Blogs

Sometimes the most obvious solution is staring you right in the face. Take businesses thinking about or already in the process of branding or re-branding themselves. They struggle with what to say, how to say it, and to whom to address it. But why? If they’ve been in business for a while, they have a…

Sometimes the most obvious solution is staring you right in the face. Take businesses thinking about or already in the process of branding or re-branding themselves. They struggle with what to say, how to say it, and to whom to address it. But why? If they’ve been in business for a while, they have a…

Do you have a hard time saying no? Lots of people do, including me. It must have something to do with my entrepreneurial spirit or some fear that I’ll miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime. Or maybe I’ve just got this nurturing soul deep down inside that never wants to let anyone down…

As marketers, we’ve probably all faced one or more of these situations: We’re not converting Web traffic to sales No one’s subscribing to our email list Our free download just sits there with no suitors, like a wallflower at the high school dance We’re getting no takers on our offer of a free consult No…

The sales this week of the Boston Globe and the Washington Post to John Henry (Boston Red Sox majority owner) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder), respectively, got me to wondering why such successful business leaders would venture into print media—arguably a dying industry. The more I thought about it, the more I realized these sales…

Communication, by its very nature, is a two way street. Someone speaks and someone listens—well, hopefully someone listens—and then someone speaks again; or someone writes and someone responds, and so on. People also communicate non-verbally. A gesture here and a wink there can have the same effect as words. People communicate in-person, face-to-face; by telephone;…

Marketing 101 teaches us to define our ideal client or customer (our “target audience”) and to gear our communications and marketing efforts toward that broad group. Not to the exclusion of others, of course, but the idea is that if we communicate what we need to the people we most want to be our customers/clients,…

Don’t Assume. How many times have we heard someone tell us that, whether it’s at home or on the job? There’s usually a second part to that saying, something about “When you assume, you make a (posterior section) out of you and me.” Seems like sound advice to me. To “assume” means to take something…

I am often surprised when I hear people grumbling how they didn’t get something they wanted, only to find out from them later that they never really asked for it. “I built this new Web site and all I really wanted was for people to contact me for a free consult.” (Well, did you actually…

It’s easy to tell people what they want to hear. After all, politicians do it all the time (sorry, I couldn’t resist!). But what about what people need to hear, whether it’s good news or bad, or something in-between? What about those “tough” conversations, which some might even call “fierce”? I don’t know anybody who…

The mid-winter blahs have no doubt hit our friends to the north, while we southern Californians bask in February sunshine that’s not too hot and not too cold. For me, this always seems like the perfect time of year to get sociable and share a slice of my “life in the sun” (at least virtually)…

With presidential and local campaigns in high gear, I got to thinking about how heavily these campaigns rely on public relations. After all, winning an election is as much about public perception as it is about policy and decision-making. So who do you think, so far, is winning the PR battle? Take a look at…