Category Archives: Marketing

Know and Value Your Customer: A Forgotten Rule

Posted on Friday, 24 July 2020 7:52 am by

One of the hardest things to teach marketers is that our customers are everything and that our brands are–in the minds and lives of our customers–tiny, inconsequential things. That level of humility can be hard to achieve, but it’s necessary … Continue reading →

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Chumbox Your Users While Taboolaing Your Brand Equity

Posted on Monday, 1 June 2020 11:59 am by

Avinash Kaushik created a (new to me) term the other day. In his email on Friday, he coined the term Taboolaing to refer to the use of the chumboxes offered by dreadful companies like Taboola to destroy one’s brand equity. … Continue reading →

Posted in Branding, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy | Tagged , , , , ,

Killing the Paywall

Posted on Monday, 12 August 2019 7:56 am by

Tom Goodwin’s recent article, “Why making content on the internet free was our biggest mistake… and how to fix it” is required reading for all marketers in publishing. I’ve felt this way for a long time. Mr. Goodwin only wrote … Continue reading →

Posted in digital marketing, Leadership, Marketing, Media, Strategy, Tactics | Tagged , , , ,

USPS 3685 and the State of Marketing

Posted on Tuesday, 23 April 2019 7:00 am by

Sometimes reading the USPS-required Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation (form 3685) can reveal a lot about the state of one’s industry. As a direct marketing and postal junkie, I find USPS forms fascinating. (I don’t get out much.) I … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Education, Marketing, Strategy | Tagged , , ,

First Mile Problems

Posted on Thursday, 18 April 2019 7:30 am by

I was recently interviewed by Tim Furey, CEO of MarketBridge, on The Last Mile Podcast. Among our discussion of SAC, CAC, LTV, ROI, other three-letter acronyms, we also spent time on “first mile” marketing problems. As a practicing performance/direct response … Continue reading →

Posted in Direct Response, Marketing, Media, Philosophy, Rants, Strategy, Tactics | Tagged , , ,

Ads on blogs

Posted on Monday, 26 November 2018 9:24 am by

I just had a chance to check my blog. Here’s the type of quality ad that gets served on blogs like mine. Do you know if the creative is automatically generated by some brilliant AI? Or have you ever really … Continue reading →

Posted in digital marketing, Direct Response, Marketing, Media, Tactics | Tagged , , , , , , ,

2.8 billion years of evolution, down the drain

Posted on Tuesday, 23 October 2018 8:40 am by

Someday, as expressed in this article by Shelly Palmer, AI and technology will be so good it will be impossible to tell truth from fakes. In other words, we won’t be able to trust our eyes and ears any more. … Continue reading →

Posted in fraud, Marketing, Media | Tagged , , , , , ,

Reduce Spend, Increase Reach? Wait, This Can’t Be Right…

P&G eliminated 20% of their most ineffective spend and generated 10% more reach, according to this article in AdWeek. Wait, that doesn’t fit the narrative about digital media. It’s all supposed to be about good, cheap media, reaching the right … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on Monday, 5 March 2018 5:27 pm by | Tagged , , ,

Virtue Signaling and Fake Marketers

“Marketing has changed forever” is the gospel according to the fake marketers. Wrote Malcolm Auld in his brilliant article yesterday. Since we’re in the era of fake news, fake traffic, fake impressions, fake agencies, and fake presidents, let’s call out … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on Thursday, 22 February 2018 8:12 am by | Tagged , ,

Humans

How many humans are in each segment of your category buyers? And how many humans are in each audience at each publisher? You need to know the answers to both questions for your campaigns to be successful. Not cookies. Not … Continue reading →

Aside | Posted on Monday, 19 February 2018 11:34 am by | Tagged ,