Fantastic TEDx talk from Simon Sinet at TEDx Puget Sound.  The core message?  People don’t buy what you do.  They buy why you do it.  And they buy it for themselves.  I know that last sounds obvious, but how often do we, as marketers, completely overlook this?  We understand it at the intellectual level, but [...]

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This may surprise you, coming from someone who’s constantly haranguing everyone to discover and declare their uniqueness – but there is actually a time when uniqueness is a mistake, and being part of the crowd is your best bet.  A time when being unique doesn’t make you more visible – it actually makes you invisible. It’s a very [...]

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There are a thousand books out there telling you that your marketing isn’t about you, it’s about your customer. There are a billion blog posts that say variations of the same thing.  You might be familiar with it as, “Write your marketing copy as if you’re writing to one single person,” or you may just [...]

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If you’re in business for yourself – really in business for yourself, rather than exploring a hobby or (as I wrote in my last post) developing a support network for yourself - then yes:  you’re a leader. You’re a leader for your clients and customers, whether they’re buying nine-dollar e-books, thousand-dollar coaching packages, or ten-thousand-dollar consulting engagements [...]

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I know one person who searched for her tagline for over a decade. Other people seem to change their taglines as often as they change their socks. And still others are like terriers:  no matter how much they recognize that they need to drop it and walk away for a while, they remain stuck, worrying at their tagline, [...]

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When I talk with people about their websites, one of the first things I often hear is, “I get great feedback.” It’s always comforting to hear people say nice things about your website.  It makes you feel good to know they like your design and they think the content is clear and informative. Nice. But … what [...]

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I’m strongly opposed to the typical canned “elevator pitch” approach. When you use a canned message, you’re going to sound – surprise! – canned.  And that equates to inauthentic, stilted, and phony. That’s obviously not the impression you want to make.  You want to sound engaging, excited, interesting, intriguing, passionate, fascinating… anything but canned. Yet my [...]

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I was talking with a colleague recently – it was just after a networking event we’d both attended – and she asked, “What do you do when it seems like everyone’s in competition for the same person’s business?” I was surprised, because I hadn’t experienced what had happened as competition – but apparently she had. My [...]

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Whether you worked with a writer to develop your website content or did it yourself, there are three significant benefits you should have experienced.  Benefits that can be more important than the website itself. A concrete, verifiable understanding of your best clients – who they are, what they want and need, and how they talk [...]

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When it comes to a website, there are two key factors (plus a third that lurks in the background). Content … and Design. Every website has both.  And both are key factors in how your site’s visitor feels and what he or she does.  I don’t think anyone would argue with this.  So why have I called [...]

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