A Racing Certainty

To win motor races you need the partnership of a great car and a talented driver.

I’ve seen race teams invest zillions in the wheels but fail to reach the podium because the driver was not up to scratch.

It’s the same with TV ads and promotional videos. You can spend zillions on equipment, actors, sets and locations but still end up with a flop.

It’s not the budget that counts – it’s the story.

You need the partnership of a great script and a team of talented film makers to make a blockbuster.

Is Your Website A Turn Off?

Visitors will scuttle and run if they don’t like what they see when a website opens.

It doesn’t matter how much content is on the site, they will not scroll down or visit other pages if they are not impressed with the view at the top of the home page.

To make them stay, you need to make an immediate impact.

An attractive picture or revolving slides are not enough.

Give them an offer they can’t refuse or a video they can’t ignore.

The Secret Of Success

Why is it that actors with little talent become big stars?

Why is it that entrepreneurs with no original ideas become billionaires?

Why are some of your rivals more successful than you?

Perhaps they are more committed.

Perhaps they put in longer hours.

Perhaps they have a formula that works.

Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps.

The No1 reason people succeed big is because they dream big.

GO WITH YOUR GUT

Many brands make the wrong decision when staging beauty parades for PR, advertising and marketing agencies.

At the start, everyone is determined to focus on the positives and choose the agency with the best ideas but if all the contestants are equally creative, the only way to whittle down the list is to look for imperfections.

They did not address this, they failed to spot that, they missed this requirement…you know the way it goes. 

By all means, judge each consultancy against pre-determined criteria but do not divorce gut-feeling from the process. If you listen to what your heart says, you’ll probably make the right choice. 

Online And Offline

We are all so busy looking at new channels to drive sales that we often ignore old routes to market.

If your brand generates most of its sales from its website, online is where you should be spending your marketing budget, right?

Wrong!

Sure, you might want to invest the biggest chunk of your budget on digital marketing but offline is likely to drive sales as well.  

Newspaper ads and direct mail are likely to produce additional sales.

Google uses mailers to drive sales, so why shouldn’t you?

Sometimes it pays to think offline to drive sales online.

The Times They Are A Changin’

The times they are a changin’ sang Bob Dylan in 1964.

If the times were changing fast in the 60s how much faster are they changing today?

Faster than the speed of light!

It’s exhilarating. It’s exciting and nowhere is our world changing faster than on the internet.

Brands which traditionally reached the consumer through middlemen are now cutting them out.

Unilever is now selling some of its products direct to the consumer and Virgin Holidays has become a direct-sell tour operator.

Power is continuing to switch from offline to online and as Dylan said – it will shake your windows and rattle your walls because the times they are a changin’.

Don’t Get Snapped In The Mousetrap

The mousetrap is the most frequently invented device in North America.

With more than 4,400 patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on top of several thousand unsuccessful applications, no other invention has captured the imagination of so many creative minds.

The man responsible for the fascination with the mousetrap is poet Ralph Waldo Emerson who is credited with saying – Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.

The statement, of course, is commercial nonsense.

No one’s ever got rich from inventing mousetraps and the same goes for most other inventions.

John Logie Baird, the inventor of television, did not die a rich man.

The only way to make money from an invention, a product or a service is to build its fame through marketing…and then the world may indeed beat a path to your door.

Coughing Up A Confession

As a teenager I had a Saturday job in our local Woolworths store.

I served customers, swept the floors and, on occasion, acted as a store detective.

One spring day the manager drew me aside with a problem – he had overstocked with cough sweets.

With the prospect of sunny days stretching before us, there was little chance of him selling his mountain of dark purple boilings.

A visit to the pharmacy provided our salvation. Armed with a few bottles of cough mixture, a tin pan and a candle warmer, we were able to fill the store with a heady aroma of “cough sweets”. Within days every single candy was sold.

The episode with the cough sweets taught me that to sell any product or service, brands need to appeal to the senses and the more senses they can touch, the more successful campaigns will be.

Looks Are Not Everything

Some designers create great-looking websites.

Unfortunately, most of them know next to nothing about building sites that drive sales.

Most designers focus on looks but the best-looking website in the world will generate zip in sales if no one can find it.

To win big online, you need to attract as many visitors to your webpages as you can.

And when you get visitors to your site, they will only buy if you make them an irresistible offer.

There are two essentials to making money online – traffic and conversion.