Everyone knows the story of the Wizard of Oz. Carried in a tornado to the land of the Munchkins, Dorothy is desperate to find her way home. She sets off down the Yellow Brick Road, hoping that the great Wizard of Oz will be able to magic her back to Kansas. Following a lifetime’s worth…
The word “guru” is so overused that nowadays it’s practically an insult, but in the case of David Ogilvy, it’s true. His thinking about what makes good advertising in the 1950s and 1960s was so influential, that he is today widely acknowledged as “the Father of Advertising”. Here is his central insight on marketing: “Big…
It’s one of life’s little pleasures. Every Saturday morning, I wake up to the sound of a bumper edition of The Times being shoved through my letterbox. I skim through the headlines and read the opinion pages….. And then I skip to the bit I really relish. The restaurant review. Now, anyone who knows me…
The words “sales funnel” scares people. It sounds so complicated…. So mysterious…. So techy. (Although in reality, it’s none of those things.) Many of the explanations online don’t really help. “It’s the process businesses put in place to attract prospects, nurture them, and get them to buy from you.” But what does that look like…
On Sunday, April 11th, Ryan Deiss’s accountant told him he owed the taxman a whopping $250,000 – in four days’ time. He didn’t have the money. “For the first time in my adult life, I cried,” he writes in his book, Invisible Selling Machine. “Right there in my living room, with my wife sitting at…
It’s election day here in Britain. Haven’t cast my vote yet – I’m going to wait until my kids get home from school, so I can show them democracy in action – but I know who’s getting it. (Don’t worry, that’s not what this piece is about, so we’re not going to fall out over…
Is your email marketing neglected compared to your social media marketing? Do you struggle to get people to sign up – let alone open your messages? Still not sure what content works best? To learn how to create a powerful email campaign, I spoke to Tim Watson, author of Smart Insights’ Email Marketing Guide. His…
One of the biggest myths about content marketing is that if you publish lots of good content on social media, you will suddenly find your business booming. Now don’t get me wrong – good content (and lots of it) is absolutely crucial to the process of building your business online. And sometimes, you will find…
Have Pharma marketers got it all wrong? Instead of trudging uneasily into the world of social media, should they be going back to the future – to email marketing? I’m asking because, according to reports, one of the presentations that generated most excitement at the Eye for Pharma conference in Barcelona this week concerned the…
I have written in my recent blog posts about social media fatigue, but increasingly, there is also email fatigue, that is people who are so fed up with receiving emails, they ignore the messages. In the last few months, the problem has got a lot worse, with people also ignoring personal emails. You send a message requesting information, or you email someone to follow up what was discussed at a recent meeting, and they don’t respond.
Unfortunately you can’t blame them. People are now bombarded with so many emails (most people get over 100/day – and that’s excluding the spam) that they ignore all but the most important messages. In fact, we are all so overloaded with information that sometimes the best way to get someone’s attention is to use a bit of old fashioned marketing.
