In the early days of starting up, the ability to scale is overrated. “Scale,” in case you haven’t heard the term, refers to the concept that there are processes in place that are fast, cheap, and repeatable because there will soon be millions of customers who generate billions of dollars of revenue. [...]
In the real world, you don’t have infinite resources; you don’t have a perfect product; and you don’t sell to a growing market without competition. You’re also not omnipotent, so you cannot control what people think of your brand. Under these assumptions, most companies need all the help they can get. […]
In their book, Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers In The Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information, Emanuel Rosen and Itamar Simonson explain a new approach to planting seeds to build awareness for a new product or service. Their idea is that the gradual adoption, trickle-down approach that started when Moses went to see God is [...]
This is a guest post by Ben Parr, the author of Captivology. You probably deal with attention issues every day. How do I get the attention of new customers? How do I retain the attention of existing clients? How do I captivate my boss or my upcoming date? It’s a hard problem to solve, especially [...]
Interesting story of how Alicia Shaffer sells $1 million of fashion items via her Etsy shop. It’s fantastic that Etsy has created a market like this–democratizing commerce and crafts! http://www.fastcodesign.com/3042352/how-one-knitter-makes-almost-1-million-a-year-on-etsy There is some controversy about whether her products are handcrafted “enough,” but there are marketing lessons to learn from her success, nonetheless!
You may find this hard to believe, but I wrote about “What We Can Learn From Justin Bieber” at the American Express Open Forum.
Just posted an article about how to persuade people at the American Express Open Forum. Click here to read it.
Amber MacArthur provided a list of the five social-media tools that small business should begin with. They aren’t the latest—but you might not want to be at the cutting edge at all times. Read her posting to learn how to get going.
Over at the American Express Open Forum, I’ve posted an article called “The Lesson of Satzuma.” This is explains how a tiny company called Satzuma stood out of the CES crowd by focusing on a fun group of products. Check it out as a marketing lesson. Learn more about marketing.
Dan Zarrella, social-media maven, explains how and when to use social media site such as Facebook and Twitter. He is the author of The Social Media Marketing Book. Read the post if you’re wondering how to optimize your social-marketing efforts.
The reality is that people and technology is getting better and better a blocking out unwanted interruptions—aka, “marketing.” Brian Halligan is the CEO of HubSpot, and he explains in my post on the American Express Open Forum “how to get found.” It’s all about creating great stuff and letting Google et al do what they [...]
For technology companies, a product demonstration is the purest form of sales because you really have to wow your audience with your product. Here is a list of 5 things to avoid if you want to not make a Stunningly Awful Demo (SAD).
A few weeks ago Garage ran a conference called Revenue Bootcamp. One of the panel featured a group of experts discussing whether advertising was dead for a website revenue model. These experts represent Facebook, Yahoo, Glam, Federated Media, and Microsoft. Click here if you’re interested in using the advertising model.
Check out the design of my new business card here. It’s a combination of my company’s logo and a business card—truly making a business card a marketing device. If you have a cool logo, you should do this too!
Over at the American Express Open Forum I posted an article about a panel of young people discussing how they use the Internet, what they pay for, what they would pay for, and what they won’t pay for. Fascinating stuff if you’re trying to make a web business work. Click here to read it.
These are the sites and applications that I used in today’s San Diego Venture Group speech about using social media as a marketing tool. Making Connections LinkedIn LinkedIn: Find References LinkedIn: Companies LinkedIn: Answers: Home LinkedIn: Jobs Home Jigsaw Spokeo […]
Over at the American Express Open Forum I posted an interview with Lee Aase. He manages syndication and social media for Mayo Clinic. In this interview he explains the history of Mayo Clinic’s use of social media and how effective this effort has been. If you’re considering social media for your organization, it’s a worthwhile [...]
I came across a good guide to social marketing that you might find interesting. It’s called “Social Marketing Playbook,” and the folks at 360i wrote it. You can read and download it here.
Dave Balter, the founder of BzzAgent, provided me with ten tips for building a brand community. Check out his tips here if you're trying to build an online community for your company. Please mark it “found useful” if you did. More about social media at Socialmedia.alltop.
In “The Sales Profession: Attention Must Still Be Paid,” Ben Stein explains how a summer job selling shoes taught him how to sell. I feel the same way about my first real job: selling jewelry. I learned more about sales, marketing, and evangelism schlepping gold and diamonds than in any high-tech position since. If you [...]