Articles by Drew Williams
My name is Drew Williams. I’m an author and marketing entrepreneur. “A what?”, you say. I call someone who’s passionate about building businesses a marketing entrepreneur. So that’s me. Full Profile | Google+
Why Marketing is so Hard
Marketing is hard. But the problem is that too many people think it isn’t. Especially with all the new, “magic bullet” technologies out there that pretty much do everything for you. So where are the …
Pale Blue Dot
If you haven’t experienced the Pale Blue Dot, and feel the need to put all your problems and challenges into perspective, click play…
The idea of the Pale Blue Dot was inspired by a picture of …
Why we love marketing dashboards
We love dashboards. We love being surrounded by stuff that makes us feel in control. It seems you can’t swing an iPad these days without hitting a marketing dashboard that promises to make your CEO …
How to Kill Your Startup in 5 Simple Steps
If you’ve started a business and decided you want to drive it into the ground, here are five sure-fire ways to get you there faster. Rest assured that these marketing strategies have all been battle-tested …
Who’s in your tent? You’d better find out.
The Customer Loyalty Effect can be brilliant – or devastating.
So you’ve got all these customers milling around in your tent. Do you really know who they are? Here’s a tip. They’re either Fans, Fence-sitters or Critics:
1. …
The story of Charles Bradley, and why you should never give up
Have you heard of pivoting? It’s all the rage. In business and especially in startups, if one direction isn’t looking profitable, take your assets and try pointing your business (and maybe your life) in a …
Intrigue Marketing #3
This is a well-produced commercial for a Spanish bank that has been making the rounds. Note how low-key the branding is, how many adults are videoing, and how many children are just dancing. I think …
Rule #3: Compartmentalize
The Startup Rulebook
One of the features of running a startup is the feeling that hyenas have grabbed your extremities and are all pulling in different directions. They all want a piece of you, and if …
Rule #2: Believe in yourself
The Startup Rule Book
So you decided to start a business. Why? Probably because you had a good idea and you believed that you could get others to feel the same way. Next stop: unbridled entrepreneurial …
Intrigue Marketing: Poo-Pourri
This ad for Poo-Pourri is insanely clever. One of the few I’ve watched to completion while waiting for the main event on YouTube.
The intrigue is delivered through outlandish subject matter and humor that somehow elevates …
Rule #1: Never stop trying
The Startup Rule Book
They say that true entrepreneurs aren’t motivated by money. Here’s why that’s not true, and then it is.
The #2 reason entrepreneurs get into business is the hope of achieving some degree of …
Marketing isn’t fast
“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago,” says an old proverb. If you have aspirations of swinging in a hammock between two stately trees this afternoon, you’d better not be planting those trees …
Startup Marketing: You need a marketing system
Fewer than 5% of startups achieve their dream growth
Hiring your first marketing person is scary. What do you know about startup marketing? What do they know about startup marketing? All you know is that you …
Social Media ROI Primer
The 80/20 On Social Media Tools
When someone asks me about social media tool trends and the effect on social media ROI, I sometimes get a little nervous wondering if I was looking the other way …
Is this you? (video)
A short story of a beleaguered entrepreneur and a hungry beast… and a shortcut to startup sales growth (of the big, hairy, outrageous variety).
(find out more here… Feed The Startup Beast: A 7-Step Guide to Big, Hairy, …
Navigate the Startup Process
Be a growth hacker…
Navigate the startup process courtesy of McGraw Hill and our new book “Feed The Startup Beast“. Comments and feedback most welcome!
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Email Marketing: Dead or Alive?
Email marketing according to Marketo… Email Marketing: Dead or Alive? (Spoiler: I’m going to go with “alive” on this one.)
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The End of Sales? (or Revenge of the Marketing Nerds)
Have you heard this one?
Sales asks for support material.
Marketing supplies support material.
Sales doesn’t use support material.
I have. Many times. The reason for this could be that Marketing just keeps missing the mark, or it could be that …
Peak Content?
When does content marketing hit its breaking point?
So here’s a story…
My wife runs a design company. She has a fax. Years ago, she would walk into the office every morning and there would be a …
Breaking through with Intrigue
I’ve talked about the idea of Intrigue Marketing before… using intrigue to engage your prospects. I believe that intrigue is one of the most powerful and under-used marketing tactics around. It’s powerful because it sparks …
Net Promoter Score, Meet Beast Potential Score
If you know anything about the Net Promoter Score, you know that tens of thousands of companies use it to gauge customer satisfaction and to track their company’s growth potential based on that satisfaction.
