Marketing Wizdom Mentoring aspiring market leaders in world-class low-risk/high-return marketing strategiesJust 13 years ago when Steve Jobs rejoined the company Apple was only 90 days from bankruptcy.
Hardly anyone believed the company could even survive. But just look at it now.
Last year it became the most valuable technology company in the world. Then it overtook Microsoft in revenues. And now it looks set to exceed their legendary profits too. Who could have imagined that just a few years ago?
Ken Segall, the man who coined the iMac name, brings you up to date with this excellent article.
Your website is one of the most important components in your business these days. But to be effective it needs to meet the needs and provide the information needed by any of your prospective clients when they’re researching the alternatives.
A lot of websites, unfortunately, fall well short of this in ways that include:
Yes people can come up with plenty of excuses for not providing these things. But if you don’t, you’re risking the loss of good business to someone else who does.
This article helps you to look at your website with fresh eyes, setting out the steps for evaluating your site from your prospective buyer’s perspective.
Follow the recommendations in this article and your website will bring your prospects much closer to a buying decision before they even contact you, and create a more positive relationship from the outset.
Facebook is a global phenomenon. It now has 600 million users, and half of them log on every single day. It is now the biggest destination on the web; some people spend hours every day there, and it’s not just the teens either. All that and whole organisation is still only 5 years old. A remarkable accomplishment.
It is also an excellent marketing platform, to the extent that you can even target advertising to the single user level. Phenomenal.
If you’re in business you should certainly consider leveraging the phenomenal power of this platform. It’s something I have been contemplating for a while, culminating in the launch this week of the Marketing Wizdom Facebook page.
With that launch fresh in mind, I came across this excellent article on “Understanding how and why Facebook users interact with brands.” It’s worth a read, and it contains some useful statistics too.
The results offer some insights into what you can do as a business to keep your followers engaged; when it is best to engage with them and more.
by combining some of these broader findings with your own analytics and anecdotal successes and failures, you can refine your strategy to grow both your following and your levels of engagement.
4 December 2010: There’s an interesting article in the New York Times on a possible bubble building up around high tech start-ups.
Less than a decade after the dot-com bust taught Wall Street and Silicon Valley investors that what goes up does not keep going up forever, a growing number of entrepreneurs and a few venture capitalists are beginning to wonder if investments in tech start-ups are headed toward another big bust.
The chief evidence, according to industry experts and analysts, is the way venture capitalists and established companies are clamouring to give money to young companies, including those with only a shred of an idea.
They are piling into me-too start-ups that imitate popular Web companies that already received financing. Companies that involve social shopping, mobile photo sharing and new social networking are finding it easy to attract investors because no one wants to miss the next big thing.
No one really knows if there is a bubble until after one pops. Nevertheless, there are many signs of froth.
The big difference between 1999 and now is that all of today’s start-ups start-ups today have business models and business cases that make them viable, whereas that was not the case in 1999.
The real challenge for start-ups over the next 12 to 18 months will be to prove they’re worth the investment, because although there may not be a big implosion down the road, there will be a bunch of blood and tears.
There was a great article in the Harvard Business Review recently on how to be excellent at anything.
The article refers to Anders Ericsson, arguably the world’s leading researcher into high performance, who for more than two decades has been making the case that it’s not inherited talent which determines how good we become at something, but rather how hard we’re willing to work — something he calls “deliberate practice.”
Numerous researchers now agree that 10,000 hours of such practice as the minimum necessary to achieve expertise in any complex domain.
One of Ericsson’s central findings is that practice is not only the most important ingredient in achieving excellence, but also the most difficult and the least intrinsically enjoyable.
Being really good at something involves relentlessly pushing past your comfort zone, along with frustration, struggle, setbacks and failures.
Here, in brief, are the six keys to achieving excellence that have been found to be most effective:
To read the full article, which expands on these points, click here
Back in the 90′s I had a lot of dealings with one of Paul Dunn’s past businesses, and always loved his approach, what he had to say and how he said it. We’ve become good friends and I’ve been impressed for some time with his current preoccupation, B1G1, based in Singapore.
B1G1 stands for Buy One, Give One, a wonderfully simple way of empowering businesses, located anywhere in the world, to change lives.
Within B1G1, giving is a simple, effortless habit. Through what’s known as transaction-based giving, B1G1 business members link their products and services to over 612 projects around the world so that every transaction actually creates a positive impact. It’s a great concept.
Paul has founded multiple multi-million dollar and global companies, but he gets his greatest joy from the successes of Buy1Give1: over 1,198,000 giving transactions to date, resulting, among other things, in more than 37,000 children being given a meal at school, more than 382,000 people receiving accommodation, and more than 45,000 square meters of rainforest being protected.
Have a look at the video which was recorded at TEDx Christchurch, New Zealand. Enjoy it, be inspired, and consider building B1G1 into what you do.
America’s No.1 sales authority Jeffrey Gitomer recently wrote a widely syndicated article about an email he received from me, and agreed that I could publish it here as a guest blog. It’s title is “How to write emails that give you no choice but to read on.” You can read it here. This morning I started getting unusually hight volumes of traffic to this site. It turns out that Jeffrey has now just published the same article as one of his famous Sales Caffeine pieces, accompanied by the video above. Check out the video. If you enjoy it and you’d also like a complimentary copy of the book he talks about, just click here.
A friend from Argentina, Exequiel Delgado, recommended this video on breakthrough creativity and innovation. He suggested that I check it out. He was absolutely right. I love it. It’s amazing. It explains where good ideas come from and why hunches need time to incubate and turn into breakthroughs. It’s in English with Spanish subtitles. Everyone should watch it. Enjoy!
Besides his extraordinary contributions to the world of science, Albert Einstein shared many amazing lessons for success in life, including the following:
dumblittleman.com recently published a great article which elaborates on each of these life lessons. It’s worth checking it out.
Click here or on the title above to go to the original article.
This is a short story I always used to tell in my 3-day Quantum Leap workshops when talking about customer retention and complaints. It was always well received, so I thought I’d share it with you here:
I’m a nice customer. You all know me. I’m the one who never complains, no matter what kind of service I get.
I’ll go into a restaurant and sit quietly while the waiters and waitresses gossip and never bother to ask if anyone has taken my order.
Sometimes a party that came in after I did gets my order, but I don’t complain. I just wait.
And when I go to a store to buy something, I don’t throw my weight around. I try to be thoughtful of the other person. If a snooty salesperson gets upset because I want to look at several things before making up my mind, I’m just as polite as can be. I don’t believe rudeness in return is the answer.
I never kick. I never nag. I never criticise. And I wouldn’t dream of making a scene, as I’ve seen some people do in public places. I think that’s uncalled for. No, I’m the nice customer. And I’ll tell you who else I am.
I’m the customer who never comes back!
When I get pushed too far, I just take my business down the street to places where they’re smart enough to hire and train people who appreciate nice customers. And the world is full of nice customers, just like me, who can put anyone out of business.
I laugh when I see you frantically spending your money on expensive advertising to get me back, when you could have kept me with a few kind words, a smile, and some good service.
I don’t care what business you’re in. Maybe you live in a different town; maybe I never heard of you. But if you’re going broke or your business is bad, maybe there are enough people like me who do know you. I’m your customer who never comes back.
Author unknown (but nice)
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