On Messaging

In order to market and sell your business’ product or service, you have to be able to communicate with precision and efficiency. Presenting your customers with a concrete message, one that snags attention with pain points and underscores the necessity for your product or service, is vital. If you have a business, you have a message—even if your message hasn’t been translated into concrete language yet.
Continue reading “On Messaging”

On Vision

In our recent blog post, we argued that good marketing brings clarity to your business. However, it’s impossible to gain clarity if your business’ vision is murky—or only exists within your mind. Before you can gain momentum, you have to put your business’ vision into concrete language. And for this to happen, all the leaders of your business have to be brought on board. Vision is something built; this means both the owner and leadership need to contribute and be heard.
Continue reading “On Vision”

Your business’ problem isn’t its website, SEO, or social media strategy. It’s a clarity issue.

All of Hatchet’s partnerships begin with a kickoff meeting. We use this meeting to poke holes in the new partner’s existing sales and marketing processes. This helps us locate the root problem that marketing needs to solve. It’s standard, and it’s indispensable. However, business owners often feel responsible for limited growth and hide the real problems with bullshit responses. If you say your business’ problem is simply the fact that you aren’t making more money, then you’re concealing the truth. Falling behind a major competitor is a problem. Generating new business in a fluctuating market is a problem. Marketing to the wrong level of clients is a problem. Asking an array of directive questions helps these real issues rise to the surface.
Continue reading “Your business’ problem isn’t its website, SEO, or social media strategy. It’s a clarity issue.”

Your content matters. That’s why you shouldn’t write it.

We begin with a portrait of Francis, a copywriter. He doesn’t wear pants to work. No, those are trousers. There’s a full inch of exposed sock above his worn oxfords. That’s the difference. Francis doesn’t talk much. He chews gum instead. If he does amble into a conversation, he spouts apothegms and wild anecdotes. He sure can craft a compelling story. That one about his best friend, the vibraphone mechanic? Phew. You learn something new each day. Francis brings his MacBook to work in a weathered typewriter case. Smith Corona. So, he’s the literary type. He’s married, or isn’t married, or is. It doesn’t matter.
Continue reading “Your content matters. That’s why you shouldn’t write it.”

We’re tired of lazy email marketing.

Marketers are humans, too. Their personal inboxes aren’t immune to an onslaught of daily, automated emails. They also spend their mornings combing through the irksome pack, deleting, unsubscribing and bemoaning the voluminous load over coffee. In our culture, this daily waste of time has become a ritual. Yet we continue to enlist in the process: subscribe, purge, repeat. Why? Because sometimes these emails are actually good. So how can marketers rise above the pack of digital gadflies and avoid the evil unsubscribe button?
Continue reading “We’re tired of lazy email marketing.”

One question that can change the way you do business

While I was a Lushin and Associates, the owner always asked me, “What’s next?” We would roll out great marketing strategies that would kill it, and he would say, “Good job! But what’s next?” At the time, it annoyed me because I wanted to bask in the glory of my success, not jump into another time-consuming marketing plan.

In retrospect, I realize he was teaching me a sales mentality. The “What’s next?” question instilled in me the thought process of never being satisfied, always keeping my head up, and focusing on the vision. It never allowed my work to stagnate.
Continue reading “One question that can change the way you do business”

Data Driven Marketing

“If you don’t understand how to use technology in marketing, there is no point for your existence,”

said Tim Kopp, former chief marketing officer of ExactTarget and current advisor and venture partner at Hyde Park Venture Partners. He was speaking as a panelist at the Indianapolis Business Journal Power Breakfast Series for Technology. Continue reading “Data Driven Marketing”

3 Ways Not to “Wing” Marketing

You leave a workshop or a three-day conference of business owners sharing success stories on how they’ve doubled, tripled, quadrupled business in a matter of a few year or months. You sitting back saying “Wow if he/she can do it. So can I!” You’ve taken copious amounts of notes and they’re all full of marketing tactics that this company has done to be successful. Things like social media, content marketing, or email and you go into your office on Monday and you hold a company meeting with your heads of marketing and sales you say “This is what we’re going to do (insert tactic)!” and your people are just as fired up as you are but what happen 11 times out of 10? It doesn’t work. Why?
Continue reading “3 Ways Not to “Wing” Marketing”