Category: Marketing
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Word of Mouth marketing: The Case of Brompton Bikes
Here’s a case of a product that has grown through word of mouth marketing: Brompton bikes. Our family have become big users of Brompton bikes over the last ten years. We have 3, and a range of child seat options so that the 4 of us can head into old town Barcelona on a weekend.…
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Branding 101
The most simple rule of product branding: You are either: Different Better Cheaper or Not Going to Be Around Very Long Which are you? If you are not 100% clear on your answer, I recommend taking some time to work through this Value Proposition Canvas developed by Alex Osterwalder. You can get more information and…
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Sales: What is your Painful Problem to Solve?
What is your painful problem to solve? Sales is not about describing your product, your process or your friends. It is about explaining to the buyer a problem that they have, and giving them a glimpse of a world where that problem has gone away. What would it feel like to live in a world…
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Framing is Everything
Rory Sutherland tells some wonderful stories about the power of framing. If you want to be persuasive, you must get good at framing the argument. Good framing shifts the argument to a playing field where you can achieve your ends and the other can feel that they have gotten a good deal. Prices are not…
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How Ideas Die: The #1 Reason
A person can have the great idea, but if that person cannot convince a number of people: the idea dies. Good ideas do die. Good ideas must have good advocates. Good advocacy and good idea makes an idea live. Ideas need advocates like humans need oxygen. The Leader as Communicator The Leader’s #1 job as…
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Yahoo pays Millions to Teen Coder (the real story)
The story in the tech news of the last few days is the purchase of Summly by Yahoo for the sum of $30M, making the 17-year old founder Nick D’Aloisio an instant millionaire. It sounds fairly simple. The story they want you to believe: Teen whizz writes cool app. App downloaded by millions. Yahoo gets…
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Entrepreneur: Start a year before you Start
Start building network, blog, educating 1 year before you make the leap. Build community. The first sales will always be to friends. Make those friends.
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Terrible or Fantastic? Do we need more Shoes?
In the late 1870s, A Dublin-based shoe company sent 2 salespeople from their head office to a new territory in rural Africa. The two salespeople, Willy and Jimmy, travelled out on boat, trains and foot to reach the rural African areas that was to be their new sales area. 2 months later, 2 telegrams arrived…
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The 3 Basic Questions of Good Business
Good business has been done the same way for centuries. The medium does not change the rules for success. Question 1: Who exactly do you help? Who do you help? What problem do you solve for them? How can you make that pain tangible for the listener? Effective sales is about helping a customer understand…
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Don’t Be Cheap.
“Cheaper” is never a deep human life goal. I don’t often hear people say “I wish my life was cheaper”. We never buy because something is cheaper. We buy because of the story we can tell ourself and others when we buy cheaper… I am a smart person because I get good deals. But, Apple…