I’ve often sat and watched one of the Sarah Beeny style shows on TV where she tries to guide a person through a property development project. Ultimately, it’s about turning a profit, but, more often than not, one of the participants will get emotionally involved in a detail such as fixtures and fittings. They forget [...]
Continue Reading →Improving your B2B value add proposition
Offering value-added services in the B2B service sector is pretty much a given these days. Many companies talk about their USP (unique selling proposition) but to be honest, how unique are they really? The thing is, technology has changed the rules on value add. It’s easier to offer value add these days. Last years value-added [...]
Continue Reading →Derren Brown and Marketing Intrigue
The great thing that Derren Brown manages to do is create intrigue. This is obviously the job of an illusionist but it’s a tough job these days, the world has changed. When I was a kid, I remember David Copperfield and Paul Daniels and I remember hearing about the Magic Circle. In my mind this [...]
Continue Reading →Kidding ourselves that people need what we have
It’s funny how we can tell ourselves that people want (or need) what we are selling. I have been promoting a scheme recently and telling everyone who will listen what a great deal it is. I personally would buy one of these ‘things’ as an individual. But, there is also a company version of the [...]
Continue Reading →Selling a complex product to an naive audience
Had a chat with a new client yesterday about selling to customers who don’t really know what they are buying. At first glance, it seems like an unrealistic situation – that a client wouldn’t know what they are buying, but when you think about it, it’s probably the norm. Last week, my car was in [...]
Continue Reading →Why your business must sell its story
I come across a number of businesses on my travels with a great story to tell – usually SMEs and startups. But, why-oh-why don’t they use them for marketing? A lot of the time they are compelling, personal and attractive stories, and, what is marketing if it isn’t just a bunch of stories that make [...]
Continue Reading →Focusing your marketing on ROI
ROI, or Return On Investment, is a powerful metric for so many aspects of business and, sometimes, when it’s not just a case of a simple financial return, it can be a hard figure to measure. For instance, when it comes to web marketing, with the likes of Google Analytics, do we focus too much [...]
Continue Reading →Attractive Marketing Propositions
Many marketers – me included – sometimes forget the difference between what they say and what they do. Sometimes, especially with my own stuff, I get so hung up on words that I forget about messages. More specifically, tailored messages. It’s not that I’m rubbish at marketing or creating marketing messages, I get good results [...]
Continue Reading →Starting Dialogue
Have you ever had a customer turn around and say, “I never knew you did that”? I went to an interesting round table yesterday about public sector and charities engaging with business (and vice versa). One specific comment in particular raised was the need to speak in a relevant language to “the other side” and [...]
Continue Reading →Business Flexibility
A few business models have come into my awareness in the past few weeks. Like this logo design company and this guy applying Photoshop filters to photos and selling them back as canvases. Both aren’t ‘the right way’ of doing it according to many of the people I speak to. Why is this? Not highbrow [...]
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