For our …
Be like Apple (used to be) in 4 words
Here’s the secret to creating an exceptional company:
stand for something meaningful
Standing for something meaningful is what has set Apple, for one, apart from the rest of the pack. If you want passionate followers, their passion …
80% of CEOs Don’t Trust Marketing
No more Mr. Nice Marketing Guy
Somewhere along the way, marketers lost the trust of their CEOs. A 2012 study by the Fournaise Marketing Group shows pretty conclusively that the vast majority of CEOs in large and …
The Secret to Attracting Prospects
The One-Minute Marketing Plan – Part 3 of 3
Okay. This is the wrap-up on the One-Minute Marketing Plan – part 3 of 3. Part 1 was all about doing the ground work to increase your …
Seth Godin: Remarkable Ideas Travel
Seth Godin is worth listening to. He’s a marketing guy with outstanding ideas that thousands follow every day through his blog (sethgodin.typepad.com). I came across this TED presentation he gave back in 2007, and thought …
The Secret to Finding Prospects
The One-Minute Marketing Plan – Part 2 of 3
I lied. The One-Minute Marketing Plan will be spread out over three blog posts. Okay. Maybe it’s really a Three-Minute Marketing Plan.
Last week we did the prep …
Bill Gross: On Denting the Universe
Bill Gross is an entrepreneur. Not just any entrepreneur. He has been responsible for the startup of hundreds of companies… from Lotus, to “Knowledge Adventure“, to the Idealab incubator which spawned Google Picassa, PetSmart, amongst …
The One-Minute Marketing Plan (that you can use)
The only way to hit your goal is to have a plan
Is there any reason for you not to have a plan behind your marketing execution? Plans take too long to do? Marketing plans expire …
Break Email Best Practices. Add 200%.
Why turning email best practices on their head may be a good idea
The idea of “best practices” has become something of a crutch in business. Email best practices, for instance, suggests that someone else has …
Brad Feld: Kind of Naked
Brad Feld is worth following (FeldThoughts.com). Brad is considered one of the top VCs in the world today (Feedburner, Zynga, amongst many others), he is a very successful serial entrepreneur, and is an entrepreneur’s friend. …
The Day Marketing Automation Stopped Working
How the Laws of Engagement Can Save the Day
There’s a problem brewing in B2B marketing land. The stuff that used to work doesn’t seem to be working as well anymore. Below is a chart from Marketing Sherpa’s …
Marketing Follow-Through – Aligning Sales & Marketing
Like golf, marketing follow-through is the only way to ensure that you end up where you want to.
As companies grow, a gulf between the marketing team and the sales team often develops. Both groups understand …
Intrigue Marketing. Huh?
If your marketing campaign doesn’t break through, you got nothin’.
The two most successful ways to achieve marketing breakthrough are: spend a gazillion dollars, and/or be really clever. The nice thing about clever is that it …
The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago
The wonderful thing about Captains of Start-Ups is that they can do everything!
We have a client who is a lawyer. Her specialty is tech start-ups. This week she commented: “so many of these start-up guys …
Nothing kills a bad company faster than good marketing
Really… what are your customers saying about you?
A few years ago my agency worked with a large interior design company whose customers were homeowners that numbered in the thousands. The design company’s business had grown …
Dancing with ourselves
The 3 P’s of Entrepreneurship
I read and quite enjoyed Seth Godin’s “Dancing on the edge of finished” blog entry this week. He makes the point that today, as entrepreneurs, we are never quite finished our …
5 Ideas to Improve Your Prospect Targeting
If you’re not targeting the right prospect, everything else you do is pretty much academic.
Idea #1 – Find more customers like your best customers
Do you know who your best customers are? They’re the ones who …
Marketing’s Secret Sauce
The simple truth is, if you know what works, you can do more of it. How do you find out? It’s all in the data.
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“You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”
You may have heard that …
Your Sales Curve: Hockey Sticks or Saw Blades?
Everyone loves the hockey stick. The hockey stick is the sales curve that every new business envisions for themselves; every new marketing and sales manager fantasizes about creating; and every president wants to show to his …
Do your customers love you? (Perception is not reality)
Do you know what your customers are really saying about you? Most companies, it seems, don’t. When Bain & Company surveyed 362 companies a few years ago, 80 percent of the surveyed companies declared they were …
The 3 Keys to Better Marketing
The secret to increased marketing campaign response rates has been kicking around in direct marketing circles for decades. Knowing how to apply that knowledge to your marketing programs can double, triple or even quadruple your …
Growth is Good. Feed Your Beast.
Businesses are beasts. When the beast is happy, there’s lots of back-slapping and everyone gets to go on cruises. But when the beast gets hungry, things change. Suddenly heads start disappearing and bodies start flying. …
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