It’s one thing to understand that your brand messaging has to make you stand out from the competition.  It’s another to come up with a creative approach that can make it happen.  So this week, four ways to generate ideas for creating a campaign that will make your message stand out and stick.  (And one caveat. …

Every Sunday, we drive past a billboard.  In fact, we’re often stopped right in front of it.  And try as we might, no one in the car can read the subhead below the headline, which is in all caps and is super small.  Worse, none of us can make out the logo of the advertiser…

A huge percentage of companies refresh or redesign their websites every few years…and do very little with them in between.  But Google loves sites that get updated often.  So here are a few quick, easy updates that can get the search engines interested in you again.  First, update or add to your FAQs.  Are they…

Why are you spending time or money on social media?  To drive sales?  To get the word out about what you do — so you can drive sales?  To start a conversation with consumers — that will drive sales?  (See where this is going?)  Social media should drive sales, as all marketing should.  Two big…

Here’s an experiment.  Pick any medium: print, TV, digital, radio, direct mail, email, outdoor.  Note every message that grabs you and gets you interested in the product.  It’s likely that as much as 99% of what you see or hear isn’t leaving any impression at all.  That’s a ton of wasted money.  As advertising legend…

A recent survey of U.S. marketing executives concluded that, when it comes to driving revenue, email outperformed social media, website and display advertising combined.  And the vast majority of millennials believe email will still be around and viable ten years from now.  Here’s how to make that work for your company. It’s Subjective. Most email…

This year’s Superbowl served up dazzling first half dominance by the Falcons, an electrifying comeback by the Patriots, the first overtime in Superbowl history, an exciting halftime performance by Lady Gaga…and perhaps the most lackluster batch of commercials ever.  So this week, a handful of lessons from some of the best big game spots of…

Research shows that successful companies are more willing to take risks.  But they’re not reckless.  The best of the best — Amazon, for example — make a lot of small bets, to see which ones pan out.  Then they can put more resources behind the ones that work, and they haven’t put too much at…

Do you have your customers’ email addresses?  If not, go get them.  We’ll wait.  Okay.  Now, make a list of things your customers need to know or do to make their lives better or their businesses better — things related in some way to what you do.  Then, every week or so, send an email…

Marketers need to look outward toward customers rather than inward toward the organization.  Think about printers.  Most use the four process colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) as the colors of their logos (because they do 4-color process printing).  Yet many outside the industry may not understand what those colors signify.  They aren’t particularly appealing…