Marketing

I recently had a conversation with a colleague who admitted he was feeling a bit uneasy about the rise of artificial intelligence. He mentioned seeing an impact on his business because, in his words: “Anyone can do what I do now, and the need for people like me is diminishing.” I told him I completely…

Nearly twenty years ago, I was attending a malware conference and had the privilege of listening to Walt Mossberg, the legendary lead technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal. This was right at the dawn of the first modern iPods and the very beginning of the smartphone era. Mossberg was addressing the rapid proliferation of…

Back when I was working for a massive corporate enterprise, management religiously preached a framework called “The Big Three.” At the time, it was pitched as the ultimate sales script to convince skeptical business owners why they needed to buy advertising. The formula was deceptively simple: Prove that a market exists. Prove that the market…

We’ve all gotten the emails. Or the glossy direct-mail postcards arriving with all the subtlety of a leg lamp in a crate. “Congratulations! You’ve been selected as a Top Professional!” It feels like a scene straight out of A Christmas Story. You’ve won a major award! Except there’s one tiny catch: to claim your shiny…

Over the past month, I attended two trade shows of considerable size. Trade shows are always a fascinating experience for me. As a marketer, I not only get to learn from what other companies are doing, but I also get to interact with marketing managers, hear their perspectives on industry trends, and share a few…

Twenty years ago, I worked for a company that had a list of five core guiding principles. If you asked me to recite all five today, I’d probably give you a blank stare. But one of them stuck. In fact, it didn’t just stick—it became a cornerstone of how I view business and leadership:  “There is always a better way.” It’s easy…

I have a confession to make: I know idea what a “KPI-driven, cross-platform, omni-channel ecosystem” is. I just refuse to say it. Too much of the marketing industry is built on a foundation of jargon designed to do two things: impress and confuse you. It’s meant to sound sophisticated, technical, and expensive. But all it…

I ask just about every new client the same question when we’re talking about their business, especially when they want their website to be minimal with just the essentials. I ask them, “If you owned a restaurant that made the world’s greatest cheesecake, but you didn’t list it on the menu—how much cheesecake do you…

You started your business because you had a vision, a skill, or a solution that was you passion. You didn’t start it because you wanted to spend your afternoons fighting with search algorithms, managing website backend updates, or trying to figure out why your email marketing platform is suddenly flagging your newsletter as spam. The…