When you head to the grocery store, buying organic may cost you a little extra — but when it comes to marketing, this is an affordable strategy that pays dividends for years to come. Investing time and energy in developing an organic marketing strategy is one of the most important steps you can take to […]

Academia is known for its rule of “publish or perish,” and this ties into one of the best kept marketing secrets: if you don’t publish content, consumers will gravitate towards brands that do. So why is this one of the best-kept content marketing secrets? To put it simply, content creation isn’t easy — and quality […]

I had the honor and privilege of speaking at WIT Network’s International Women’s Day Event (WIT= Women in Technology) earlier this month on a topic near and dear to my heart:  Creating a Life by Design, not Default.   I share my early corporate experiences with discrimination and double standards, my decision to start my own […]

Do you know what the most important piece of your content marketing is? It’s not the actual content—it’s the headline that entices people to read, watch, or download your content. Headlines are the trailers for your film: they should entice people, not bore them. If your headlines are not compelling, then no one will look […]

If you are asking yourself, “Why is customer feedback important?” you might want to gently tweak that question, changing it to “When is customer feedback important?” Wait, did I just say you can be choosy about, and even sometimes ignore, customer feedback? Yes, I did. I’ve talked several times here before about the importance of […]

I like watching movies on Netflix, and I love how Netflix recommends movies for me to watch based on what I’ve already enjoyed. Sometimes Netflix gives me a weird movie, but most of the time its recommendations are on point. Like more and more companies today, Netflix has mastered the art of personalized content, and […]

If I asked you to tell me about your best friend, how would you do it? Would you use a PowerPoint presentation with slides of bullet points, or would you tell me stories of long talks and adventures and other shared moments? Obviously, the first option is silly and you would never use it to […]

Most business owners find marketing both critically important as well as a challenging part of their success. There are so many elements of a successful marketing strategy to master: branding, competitive differentiation, story-telling, digital, social, thought leadership, sales enablement, ongoing customer communications, and more.  I had the recent pleasure of being a guest speaker on […]

You may recall that traditional marketing is all about building awareness for products and brands. In traditional marketing, the emphasis is on getting new customers and very little attention is paid to customer retention. But according to best-selling author and marketer Stan Phelps, traditional marketing is dead. Instead, it’s time to focus on retaining customers […]

What makes your business unique is the key to its success. If your industry is like most, you and your competitors may all offer fairly similar products. Sure, there are various technical differences, but if you’re a baker, what makes your bread different from the baker across the street? If you’re a college, what makes […]

For content marketers, it’s a publish or perish world — but have you ever thought about the balance between quantity and quality of content? In most cases, it’s a simple equation: more quantity often does not mean greater quality. The key in content marketing — as in most areas of life — is to find […]

Story branding requires connecting with a customer on a personal level. Famed author Maya Angelou once said, “They will forget what you said. They will forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel.” When we create content and illuminate a brand, we mustn’t forget that we are doing more […]