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Recent Posts
When the Founder Is the Rainmaker: How to Scale Without Losing the Spark
In many founder-led businesses, the founder isn’t just the leader—they’re also the best (and often only) rainmaker. They land the big deals. They have the trusted relationships. They know the pitch inside and out because they are the pitch.
It works—until it doesn’t.
As the business grows, this model creates a bottleneck. Every new opportunity depends on one and only person. And it’s the same person every time. But there’s a downside. When that person is also responsible for running the business, mentoring the team, and shaping the vision, something eventually gives.
Attention, Company Founders: Keys to Avoiding Colossal Marketing Flops
Mon, Jul 25, 2016 — They’re some of the worst American marketing flops of all time: Smith & Wesson Mountain Bikes, Cosmopolitan Yogurt, and Coors Rocky Mountain Water. These three powerhouses are some of the most well-known brands on the planet – and yet they still hit the skids when their seemingly unique and interesting idea failed to meet customer expectations and gain traction in the market.
What do I do with my Marketing Intern?
Sun, Jul 17, 2016 — Internships are an important part of today's marketing teams. They provide recent college graduates a chance to combat the catch-22 of needing experience to get a job that will give them experience, while employers can select from the cream of the crop, see how a potential employee will fare in a real-life setting, and even create a pool of interns to pull from in the future. However, the key to a successful marketing internship is to make sure their time spent remains a win-win situation for everyone.
How Do You Become the King of Content?
Tue, Jun 28, 2016 — By now modern marketers should know the power of content. Content is everything. Producing unique and innovative content is a vital piece of the marketing pie. So if content is king, how do you become the King of Content? It does not happen overnight. It’s a process. A process that is based largely on “trial and error”. To create meaningful content, you must start by answering the following questions:
Pick a Strategic Direction: What Alice in Wonderland and the Cheshire Cat Can Teach CEOs about Growing Their Business
Tue, Jun 21, 2016 — In the whimsical world of Lewis Carroll’s famous tale Alice in Wonderland, the author paints mind-bending pictures of some of the most pressing questions in modern society. Though many regard this classic as merely a children’s story, every modern CEO can appreciate several scenes woven through the book that can be applied, succinctly and directly, to the challenges of today’s global business environment.
Beer or Innovation? I'll Take Both!
Fri, Jun 17, 2016 — Even the oldest, most straightforward business models are capable of innovation. Your company may never be revolutionary like Apple or become a category buster like Starbucks. But if you innovate by making small, often simple, changes you can alter the way your customers and prospects think about you and your products. No matter how staid or commoditized your business is, follow the three tips at the conclusion of today’s post and you will become an innovator, with all of the attention and revived interest that innovation creates.
Delivering on Your Brand’s Promise through Lifestyle and Culture
Thu, Jun 2, 2016 — Today’s brands offer a rich means of consumer self-expression. Like digital bumper stickers, the blogs and pages we follow and interact with on the Internet and social media are beginning to serve as a reflection of what culturally defines us as people. Whether or not we, as consumers, build a personal connection with the barrage of brands around us, can ultimately impact the fate of the brand itself. As former IBM chairman and CEO Lou Gerstner said in his interview with Spencer Stuart, “Culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game.” Since a brand’s authenticity and lifestyle fit is so important to today’s customers, we know that we have to fortify our brand’s promise, so it means much more than a set of two-dimensional, written benefits on our website, social media pages, and product packaging. There are two distinct ways we can achieve this:
Are You Marketing An Organism Or An Ecosystem?
Wed, Jun 1, 2016 — People like to use metaphors. When we are trying to explain something, describe a situation, or develop an idea, we often compare the subject at hand to another thing that the listener may already know. Marketers use metaphors in many situations to reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to grasp a concept or an idea behind a product. Terms like bandwidth, information highway, the cloud, data mining, and even internet and web are all attempts to transfer what we know about one thing to something inherently dissimilar – the definition of metaphor.
The Great Race: Staying Ahead of Consumers and Competitors through Product Innovation
Wed, May 25, 2016 — If you’ve ever watched the popular ABC-TV show “Shark Tank,” you know that Mr. Wonderful, Mark Cuban, and the rest of their millionaire and billionaire entrepreneurial assemblage are simply not interested in investing in any product that a) has a competitor copycat, or b) can be replicated by a consumer giant. If one of these two criteria is apparent, the deal is 100 percent dead on arrival, no matter how devoted or tenacious the entrepreneur may be. As Mr. Wonderful (aka seasoned entrepreneur and investor Kevin O’Leary) often says, we all have to “wet our beaks.” It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and regardless of whether our company is dealing with an investor or a customer, we are attempting to innovate in the middle of a quick, competitive age of consumer product innovation. Brands must utilize their consumer data and analytics, think ahead on product innovation, and interact with their customer base in an impactful way – or the competition will take care of it for us instead.
Making It Easy: Three Steps To Creating the Ultimate Customer Experience
Tue, May 24, 2016 — Why a commitment to consistent, small improvements in customer experience will lure customers back and cement customer loyalty over time Your nightmare has come true – someone has fraudulently charged a sheaf of frivolous, online purchases to your trusty Visa card. Luckily, the credit card company’s algorithms caught it and shut the scam down – but of course, nobody told you. You actually found out in a bustling grocery store on a Sunday morning, with a cart full of perishable food, two kids in tow, and a long, impatient line behind you. As a warm, gripping panic begins to squeeze your insides, you hope that a simple call to the card service center will be able to fix everything in a flash.