The best guide I’ve ever seen for writing your homepage is Carrie Klassen’s eBook How To Write a Loveable Homepage. And, over the years, one of the biggest questions I’ve gotten about websites and homepages is, “What if I offer three different things? How do I represent this on my site?” The first thing is that, […]
Five Homepage Case Studies: Directing Them Where They Need To Go Read More
Educate when you educate. Sell when you sell. Don’t confuse the two. Don’t promise an education and then deliver a sales pitch. Don’t promise amazing content when they opt-into your list only to deliver something shitty and then bombard them with marketing for your incredible content. Don’t bait and then switch. I recall a colleague
Educating vs. Selling Read More
Before someone buys from you, everything in the following sentence needs to be true (and true in the order it appears in this sentence): There’s a result clients crave that they believe can be attained, and they believe you can help them attain it better than others. So simple. Of course. But we often miss pieces of this in our marketing. My
Everything I know about marketing in a single sentence Read More
Your clients want to know they’re in good hands with you. I’m thinking about this because I just came back from a mediocre massage. The style wasn’t one I liked. A bit too abrupt. Not as flowing and as intuitive as I like. But that wasn’t the big issue. In fact, there were no big
The purpose of marketing is to make promises. The purpose of your business is to keep them. Most traditional cultures in the world are overflowing with proverbs around the importance of keeping your word and doing what you say you will do. It’s certainly true for my own Scottish and Celtic ancestry. “If I break
On The Four Levels Of Promises Read More
Like most of us in this modern age, my phone has kept me up late more nights than I can count. I put it down to go to sleep only to find it, mysteriously, back in my hands, lighting the room with it’s strange, modern glow. Of course, it’s terrible for our brains and our
If Your Phone Keeps You Up At Night Read More
The other day, I was wondering about why there was such an appeal to marketing courses that taught secrets of unconscious persuasion, stealth tactics, invisible influence, secret closes, ninja strategies etc. The implication of all of these approaches was that no one would notice what you were doing. No one would notice that you were
Marketing Feels Bad Because We’re Ashamed Not Because It’s Shameful Read More
Is what you do a hobby or is it a business? This is an important question to answer because most entrepreneurs I know are on the fence about it. There’s no right or wrong answer to it. But I know a lot of people who say it’s one and do it like the other. My
Getting Off The Fence: Hobby vs. Business Read More
I couldn’t get myself to tidy my home on a regular basis and I seemed to resent scheduling regular calls with clients because I hated my schedule being so full and I hated being locked down to sit at my computer. I spend to much time on it already (shakes fist at Facebook). Then I
Make Your Offerings More Attractive By Weaving Your Lifestyle Into Them Read More
Here’s the truth: most of marketing your business is boring. It’s the tedious making lists of people to contact. It’s pre-writing emails. It’s scheduling things out and making plans. It’s rewriting headlines. It’s editing eBooks (dear God… the editing). It’s doing all of those things when, frankly, you’d rather be having beers with friends or
Ten Simple Ideas to Deal With The Reality That Most Marketing Work Is Boring as Hell Read More