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Should Marketing Pay to Entertain Clients?
Martins Blog
Is customer Hospitality** a justifiable Marketing expense? Under what circumstances is it sensible, reasonable and cost effective to take a few customers to a major sporting event or a holiday in an exotic location? Or is it the case that this kind of expense is simply largesse without a real business justification? We need to know as budgets are under pressure.
To an accountant all Marketing expenses are part of the operating costs associated with sales. One definition is ...
The expenses incurred to sell (e.g. advertising, salesperson commission) or distribute (e.g., deliver) merchandise.
No. 1 Opportunity ...
Martins Blog
Last week I was asked by a client to write some words to help them convince some senior managers, and salespeople, that women play an important role and increasing role in business.
It's an interesting and different brief. I leap at it, but was surprised myself when I wrote what I did. It's great when you learn and earn at the same time.
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Can you answer this simple question ?
What has been the main driving force of the world economy in the last 20 years? The Internet? China ? India?
What's the worth of a good name?
Martins Blog
One on my oldest friends contacted me a couple of days ago (I won't say who to keep confidences). But he was tackling a tough naming issue - a new service needing a new name. He works in the public sector, I do not. He thought that the issues he faced were different because of that, I don't agree. The whole world over, in public and private sector, we face the same problem - finding the 'right' name is difficult, it takes time and consideration. Finding the 'right' name is valuable.
On SEO and getting traffic for your website
Martins Blog
There is more hot air written about SEO than virtually another other subject ... except for faith.
All of the SEO 'tricks' added together will make some impact. But even if you were hyper-successful and raised your SEO rank 100 fold you might still only move from position 3000 to position 30 in any given 'popular' search - and you need to get into the top 5 to make a real difference.
Clarity and Economy
Martins Blog
I was helping a major client the other day with a paper that was being produced for their Board.
It was an internal document created to request funding for a new market area that shows real promise. The problem was that it was written in such a way that it had no chance of gaining the executive support it needed.
What I saw is not untypical. It lacked punch, the language lacked clarity and, as ever, there was too much detail. Overall the document was too long and dull. This is nothing new. As Board member myself of a large company I was regularly assailed with lengthy tomes that were neither compelling or brief enough to gain my attention.
Its a fact that better presented propositions will always do better than those that are presented badly (sometimes regardless of the merits of the proposals). Every salesperson knows this, but people forget that its important to sell your ideas inside your company too.
In this case the document had been created by a couple of vertical market experts, and its natural for an expert to want to show their expertise, especially if they think that their views are to be widely read. What an expert often misses is that you just want them to communicate with clarity and economy.
I proposed an interesting challenge that I have tried before. I asked the expert for a maximum of 10 words to summarise their paper.
I wanted just the 10 most important words. These words could form a sentence; more often they are ten individual words and each word describes an essential concept, request or fact.
When you have agreed the 10 words. Ask for 1 sentence for each. You will end up with 10 sentences, and this is the core of your document.
More will need to be added, but only if it aids clarity and readability. Its often the case that you can end with 200-300 words saying more than 2,000 did before.
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