brand values
582 posts
How To Leverage Results Based Marketing
In sales and marketing and in life we devote an extraordinary amount of time to finding the words to describe the value we create. We labour over marketing copy, taglines and slogans that will attract, persuade and entice. We get so preoccupied with ‘the marketing’ that we forget the first step in t
Acts Of Marketing
The tight-lipped cabin crew wearing crumpled uniforms pass out miniature bags of pretzels to the passengers—the only snack included in the ticket price of the five-hour flight. On the world’s largest airline everything that would make the journey more pleasant is extra. Profit margins trump empathy
The Purpose Of Design Features
In business, we use design to differentiate ourselves in a number of ways. Design features are primarily seen as a way to attract customers and to help them decide if our product is for them. In a digital world, design is one of the best tools we have to build trust with customers we many…
The Power Of The Customer’s Story
Mike, the guy who sells bus tours in Times Square doesn’t do permission marketing. He has 60 seconds to find a way to engage his prospective customer—a wary visitor in a strange city who isn’t anticipating being interrupted. Mike is competing with dozens of other street vendors. He’s also got the gi
The Quiet Marketing Opportunity
It was 6am on a wet and windy Melbourne morning. The two tourists wandered out of their hotel on Exhibition Street, each armed with a giant red golf umbrella plastered with the hotel’s equally giant logo. At first glance, you might think how thoughtful it is that the hotel anticipates the traveller’
Changing People’s Minds
We spend a lot of time trying to convince people of our opinion at work, in business and in life. If only we could attract more customers. If only the customers we had could be persuaded to spend more. If only our colleagues could see the sense of doing it this way? If only the…
No Success Without Fear
When Elon Musk unveiled his audacious vision to colonize Mars this week, commentators had as much to say about his hubris and lack or fear as they did about the plan itself. They remarked that Musk’s greatest strength is probably that he has never been afraid to fail. That’s just not true. Of course
The Weight Of Our Words
The laminated sign next to the order and pay point at the cafe read: “We can’t and we won’t serve you while you are ON the phone. We need to engage.” These are the first words that greet every single customer (not just the rude ones). On the flip side, when I email a colleague…
Why Do They Come?
There was a twenty-minute wait for croissants at Lune long before the New York Times announced that the best croissants in the world might just be made in Melbourne. Now you can wait for thirty, but people still get up early and hang in there just to try one. Why would they take a tram…
10 Questions To Ask Before You Do Any Marketing
It’s fun to think about getting our products and services in the hands of the people we want to serve. In our rush to increase brand awareness we often overestimate the importance and impact of short-term, tactical marketing decisions. It’s possible to put things in perspective by answering some que
The Thing That’s Worth Measuring
Josh is a sales assistant at a sports store in the city. He proactively solves customer’s problems while they browse, taking the time to answer questions about the equipment they’re considering buying. If one of those interactions results in a sale Josh adds a new barcode containing his employee ID
Lessons From The Best In B2B Brand Storytelling
It’s easy to think of great examples of B2C (business-to-consumer) brand storytelling. The list of B2C companies that leverage storytelling to engage with their customers’ grows daily. The perception in many B2B (business-to-business) companies is that it’s easier to engage with customers through st
Why Are Your Customers Here?
The city centre bookstore manager complains to her colleague on the phone about people wandering in on their lunch break to browse because they have nothing else to do. “They’re not coming in for anything in particular.” she sighs. She’s right, for two hours every day hundreds of office workers with
Everything To Everyone
While I was consulting with a client last week we got talking about people who had built powerful personal brands and the reasons for their success. When we stopped at one in particular, her reaction was immediate. “I don’t like him.” she said, as her nose wrinkled. Of course, she has never met this
Why Startups Fail
Take a look at this list of reasons startup founders give for failing. These are just some of them. The cost of customer acquisition, ahead of its time, wrong positioning, not enough income, no problem solution fit, wrong target market, low customer adoption, too early, not enough demand, no real au
Are Your Marketing Goals Aligned With Customer Objectives?
As marketers, we often skip the important step of assessing our marketing goals against customer objectives. As a consequence, we fall in love with our message and forget to question what it is the customer needs to know or wants to hear. It’s not hard to check if this is true of your company—simply
The Difference Between Saying You Care And Caring
I’m not sure when we became defensive about customer care became. I suspect it might have been when we began to put more distance between the customer and us. In the days when there was a cash register that rang with ‘real money’, when we sold eye-to-eye and transacted hand-to-hand, instead of digit
How We Drive Change
When we want to improve our diet we monitor what we eat and how much we exercise. When we want to change a toddler’s behaviour we look for opportunities to praise the good, instead of constantly shouting down the bad. We measure and reward the behaviour we want. In organisations, the things we measu
How Will You Win?
All success at some level is about winning. Not necessarily coming first, but certainly reaching some kind of goal or destination. The truth is that most of us are terrible at articulating exactly what the plan to get there is. The ability to do this is probably the single most important competitive
The 4 New Stages Of Customer Engagement
The commercial reality for any business is that sales keep the lights on. We’re still following rules that were proposed in the late 1800s by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in order to do that. “The mission of an advertisement is to sell goods. To do this, it must attract attention, of course; but attracting
