Determining what is a real opportunity versus a speculative risk is a challenge. Over time, this becomes intuitive. In the meantime, following are a few questions to mull over: 1. What aren’t my competitors (especially my bigger competitors) doing this already? 2. Am I justifiably ahead of the curve or is there a flaw in the idea? 3. Am I evaluating the right numbers? 4. Am I in love with the opportunity so much that I am overly optimistic about the viability?

The Hawke Marketing Method[1]-created by super-marketer Erik Huberman- is meant for larger businesses, but a smart marketer could scale the system down for any small business. The method is based on the following 3 pillars of a tripod. 1. Creating Awareness: The goal is to let your prospects know you exist, what you offer, and how you can solve their problems. There are many tools available to accomplish this: from media releases, to search optimization, to social media. C

There’s a maxim in business (and in life) that in order to be successful, you have to do more than others are willing to do (in the case of business—your competitors). The interesting (and encouraging) thing is that you don’t have to do a lot more. Just a little more consistently. James Clear explains this idea and how to implement it in his excellent article “The 1 Percent Rule.” In the article, he writes: “T he margin between good and great is narrower than it seems. Wh

Gartner created a PowerPoint slide to illustrate just how complex the actual buyer’s journey is (see below). The main points being: 1. The journey isn’t as predictable as we believed 2. It’s also a lot more complex. So much for the sales funnel. If you are using Microsoft Clarity (a free tool that shows you exactly how users are navigating your webpages) or another tool such as StatCounter (a low-cost tool with the same functionality as Microsoft Clarity, but much better da

There are some pretty clear signs that an organization needs to either expand or revamp (or start) marketing efforts. Declining sales. No need to elaborate here. Sales are flat and your company needs a growth strategy. Sometimes that means you need to add to your marketing team. Sometimes it means your marketing team needs to work more closely with sales. No organization can really grow without support from marketing. Why? Because effective marketing proje

From the buyer's perspective, the brand is an insurance policy. A brand on a consumer product tells the buyer exactly what to expect – every time. But in B2B sales, buyers often don't know what they need, what’s available, or how it works. A reputable B2B brand, from the buyer's perspective, insures the buyer against risk before and after buying. From the B2B seller’s perspective, the basic purpose of a brand is to educate the potential buyer and reduce the impa

I’m sure you’ve wondered why your Contact Us page is getting so much traffic (it’s usually #2 in volume just behind the homepage) and so few people are filling out the form. Actually, people go to Contact pages for a lot of reasons aside from filling out the form. Here are a few: 1. They just want a phone number (and an immediate response). Research shows that buyers would much rather reach out to you and get an immediate response rather than wait for someone to respond to

While there are similarities between personal and business relationships, they are significantly different in a number of important aspects. Many people have found this out the hard way and ruined, what otherwise would have been, a wonderful long-term relationship with a client. Following are 2 ways that business relationships are similar to personal relationships and 6 ways they are different. Similarities Time: They both require time to develop. Just as you can’t expect t

A robust website metrics platform (more than Google Analytics) reveals critical information about website visitors—what is and isn’t working, trend data, competitor website analysis, etc. But if you dig a little deeper, there much more value hidden in there. Here are 4 bits of important product-related information that higher level analytics can infer. 1. Proposed product viability. While products are still in the concept stage, search behavior will be able to give you som