Want to make every marketing tactic you employ more effective instantly?  Here’s how.  Focus relentlessly on who your target audience is, what matters to them — and most of all, what you want them to do.  Then let that focus guide every decision regarding media, creative, products and so on.  Be ruthless.  It will pay…

Brazil has always evoked the idea of exotic beauty.  But in 1987, the seven J. Sisters made the trip from their family beauty salon near the beaches of Espirito Santo to open a shop on 57th Street in the Big Apple.  They introduced the rigorous Brazilian approach to manicures and pedicures, and their business blossomed. …

While Disneyland was being built in California, Walt Disney had a habit of grabbing contractors and making them crouch down beside him.  “Look up,” he’d say, “this is my customer’s perspective.”  So the park was built with a child’s point of view in mind, with spectacular results.  What’s the equivalent for you?  How far will…

They may not be in sales, but everyone in your organization affects the way your brand is perceived.  Back office people build or break down the brand based on how well they provide the support services on which customers — and other team members — depend.  Front line people either deposit to your brand’s goodwill…

Blair Enns, author of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, blogged recently that he’s come to see the fallacy in the notion that “it’s everyone’s job to sell.”  As he and others like Marcus Buckingham have pointed out, if someone isn’t naturally inclined to sell, all the training in the world won’t turn them into salespeople. …

An old rule of thumb that’s been proven over and over again in print advertising appears to be equally true in the blogosphere: people like pictures, and they like pictures of people best.  Some of the best-read consumer blogs being written today include photos of the writer engaged in the activities being written about.  In…

Which goal are you more likely to reach: becoming more fit over the next year, or running a mile three days a week?  The second one, obviously, because it’s more specific.  So how clear are your marketing goals?  A specific percentage increase in net new customers?  A dollar increase in sales or profits?  The clearer…

Istanbul-based tailor Tacettin Seker, who dresses many of Madison Avenue’s top guns, makes this observation about the custom suits he sells: “This is my mirror, so what I sell reflects me.”  We often overlook this idea – that what we sell and the way in which we sell it are the primary drivers of our…

Marketing guru Theodore Levitt famously noted, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill.  They want a quarter-inch hole.”  His point is that too many businesses forget to sell the benefit of their product or service.  How can you tell if you’re one of them?  Your website and brochures have lots of bullet-point lists of…

It’s a basic fact, but new businesses in particular overlook it every day.  You can’t run one ad or one radio spot, send out one direct mail piece or one e-mail, and expect big things.  People are too busy and exposed to too many other messages.  You have to be a constant, consistent presence to…