You may notice some website weirdness over the next week or so, and especially this weekend. For the past month we have been re-building TheMarketingSpot.com using the Headway WordPress platform. We’ve been building it in the background and now will begin publicly unveiling the site this weekend. The reason is that we are converting The Marketing
Know Your Website Hosting Options
You thought website hosting was all the same? If only it were so easy. Price is not the only consideration when choosing a website host. You should know what you get and what type of hosting you need before you choose. Let’s run down the most popular hosting options. Reseller Hosting Someone rents a dedicated
The Ecstasy and Agony of Facebook
It was a Facebook Fairy Tale… Erin Shephard of Lone Star Pin-up Once upon a time in Killeen, Texas there was a young maiden named Erin Shephard who had a full-time photo-retouching job, and a hobby. Her hobby was that of an amateur photographer doing what she calls “pin-up” photography: vintage-style portraits that are recreations
Fundamentals of Business: Customer Choice
No sale is made until somebody chooses something. The fundamentals of choice are the fundamentals of business. How are you handling customer choice? Flickr photo by emilio labrador As Denise Lee Yohn pointed out in her blog yesterday, businesses often paralyze customers with choice, leaving them frazzled and frustrated with their shopping experience. I’ve written
The Branding Process Explained for Small Businesses
The Marketing Spot’s Jay Ehret was recently a guest on Mike Klassen’s Magalog Guy Podcast, discussing marketing principles that make sense. Jay and Mike spent a great deal of time diving into branding basics. You can listen to the podcast in the player below. There’s a lot of branding advice packed into this podcast, including:
The Potential to Differentiate
What can we do that’s different? That’s probably the most asked question in business, and there are a couple of different ways you can go with this. I’ll lump them in to two categories: 1. Everything Else 2. The Customer Experience Let’s cover the Everything Else category first, because it’s the most popular. A lot
Marketing When You Should be Networking
Gaming the System It seemed like a good idea, and LinkedIn started it with LinkedIn Answers: Provide a forum where people who need information can ask questions and unselfish experts will provide helpful advice. The information seeker gets the critical help they need and the experts providing the information help make the world a
The Four Essential Marketing Spots Explained
I recently appeared as a guest on the Business Owner’s Toolkit podcast and they asked me to explain my Four-Spot Marketing Model. It contains what I consider to be the four essential spots of marketing: Branding, Experience, Conversation, Promotion. I’ve illustrated them here in The Marketing Circle of Life, But Greg Corombos of Toolkit and
Pay Per Click (PPC) Starter Tips for Small Business
This past weekend I was at ProductCamp Austin and caught Shawn Livengood’s excellent presentation on Pay Per Click Advertising Campaigns. After his session, Shawn and I got together in the lobby to discuss PPC and some starter tips for small business owners. Dustin Donham was there to capture Shawn’s wisdom on video. Email Subscribers and
What should you do about Facebook?
There’s a lot of discussion by marketers about Facebook right now, and the value of Facebook pages for business. One of the knocks against the social media giant is that you don’t own your Facebook page. Your page and all your fans belong to Facebook. That is 100% true. But does that mean you shouldn’t