or more to the point – how to choose what to think about.
Why do you want more visitors/likes/shares/transactions. Do you need 8,000 before you die or you go to hell?
Benjamin Franklin invented the concept of the mastermind group with such artistry and panache that we must look back to see what we can learn
Hell no. The idea is ridiculous. Here’s why
Whether your software requires training or not, design training into your solution. Make it part of the product.
Areal-life example of thinking different: using Google Slides as a website CMS… h/t Dan Oshinksy
If you ever took statistics, there’s one number you should remember. 30. Why is that? (I actually don’t know… do you?)
There is no formula to writing brand YOUR messaging. There are only other people’s formulas – here’s what you can learn from them
Quick – say what you do in 30 seconds or less. And don’t be awkward. Hard huh? Use positioning
SEO is a market intelligence process that helps you get into the minds of the people who can help. Here’s how to turn that in to words
Keep on eye on how AI is speaking for you, writing for you, thinking for you. Three examples to watch out for
Turn the page upside down. Header on the bottom. Learn how this approach can improve conversions with hurting your brand integrity
A structured approach to introducing yourself like a marketer would introduce a product
Most “artists statements” are absolute garbage. They are no more artful than a dumpster fire. If you’re an artist, please read this article before you cause more cringe
Ok.. ever wondered what the connection between pricing and Ray Dalio’s principles?
When is first sight? It’s your HOMEPAGE, of course. Here’s how to use to make a good first impression
“everything around you, that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you”
Five things I have been paying attention to this week, starting with the letter C
In email marketing getting the recipient to take action is the whole point. So here’s your opportunity to practice email marketing at work. Use these 6 steps to practice asking for something
Your homepage has #1 purpose to rule them all: convert visitors to leads. Does yours?
When you get stuck in your marketing, here’s a tip – think about your positioning
In the 2020’s, all successful expertise consultants will ply their trade from an interactive broadcast studio; this is the essential communications conditions for a consultive selling mindset to flourish. Is your studio ready?
Being charming in business, specifically in marketing, confers an advantage. So what is charm and how can you cultivate it?
The secret ingredient to all forms of marketing and business development: confidence
SEO is insulted as transactional. But you can learn more about your market through SEO research than through any other medium
Are you on this list of 9 possible types of complex service businesses? If you are, you need to read this article
Page One Score for big creative & digital agencies. If you could create the results someone gets when they type your name into Google, what would the results be – what’s your score?
Have you heard, “Word-of-mouth and referrals are the best possible leads”. Yes. But these aren’t the same thing. At all. Right?
What’s the difference, between the difference, between a UX consultancy, a digital ad agency, and a tech consulting firm? In my opinion, less than we think. All digital services firms should offer a hybrid mix of creative, technological, and marketing expertise.
Harry Browne’s definition of profit is selling happiness. in his book Secret of Selling Anything, he explores how the art of persuasion need not be a “dark art”
Cannabis SEO consultants are in high demand all of a sudden. Why? Because you can’t advertise the stuff, so organic is the path
Digital agencies have an obligation to society to stop creating bullshit content. Stop it, Ok. Here’s how..
How much does inbound marketing cost? It costs a LOT more than you think. But also contains more benefits that you can image
Inspired by an off the cuff quote from Bob Dylan, this article explores interior intellectual process that drives Ideation
Impossible but interesting question and mental exercise. This article reviews three advertisements singled out by David Ogilvy, including a “B2B ad” written by Raymond Rubicam
Even wholesalers embrace embrace value-based sales and marketing, so why can’t a B2B services provider?
About half of my career in digital happened in Big Nonprofit world. Here are 20 things I learned
One of the exercises advocated by management consultant David C Baker is “Drop and Give Me 20”. Here’s your 20 on technology strategy consultancies
The ultimate guide to creating a B2B prospect list using LinkedIn Sales Nav and other tools
As you write web copy, imagine talking, then listening. Put that on repeat. Here’s how…
Soft sell vs Hard sell. Also known as brand messaging vs conversion copywriting. Also known as direct vs brand marketing.
A brand used to be hot piece of metal you jab into a living cow’s hide. But what about the words that surrounded it?
Copywriters: you are UX designers. UX designers: you are copywriters. This article explains why
Don’t ever sell or buy complex consulting services on commision. Why? It’s impossible to calculate your cut
David Ogilvy’s secret was a book about direct response marketing called “Tested Advertising Methods”, by John Caples. Make Ogilvy’s secrets your own
If you want to read (or write) a book about business development for complex services firm, first make sure you read this outline
Google grants just wants your AdWords to convert better. Nothing wrong with that, right?
Marketing is selling. We divide the work of the so-called marketer and the salesperson into two for logistical reasons, not functional reasons.
The lost connection between selling and digital marketing – a personal anecdote
Should content stay the same forever? Or should it be change. And adapt. The latter – here’s why
I interned at a publishing company in New Orleans and that made me ask myself: what’s the value of writing about your work– does it make you think differently about it?
A collection of thoughts on project planning and especially the importance of budgeting the right amount of planning time into projects. #CatastropheAversion
In the book, A Technique for Producing Ideas, author James Webb Young lays out an ideation method that is “as definite a process as the production of Fords.”
La definición autorizada de la estrategia digital. Si su estrategia de crecimiento no tiene cada una de estas seis cualidades clave, es probable que falle
The authoritative definition of digital strategy. If your strategy doesn’t have each of these six key qualities, it is likely to fail