Marketing in Real Life

If you're not always thinking about how to do it better next time, you're just not trying hard enough.  That's the difference between winning and losing in the long run.

"It's not your call." Those are four words that as a leader in a company you really hope you don't have to say. They are hierarchical and demeaning. They imply that one person is less important than another. They also mean that something in the process has broken down.  Sadly, when an issue can not be amicably resolved that's what we are left with.  "It's not your call" is a symptom of a bigger problem that needs addressing. And that's everyone's problem to solve.

No matter how many start up blogs you read, user testing sessions you conduct, market studies you digest... Nothing quite prepares you for the first few weeks of getting real customers for your product or service.  I'm going through it right now and like Stuart Smalley, I look at myself in the mirror every day and offer a positive affirmation because... 1.  All those people who said they could imagine using your product that made you feel awesome and excited... Most of them won't actually do it, or at least not right away. 2. Whatever your acquisition plans are for the long term, they won't work in the beginning.  It's hand to hand combat to get people to jump on board in the beginning and you just have to do things that you know won't scale. 3.  Bugs you pooh-pooed during testing are magnified 1000% when a "real person" can't get through a task.  Oh- and those same "real people" don't care that you're in a Beta. 4. Getting t...

When I was a kid, I wasn't quite as motivated as I could have been.  I wanted to do well but I did a lot of things half way  and then moved on.  Whether it was schoolwork or sports or music it was a trend for sure.   Which led to one of the most enduring conversations that I ever had with my dad.  It was all about effort and concentration. Effort: to do things as hard as I could for as long as it took. Concentration:  to focus on what I was doing and what I was trying to accomplish without being distracted. As I got older - and funnier, obviously - I changed it to be the F word and concentration.  But to this day it's a lesson I practice with everything I do. Thanks Dad!

Last week I spent 4 days at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival – my own personal Mecca full of great food, amazing music, wonderful people, and this year a really cool promotion from Samsung who is now one of the lead sponsors of the event.   My wife and I go to a lot of live music venues and usually find it incredibly easy to avoid and/or forget the on site promotions happening at any given time.   But this one was different.   The people behind it “got” the event they were at and left me wondering if I should abandon my ten+ year relationship with the iPhone for a Galaxy. There were three things in particular I loved about their set up – an interactive tent in the middle of the fairgrounds that made us go back multiple times to experience it. Samsung gave me a good reason to play with the product(s).  The promotion was simple, take a selfie on a Galaxy phone, fill out a quick quiz, and send it to yourself via one of the mail apps.  Then ...