Archive for 2015

Just because I can hear you doesn’t mean you have the right to be heard.

Extraordinary work requires that you trust the person doing the work. Don’t expect the extraordinary if you won’t let people create it.

If your audience would not miss your insights and updates should you suddenly stop, then you don’t have an audience that’s listening.

Virality comes not when you talk about your product but when other people talk.

Well implemented on-line marketing offers a more cost-effective strategy, with greater flexibility, than anything you could implement purely offline.

Don’t build your marketing strategy without considering your product.

Don’t build your product strategy without considering your customer.

Don’t build your customer base without considering your marketing.

Good marketing cannot happen without a good audience.

You don’t claim to love good hamburgers and eat at McDonald’s.

Yet people who claim to love coffee drink Starbucks.

It is not love of the individual product that makes them eat and drink. It is love of the consistent experience. The uniformity of consumption. They love the lack of surprise. They revel in the safety of the mediocre and consistent.

Levis. Starbucks. Nike. McDonald’s. CocaCola. This isn’t quality that people are buying. It’s consistency.

Once you have convinced your audience that your product is unsurprising, you no longer have the ability to surprise your audience AND keep the audience you have.

It is easier to shrug helplessly than it is to care.

Make your work count for someone, not everyone.

Marketing is not a cost center.

If marketing isn’t boosting your bottom-line, you’re doing it wrong.

My wife refuses to let me take on more pro-bono start-up clients than the number of non-profits she works with.

At every decision point in your marketing, you shouldn’t think “What’s the ROI if I do this?” but instead focus on “What’s the loss if I don’t?”

Think of your marketing like a water hose.

You turn the tap on here, and eventually, after a little while, water flows out of the end of the hose over there.

You want to keep the hose full of flowing water all the time, which means you want to be marketing, all the time.

Marketing is like dining at a fancy restaurant where they serve many courses.

No one course will ever fill you up, but at the end of the evening, thinking about a wafer thin mint will make you explode.