How trust converts brand advertising to sales

Brands can engender trust simply by being seen and heard. Consistent brand marketing directly affects how willing someone is to trust and shortlist your product or service. Here’s how.

7 ways traditional marketing fails for B2B SaaS

 The marketing rules are changing, particularly for SaaS companies, and the time of spending months fine-tuning a campaign worth a quarter of your marketing budget, launching it and crossing your fingers that it will work are going. Instead, a new, more agile approach to marketing is needed.

What the newspaper you read can teach you about the importance of brand positioning

A few years ago I made the conscious decision to stop watching the news on TV. Perhaps it was the groundhog day formula of ‘international war, opposition says the Government made a stupid mistake, sport, sport, sport, heartwarming kitten story’ or that it was increasingly easy to find news from other sources – online new sites, Twitter and opinion blogs that provided a sense of balanced perspective on the news.

The power of niche marketing

Consider: you live in Northcote, Portland or East London. You have a fine, full manly beard, a fixie and visions of selling sushi tacos or vegan jackfruit pulled pork sandwiches. You’re looking for some advice. What message do you think is more likely to catch your eye: ‘How to set up a new business’ or ‘10 steps to crushing it with a killer food truck’?

A marketing plan is a measured piece of string

Sitting at number 2 of my top 5 most disliked, clichéd sayings, is ‘how long is a piece of string’. If I am sitting opposite someone and they say it, I want to slide under the desk like I’ve just been given a very fast acting poison and if I’m standing I would like to fall to the ground like a narcoleptic goat.

Emotional Marketing – B2B technology customers need cuddles too.

Two years ago I read The Millionaire Next Door, the revised, revised, revised edition. Why didn’t they revise the title? What’s one million dollars going to buy…one house! Anyway if you haven’t read it let me save you $9.45 on the Kindle version and tell you in six words how to be rich – Be quite tight with your money.

6 brands proving B2B content doesn’t need to be boring

In the hierarchy of marketing, there is an unofficial ranking of ‘cool’ brands to work for. Top of the list? Luxury brands and beer (nothing surprising there). Middle of the pack might be banking – big budgets, and looks good on the CV too. And way, way down the bottom of the list you’ll probably find B2B firms.

Make your marketing budget small but powerful

What’s your marketing budget? It’s probably a closely guarded secret; very likely the actual figure has never been totalled up. Whatever it is, many businesses believe that If only they had more to spend they’d be able to make a bigger impact. For instance, $10,000 might buy you attendance at one conference and net you one customer. Or you could invest that $10,000 in Facebook advertising and gain 10,000 likes – but how many of those will turn into an actual customer?

Marketing automation: when machines attack…

Simply put, marketing automation is the use of technology to make marketing more efficient. Whether your challenge is efficiency, pushing customers down the sales funnel or increasing conversion, more than likely you’ll find a ready-made solution just waiting to take all the pain away. Or will you?

Phil Collins: the man, the musician, the marketing funnel legend

marketing funnel

Admit it, we’ve all been there. The time someone broke your heart, and you were devastated? Weeks spent in a pinot and Ben-and-Jerry’s haze, boxes of Kleenex and that one song that captured all the pain in one perfect lyric, almost as if the singer had been there going through the breakup with you.

New ways to break old habits

Our daily lives are driven by repetition – what we have for breakfast, the way we travel to work, and what we watch on TV.  And while we tend to make considered choices when first considering a product purchase, over time we can develop purchase habits out of inertia or a desire to keep live […]