Marketing Communications

A collection of 25 posts

Ethics

Why Do People Lie?

Lying is an inextricable part of the human experience.  When Grandma gives you a horrendously ugly sweater for Christmas, you can’t possibly say you don’t like it or you risk hurting a nice lady’s feelings. Why do you not just say the truth? Research suggests that many

Advertising

Paraprosdokians: Unexpected Endings

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” – Groucho Marx No, this is not a blog about ancient dinosaur species or prokaryotic cells.  It is about, however, the wonderful world of paraprosdokians.  A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech where a sentence or phrase ends unexpectedly,

Advertising

Nurturing Relationships With Social Media

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have replaced the water cooler as the customer hangout. Business owners need to understand that social networks have quickly become the preferred way to communicate for many people. This means that many of the conventional ways to promote and sell products and serices

Advertising

Déjà Vu

Have you ever had the feeling that you have experienced a sales and marketing challenge before, but were uncertain about what to do next?  Have the conventional tools become less effective for you? You tried direct mail, networking, print advertising, and cold calling. Nothing seems to work anymore. Welcome to

Marketing Communications

Three Dog Night

Some of you may think “three dog night” is a rock band from the seventies. There may be others that think this means the neighbor’s dogs are barking too much. Still others may think it means it is cold outside. If you think that “three dog night” means that

Marketing Communications

Communicate with a Mind Map

People learn, read, and communicate in many ways. Some people need or prefer more spatially effective communication with both words and images. In that case, consider a mind map. A mind map is a visual outline. It has a central core or box at the highest level, uses topics as

Marketing Communications

A Few Words on Business Cards

The ubiquitous business card is a critical tool for communicating your brand. Make sure it reflects your image and that you maximize its usefulness. Here are 11 hints for better business cards: Print the card using color. Study after study shows that color printing significantly impacts the readers’ ability to

Direct Mail

Your Signature Please

At the end of every e-mail is the signature line which tells the reader how to contact you. It also tells them a lot about you and your brand. Surprisingly, many people don’t take advantage of this last step in the communication process in an e-mail letter. The minimum

Advertising

Text-Speak

Text messaging has created a new “language” of sorts that is destroying the written word and has infected all aspects of our society. Driven by young cell phone users who would rather text than talk, these abbreviations are appearing in advertising, new media, and college term papers. SMS (Short Message

Email Marketing

How to Write Great E-mails

E-mails dominate B2B communication. E-mail volume dwarfs that of the telephone, fax, and direct mailer. If you are like me, you are getting dozens if not hundreds of e-mail messages a day; most are spam and are deleted. The rest are scanned or put aside to be read later. The

Branding

Help Me Name My Next Book

Book titles play a huge role in a book’s success. I need your help in naming my next book which will be a follow up to “First, Best, or Different: What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know About Niche Marketing”. The new book will continue the exploration about how to

Branding

Marketing Mantras

Marketing mantras say how you are different. A mantra is a religious prayer or mystical phrase or poem that instills concentration when repeated and is used for meditation and prayer. The key is to focus on the mantra and to block out everything else. A marketing mantra is three to

Advertising

I See Colors

No, this is not a flashback to the psychedelic sixties. Instead, this is a serious discussion about color and how it can be used in marketing. While perceptions of color are somewhat subjective, there are some color effects that have universal meaning. Colors in the red area of the color

Direct Mail

Send Thanksgiving Cards

Be different this holiday season. Don’t be like everyone else and send holiday cards and gifts for Christmas, Hanukah, and New Years. Instead send Thanksgiving cards or gifts. Your well-intentioned best wishes during the year end holidays will only get watered down by the crush of others doing the

Email Marketing

E-mail Campaign or Just More Spam?

Your latest e-mail campaign was supposed to create new leads for the sales team. Sadly, most of the recipients greeted your e-mails with the delete key. All they saw was another piece of spam. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone since most e-mail campaigns struggle to be read

Direct Mail

I Hear You Loud and Clear, or I Think I do

The following is guest blog contribution by my friend Bonni Montevecchi of The Celebration Station Seminars: How are your written and verbal communication skills? How often have you been asked that during a job interview? How often have you asked someone else? Or, better yet, how often have you said,

Direct Mail

Stupid is as Stupid Does

Marketers occasionally make stupid mistakes when innocently trying to deliver a message to their customers. These stupid mistakes happen for a lot of reasons including cultural insensitivity, poor grammar choices, language translation, and even spelling errors. But, my research indicates the most common cause is just being plain old stupid.

Direct Mail

Choose Your Words Wisely

Words change. Words that we used long ago may have new meanings today. Words can also have different meanings in different cultures. Be careful to choose yours wisely or you might not get your point across. Words change meaning over time. I was talking with my daughter about the movie

Marketing Communications

Jumbo Squid Invade California

Run for the hills! We are being invaded by monstrous sea creatures! All is lost! This is an actual headline from the Associated Press on 7/25/2007, which describes the increased sightings of seven foot squid off the coast of California. Yet, if you take the headline literally, Armageddon

Marketing Communications

Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

Ever wonder what that expression really means? A current interpretation might be that it is impolite to receive a gift and then question the value of that gift. Long ago when we all rode horses it had something to do with a horse’s age and its teeth, or “So

Marketing Communications

Being Understood

“I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” Robert McCloskey, US State Department spokesman Being understood by your customer may be the most important aspect of selling. If they

Branding

Messaging Tells Your Story

Messaging is a fancy marketing term for the story that you tell about your company or your offering; most importantly, your message must be heard and understood by your customers, friends, and employees. This message must clear, concise, backed with evidence, and tell the right story. Starting with the basics,

Branding

Marketing Mantras Make Money

A marketing mantra is three to five words that describes how your business or offering is different. It must be easy to say and remember while being easily understood. If it is in writing, it should leap off the page with authenticity and integrity. It can be used internally or externally. It should

Article Marketing

Why You May Want to Blog

When I wrote my book, First, Best, or Different, I included a chapter on the importance of blogging. Little did I know at the time that blogging would become the core of own book marketing effort. Indulge me as I tell you about my own blogging story.

Advertising

Cut the Crap

Every day we are bombarded by overly complex, jargon-rich messages from every media source: radio, TV, internet, and print. I am sick of it. How about you?