Blog

When it comes to B2B marketing, it’s not cold business. It’s still about the human factor. For example, once upon a cable TV plan, my dad was paying over $100 per month to glare at more commercials than programming. We stopped the madness. I bought him Google Chromecast and a 3-month trial subscription to Netflix. He can sit on the sofa, push one button on the remote, and watch commercial-free movies all night long. But here’s the problem with most trial offers. If I just said, “Pops, … [Read more...]

My dad is getting up in years. He watches a lot of TV these days. He was paying the cable company over $100 per month to broadcast more commercials than programming over hundreds of channels. From a business model, making someone pay monthly for the right to be sold more products they must pay for is brilliant… as long as people continue to pay for it. From a consumer’s perspective, it’s ridiculous. So much so I ended the madness and found his solution: Netflix and Google Chromecast. Last … [Read more...]

We’ve heard it all… People have the attentions span of a goldfish, about 8-seconds. Maybe a gnat. We get it, it’s short. We hear smart device usage lords over desktops by 67%… 78%… and according to a recent article in fortune.com, 85%. Again, we get it. Optimize for mobile use if you want to be read. But still, customer retention and growth could be crumbling away. Why? We overcompensate. Instead of e-mail copy holding the attention of a reader, giving helpful information, entertaining … [Read more...]

You can tell someone loves their work when it shows up in every activity of their life. For me, I find marketing nuggets any place I go. And this place is no exception. besides a B2B sales and marketing copywriter, I’m a performing songwriter. One day, I was co-writing with a fellow guitar picker. A quite skilled one at that. He stopped me in the middle of our writing session, leaned in close, stared at my fingers on the neck of the acoustic guitar and said …  “What are you doing … [Read more...]

Little rant disclosure here. But don't think you'll mind. I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed a trend in my in-box. And, I love it to bits.  And if you’re on your game, you will too. Because your competitors just might be falling for this one. More on the, ‘why,’ in a second. For now, I’ve got a bold, “I don’t care if you even know,” confession to make. It’s about the e-mails I’m talking about in my in-box. I subscribe to them for one reason and one reason only. To see who are the … [Read more...]

Recently, I attended a professional copywriting peer review session. This is where serious copywriters get into a virtual room. Someone tosses out a bit of copy. Then, writers like myself swarm it like sharks on a wounded fish. Well, not exactly like that. We’re actually very helpful and very nice. Much nicer than their client’s customers would be… as you’ll see in a minute.  We grade it based on quite a lot of strategic criteria. More than what appears at the surface. Anyway. Someone … [Read more...]