3 Coins in the Fountain: How Small Business Ignore Branding and Miss Opportunity
Three Coins in the Fountain is the title song (sung by Frank Sinatra) from a classic film about 3 American women working and looking for love in Rome. It refers to the Trevi Fountain, where visitors make a wish and toss in a coin, right hand over the left shoulder....
The End of the (Land)line
Hi, this is Rachel at Cardholder Services. My gosh, how does she do it? What stamina! She calls at all hours and from all over the country, and from a new phone number each time! In fact, several times caller ID said the call was coming from my own phone number....
5 Steps to the Purposeful Integration of Sales and Marketing
Often it seems as if sales and marketing work for different companies, and often, they wish they did. However grim this may seem, truly effective b2b prospecting can't be achieved without cooperation. Our experience is that sales usually follows-up only to 30% to 34%...
Content Must Connect – Three Essential Insights for B2B Content Marketing
We recently conducted Prospect Persona research with C-Suite executives worldwide. An inescapable observation is that in b2b content marketing, we speak before we listen, that most content is based on assumption of need rather than firsthand knowledge of what...
Manage Change, or It Will Manage You: True marketing innovation requires top-down cultural buy-in
The success of marketing innovation correlates with the success of implementing change. Marketing may realize that all systems and processes must be retooled to become more customer centric. However, if the cultural change is not managed successfully, these will be...
The Center of the Universe for B2B Prospecting
Every champion of a product or service believes in their heart that their target is the CEO. They need to find a way into CEO's consciousness. That the illumination of their message will pierce the maelstrom like a lightning bolt and all, from there, will be smooth...
A Smart 4-Step Formula to Identify B2B Prospect Opportunities
Not all prospects are created equal. Some are ready to buy now, some later, some not at all – yet marketing tends to invest the same in each one, which is inefficient at best. I’d like to suggest a simple 4-step formula that will bring an early identification of...
The Big Picture – Use Care With That Database
A data-dollar spent in assiduous customer retention can be well worth it. If you want to identify one of the most powerful tools for assuring long-term customer satisfaction, you'll find it in your database. It's capable of driving the most efficient and effective...
The Lure of The Easy Target
The Lure of the Easy Target
Customers Come First
In his second "Smart Marketing" column for the respected print and online publication, Sales & Marketing Management, marketing consultant, lecturer and author Scott Hornstein cautions that successful marketing is based on customers' wants and needs, as articulated...