Blog

March 22, 2021

What do you have to think about when naming your brand or business?

It’s tempting to think short term as an entrepreneur. To go with a brand name that seems to get the most attention. But your brand is perhaps the biggest and longest-term decision you face. Anita Roddick

Some conundrums: Do you make your brand distinctive (or even controversial) or do you make sure it conveys what you do and who you are? The former may be great for attention but might be tough on achieving

A check list for brand naming success: Remember: Naming is the art of the possible. Naming is as much about what you can have, as what you want. Just think about everything a name faces: language checks,

March 22, 2021

Why is it so hard to get honest feedback and what can you do about?

Fear, insecurity and playground bullies. Why is it so hard to get honest feedback and what can you do about it? Unless you genuinely think you have a monopoly on wisdom and an all seeing, all knowing perspective

Our own insecurities power our emotional responses in life. How many of us nurture an inner child desperate to be approved of, and scared of being criticized? And how easy is it for this child to be resurrected

Of course just being aware that when you ask someone “Hey Bill, what do you think about…..?” you might not get the unvarnished truth helps. But some simple tips from my experience: Feedback, wherever

March 16, 2021

Marketing guesswork costs you in hard cash

Some of the worst guesses of all time: Einstein thought nuclear power impossible. Keynes thought by now we’d have a 15 hour work week.  Irving Fisher said in October 1929 that the NYSE had reached a

In business, when you think about it, we are just guessing most of the time. For how many decisions we make in our daily business life do we have little or no evidence to guide us? Some? Most? All? If

March 3, 2021

Why being customer centric matters so much for B2B marketing

The importance of obtaining genuine insight and why defining the problem is key to success “If you think marketing is expensive, consider the effects of invisibility on your business” 

This is probably the hardest won lesson that many of us fail on. Not because owners and managers of small businesses don’t care about their customers, far from it. In fact, it’s more because they are

How to Find New Winning Insights: (not generic observations) The first crucial step is to unearth genuine insights into your customers’ lives and their needs. People often mistake generic observations

January 15, 2021

How to write a good marketing brief

If you use an external designer or agency to develop any marketing activity then a good clear brief is absolutely crucial.  The designers can only “create” based on what you tell them and here the

The vaguer you are, the more challenging it is for the designer to solve the problem given to them. Vague briefs result in lost time and frustrations for both parties involved, as the designer has little

Measure of effectiveness can be numerous and include things like: Sales measures Increase in sales – by percentage but preferably with amounts Increase in footfall Improved conversion rates – sales

Improved impact on the environment E.g. Energy conservation or offsets, using recycled materials, selecting an alternative delivery mechanism that removes the need for materials (i.e. A web banner instead

January 9, 2021

Why marketing must come first

Many of us running small businesses can be tempted to view marketing as the end of the process, the window dressing, the bit that new prospects see first. However, in truth, marketing is the very cornerstone

Thus the reality of the B2B marketplace is a messy, noisy environment where most clients are playing “hard to get”. This can mean that the seemingly simple task of driving demo attendance involves

In their recent Harvard Busines Review article “How to Sell New Products”  Thomas Steenburgh and Michael Ahearne talk about how much more confident they are in their innovation processes than in

December 16, 2020

What are the crucial elements of great marketing

Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is one of the worlds favourite songs. It very nearly was lost without a trace. His own versions went nowhere. It wasn’t until Jeff Buckley covered it (see link) that

An astonishing rendition. The story of this now supremely successful song has much to teach us about marketing. Marketing is like music. Your customers are the audience. And as a small business owner or

November 18, 2020

Why its good to make business improvements one step at a time

Woolworths was a staple high street fixture of a shopping trip in my childhood. Not the least of which was due to its confectionery pic n mix. A huge array of tempting sweets from which you could choose

For several years I worked for a supplier to the pic and mix department. Which was a massive profit engine for Woolworths not to mention a store traffic driver. But it became the classic victim of the

Incrementalism is a powerful force. As above, in the negative (and one of my former media managers once told me that they day you cut your ad spend is the day your brand dies because it can never go back