Marketing

Could This Be You? One Great YouTube Launches a Startup

March 9, 2012

CNET’s Rafe Needleman posted about DollarShaveClub.com yesterday and I picked it up this morning. It seems that the key to a successful launch was one extremely-well-done one-minute video on YouTube, which I’ve embedded here: I find this inspirational. It’s fascinating how this one big hit can be so effective. How much would a couple of [...]

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Do You Believe Your Analytics?

November 23, 2011

What I hate about analytics ia that sometimes numbers are wrong or misleading, but when they are numbers, we’re not supposed to argue. I like analysis when it adds information and context to human decisions. What we have now as analytics available for marketing and web development is amazing, especially compared to the “olden days” [...]

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Some of Social Media Marketing is Community Management

October 21, 2011

Suggestion: don’t just call it all  social media marketing. Call at least part of it community management. Why? Because words and phrases get worn out. Or they get clogged like a motor boat’s propeller in a swamp. And social media marketing has been worn out by too many people with too many fake names talking [...]

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How Much Should You Worry About Your Competition?

October 14, 2011

I’m intrigued with Steve Thoeny’s comment earlier this week to my post about market research. Steve quoted Joel Spolsky, Co-founder Stack Exchange, and one of my favorite writers, with this suggestion: Talk to your customers. Find out what they need. Don’t pay any attention to the competition. They’re not relevant to you. I love Joel’s [...]

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How Can These Over-used Tactics Work?

September 27, 2011

I saw an offer the other day, on the web of course, something with a normal price of $495.00 knocked down to $19.95. I thought to myself that nobody would ever buy something offered with that patently absurd insult to intelligence.  But I’m pretty sure people do.  I learned that the hard way. I once [...]

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What Kind of Advertising for a Startup

September 14, 2011

I revised my timberry.com website a couple of months ago and one of the additions was the ask me page where I offering to answer questions people ask. This question came to me from that page and I think it might be a useful answer for this blog. Question: I just started a small business [...]

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Is Marketing Dead?

August 5, 2011

I’m troubled. Some of the smartest, most successful people I know say marketing is dead. It doesn’t matter, they say. It’s a waste of time. Instead… … just build great product. Disrupt a big market. The buzz will follow. And it makes some sense. Did Facebook care about marketing, or product? What about Twitter? Amazon.com? [...]

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Endorse Me, You Gypsy Savage, Endorse Me!

March 23, 2011

On the one hand, who likes big government? The FTC, Federal Trade Commission, sounds like the feds. Gear up your paranoia. On the other hand, who likes fake endorsements? And then — can I borrow your hand to make the third hand, please — wow! How can we resist highlighting this: On Monday the FTC [...]

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Never Confuse a Domain Name With Marketing

March 16, 2011

Once upon a time I ran into a group of entrepreneurs who had a business plan based on the simple power of a domain name. I won’t say what that name really was, but let’s pretend it was books.com. In their business plan they touted their ownership of this domain name repeatedly. But they had [...]

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That It Didn’t Work Then Doesn’t Mean it Won’t Work Now

January 13, 2011

I’ve had another stark reminder this week: with the way things change so fast, these days. we can never assume that what didn’t work for our business even two or three years ago won’t work now if we try it again. That’s tough. It’s so easy to get locked in mentally. I’m thanking my lucky [...]

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