Thoughts on Marketing, Strategy and Hummus
Zapier’s 3 Steps To Build A Die-Hard User Base
The I’m-too-busy-to-read-this overview: Get to know your high-expectation user who can recognize maximum product benefit. A brand that speaks your users’ language is a force multiplier. Experiencing user pain first-hand is a must to nail product messaging. Find the forums where your users spend time. Spend all day there. Run [...]
19 Timeless Reads That Will Make You A Better Digital Marketer
*This post is regularly updated. It's now up to 19. The internet is packed with hordes of marketers marketing to marketers about marketing. Which sucks when you're trying to up your game. But every once in a while, I come across an article, book, or slide deck that actually educates, [...]
6 Content Marketing Lessons From Fake News
84% of Americans think they know the difference between fake news and real news. They’re wrong. A Buzzfeed survey found that 75% of Americans have been fooled. We may be on the lookout but fake news still penetrates our hardened Internet attention defenses. This is an unmitigated disaster for media producers and consumers, [...]
Life for Marketers Is About To Get Harder. Here’s Why.
This isn’t unique to marketing. In the field of biomedicine alone, two papers are published every minute on PubMed. And they’re also turning to aggregators. But here’s the thing - aggregators that control information overload doesn’t actually improve how well people remember things.
Playbooking Creativity: 6 Recipes From Real Creators
The recipe for the internet is 99.9% crap, 0.1% creative inspiration. Unfortunately, like most digital marketers, I've played my fair role in creating crap. But hiding under the mountains of terrible articles are incredible, mind-blowing pieces. Articles that trigger a sense of longing before you even reach the end. Videos you can't stop watching. [...]
A Call for Imaginary Marketing Conversations
Think of a catchy song. Now grab a friend, sit them down and tap the song's rhythm on the table. Think they can tell you're tapping Pharrel's Happy? They can't. In Elizabeth Newton's PhD dissertation, groups were split into pairs of Tappers and Listeners. Before tapping the song, Tappers guessed whether their Listener would [...]
Questions, Not Answers: Keeping Marketing On Track
TL;DR: Real progress comes from clearly defined obstacles or problems. Challenging working assumptions with fundamental questions on a regular basis is an incredible way to stay focused. There's nothing uniquely 21st century about innovation, or technologically-driven efficiency. Even hockey-stick growth has been around for over two centuries. And while there was [...]
20+ Drivers of the Best Startup Referral Plans
Referral Programs and Viral User Growth When it comes to scaling up and acquiring customers, letting your customers do it for you is by far the most popular way to do it. Josh Elman, a Greylock Ventures partner with real scaling experience (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Connect) breaks down five types [...]
Uber, Air BnB and Moneyball: The Truth About Disruption
I came across this scene in Moneyball (great movie, you should watch it) and immediately knew he was describing the fight that Uber, AirBnB and every other really innovative startup is fighting. Check it out: My attempted transcription: I know you've taken it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through [...]