The Competitive Advantage

June 28, 2022

Marketing During a Recession

The economy – and the potential for a recession – has been the focal point of the news lately… and as business owners and leaders, we have to make business decisions while considering that economic input. Historically, when times get tough, ‘marketing’ is often the first thing that gets cut back (or cut altogether)! In this article, we’ll explore why cutting marketing during a recession is not a smart business decision… and ways to keep actively marketing for little or no cost.

June 14, 2022

6 Common Blogging Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Blogging is one of the most common marketing activities – and for a whole host of good reasons. It helps to support your reputation in the marketplace, it builds awareness, it showcases your subject matter expertise and it’s a great way to nurture sales leads and your relationships with existing clients. Further, it costs virtually nothing to do (other than some of your time) and you can write about nearly any topic on your mind. Which is why so many firms include blogging in their marketing arsenal.

However, it is still a marketing tactic that needs to be done well… and too many firms are making too many mistakes with it. In this blog post, we’ll explore the six most common mistakes and make recommendations for how to fix them.

April 12, 2022

Think-Plan-Do #2: 3 More Smart Ideas For Your Marketing & Sales

This is the second in our new once-a-month Think-Plan-Do blog series where I’ll share three low-cost/no cost ideas to help with your sales and marketing efforts. [You can read the first one here.] This month, our three topics are:

Think: You have two kinds of clients

Plan: The sales pipeline report

Do: Tips for your capabilities presentation

March 15, 2022

Think-Plan-Do: 3 Smart Ideas for Your Marketing & Sales

This blog marks the start of a new series of articles – one every month where I’ll share three low-cost/no cost ideas to help with your sales and marketing efforts. Each article in the series will follow the same format: Think-Plan-Do.

‘Think’ will provide ideas about strategy. ‘Plan’ will cover topics around planning and management. And ‘Do’ will offer very tactical suggestions. I hope you find the series helpful.

January 11, 2022

8 Last-Minute Ideas For Your 2022 Sales & Marketing Plan

Is your 2022 sales & marketing plan done? If your firm is like a lot of others, you might still be wrapping it up. And even if it is done, it’s supposed to be a living document… to be updated/changed as the year progresses. In either case, I wanted to share a few last-minute tactical ideas for you to consider adding to your plan.

December 14, 2021

I Stopped Blogging for a Month… And Here’s What Happened

At our firm, we are all big believers in content marketing – for our clients and for ourselves – because of all the great things it can do for a business:

September 21, 2021

Your Customers’ Experience (CX) with Your Firm Can Make or Break You!

I’m a bourbon drinker. But sadly, this blog post isn’t about bourbon… it’s about CX – the customer experience.

As a bourbon drinker, I have gotten into the habit of sending bottles of bourbon as gifts to clients. And I’ve been using a website called ReserveBar.com to do it.

It’s a really easy site to use… to find the particular product I’m looking for and to have it sent. But recently, I had a problem with a purchase there.

September 14, 2021

Too busy for sales and marketing? Stop lying to yourself!

Most every firm I’ve spoken with of late is doing pretty well – business picked up in Q4 of last year and continues to be strong. And while some experienced a bit of the traditional summer slowdown this year, nearly all are expecting a very strong fourth quarter again. And that’s great! We should all enjoy and benefit from a strong business environment.

But there will be a downturn in business at some point… no one is sure when… but it’s coming. It always does. Are you preparing for it now?