Business owners or managers, whether new or experienced, often use friends and associates as an informal sounding board for everything from new products or new names to ad and logo designs.  But unless those acquaintances are also marketing professionals (and maybe even then), you’re likely to get a lot of diverse opinions without much (if…

Many marketing budgets are created backwards.  Some “standard” is applied, such as the industry average for companies your size, or a fixed percentage of income – then marketing expenses are shoe-horned into that number.  But what if you did the opposite?  What if you began by defining your goals (sales, customers, retention, etc.), then built…

Creativity is a great way to make your message “sticky” – to help customers retain it long enough to act on it.  But sometimes, the message itself is so simple and powerful that it can stand alone.  Case in point: a recent bank ad tries to be clever to get the idea across that they’re…

Papa John’s is inviting customers to create its next pizza offering.  Using social media, the chain is offering a slice of the profits, a lifetime supply of pizza and $1,000 in marketing dough to whoever concocts the winning recipe (the top three recipes will be sold in its stores; the highest selling of the three…

Sometimes it makes sense to state the obvious.  So here goes.  You want customers to do business with you.  Customers could not care less.  This is the point where marketing begins.  You have to do two things: get the prospect’s attention, then give them a great reason to do whatever you want them to do. …

Why do your customers come back for more?  Is there a saturation point where they’ve taken advantage of all your services, or where there’s nothing new for them to see or try?  Think of the way animals forage.  They eat all the available food in a relatively small area, then move on, pick a new…

A client once offered a challenging thought.  When you buy a new vehicle, you don’t expect the salesperson to take care of servicing it for you.  That’s what the service department is for.  The salesperson devotes his or her time to checking in with you to make sure you’re happy, to letting you know about…

All businesses operate on some basic assumptions about how they’re doing.  Sure – you have numbers to tell you how profitable the company is, or where sales are coming from.  But how do you find how happy your customers are?  You can take a passive approach, leaving surveys where customers can find them and fill…

When we face a difficult business challenge, our first response is usually to look around our own industry to see how other companies like ours have solved it.  This poses two problems.  First, your challenge is often shared by others, but solved by no one.  Second, it limits the solution to whatever your competitors are…

The multi-generational household is making a comeback.  According to 2008 Census Bureau statistics, over 16% of Americans now live in a home with at least two adult generations, or a grandparent plus one or more other generations.  Nearly half of these households include three generations living together.  While such households declined steeply from 1940 to…