Marketing — or generating leads for — your business shouldn’t be a mysterious process. In a nutshell, you’ve got to identify the problem you solve, somehow get in front of people who have that problem (and are committed to solving it) and get them to say, “YES… I’d like to hear how you might solve
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The Advanced Guide to Marketing With Muscle
Marketing is a deliberately over-complicated term for small business owners. When you view marketing — as most do — as synonymous with “getting your name out there,” you lose. You lose money on ads that don’t work. You lose money on branding that doesn’t amount to even a small increase to your bottom line. You
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A 2-Step Test For How Well You (Really) Know Your Target Market
For more than a decade, I’ve contended that the absolute best business advantage you can give your business is one you cannot buy or fake: to know your market intimately… to know your target market better than any of your competitors. This has been the cornerstone of my own business success, is the primary principle of
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What You Must Know Before Hiring a Marketing Agency
This article will tell you what you MUST know before hiring a marketing agency. But first, I want to share the easiest — and hardest — “this ain’t happening” moments of my pre-marital dating experience. =) This TMI is for illustrative purposes only and, I promise it applies. First, the easiest. I went out on a date
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Required to Search: Strength from the Struggle
I just read an e-zine from Adam Urbanski of www.themarketingmentors.com and it reminded me of a wonderful story of a farmer… and how this applies to our business. Here is the condensed version: (I am summarizing.) After a season of much higher rainfall than normal, a local reporter visited a farmer for a comment on how the increased
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What am I Selling Today?
I’ve never before been MORE aware of how many business owners genuinely HATE sales. I don’t just mean a playful “dislike” of sales. I’m talking about a genuine, consuming, nasty, and disdainful hatred. It’s a shame, because (obviously) without SALES, these business owners will never make any money. Of course, what these people (mainly women??) are HOPING is that they won’t HAVE to sell… that they
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THE DEATH OF MASS MARKETING… RIP!!
Here lies the rotting corpse of Mass Media Advertising. He passed away recently after a prolonged and difficult illness. Thanks to the valiant efforts of advertising salespeople everywhere, and the foolish attempts of big business seeking to win “creative awards” (think: Superbowl) rather than new customers, he was able to live on far past his
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Market Like a Hooker…
Sex sells. We have all heard this “truth”, but how, exactly? HOW does “sex sell”? Well, I spent the weekend with a call girl to, um, pick her brain. More on that later…. If you are like many of my private clients…. *** you may be wondering how to do this thing “right”… I mean,
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