Category Archives: Marketing

The Essentials: Clean and Organized Buildings are Important

For most organizations, your physical location is just a part of the way a customer experiences your brand. However, it can quickly ruin a customer’s experience because it gives them a concrete image to associate with your organization. A poorly … Continue reading

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Using Social Media with a Defensive Strategy

For most companies, the best reason to have a social media strategy is to play defense. The effort to effectively use social media to influence sales or conversations requires commitment and time. Most companies aren’t ready to put in that … Continue reading

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The Essentials: Social Media

Lately I’ve had several people ask me about adding social media to their marketing mix. Here are my three essential rules for social media: It’s still marketing Expect conversations on difficult issues Regular updates  are key, so plan accordingly It’s … Continue reading

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The Essentials: Consistency

If you want to succeed as a business or organization, consistency is crucial. Last week one of the blogs that I follow had a post that was different than the type of content they normally publish. The blog has a … Continue reading

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The Essentials: Stories and Relationships

My current working theory of marketing says that there are two core elements, stories and relationships. Stories Stories are the threads that tie all the pieces together. Packaging, distribution, pricing and advertising are all parts of a story that is … Continue reading

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Royal Caribbean: Not so bad in the end

A few months ago I wrote a post about Royal Caribbean adding a fuel supplement to our cruise bill after we made our reservation and paid a deposit. For this I called them out as a bad company. Well a … Continue reading

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The Art of Speed

Speed is becoming an essential part of business today, especially on the web. This weekend I attended a panel discussion entitled “The Art of Speed” at South by Southwest Interactive. Here are the points I found useful or interesting: Follow … Continue reading

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Work Practices

37signals the makers of BaseCamp and RubyonRails shared some changes to their work environment recently. Here are three interesting ideas.  4 day work week – If people rest for 3 days, they will be refreshed and do better work in … Continue reading

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Starbucks closes all stores – better be good

Starbucks has announced that it will close all of it’s stores from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. today to train its employees on “The Art of Espresso”. The unusual move will catch enough attention that if customers don’t notice better … Continue reading

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Bad Company: Royal Carribbean

My wife and I are looking forward to a cruise this spring with two other couples on Royal Caribbean. We made our reservations  last fall, including a relatively sizable deposit. The remainder of the cost is due this month. When … Continue reading

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