Inimitable Product is the New “Make Great Content”
For 25 years, Google told websites to “just make great content,” and they’d sort out the rest. This advice was incomplete, problematic, and reductive,…
Psychology
The 5 Big Trends that Will Dominate Marketing in 2026
I find most end-of-year prediction and crystal ball-gazing listicles to be trash. They don’t prove their assertions, use anecdotes rather than data at scale…
Never Ask an AI Tool How It Came Up with That Answer
This post on LinkedIn by Britney Muller is, IMHO, the most important short piece on AI you’ll read this year. It’s so critical to…
The Pinball Customer Journey Has Replaced the Marketing Funnel
I like the marketing funnel. It’s a great analogy, and has served me well for years. I *STILL* think it works reasonably well as…
Make Something People Want to Talk About
In my formative years as a tech entrepreneur, Paul Graham (cofounder of YCombinator), wrote a seminal essay entitled: Be Good. Most tech folks have…
Seriously, please stop with the new acronyms. It’s still SEO: Search Everywhere Optimization.
It’s a day ending in Y, which means my social feeds are filled with people attempting to rebrand the acronym “SEO.” Look, I ain’t…
Demand-Creation vs. Demand-Converting Marketing
One of the fundamental mistakes I see executives and marketing leaders make over and over is investing in the wrong part of the demand…
How to Use Mental Jujitsu to Convince Your Boss/Team/Client to Make the Right Marketing Investments
“How do I convince my boss/team/client to invest in my audience’s true sources of influence? Especially when those sources are so hard to prove…
If your audience’s sources of influence and your marketing budget don’t align, you’re gonna have a bad time
Yes, this is a rant. It’s a rant about where leadership teams allocate their marketing budget vs. where their potential customers actually pay attention.…
5-Minute Whiteboard: Why You Can’t Just Crank Up Marketing to Get More Sales
CEO/Sales Leader: “Hey marketing team! We’re behind on our quarterly sales goals and only have 3 weeks left. Do some marketing why doncha?! Crank…