Blogs

I received a direct mail postcard (yes, they still make those!) in my inbox this week — not my virtual inbox, but my trusty old snail-mail box. This was a piece I could pick up and hold. It was a well-designed card, quality print job, and it had a few nice things to say about…

If there were such a thing as a marketing “silver bullet,” then I’d either need to find a different line of work—because everyone could do it—or I’d be super rich, because I’d be the keeper and dispenser of marketing’s secret sauce recipe. But marketing is not easy and automatic. It’s much more than a press…

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…

A blog on the topic of personal branding seemed like a natural follow-up to last week’s “I Know My Brand … Do You Know Yours?” As I started to ponder what to write, I had the strangest sense of Déjà vu. Seems I’d touched on that subject a few years back, so why re-create the…

Feedback is how we know we are doing something right; it’s also how we know when we’re doing something wrong. Feedback is necessary. It’s how we improve our relationships and raise our golf (or in my case, volleyball) game to the next level; it’s also how we fine-tune our business offerings and hone our brands.…

What if I told you that you could market your product or service to a handful of key individuals and be just as successful, if not more so, as you would casting a wider net to reach a bigger audience? Would you think, “Paul’s been spending too much time on the volleyball court” or “What’s…

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,…

Sometimes ideas just pop into our heads. Intuitively, we seem to know what to say or write about our product or service, or some incredible insight we want to share with the world. The ideas and words come freely, easily, as though they’re on auto-pilot. Then there are other times when the ideas don’t flow…

“Content is King.” That’s what Bill Gates wrote back in 1996 while Microsoft was still the king of software and the Internet, and Google was still toddling in diapers at best. Of course, a lot has changed in 16 years, from the ascent of Apple and the departure of Steve Jobs for his next gig;…

We take for granted that students learn in different ways. Some are visual learners. For them seeing is believing. Some are more inclined to reading. They get their information through words. Some require more hands-on activities, while for others that’s no so important. Educators must therefore tailor the way they teach to address a variety…