When you have very little to spend on marketing, how can you make sure that the advertising you do will get a lot of attention?
Here’s an idea I first came across on the roads of New Mexico in the 1960s, when I was a young boy in the backseat of our family car. Read more…
Last week I wrote about how important headlines are and how to write a headline that turns more heads.
This week, to further inspire you, I’m going to share five of my favorite headlines and talk about why they are so good. Read more…
When James Carville was running Bill Clinton’s campaign for president in 1992, he kept his staff sharply focused on what he felt was the big issue with the slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
If we applied that same idea to marketing, we might say, “It’s the offer, stupid!” The offer you make—and the way you make it—is one of the key factors determining the success or failure of your marketing. Read more…
A guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “I keep having two dreams. One night I dream I’m a teepee. The next night I dream I’m a wigwam.” The psychiatrist says, “I know what your problem is. You’re two tents.”
Okay, it’s a corny joke. But now you’ll remember this point. Read more…
In the last two posts, I’ve talked about one of the simplest and most versatile of marketing tools: the tag line or catch phrase.
Why is this tool so powerful? Because it can capture the essence of your marketing message in a small, condensed package that can be spread far and wide. Read more…
In last week’s post, I talked about how important a slogan or catch-phrase can be to promoting your business, even if—check that, especially if— your business is very small.
A well-worded catch-phrase can help people to remember you and remember why they want to do business with you. It gets your selling message down to a single, memorable phrase that can be etched on people’s minds. But of course, not any phrase will do. Read more…
Ah, the lowly catch-phrase. So misunderstood. So under-appreciated. So often accused of being “merely cute and clever” when in fact it has the power to encapsulate your marketing message in a brief phrase that can be broadcast far and wide and easily remembered.
The catch-phrase is the unsung hero of marketing.
There’s a reason why most advertising campaigns you see feature a catch-phrase or tag line: when these simple phrases are done right, they work! They help engrave a key selling thought in customers’ minds. Read more…
I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a business owner say something like, “We don’t care about branding and brand image and all that stuff, we just want to sell products.”
Well, actually I do have a dollar. Because some of these people eventually hired me to create branding programs for them and they were so glad they did.
But I understand the thinking—I really do. When many small business owners think about branding, they are thinking of something that, to their mind, is expensive, impractical, unnecessary, and wasteful.
In other words, to them,
We’ve had a warm November here in New Hampshire. The golfers are still out! So we haven’t seen any snowballs yet.
But I want to tell you about a different kind of snowball—the kind that will create a kind of “awareness momentum” that builds and builds and helps build your business. Read more…
