Learn to love The Logic Sandwich
To successfully take people through a whole buying decision, you need to find the right balance between satisfying their emotional and logical needs. The human brain has two halves: the left side of the brain is rational, considered and thoughtful, the right is creative, intuitive and spontaneous. To really get someone on board with your brand, you need to appeal to both sides of their nature. In short, you need messages that tick their emotional and logical boxes.
[caption id="attachment_35506" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Are you serving up a Logic Sandwich?[/caption]
Whatever you’re selling and whomever you’re selling it to (in the vast majority of cases), you are selling to a person: a human being. And, real people are primarily driven by their emotions. Even when what they articulate is a logical motivation for a purchase, there will be…
A checklist of the 13 most common touchpoint leaks
Over nearly two decades in marketing, and across well over 200 businesses – from as large as Microsoft and as micro as the back bedroom – I have yet to find a single one that isn’t leaking potential profit somewhere in their marketing operation. And, even those that have it pretty tight can usually notch it up with a few judicious tweaks.
Categorising marketing profit leaks
In pulling all this together, I found that profit leaks fall into two clear categories. The first, and most obvious, are those that relate to how you interact with the outside world. That is, the touchpoints with customers, potential customers, or anyone else who might encounter your business. Of these, I have defined thirteen typical ways that most businesses lose money in their marketing.
The second category is what I call the Foundation Leaks, and they are far more…
Signs that you need an integrated social media strategy...
The CEO wants 'a Facebook', 'a Twitter' and 'a blog'?
The reason? Because they saw competitor becoming more active. Sound familiar?
This request is perhaps less common than it was 5 years ago, but on the whole there is still a distinct lack of social media marketing strategy with plenty of examples of under-resourced social network pages or poor customer service delivery by social media - a problem when nearly half of adults now use the web to share grievances with brands.
The key to social media success is understanding the full scope and impact of social media, defining exactly what you are looking to achieve and then creating an integrated social media strategy to maximise results. In this blog post, I review some of these issues which are covered in more detail in our Social media marketing strategy – 7 Steps to Success Guide which I…
Marketing planning can be a long process. With the different steps involved, one area can often hold up another. This template is a quick way to get started as we know that companies that have a plan succeed better and faster than those without a plan.
And here’s a thing not many people know! It doesn’t matter whether it’s a marketing plan, business plan, company plan or HR plan. The key is having a plan.
A marketing plan is a little like a route map for a business. It shows where you’re headed and gives you a greater chance of achieving goals as there are built in mechanisms to measure progress.
The template laid out in this post shows you how to create your marketing plan in 7 steps. For full details on what's involved at each stage see my guide to…
Applying the Ebocube B2B Digital Marketing model for international market development
Emerging markets are countries experiencing relatively recent industrial, political and technological change resulting in rapid economic growth. Emerging markets cover more than the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), however; these countries are amongst the buoyant emerging giants.
Large populations generally characterise these markets, as is obvious with China and India. They tend to be dominated by young populations and rising middle classes.
As business revenues plateau in saturated, developed markets, expansion into emerging markets is a popular means for reaching new growth targets. Although these countries are affected by the global recession, many remain in robust growth positions. The endeavour of international business involves uncertainty and risk, however; this can be mitigated by the internet .
Bringing the Next Billion People Online
Developed countries have long defined the Internet, however, at least 500 million new users of the Internet are expected to come from emerging markets from…
Just read an interesting post on Ecommerce strategy over on Econsultancy from Matt Curry who runs the Wiltshire Farm Foods website amongst other things.
He's discussing a new year review to prioritise the activities to improve performance and is using a useful 'divide and conquer' framework to think through the factors which drive performance of an Ecommerce site and how you measure them.
The diagram he uses reminds me of this diagram that I have in my Ebusiness and Ecommerce Management book taken (with permission) from Ashley Friedlein's 2003 but still relevant book (see end of post for reference). I think Ashley's diagram is stronger since it not only looks at referrers but splits out first time and repeat visitor types.
Here's the diagram:
Matt's diagram is a good way to look at all the factors, but Ashley's works back one…
Great to be at the sixth year of this Econsultancy event - I was there at the start. speaking at the first couple of events, but today speakers are exclusively client-side experiences which is fine by me, I can relax.
As always the talks are structured around the famous Econsultancy Wheel which is a good model for developing a digital strategy:
Customer acquisition session
ACQUIRE 1: Social media, viral marketing, creativity...
Andy Hobsbawm and James Alexander, Founders, Green Thing
Great description of developing business. From a digital perspective, my takeaway was developing a social media distribution strategy, i.e.
1. Post blog post or offer on site.
2. Syndicate to primary networks manually so personal, e.g. Facebook, Twitter
3. Automate distribution to less popular social networks and popular video sites where relevant via Tube Mogul
ACQUIRE 2 : Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Julian Sambles, Head of Audience Development, Telegraph Media Group
Julian's angle was…
