At the behest of friend and fellow gamer someone, I’m trying out Guild Wars 2 (GW2), a game very similar to World of Warcraft. It’s got all the stock, standard tropes of an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) with a couple of interesting twists. Unlike traditional MMOs that have defined roles such as…
What makes a successful restaurant? Is it a single dish, a single signature food? Not if you want to stay in business, it’s not. There are countless reviews on sites like Yelp that effectively say, “This dish is good but the rest of the menu is inedible”. Five star reviews are not made of single…
If you have any role in sales or marketing, chances are you’re always on the lookout for new opportunities to develop customers. One of the easiest ways to do so is to look for transitions, when roles change out. When someone takes a new job or leaves a job, there’s an impact on an organization.…
“It is said that the future is always born in pain. The history of war is the history of pain. If we are wise, what is born of that pain matures into the promise of a better world, because we learn that we can no longer afford the mistakes of the past.” – J. Michael…
Ellen Butler asked: “Do you post your project, hourly, or starting rates on your website?” The answer depends on what pricing model you’re using. If what you’re selling is a commodity, then pricing can be public. Most people who are in service-based businesses are selling hours of their time, which they treat as a commodity,…
If you’re struggling with a content marketing strategy, if you’re struggling to put together something that your brand can be known for, the simplest, most effective fallback is to teach the news. Yesterday, I was doing some work on a financial aid company’s account. Few things are as bewildering or poorly explained as the process…
Does this sound familiar? When you’re looking to buy a product or service, especially as a business, there’s a list of must-have features. A/B split testing. Dolby Surround Sound. Retargeting. If a product or service doesn’t have the features that you or your executives read as “must-have”, you give it a pass. Does this sound…
Ever notice that business is getting more and more casual? I certainly have. Dress codes have been relaxed almost to the point of “please just wear clothing”. That’s okay – the more latitude you give people, the more ability you give them to differentiate themselves. That’s one of the main reasons I love to wear…
One of the easiest paths to profit in World of Warcraft is to have a mage visit the various cities in the game and pick up stock items from various vendors and resell them at obscenely high prices. For example, here’s my mage visiting the engineering company in the game to buy some blueprints from…
Ellen Butler asks: “Do you require double opt-ins on your email list signups? Pls discuss! @cspenn @johnjwall” Since we’ve got a pre-recorded show in the can this week for Marketing Over Coffee, I figured I’d tackle this here. Let’s review the choices first. When it comes to opt-ins for email lists, there are 3 different…
