From the category archives:

Marketing Strategy

A Quick Plan Check

June 25, 2010

Whether you’re starting up a new business, launching a new product, or simply making adjustments to what you’ve been doing all along, a little planning can go a long way. Now, I’m a marketing strategist. I believe a marketing plan should start at the beginning — with your audiences — and do a thorough job [...]

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Segmentation Exposed: Making Segmentation Data Actionable

May 17, 2010

This is one of a series of posts about a real-life attitudinal audience segmentation project.  See other posts in this series. One of the biggest challenges I find companies have with market research is how to make it actionable.  The fact is, you can have a lot of great data about your customers and prospects [...]

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Segmentation Exposed: Data Data Data!

April 14, 2010

This is one of a series of posts about a real-life attitudinal audience segmentation project.  See other posts in this series. Now we get to the fun part.  They survey’s been fielded and the data’s in — now it’s time to get the stats involved and see what segments the data gives us. This is [...]

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Mind Mapping – Beyond Brainstorming

February 23, 2010

I use mind-mapping software like crazy.  But in addition to its obvious assistance with brainstorming, I’ve found it very useful in a variety of planning activities I do for clients every day.  I use a Mac-only program called MindNode Pro, developed by Markus Müller, an independent software developer in Vienna.  (Markus also has an outstanding [...]

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Are You Insulting Your Customers?

January 28, 2010

I am amazed at how many companies have fallen into the habit of regularly insulting their customers. If I pointed them out, I GUARANTEE that each and every one of them would strenuously object to this accusation, claiming (and, in all likelihood, truly believing) that each and every customer they have is of the utmost [...]

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The Great Debate

November 2, 2009

I had an interesting experience last week when a client pulled me aside to make me aware that the company’s CRM guru was loudly expressing his concern that this “warm and fuzzy” attitudinal approach to audience segmentation couldn’t hold a candle to good, old-fashioned database analytics. This isn’t the first time it’s happened.  I often [...]

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There’s No Crying In Research

September 28, 2009

I am currently finishing up an audience segmentation project for a large multi-channel retailer.  As usual, we’re trying to identify the key motivations for their various customer groups. I was surprised to hear from my client contact that, when pursuing such a project was discussed in a team meeting, one of the team members was [...]

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Use Your Insight to Torpedo Your Marketing Efforts

March 16, 2009

Gail Goodman, writing for Entrepreneur, makes a great point about how audience segmentation can transform your email marketing, making it more relevant, impactful and effective. Unfortunately, I have to take issue with her recommendations about segmenting your audience in the section titled “Selecting Your Segments”: “To be effective, most businesses need only two or three [...]

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Rock Your Recession Marketing

February 25, 2009

Recently I noticed that a former client has been running their old television spots — undoubtedly an effort to take advantage of the recessionary conditions and reduced advertising presence of their competitors, and to do it at a bargain-basement price to boot. I applaud this company for recognizing that now is a great time to [...]

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Welcome to Audience Audit

February 7, 2009

For years I have had the privilege of working with organizations — some very large, some very small — in their efforts to effectively market their products or services to potential customers.  While a few of these companies have been able to gain an understanding of what customers seek from them, the overwhelming majority have [...]

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