Marketing Segmentation A couple of recent articles in Harvard Business Review (HBR) on marketing segmentation made me reflect on one of the basics of effective marketing. In ‘Choosing The Right Customer’ (Robert Simons, HBR March 2014), the Harvard Business School Professor suggests that although there are potentially a number of different groups that could be […]
‘Quality, originality and relevance’ are the new Triumvirate of marketing. An article in The Guardian on ‘Google Search Changes’ started with a reminder that ‘Google’s Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird search algorithms affect around 90% of online searches, according to Search Engine Watch. These algorithms strip out “bad searches” – sites stuffed with keywords, duplicated content […]
Marketing Cost: You cannot save your way to success. In 1993 Al Ries and Jack Trout published the seminal marketing text book, ‘The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (Violate them at your own risk)’. If you are a student of business (every day is a learning day!) you should read it. Aside from some anachronisms […]
Rebranding Article on ‘Rebranding’ by Nick Eggleton that appeared in The West Australian 8.12.14 Did things change or is that lipstick on your gorilla? There is no right or wrong answer to the question about whether a business should rebrand. Some urge a rebrand because it is a revenue opportunity for design and implementation of […]
The 2015 Sensis Report ‘How Australian people and businesses are using social media’ reported that 37% of large businesses and 80% of small businesses do not have a ‘social media strategy’, with many ‘digital communications and social business strategists’ seeing this as bad news. But like the Curate’s egg, it is both bad and good […]
“A winning marketing strategy is fundamental to building long-term company success”, said a marketing strategist. (Me. Just then). As I wrote that line Warren Buffet’s famous quote, “never ask a barber if you need a haircut, he’ll say yes”, sprung to mind. Assuming you have hair and you don’t want to resemble a homeless person, […]
Brand Development If you are planning on expanding your business, it is crucial you understand the importance of developing your brand to achieve the results you want. Brand development techniques can be implemented by businesses of any size, and can help your business grow even faster and stronger. Here are some more thoughts about brand […]
Marketing is a wide and complicated area of study and, as with other specialities, it takes years of experience and constant study to master. However, the word ‘marketing’ has been overused and generalised in a way that has led some of the tried and tested concepts and tools of marketing to be misused and wrongly […]
How do I get more customers? How do I grow my business? How do I get existing customers to spend more? Google loves to answer search questions like ‘How do I get more customers?’ with a page that 1) recognises the question (i.e. the page repeats the ‘keywords’ often – especially in H2 / H3 […]
Content Marketing is the latest area of marketing communications being promoted as a new opportunity for brands. ‘Content is King’ is a phrase now being used in this area, but what is Content Marketing? Definitions of Content Marketing vary, but let’s use the Content Marketing Association as a starting point: Content Marketing is the […]