So Here’s Your Challenge

How often have you struggled to show up on time for a meeting, only to be kept waiting as others stumbled in 5-10-15 minutes later? Or have you ever tuned in to your favorite TV show, only to find that it was “rescheduled” for some other time? Or travelled to a faraway store, but finding it had closed an hour early and you couldn’t get in. Research shows that by far, the two most important determi...

Do you see your website, CRM, social media, and other digital initiatives as a way to improve service levels, market your organization, or be a central part of your thought leadership strategy?  While important, at best these are merely tactics:  too often the bigger opportunity of digital transformation is ignored.  This isn’t surprising, as digital initiatives are often driven from marketing or...

Have you ever had a problem – or a disastrous – project in your organization?  When this happens, it is often “clear” that the problem is with the consultants hired to help, and sadly, this is often true. But is some of the fault also with your organization?  

Has your organization invested in a “game-changing” software project, only to discover that the promised benefits never really materialize?  Or that the implementation was so flawed that the system is regarded as a financial and operating disaster? Sadly, this happens far more than it should… but must this always be the case? 

Would you rather be a reporter, or a columnist? Reporters have a great combination of investigative skills, communication skills, moxy, and pluck. Columnists are made from the same raw material, but they get paid far more.  Why?  

How can you be your most creative? Google the topic and you will find millions of pages with an answer. Some will say you are “born” with it. Others will say it is a matter of following a process.  And others will claim it is a matter of using a secret sauce formula, which, when applied, will help you create the new and the beautiful...

Too often, the signals we send through digital channels (web, social, email, etc) are so focused on transactions – which often mean price – or so focused on expertise – which means content – but very little is focused on trust.  Pretend to be a client: when they interact with you online, will they see you as cheap, smart, or trusted?  

Unlike the written word, it is almost impossible to scan a video and get any value from it. At best, a video scan helps a user find their place: at worst, it is an exercise in frustration. But does it have to be such a low-value experience?  Is there a way to impregnate your video with value, knowing full well that the user might merely be a scanner?  

Did you ever wonder how children can so quickly learn new things? And ever hear the expression “Children should be seen, and not heard”? Maybe there is a connection between these two concepts that can help us be better leaders.  

What professional activity have you purposely decided to do over a multiyear time-frame, continuously? Perhaps attending monthly trade association meetings?  Completing an advanced degree or certification?  Or perhaps writing a thoughtful blog? The concept of 365 is equally applicable at the organizational level: what is the stake in the ground – and the associated initiatives that support it – th...

While the increasing speed of change is not new, how we market around it is.  Today, marketers have two key responsibilities: the ‘today’ marketing of today’s products and services, and the ‘today’ discovery of tomorrow’s products and services. Unfortunately, because of the very real pressure to drive current quarter sales, most marketers focus exclusively on the today.  Tomorrow is someone else’s...

Where do you spend your organization’s budget?  Should it be on communications, or on training?  Should it be on infrastructure, or on people?  Inside the organization, or to partners? While these may all be good questions, there is merit on reframing it – especially when it comes to questions around growth.  

Most marketers think of themselves as builders. Their work grows the organization, grows market share, grows the portfolio of products and services. A bit more tactically, the marketer builds page views, conversions, and social engagement; underlying all of these activities, the marketer builds trust, and builds relationships. But is there merit in growing marketing itself? Not the ad spend or dep...

Have you ever considered why some of your content resonates, and some seems just a bit off? Too often emails – especially ones that form part of a marketing automation sequence – fail because of one thing: voice.

With so many people and organizations getting on the blogging and podcasting bus, it seems that blogging must be very important. But why? Deciding on a strategy helps clarify the underlying purpose of the content itself, and provides focus to the creative process.

Who do you prefer being – the host or the guest? When you are asked to be a guest at an event, it is a validation of your skills, experience, and your importance. Of course, being a guest has it’s obligations: if the invitation is a personal one, you often will bring a small gift. If it’s professional, you are expected to contribute your professional attention to the purpose of the event.

At its core, the rationale for market research is to help make better decisions.  Market research can discover, validate, and reduce risk.  It can improve ROI, improve management confidence, and expose competitive threat.  And it can also be the worst thing that an organization can do. Even when done perfectly, traditional market research – both qualitative (focus groups, interviews, etc) and quan...

Today, we see digital marketing techniques (such as “squeeze-pages”) that also presume too much:  How many sites have you seen that exhort the reader to “Sign up for our promotional newsletter, and we’ll give you a free ebook.” Unfortunately, this approach is completely backwards:  the marketer is asking for something – your contact details – without earning the right to do so.  Even worse, they a...

What do houses, cars, and Social Media all have in common?  For one thing, they all share a primary question:  Buy or Rent.  Buy a house, or look for a rental?  Buy a car, or lease it?  And should we rent our Social Media, or build our own? Most leaders don’t even think about this last question, because they don’t consider that Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube (and in fact, every Social Media...

Does the trend to digital mean that traditional communications are effectively… dead?  That all of your traditional communication tools (newsletters, magazines, brochures, booklets, etc) are destined for the trash heap?   One only needs to look at the sorry plight of the newspaper business to see that the future doesn’t look rosy. The world has changed.  

Have you ever felt that each year, there is yet another set of marketing buzzwords that you need to learn? Service marketing, value marketing, values-based marketing, content marketing, Social Media marketing, and the list goes on. What these terms all have in common is the connection between your organization and its target prospects: the relationship. While much has already been written about re...

How long is your attention span?  How long is the attention span of your clients, colleagues, or kids?  The conventional wisdom is that it is very short – 30 seconds – the length of a typical TV commercial.  Supposedly, the attention span of a Gen-Xer is even shorter. Thankfully, both of these urban legends are wrong – very wrong.  The attention span is highly variable, but is dependent on two key...

There is an eerie parallel between marketing automation today, and desktop publishing in the mid-late 1980’s.  Back then, the newfound ability to choose between so many fonts/sizes/styles gave the writer incredible power when it came to formatting and layout.  Some of what was produced was brilliant – but most was a disaster.  Today, marketers have been given similar superpowers: some superpowers...

In the olden days, domain names were easy.  Take your brand, add dot com and you’re done.  Those of us who didn’t want to fight the squatters also registered the dot net and dot org versions.  But with 100's of domains available, how many is too many?

The biggest risk in email fraud isn’t clumsy emails of this nature, but when a hacker gets access to your email account, and actually sends their requests directly from the account itself.