2019 awaits us. Which new trends and practices will be in store for marketers in the new year? I did some digging and discovered several predictions for your review. I leave it to you to decide which ones have merit and which do not. According to Janice Chou in a recent Forbes article, “content marketing continues to […]
Community
3 Ways to Overcome Competition from Online Retailers
According to the Census Bureau, today’s consumers buy nearly 10 percent of goods and services online—and that percentage is rising at a clip of over 15 percent per year. Some small businesses, such as used books stores and antiques dealers, rely on the internet for a majority of their sales. What does that mean for local […]
Relationships Matter—But What Does That Mean?
Andy Paul wrote a terrific piece on relationships (visit TheSalesHouse to get some of his thinking). There is a lot of discussion, pro and con, about the importance of relationships—but little of it drives any clarity about what a relationship is, and why it matters. There are the “old timers,” who view relationships as key, but define […]
Going Hyper-Local: How Sponsoring an Event Like Goat Yoga or a Garlic Festival Can Grow Your Business
For businesses of every size, maintaining a good reputation and relationship among consumers is essential for growth, but that’s easier said than done. Consumers support or reject companies based on the positions they advocate; 87% buy based on values and 78% boycott based on values. While it’s impossible to please everyone, involvement with community action […]
6 Ways Businesses Can Give Back to the Community
There are many ways for businesses to give back to the community. Whether it comes in the form of donating to charity or donating knowledge or experience, every company has something to offer the community. It is important that businesses act as a force for positive change within the environments they operate. We have compiled […]
Your Organization’s Mark
In marketing terms, an organization’s trademark, or “mark,” is any word, phrase, symbol, design, sound, smell, color, or combination of these, used by a company to identify its products or services, and distinguish them from products and services provided by others. We’ve talked many times about the importance of having a unique mark and protecting […]
Are You Building a Community?
Last year, I spent a weekend with my daughter and her boyfriend at a Supernatural Convention in Chicago. If you’re not familiar with the TV show Supernatural it’s in its 13th season, largely due to the huge fan base that it has built and how vocal they are about the show and its very existence. […]
What’s In It for Me? A Summary of Social Impact Tax Reliefs
Interested in injecting an ethical component to your investing? Well, we have good news – with the SITR, you can have your cake and eat it too. So-called ‘impact investing,’ in which investors aim not only to make a return but also to make the world a better place through their investments, is a relatively new […]
How Companies Can Start Planting Roots in a Community
Consumers don’t favor Whole Foods over Walmart for reasons relating to the chains’ respective sizes or ubiquity — it’s because only the former serves as a catalyst to community. The competitive difference between the homogenous corporate paradigm embodied by Walmart and the community-centered model cultivated by Whole Foods grows increasingly stark. At Walmart, sterile interchangeability and […]
What is Your Marketing Doing to Develop a Better World?
Is your business solely focused on profit-making or does it try to make a social impact, too—aligning profits with purpose? What does social impact mean? “Social impact has become much more than just a business strategy—driven by Millennials, social impact is, instead, a way of life and a way of being in the world. It has undeniably […]
