The Competitive Advantage

April 7, 2015

Is bad marketing better than no marketing?

I received an unsolicited email the other day from a company using the holidays (Easter and Passover) as a reason to communicate… not unlike so many companies do at Christmas/Hanukkah time. Now, I appreciate when somebody tries something different as a way to “break through the clutter”… and I admit, I’m not sure I have ever received an Easter/Passover promotional message before.

But the real problem was the message itself… It was simply one short sentence. That’s it!

Now, I’m as big a fan of brevity as the next guy… but there was no real thought behind it. No real value. Not even a nice story in the message. It’s as if the sender tried to do the absolute least amount of work possible, just to get out an email for Easter so they could say they were doing something.

All-in-all… an OK strategy – but lousy execution.

Here’s my point… I see a lot of bad marketing in our industry. Poorly thought-out, haphazard, hastily-executed tactics – just to do something. Anything. And the worst offenders are these…

March 31, 2015

The 13 Most Common Website Mistakes

Marketing technologies and tactics are changing at a whirlwind pace… but one of the things that has remained true for years is that a company’s website is – and should be – the foundation of its marketing.

It’s the first place a prospective client will go to learn about your business – your services, team, history and latest news. It’s where resources like blogs, articles and eBooks are stored and accessed. It’s the starting point for communicating with your firm – either directly or as a place to connect with your social media sites. Bottom line: it’s the centerpiece of your brand… the primary element around which all other marketing should be based.

Then why are so many websites in our industry so bad? And in some cases, not just a little bad… but embarrassing!

March 27, 2015

Are we really in the people business?

As I write this, I’m 35,000 feet over Illinois, heading to Chicago, on my way to Detroit. I’m heading there for a kick-off meeting with a new client. I start nearly all engagements this way.

Why? Honestly, it’s not just for the work – much of it could be done remotely. I do it for 3 key reasons:

March 17, 2015

Hey business owner… sales success takes time!

Have you ever hired a sales rep for your firm?

What were your expectations for his or her success?

I am amazed by how often I’ve heard something like, “Our new rep didn’t bring us any new projects in his first two months – this ‘sales’ thing isn’t working out!”

Seriously?!

March 10, 2015

Do you have a mobile-friendly website? Let’s hope so!

Internet viewing trends

As regular readers of this column know, every Saturday morning, I go to the same local coffee shop to spend a couple of hours working “on” my business… not just “in” it. I do some writing, review email and social media metrics, plan out the upcoming week and record the past week’s Google Analytics.

Rarely do the Google Analytics surprise me… but this week they did. Of all the visitors to our website this past week, 24.8% of them came from a handheld device or tablet. That is, 1 in 4 visitors were not using a computer! It was the highest ever – up from an average of about 1 in 6 just the middle of last year – and the continuation of an ever-increasing trend.

March 3, 2015

Best booth giveaway ever?

In last week’s post, I wrote about several things NOT to do in a booth when exhibiting. And one of those was giving away cheesy “merch.” I believe that things like pens, mini-frisbees and logo’d post-it notes just don’t deliver lot of value for the exhibitor.

However, I did see one exhibitor at the CASRO Digital Conference a couple of weeks ago with what may have been the best booth giveaway ever… and for a couple of reasons.

February 28, 2015

The Most Important Part of Exhibiting

The calendar year isn’t event three months old… and already it’s been a busy conference season. February saw events like the inaugural Quirk’s Event, the CASRO Digital Conference and IIeX (in Europe). March has the PMRG and ARF conferences among many others. It’s a “target rich” environment for exhibitors.

But it doesn’t always work out like you hope.

I’ll bet you’ve seen this kind of scenario play out at your own firm… you return from exhibiting at a conference with a pocketful of business cards from prospects that stopped by your booth. It’s an impressive group of people. Then the phone rings. And you get called into a couple of meetings. A client’s project implodes and you have to jump in to help… and before you know it, it’s a couple of weeks later and that pile of business cards representing all those ‘warm’ leads now has a thin layer of frost on it. The opportunity (and the urgency) has passed.

February 26, 2015

5 Basic Guidelines for Exhibiting

We exhibited at the CASRO Digital Conference a couple of weeks ago. It happened to be in my back yard, right here in Nashville. A really nice event.

The ‘exhibit hall’ was fairly small… it was actually a ballroom that held 12-15 exhibitors. And even in this microcosm of the exhibiting world, it was amazing to see just how bad most firms are at exhibiting. Here are five basic guidelines for exhibiting that I saw broken again and again…