Browsing all posts in Marketing tips.
Seasonality is an Excuse
I hear a lot of people say their product is seasonal and I see a lot of companies treat their products as such. But in many cases, is your product really seasonal? Or are you simply using that as an excuse? I won’t deny it, some products are definitely seasonal. Most people don’t shop for [...]
Is Social Media Hurting Your Marketing Efforts?
Just like a shiny new toy, social media marketing is the hot new thing. But as I wrote about in Is Social Media Right for Your Business?, it isn’t for everyone and can actually do more harm than good. Last month I received this email: The email is nice and clean and with a direct call [...]
Are They Open to a Sale?
Selling a product is a hard job. It’s certainly not a job I would want. Sometimes though, I think sales people make it even harder for themselves. It’s drilled into their head that they can’t let anything stand in their way of making a sale and their customers feel it. Recently, we had a door to door [...]
5 Ways to Kill a Sales Lead with CRM Software
I know many of my posts lately have been focused on the automotive industry, but personally I feel you can learn a lot from other industries that can be applied to your own. As my last actual car buying experience (not including curiosity excursions onto car lots and test drives) was 11 years ago I [...]
Customer Complaint Isn’t a Swear Word
Image via Wikipedia Have you ever given much thought to customer feedback? It certainly incites a wide variety of feelings in most people, both good and bad. Customer service is certainly a frequent topic of discussion. But do you really listen to your customers? Or does customer feedback simply go into the circular file, written [...]
Anti-Networking
Image by ExecGifts via Flickr Recently I went to a tweetup and caught up with some friends as well as met a lot of new people. As is often the case at tweetups, you have two distinct groups. I think of one as the friendlies, and the other as the card exchangers. Both are about [...]
What Opportunities are You Overlooking?
Twitter is often cited as a great new marketing tool that truly brings one-to-one marketing to the forefront. But truly, what good is this tool if you don’t really use it? A few months ago I was looking into getting a new cellular phone, and as there were so many fantastic new options, I really [...]
5 Reasons Zappos is Killing Customer Service
Image by George Eastman House via Flickr It’s hard to not have a conversation about customer service and not mention Zappos, but I have to say, they’re wrecking customer service. 1. They make you expect a real person when you call instead of numerous levels of automation hell. 2. Not only do you expect a [...]
Think You Can Automate Your Marketing?
With the growth of social media, many companies want to get involved, but don’t really want to divert resources to these untested areas. Often, companies set them up and forget about it, or they try to keep it active by passively automating it. After all, why should you pay for someone to manage your social [...]
Why You Should Understand Domains
Why in the world should I care about understanding domains? I’m not an IT person, I’m a [fill in blank]. Understanding domains is important for more than your tech team for a number of reasons, not the least of which is so you don’t get taken advantage of. Communication Having even a basic understanding of [...]
