By all accounts we’re standing by a cliff-edge, about to head into a global economic recession. It’s no surprise that businesses are looking for ways to mitigate the impending damage. For most, that manifests as a choice between either reducing costs, or increasing efficiencies. And this is where most small business owners get it wrong. In times of trouble, for many businesses marketing is the first thing to get cut – as well as the last thing to return. But why would an erstwhile savvy business person do such a thing? To sever a mechanism so essential to the value creation process, driving a ..read more

Designing and executing effective marketing programs is a tough gig at the best of times. Yet, on top of everything else, many marketers are saddled with having to convince skeptics on the value of marketing in the first place. Pretty much every small business has (at least) one marketing skeptic. It’s the person who remains unconvinced of the ultimate effectiveness of marketing as a business function. The one who wonders whether all this hippie talk of “feelings” and “brand narrative” isn’t just a thinly-veiled communist plot to overthrow the country. Marketing skeptics can come from any wal ..read more

Part of marketing’s role has always been concerned with delivering information to people. Today, it would seem marketing is more concerned with looking for ways of extracting information from them. The advent of digital advertising, a decade or so ago, provided marketers with an exciting opportunity. Being able to deliver messaging through digital channels more effectively opened up new possibilities for marketers of every shape and size. The technology would allow us to target our messaging more acutely. We would be able to learn more about people’s habits on the web in order to reach indivi ..read more

There’s a danger in remaining overly confined within your own industry’s thought bubble. Reading and listening to peers too much can cloud your view of your job, as well as the industry as a whole. It pulls you in a direction that ultimately does more harm than good. For example, much is being written at the moment about how the majority of marketing produced isn’t fit for purpose because it’s so bad. I see articles like this all the time, and I’m as guilty as anyone in writing them. I can only speak for myself, but stating my case that creativity is being exorcized from marketing is my genui ..read more

At a geopolitical level, there’s evidence to support the notion that democratically-governed countries produce higher levels of innovation than autocracies. But does that hold true when we’re talking about industries, businesses serving those industries, or departments within those businesses? I’m not so sure. You can’t help falling over organizations of every size and persuasion boasting about the flatness of their corporate hierarchy. “We don’t have departments, we have teams. We encourage debate and discussion at all levels,” and so on. But based on the observations from my ‘fly-on-the-wal ..read more

None of us know what the next 12 months have in store in terms of social distancing, mask-wearing, or vaccines. Regardless of that, whatever you previously thought marketing was must now change. Thirteen years ago, when we launched our agency, part of my time was spent convincing business owners of the importance of a marketing plan. At the time, many of them remained unconvinced. It wasn’t because they didn’t recognize its importance. They had decided it didn’t apply to themselves or their business. Today, implementing marketing efforts as a systematic part of doing business is still – unfor ..read more

As long term readers to this blog will know, most of my working day is spent talking with business owners or marketing managers. Subjects can range anywhere from whether I think they should redesign their website to generate more traffic, to why their Facebook ads are underperforming. But the single biggest inquiry we get as an agency is from owners of e-commerce sites. And, since it’s the most ubiquitous e-commerce platform around, that usually means Shopify. Before we continue, a quick nod of appreciation to the other shopping platforms. Hi there BigCommerce, PrestaShop, Magento, plugins li ..read more

In the old days, the role of marketing within an organization was more straightforward. Its confines were clearer too, especially against a backdrop of B2B sales. Today, truly effective marketing needs to expand into previously-restricted departments such as sales, support, IT, and even finance. Marketing is no longer (just) about marketing. Businesses continue to struggle to work out how and when to engage with customers in this new environment. Our personal, professional, and physical lives are overlapping in ways that no-one could have anticipated a few months ago. Companies, as well as en ..read more

None of us know what the next 12 months have in store in terms of social distancing, mask-wearing, or vaccines. Regardless of that, whatever you previously thought marketing was must now change. Thirteen years ago, when we launched our agency, part of my time was spent convincing business owners of the importance of a marketing plan. At the time, many of them remained unconvinced. It wasn’t because they didn’t recognize its importance. They had decided it didn’t apply to themselves or their business. Today, implementing marketing efforts as a systematic part of doing business is still – unfor ..read more

Well, this is all pretty bonkers, isn’t it? Like many people, the past weeks have seen my email inbox filled with heartfelt wishes for my continued good health and current working situation. Sometimes these wishes are extended to the immediate members of my family. But these sentiments of concern and goodwill aren’t from friends, colleagues, or clients. They’re from companies. Companies that, in many cases, I don’t even know. In the space of a few weeks, COVID-19 has turned the entire world upside down. As write this, around 20% of the world’s population is under some kind of lockdown. Attempt ..read more