More than a Few Words

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  Where does marketing end and sales activity begin?  These days, the line is a little fuzzy as both teams rely on digital tools to attract prospects and close sales.  This week, Kyle Hammer shares some ideas on how these two groups can improve their re...

If you’re like many business owners, you started your company to do something you enjoyed. Maybe you were a chef and you started a restaurant, or a doctor who wanted to take care of people, or a marketer who enjoyed the creative challenge of engaging customers with a product. Whatever it was, you started your company to do that thing. Along the way, you figured out you also had to do sales, bookke...

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.    You have only a few moments to make that great first impression and you won't stand out by sounding like everyone else.  You need to find a way to be first, best or different. And if you choose different, make sure your point of difference is actual...

The marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features brief marketing tips and conversations with professionals from around the world.  Okay, so you’ve launched your new website and everything’s great. It looks wonderful. But you’ve noticed that you’re not getting a lot of traffic. You probably did some basic SEO when you first launched the site, now’s a great time t...

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  Before you can create an irresistible offer, you have to have a clear picture of your ideal client. Without that target your marketing and your offer are unfocused. Once you figure out who you're serving and what they want, you can begin creating offe...

When I was Vice President of Creative Services at Conseco, we were always out of literature for key products. In the insurance business literature is all you have to sell, so these outages would cripple our sales team. Our out of stock list was routinely close to 300 different items and climbing. While we had numerous meetings on the subject nothing ever changed. So I stopped talking about procedu...

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  These days there is a lot of noise out there. With the increasing number of free social media platforms right at our fingertips.  You can share the same boring information everywhere or you can create content which shares a bit of who you really are....

The weekly marketing podcast, More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  Good marketing starts with the basics.  You need to have a plan.  Unfortunately, as we learned in the last year, sometimes life throws us a few curve balls and your year long plan goes right out the window.  That's why my guest, Tim Fitzpatrick sugges...

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular  More than a Few Words  podcast. Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. If you follow national brands on social media, ask yourself why. Odds are it’s because the content is fun, entertaining, and engaging. Now look at your business social m...

he weekly marketing podcast,  More than a Few Words  is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  These days everybody's trying to present themselves as an expert. So how do you stand out in your niche in a crowded market? Part of the magic comes from creating a visual brand. Where does the process begin to build a visual brand for yourself? In t...

The podcast More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with marketing professionals from around the world. A heart-centered business has purpose and intent, connected to your superhero talent. For so many 2020 was a time for pivoting and taking drastic measures, to keep our business running. We had to move fast and we didn't always have the ability to incorporate s...

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular  More than a Few Words  podcast. Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. Today I want to talk about patience. Because let's face it, this is something that small business owners typically don't have. We start our businesses with these grand p...

The weekly marketing podcast,  More than a Few Words  is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world. Many business owners assume they know the answer. They believe they don't need research, but Lori Highby thinks that's a mistake. When you are making assumptions, it is like shooting darts in the dark. You may hit the target, but the majority of thos...

The weekly marketing podcast,  More than a Few Words  is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  This week we explore the importance of sales and marketing working together. Our guest Allan Langer explains companies that keep their marketing and sales teams separate have a lower success rate than companies which actually allow and encourage the...

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular  More than a Few Words  podcast. Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. Who is your business plan for? I know that sounds like a simple question, but it’s not really. As a business owner, it’s important to have a business plan that guides yo...

The weekly marketing podcast,  More than a Few Words  is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  Handling the mental health challenges (mostly stress, anxiety, and isolation) that come along with being a business owner. It's essential to separate your emotional state from the results, which brings you more peace of mind and ironically better re...

I happen to love things that are quirky and a little off balance. That should come as no surprise considering the fact that I named my company Roundpeg. It is this love of asymmetry and innovative shapes and sizes and styles that has really got me jazzed with some of the new web trends we’re seeing. Over the last few years websites had gotten very boxy with large rectangular images at the top, thr...

The weekly marketing podcast,  More than a Few Words  is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  Look Before You Leap Question to ask before you start your business. These days, lots of people are thinking about starting their own businesses, but they are not quite sure where to start.  Too often they focus all their energy on the product, serv...

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast.  Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. What's important to you as a company? What do you value? It's natural in a small business for the values of a company to be driven by the owner, but if your employees don...

The weekly marketing podcast,  More than a Few Words  is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.    So often small businesses make their web copy and marketing information so flat and so generic, prospective customers have a hard time finding a reason to hire them.  To make your company stand out and encourage prospects to choose you, your brand...

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast.  Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner. The introduction of the first iPhone a decade ago started us down a path from which there is no return. Today, most websites see about half of their traffic coming from m...

The weekly marketing podcast,  More than a Few Words  is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.  These days, we're not doing a lot of face to face interactions with customers or coworkers, but we still need to communicate.  I sat down with the Story Guy, Geoffrey Klein to talk about the best way for businesses to  engage an audience of prospect...

The marketing minute is a shorter version of the popular More than a Few Words podcast.  Instead of a conversation with a marketing professional, host Lorraine Ball shares a quick tip to start you on your day as a business owner.   One of the most interesting statistics to come out of our annual Small Business digital marketing survey was the fact that although most companies have blogs, they are...

The weekly marketing podcast,  More than a Few Words is hosted by Lorraine Ball and features conversations with professionals from around the world.    We are living in a relationship centric era.  Long gone are the days of mass marketing. Successful businesses must develop real relationships with their customers ,and deliver relevant, personalized and authentic communication if they want to stand...

Often when I talk to business owners about their Google Analytics, they focus a lot of attention on how many people came to their website, how many unique visitors, and what their bounce rate was. They miss  some of the most valuable information in Google Analytics, which is where your traffic is coming from. This data is the most actionable of all the information in your analytics. If your direct...