customer engagement
847 posts
The Purpose Of Collecting Data
Data collection shouldn’t simply be about looking for proof or testing your assumptions. Your questions are not always about collating the right answers, often they are about finding out who the right people are. The idea isn’t just to get the data, it’s to understand the people who want to be under
Valuable Things We Ignore In The Quest For Growth
One of the first words a baby learns to say is ‘more’. They learn very early on that this one word is the shortest route to getting what they want. Every three year old knows that two cupcakes are better than one. It’s no surprise then that this lesson stays with us through life and…
3 Questions To Help Your Business Evolve With Your Customers
The sign next to the juice bar announces that waiting is over. “Don’t Line UP. Order on our app.” No interruption to your day required. Have you noticed how waiting has gone out of fashion and the slew of products, apps, services and shortcuts that have come to market which are designed to give us…
Taking Your Place In The Difference Economy
Whole Foods launched it’s first national and TV marketing campaign in 35 years on the back of losing 30% of its value in just six months. The company has been losing market share to chains like Walmart who are now stocking once hard to find sustainable and organic produce and selling it cheaper. The
The Best Marketing In The World
It’s easy to know why the features you built into your products and services are important, but it takes a particular skill to understand and communicate why they should matter to people. The best marketing in the world doesn’t remind people how great the company is or how many features have been ad
The Meaning Business
In the past most businesses gained competitive advantage from size, scale or dominance. Whoever the biggest marketing budget and could sell the most stuff won. Success was more about what you did and much less about the way that you did it. But today it’s the way that you go about your business and
Showing Up For Humans, Not Just For Google
I want to send some flowers to a friend a few suburbs away, of course I could deliver them myself, but there is something magical about the unexpected arrival of flowers that means I want to have them delivered. And so I turn to Google. After 20 minutes I find myself on page ten feeling…
What’s The Reason?
What’s your reason for contacting that prospect? Why do you call her a prospect anyway? What’s your reason for sending that email? Why will everything be okay if you can just get the word out? What’s your reason for printing those fliers? Why does the world need your thing? What’s your reason for st
My New Book—Marketing: A Love Story
My new book is here. You can buy it now on Amazon in paperback and in Kindle. I’ve wanted to find a way to juxtapose the concepts of marketing and love in a book for a long time. I like to think that even if you never opened the book, just owning it—seeing it on…
The Two Approaches To Marketing
All marketing uses two basic approaches. When I was growing up and maybe when you were too, marketers used ‘The Influence Method’. 1. The Influence Method Make a product. Create an advertising campaign, jingle or tagline to persuade people to want whatever you are selling. Increase sales. Make more
Make Things People Want
Marketing means different things to different people. To some businesses it’s about Facebook engagement, to others it’s all about analytics or SEO, advertising or PR. If you’ve got the budget it could be a glossy image of Hugh Jackman—your 18K red gold watch, which has been “Crafted for New Heights”
Close, Closer, Closest
Twenty years ago geography mattered. When there was one grocer in every suburb there was always enough business to go round. Close was an advantage. It’s easy to believe that because digital has dissolved borders, that it has simultaneously diluted advantages. But being close has taken on a whole ne
How To Get Attention
Everyone will tell you that in the age of distraction it’s harder than ever to get attention. Actually that’s not strictly true. It’s not difficult to interrupt the rock star as she checks into her hotel to ask for a selfie—just a quick tap on the shoulder, fake smiles and you’re done. It’s easier t
Knowing ‘The How’ Is Not Enough
When that friend you haven’t seen for ages shows up at the party in a figuring hugging dress having dropped two sizes, the first thing you say is, “You look great! The second thing you say is, “How did you do it?” And so it goes when we see evidence of any kind of success…
Where Are The Holes?
It’s hard to be objective when you evaluate your competitors. When you’re feeling vulnerable there is a tendency to think about all of the things your competitors are doing right and how you don’t measure up against them. The irony is that opportunities are realised and groundbreaking ideas are brou
What Lens Do You Use?
I’m a huge fan of Human’s of New York. It’s the kind of generous and rare content on the Internet that makes you grateful, sad and optimistic all at once. Brandon (lying down in the photo above because he is 6’4″ and always wants to get down to the level of his subject), will happily…
Two Simple Questions Most Content Marketers Forget To Ask
For fifty years marketing was all about pushing. We used advertising to get us closer to our end goal—which was more sales. Today marketing is more about drawing people closer. We use content (amongst other things) to help us build relationships with potential customers. And yet sometimes we forget
How Are You Creating Value?
Think about your favourite airline or a product you use every day and the supermarket you feel most comfortable shopping at. Now think about why you keep going back. What is it that this business delivers? The airline most likely sells similar seats, with average legroom, at around the same price as
Who Is Responsible For Seeing Your Customers?
When I worked in the stock control department at Tesco thirty years ago, I was partly responsible for making sure there were enough tins of soup available to be bought by the customers who would walk up and down those supermarket aisles the following week. There were people in charge of making sure
Lessons In Non-Profit Storytelling From The Best In The World
If you think times are tough in a marketing world where you’re actually providing goods or services in exchange for money, spare a thought for the marketers of charities who need to convince us to part with money without wrapping up something for us to take home. One of the biggest challenges non-pr
