Articles

Develop a Growth Mindset Marketing

Blog-GrowthArrow

Case Study: Growth and Change Elicit Strong Feelings for Everyone in a Company

When the founder left the industry-leading company where he’d worked for the better part of a decade to strike out on his own, he had big ambitions: to compete with his former employer on a global scale, with an offering that would set a new industry standard for ethics, safety, and client value.

He was soon joined by two colleagues he’d met during his 16-year tenure in the industry, who had also become friends. The three shared the same vision for improving the industry, and together they atta…

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Blog-Slinky

Increase the Power and Impact of Your Brand with a WOW Statement

Are you looking to enhance your brand impact, drive sales, and achieve your revenue goals? Harnessing the power of brand messaging with category design is the key to unlocking growth and scaling your business.

In my experience, there are gaps between formal, traditional marketing statements, the pillars of marketing success, and the actual application and results of these structures. These statements are either too formal and wordy or too slapstick and trendy. The pillars used to build and defi…

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Blog-Matches

What is Brand Personality and How it Helps in Marketing?

Think about a person that you admire or has been a mentor to you.
Can you see them in your mind?
Feel how they make you feel?

Now, tell me about this person. Only I don’t want to know their name or their gender. I want you to describe their personality to me. Do they always make you laugh? Are they always running late? Do they have a quirky twitch that they do when they are thinking? Remember, do not tell me their name or gender.

I’m listening...

Now let me tell you about my person-> My perso…

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How the Influence of Technology is Vital on Corporate Boards

“If you didn’t have a digital strategy, you do now or you don’t survive,” said Guillermo Diaz Jr., chief executive officer at software firm Kloudspot, and a former chief information officer at Cisco Systems Inc. “You have to have a digital strategy and digital culture, and a board that thinks that way,” he said in an article for the Wall Street Journal.

Technology is not new for businesses. It’s been a standard for a minimum of two decades. But not everyone embraced it, understood it, or recogn…

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Blog-Snowflake

How to Avoid Being a Brand with Snowflake Syndrome?

A while back in one of my first books, I wrote about what I call “Snowflake Syndrome” and it was the hit of the book. That chapter was popular beyond the specific industry that the book was written for. Recently, I have had a few encounters that have reminded me of it and got me thinking that maybe I should expand upon it and release a new book. Maybe…what do you think? 

So just what is Snowflake Syndrome? It’s when a brand believes that it is unique in its market and that the market should go …

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Blog-Aloha

The Power of Aloha Customer Service Is Unconditional Friendship and Trust

I have lost count of all of the different “types” of customer service and sayings about what customer service should be. Oh, and we can also add the different words for customer service and the actual customer! In the end, they all say the same thing, be nice to the people or companies that give you money.

When I was in Hawai’i, Oahu to be exact—and just so you know, there is no ‘w’ in O’ahu. I was there for a speaking gig and then magically it into a vacation. It was my first time there and wh…

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Getting Employees Engaged: When They Really Don’t Care

Dustin Walling is a very good friend of mine who works with the construction and technology industries on the gap between management and experts within a company, or "performance management" as he calls it. Anyway, he wrote a great post about team building at a Caterpillar dealership that I want to share with you. Enjoy!

When Doug Fabick became the 4th generation owner of Fenton, MO-based Fabick CAT, a Caterpillar Tractor dealership, his father left him with one key piece of advice, “Build your …

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Most Innovative Ways to Recognize Your Employees

I posted the below text about a year ago to get some feedback, when I was switching my site, I rediscovered it and wanted to share again. Hope you enjoy it and it gives you some great ideas for saying "Thank you" this year. Recognizing your employees (when done properly) is an incredible element of your culture. It can be a driving force that leads to the most amazing results. Your employees end up feeling like what they do matters. Happy employees lead to happier customers and better results fo…

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Blog-TargetMissed

Truth Bomb: You Will Fail in Marketing and It's OK.

It’s true, 90% of all B2B companies market in pretty much the same way. It goes something like this:

  • Make a product/service

  • Talk a lot about their product/service

  • Produce a load of boring content and collateral to sell their product/service

  • Use various techniques to attempt to stand out and cut through the noise

  • Use a variety of channels and platforms like advertising, email, or direct marketing, as well as social media to make people aware of their product/service

  • Build a sales funnel and manage and …

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