Every week, a couple of e-mails arrive with scintillating subject lines like “Weekly e-blast” or “The Latest News from…”  Makes you want to drop everything and open them, doesn’t it?  So two thoughts.  First, content matters.  If you’re just e-mailing people to tell them how awesome your company is, please stop.  Instead, prove your awesomeness…

When was the last time your marketing surprised anyone?  One of the easiest ways to elevate your brand is to deliver a message that takes prospects by surprise — to be distinct enough they leave an impression.  But truly surprising marketing has some natural enemies — primarily inertia, consensus and the kind of reluctance to…

How many times have you seen it — a BTB ad using an image of two people shaking hands?  Too many.  Way too many.  And like a handful of other overused business images, the real problem runs deeper than overexposure.  Marketing images should do several things — but primary among them is to illustrate the…

In Andy Weir’s insanely great book, The Martian, stranded astronaut Mark Watney performs astounding technological and scientific feats — all to survive the calamities that Mars throws his way.  Which begs the question: what drives innovation at your company or in your industry?  Does it take some unforeseen crisis or catastrophe to force you to…

It’s a nice problem to have: how much marketing do you need when you’re already running at capacity?  The temptation, of course, is to pump the brakes and slow or stop marketing.  After all, why spend money on bringing in new business if you already have all you can handle?  The answer, at least in…

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu offers marketers some very good advice.  “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.  If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.  If you know neither the enemy…

In the middle of his historic address to the U.S. Congress, Pope Francis said five words that get to the heart of many issues — including branding.  “Don’t discard what proves troublesome,” the Pontiff advised.  It’s good advice.  Like Congress, your company has already solved all of the easy problems.  (Okay – you’re probably doing…

When asked to rank the attributes that mattered when choosing an asset management firm, consumers said one thing.  But when asked why they actually chose the firm they settled on, the attributes that had ranked highest dropped from the top of the list to near the bottom.  Why?  It’s one thing to speculate on how…

Based on the amount of time people spend talking and writing about it, and the number of companies pitching their ability to do it, and the money being thrown at it, you would think that search engine optimization was the holy grail of marketing.  Just do SEO well, and marketing will take care of itself. …

A local builder decided to make his company stand out in a very competitive field.  So in addition to serving his customers extraordinarily well and paying a lot of attention to even the smallest details — something all builders would claim but few actually do — he began building the most energy efficient homes in…