I’ve had a number of clients over the years that have done some significant – and often traumatic – restructuring to their organizations while I was working with them. The process was usually driven by an urgent need to reduce costs and improve productivity. While these otherwise intelligent, savvy business leaders were usually successful in [...]
If you have a contact form on your website, will you get the messages people submit through it? Recently I received an email from an online marketing expert sharing the story of how his contact form failed and he didn’t realize it for about six months. It’s likely that he missed messages from prospective customers [...]
Your customer mailing list is one of your most valuable assets. It’s the foundation of your ability to communicate with the people you’ve identified as customers or potential customers. Whether you market by email, direct (snail) mail or a combination, think about this: What would it mean to your marketing plan specifically and your company [...]
What do you say when clients ask for a discount? Most small business owners and even a lot of professional salespeople find it difficult to deal with customers who want to haggle over price. In the past when quoting my professional fees, my usual practice was to say that I could only reduce my [...]
Adult coloring books are for more than just coloring. When I first suggested to Jerry that we collaborate on a coloring book for adults, he thought it was a crazy idea. He hadn’t heard about how popular the adult coloring book trend had become, but—good husband that he is—he was willing to humor me. He’s [...]
Do you use content that you did not create on your blog, website or elsewhere? By content, we mean articles and other copy; photographs and other types of images; audio; video and so on. If any of your content is not original, you need to be sure you have the right to use it. If you [...]
Have you ever landed on a website and found information that’s out of date or inconsistent, links that don’t work or images that don’t display? Could there be pages like that on your website? Most business websites these days reflect the rapidly-changing environment in which we operate. New content gets added and old material doesn’t [...]
I love a bargain. Who doesn’t? Although it may sound good, “free” isn’t always the best deal. In fact, it’s not always even a good deal. Recently I was watching an online training that is part of the benefits of my paid membership in the Social Media Marketing Society. The presenter was sharing some tools, [...]
We live in a celebrity-obsessed culture. Thanks to that, celebrities have made millions of dollars pitching various products. But do you need one pitching yours? I’m writing this as the case of Jared Fogle and Subway is in the news. Fogle didn’t start out as a celebrity. The ex-Subway spokesperson achieved his celebrity status by [...]
What Should Employers Do to Help Grieving Employees? It’s not realistic to expect that employees can leave the impact of personal tragedies at home. The effects of death, divorce, accidents, serious illness, or other personal crises frequently carry over into the workplace and must be dealt with. Even the most compassionate supervisors might find themselves [...]
