Three Scenarios Where Hiring a Marketing Consultant Makes a Tons of Sense
Can I assume that you’re outsourcing some services that your business needs right now? It could be accounting, IT support, or maybe HR and hiring. Perhaps your company provides one of these outsourced services for other businesses. Outsourcing makes a whole lot of sense when you want to bring in expertise that you don’t have internally.
Jobs Theory for Marketing: Simple But Not Easy
I was recently introduced to “Jobs Theory” and decided to learn more about it so I have started reading the book, “Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice” by Clayton Christensen. Before I even finished the book, I liked how the author distilled the purpose of business down to a very basic level. Of course, I have applied it to the work that I do as a marketing professional and here’s my insight: marketing does the job of developing and sustaining relationships.
Resonance - The Simple and Profound Reason We Need to Be Storytellers
Something a client said at a meeting recently has been mulling around in my head. What she said was a great compliment, although I don’t think she realized it. She validated that my work with their organization is not just to help them with marketing, but it’s also to change the way they think about who they are trying to reach by getting into their story. Here’s what she said. “I keep hearing your words in my head, Lori. Why are we doing this?”
The Single Most Important Ingredient in Your Success Story
What's the single most important ingredient in your success story? I won’t keep you in suspense, but first-- what it isn’t. The single most important ingredient in your success story isn’t success. It’s distress. Surprisingly enough, when you leave out the struggle that led to your success, you really have no story at all.
Do You Know How to Find Your Stories?
I know why you haven’t started using a storytelling approach to your marketing and communications. You’ve been hearing about it everywhere – from your industry organization, in your social media feed, at training events. You’re sold on its power to connect, persuade and motivate people. You just haven’t taken that first step. Here’s why. You don’t know how to find the stories you need to tell.
Unwrap Your Client Success Stories
Customer success stories should be in every company's marketing strategy. The usual format takes you through three phases: the situation, what the vendor did, and the outcome. It’s common to focus on the middle phase and blow your own horn talking about yourself and your work, but there’s a different way to tell your client stories that will enable sales and guide your prospect to a decision.
Storytelling Isn't Just For Telling Stories
Storytelling for business isn’t anything new. It’s been an on-again, off-again buzzword for a long time. At face value, the word “storytelling” seems a little fluffy and certainly, everything that is being called a story is not a story. The reality is that companies that have embraced a storytelling approach to communications are finding benefits in all areas of their business, not just marketing. They have found that storytelling isn’t just for telling stories.
This is What Happened When I Started with a Story
When I was in college, I worked for the New York Times. That’s how I started out a talk that I gave recently to the Women Executives in Business (WEB) organization in Mankato. Until I became a student of storytelling, I didn’t understand the value that my personal stories could have in the business world. But the success of this talk, measured in audience feedback, proved out the concept that good stories power up your communications. Here’s what happened.
Is Your Marketing Recipe Cooking Up the Right Results?
Have you ever made lasagna from scratch? It’s laborious but worth the effort. It’s what I make for my family when I want to love on them with food. Different people have different versions of the recipe, but the basic ingredients of pasta, tomato sauce, seasonings and cheeses mixed with egg remains the same. Once I had homemade lasagna that a friend made with boiled eggs in it. She had the right ingredients in her dish but she cooked them up in a way that changed the results.
How Talking About Yourself Backfires on Your Website Results
What if you were looking for a home builder and the websites that you landed on said this – “We have hammers. We have nails. We have lots of other building tools, too. We have people who know how to use these tools. Our people are really proud of what they can do with these tools. We are really excited to use these tools to build something for you. If you need
What Happens When Your Website is Nobody's Baby
Neglected websites. You know them when you see them, don’t you? They are visually unappealing. They don’t answer your questions. They don’t work well with your phone, or sometimes they just don’t work. There could be several reasons why a website falls into neglect. The company may have spent a lot of money creating the site – years ago -- and thinks that it should last a long, long time. There might not be anyone in-house who knows how to work with the site because special software or knowledge of coding is needed.