This is a culmination of my thoughts on the issue of wasting money on online advertising, spurred by an article on the uselessness of traffic from Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. In the article, the author concludes that “Google [AdWords] and Facebook [Ads] traffic is 90% useless,” because: * Every 9
Bad advice is everywhere, especially in marketing. Reading and keeping up with marketing advice is overwhelming because there’s so much of it, and so much of it is awful. While professional marketers and consultants eventually build up the experience to discern the junk from the gems, everyone else risks
I used to dread setting up email automation and email campaigns. Why? Because before a single sales or marketing email could be sent, it needed a design. In my attempt to sidestep this time-consuming process, I learned that plain emails not only save time but work better. Why Design
How to get B2B customers using LinkedIn ads. The web is supposed to help us do more with less. We can email everyone we know with a few clicks, find anything we need within seconds, and learn something new within a few minutes. Yet when it comes to using the
A common question I hear about A/B testing is whether to test small changes or big changes. My answer, almost always, is ”test big changes.” There’s an immediate follow-up question: “But if I test a big change and it wins/loses, how will I know exactly what
Some junior staff member of The New Yorker once suggested they start printing their famous black-and-white cartoons in color. This really pissed off Sam Gross, a veteran cartoonist for the New Yorker, who responded: “There’s nothing funny about the color red!”[1] His point was that on
In a constant search for new ways to acquire customers, we forget of the old ways that worked well. Years ago I learned the value of chatting one-on-one with the target audience as they browse a client’s site for the first time and share their feedback. Yesterday
Some time ago I was creating a landing page for a client and their regularly scheduled webinars. Apart from the design and content I was also setting up the mechanics and automation of letting people register, sending automated confirmations and reminders, tracking conversion rates, and passing registrant information to the
The freelancer sprints down the path they know best as soon as the gun fires. The consultant surveys the land and finds the path to the summit. Just as any newly independent worker gravitates towards becoming a freelancer because that’s the only form of independent work they know, many
(Updated December 2017 to reflect how my strategy for finding new consulting clients has evolved in the past few years. Sorry if some parts feel disjointed.) I love consulting. I make a good living, I’m rewarded by seeing companies succeed—I’ve seen clients go through two acquisition exits,
Getting trial users for your product is one thing. Getting them to talk is another. In a dream world, new trial users guide themselves through your product then upgrade or send you a check within 14 days. In reality, most of them won’t get past the onboarding and will
One day I was searching for a software product—an online helpdesk—when I stumbled upon a clever tactic that a startup was using to get users thanks to their (bigger) competitor’s popularity, and the more popular the competitor gets, the more users the startup gets. Continue reading to
