When you belong, the community does your marketing for you. That’s the insight I want to consider in this post, and address the parallels to small town values, when applied to marketing. I grew up in a little town in Ontario called Sutton. It was the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else by name, there’s a lot of shared history, local pride, shared values, bonds … [Read more...]
Being more human
I've been travelling in Australia recently, logging some 1,400km on the rental car, making my way down the east coast from Noosa to Sydney after a learn to kite surfing adventure. The trip has been a mix of business and pleasure, that has enabled me to meet up with clients in both Sydney and Melbourne, as well as some business contacts along the way in Queensland and NSW. … [Read more...]
What makes cult brands special?
This past week I attended the Cult Gathering marketing conference in Banff, a meeting of CEOs and marketing directors from global cult brand leaders. Cult brands don’t just have customers, they have fans and brand evangelists who do much of their marketing for them through word of mouth online and off, and through earned media and publicity. In fact, most spend very little on … [Read more...]
Marketing Rebellion: A review of Mark Schaefer’s new book
Customers are your new marketing department. That's the upshot of this newly released 290 page book. The thought of more then 66% of your marketing communications being outside of your control will be too unnerving for many. But for those leaders that know intuitively that there's a shift happening that we need to get hold of, read on. This one's for you. I just finished … [Read more...]
Escaping the sales funnel
It's time to escape the sales funnel. The traditional sales funnel measures quarterly results in a quantifiable manner. It doesn’t capture qualitative share of mind or share of voice very well, which is how momentum builds when you are mining the support of trusted peers. If you’ve done your marketing right until this point, you have company assets: evergreen content and … [Read more...]
