Your Best Marketing Move

Your New Year’s Marketing Resolutions

Geoff — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:10:36 +0000

You know there’s more business out there somewhere…if you could just find it. You know there are opportunities you may be missing. You know you should be working on your marketing all the time. So let’s start the year off with some New Year’s Marketing Resolutions. Here they are: 1. I [...]

10 Ways to Hog the Spotlight

Geoff — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:09:25 +0000

Great actors share the spotlight. But if you’re running an ad in a newspaper or magazine, you want to hog the spotlight. The aim is to get as many eyes as possible going directly to your ad-rather than going to whatever else is on the page. The success of your ad may depend on how well it [...]

If You’re Not Solving Problems, You Have a Problem

Geoff — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:27:11 +0000

Your business doesn’t exist because you have something to sell. Your business exists because someone has a problem. Fred Wiersema of Harvard Business School, author of Customer Intimacy(), said that the basic requirement for doing marketing is to understand the customer’s problem and its solution from the customer’s point of view. In other words, you’re not [...]

How to Break (Almost) All the Rules And Still Laugh All the Way to the Bank

Geoff — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:30:44 +0000

You can find all kinds of opinions and “rules” about what it takes to make your advertising work—and they certainly have their place. But in the final analysis, the rules don’t matter much if you’re not saying anything that really connects with readers. Likewise, you can break a lot of the rules as long as you are [...]

Fact-based Advertising vs. Opinion-based Advertising

Geoff — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:26:03 +0000

“I have seen one advertisement actually sell 19 ½ times as much goods as another.” So wrote John Caples in his classic book, Tested Advertising Methods.( But what do you have to do to get results like these? What kind of headline, pictures and copy should you use? Finding out these things is [...]

Want to Improve Your Ad? That’s What a Metaphor is For.

Geoff — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:35:55 +0000

Last week I talked about how easy it is to kill good ideas. But where do you find good ideas? Here’s one place: look for a metaphor. When I was in Greece, I saw trucks from a moving company named Metaphor, which, in Greek, means “to carry over.” A metaphor is an apt communication [...]

How to Kill a Good Idea

Geoff — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:56:09 +0000

“A committee is where good ideas go to die.” I don’t know who said it, but I’ve got 30 years of experience that says “amen!” to it. And since the success of your marketing depends on good ideas, it’s important to be aware of the quicksand dangers that the committee process poses to creative thinking. Here are three [...]

Skip the Hype. Go for the Gripe.

Geoff — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:25:13 +0000

I’ve never liked listening to gripes. When my kids were young and would start griping about something, I would tell them, “You’re only allowed to gripe in duck language.” Then I would illustrate, “Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack.” Corny, I know. But it made the point, while breaking the tension. But as a marketer, [...]

Marketing Judo: When a Customer Punches You…Use That Energy!

Geoff — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:27:39 +0000

The book What Would Google Do? tells an important story about Dell Computers. () A customer had written a venomously critical review online, shredding Dell’s products and service. () Naturally, this triggered a lot of defensiveness among Dell employees, who are justifiably proud of their company and their products. There was much [...]

The 1-2-3 Formula for Building a Brand

Geoff — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:05:41 +0000

Of course you need to drive leads and sales right now, in the short term. But you can also do that in a way that builds your brand—including your reputation, and your relationships—for the long term. Here is a simple 1-2-3 formula for building a brand. 1. Promise. Own a meaningful promise in the [...]