Category Archives: Customers

Mapping Social Media

Most Aussies will probably recognise the diagram above, the London Underground. The first time anyone arrives in London, an underground map is  a vital piece of paper, even in these days of mobile phone enabled GPS tools. The underground system … Continue reading

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2 vital and connected KPI’s for SME’s

Share of wallet, share of attention Share of Wallet is, very simply, your share of an existing customers total purchases in a domain you service. You can fiddle at the edges in the way you define the domain, but it … Continue reading

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Business of Social Media.

The business function of Social Media is to spread the message, and make sales. Each platform differs in the balance between the “Social” and “business” focus but nevertheless, they are essentially the digital equivalent of a social gathering. Some are … Continue reading

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6 imperatives for effective SME email marketing.

Cold emails are usually no more welcome that a cold phone call. However, For small businesses, the emergence of email marketing has transformed the opportunities they have to communicate, but so many fail to do some pretty simple things before … Continue reading

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5 classic marketing steps that still work.

In 1968 a seminal Book called “Consumer behaviour”  Engel, Blackwell & Kollat described the 5 steps in the marketing process that dominated marketing thinking for the next 45 years. It is clear that they are still as valid now as … Continue reading

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Native advertising or news fraud

Last night Media Watch on the ABC did a piece on the “news report” done on one of the 6.30 current affairs programs on a commercial station. The “report” was a 15 minute advertising free  expose on the sourcing of … Continue reading

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12 key success factors for SME’s

Small businesses make up the vast majority of business numbers, make a huge contribution to economic activity and health, but most do not last 5 years. Over  20 years of observing small businesses as a contractor and consultant, I have … Continue reading

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Marketing recidivism

The word recidivism is usually heard in the context of those convicted and punished, going on to re-offend. The objective is to reduce the rate, ideally to zero. Not in the context of marketing and sales, where the objective is … Continue reading

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Intersection of sales, marketing and technology

  18 years ago running an ingredient supplier to the food industry as a contractor, I sponsored a project of quantifying a range of ingredient specifications against a matrix of  organoleptic, and cost outcomes given a range of processing parameters. … Continue reading

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7 tips to improve your marketing.

Marketing has changed very rapidly from the mass outbound marketing upon which all the marketing theory and practice until about 2000, to what is often called “inbound” marketing, or in other words, finding ways to attract customers to you. There … Continue reading

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5 ways small retailers avoid failure

Small retailers see themselves as under siege, and many just hunker down and work harder to survive, for many, it is too hard. For those that survive, some are doing really well, and there seems to be a few common … Continue reading

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How can you do it to yourself???

  I just had another of those really, really annoying phone calls from a call centre, and being a marketer, I cringed with shame and frustration. After I answered, it took probably 5 seconds for the person on the other … Continue reading

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Design doing

Steve Blank is one of the real thinkers in the innovation space who gets out there into the weeds and gets stuff done. The illustration at the top of this post is one from a recent post on his blog … Continue reading

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7 essential sales tips for SME’s

Most of us recognise that the best sales lead you have is a satisfied existing customer, so why do SME’s so often fail to capitalise on them?. It seems to me that there are a number of reasons, usually they … Continue reading

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Sales funnel revisited as a purchase funnel

  The “sales funnel” is a pretty familiar diagram, it has been around for a long time, simply because it makes sense, at least it did to sales people. To their customer prospects, there is a level of antipathy to … Continue reading

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The value curve

As a young marketing graduate in the 70’s I was given a scholarship to attend  an intensive marketing management program in Boston, run by Harvard professor Jim Hagler. He changed my life. One of the many things he rumbled to … Continue reading

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Digital body language

  Prospecting, lead qualification and nurturing, prospect management and the transaction itself have all changed forever. The salesman with a bag has been relegated, at best,  to the transaction end of the prospect to transaction continuum. In the process, we … Continue reading

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Conferences are for marketing.

  Few things are more important than how we feed ourselves, and get access to clean water. Without these, our species will not survive,  our numbers are increasing rapidly, as the resources of the planet, particularly available water, are being … Continue reading

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The 7 common features of successful websites

  Success does not happen by accident, it comes from hard work, knowledge, insight and experimentation. In the case of websites there are almost a billion websites live (866k) in July 2014, the billion mark will probably be reached by … Continue reading

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Content marketing, and marketing content

  Have you created the best content you can, original, insightful, and engaging, that demonstrates your domain knowledge, but it goes nowhere? No impact, no interest, even your friends do not read it. It is a bit like throwing a … Continue reading

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