At Christmas it’s easy to feel as if everything has become overly commercialised.  When you’re running a business you might feel as if you’re just contributing to the problem.  After all, the run up to Christmas is often referred to as the ‘Golden Quarter’ because of the increase in sales.  The good news is that […]

You need to focus on your customers at Christmas.  Of course, you need to focus on them all year round, but especially at Christmas.  To quote Andy Williams, it may be the most wonderful time of the year, but it can also be the most stressful. If you can bring your customers something useful and […]

How much time, money and effort do you spend on content marketing? I’m going to hazard a guess that at least one of those things is going to loom large in your marketing efforts.  Hopefully it’s working for you. (If it’s not you can go back to basics and sign up for my email series […]

If you’re an A-lister with a massive advertising budget, you can get your marketing message out to any audience you like.  Targeted advertising online or on social media makes it easier to bombard your target audience with adverts, post and videos. Visit a web page and you can find the product you viewed following you […]

Have you ever avoided a confrontation, in business or life generally? Do you feel as if you backed down when you should have stood up or did it teach you something else? I once had a confrontation that played on my mind for a very long time. I decided to tell you about it because […]

If you’ve never heard of customer personas before, don’t panic. It’s basically a fancy way of saying ‘who do you want as your customer?’  I’ve talked about the importance of getting to know your customers before, but this time we need to get down to the nitty gritty.  You need to get as much detail […]

I know that the idea of tracking and analytics is enough to make you want to run and hide.  If you’re not technologically minded, the idea of installing tracking and pixels seems like a complete nightmare.  However, it is worth it. Knowing your numbers is absolutely vital if you want your business to go anywhere.  […]

Henry Ford once said that he’d never have invented the car if he’d asked people what they wanted. Quite simply because they’d have asked for a faster horse.  I’m not sure that’s strictly true. Whilst people are perfectly capable of being daft at times, I imagine that most people knew they couldn’t force their horses […]

Whenever I talk about blogging, or marketing in general, I’m asked about ideas.  How do you come up with marketing ideas? What should I write in my blog? You get the idea.  The truth is that there are lots of ways to come up with new marketing ideas and most of them involve one basic […]

Let’s face it, running a business can be lonely sometimes. If you work alone you can start to feel isolated. Even if you have people working for you, it’s tough when the decision making is all on your shoulders. It’s at times like this that it’s important to take a breath, look around and remind […]