Don’t just look at web traffic and keywords. Make your competitive analysis more strategic and actionable by answering these critical questions. I see a lot of articles around the web these days that promote the idea of competitive intelligence. But most posts and articles say to look at web sites, web traffic and key words. While there may be some …
5 Must-Read Small Business Marketing Blog Posts
Every once in a while I read a post or an article and think to myself, “That is really good!” And this was a particularly good week for some of my favorite blogs. So I’m sharing with you some of the strongest posts. These blogs are good to follow if you work in marketing, but they are especially useful for …
Gurulocity Launches New Online Course: Design Your Small Business Marketing Funnel
Note: This post refers to the original pilot version of our flagship online course. The pilot is no longer available as we’ve since launched a full scale, optimized version of the course. Please visit our Courses page for more information. After months of work, we recently launched an online marketing funnel course for small business owners and entrepreneurs. We developed …
This Week in Marketing Strategy: Nike Bucks Convention, Rivalry Positioning, Trust-Building Digital Tips
Welcome to the February 26, 2017 edition of This Week in Marketing Strategy. Here I’ll highlight a few articles, blog posts or news pieces from around the web that are newsworthy or trending over the last one to two weeks. First up: Watch the New Nike Ad Celebrating Arab Women in Sports That is Causing Controversy, courtesy of businessinsider.com. The Wieden & Kennedy ad features …
6 Questions to Optimize Your Marketing Funnel (with template)
The marketing funnel explained including questions to help diagnose and improve your funnel. Includes a template to build your own. Do you have a marketing funnel? Does it work? Maybe you hesitated in answering either of those questions. Or maybe you’re a bit hazy on what a marketing funnel is. That’s OK. Search the web and you’ll find many definitions, …
7 Characteristics to Define Your Marketing Target
This article focuses on ways to define your marketing target. Answer each one to make your marketing target more actionable and competitive, so you can win. If you’d like more information on brand positioning, check out the Ultimate Guide to Writing a Brand Positioning Statement. And be sure to subscribe to receive new articles like these. Chances are, your marketing …
10 Soft Skills Business Leaders Need to Succeed
10 soft skills that, if mastered, enable brand and business leaders to work with integrity, get things done, and ultimately get promoted. When did it become okay to leave people hanging? To treat others poorly? To not follow through on commitments? You hear a lot of talk these days about values, collaboration and leadership. But what do these words mean? …
A Powerful Sales Presentation Outline
As a marketer, you are always selling. From external customer pitches to internal leadership alignment, knowing how to create a compelling sales presentation means knowing how to tell a story. While most of us get the basic concept of storytelling, it helps to have a tangible example to look at. So, I’m sharing an example sales presentation outline and flow …
How 3 Established Consumer Brands Unlocked New Growth
A marketing definition for frame of reference and three examples of consumer brands that expanded their domain. Includes a downloadable eBook pdf of case studies. How do they do it? Those big brands that dominate across multiple aisles. It’s hard enough to win in a single category, let alone enter adjacent categories and have success there, too. Many brands attempt …
My Three Words for 2017
Let’s make great things happen this year. Here are three words that will guide my success. What are yours? 2016 was a whirlwind for me. I went through job changes, started a company, had health issues (better now!), my wife went back to work after almost 10 years, our kids’ schedules have taken off (two boys active in school and …