When developing marketing and advertising campaigns it is very easy to get caught up by the fancy stuff. We all strive to have the best and most creative execution that could win awards, but it's so important to look beyond the surface and assess the creativity accurately and logically. But how? I've both worked with … Continue reading Assessing creativity by looking beyond the creative.

As a customer who is a little passionate about retail marketing, I get so frustrated when I can't very quickly grasp the key message that marketing are trying to tell me. We hear so often the phrase, "I'm time poor" and I'm a culprit of using it myself so why, as marketers, do we often … Continue reading Drop the BS – just tell me ”what’s in it for me”!

As a marketer, there is one thing that makes me cringe the most and that is when a customer service representative clearly isn't engaged with the marketing direction of the business they work for. Recently I was shopping for what I would deem, a large ticket household item, and so wandered to some local retailers. … Continue reading Marketing? What marketing campaign?

In a society where people are considered time poor, have access to lots of different information through our wonderful fixation with technology and the world wide web, it's no wonder that consumers are using content to help influence their every day life. When referring to content, I am considering information that can come from many … Continue reading Content Driven Consumerism: the new business challenge

For so many of us "budget" can seem a scary word but it is such an important tool for all businesses. Recently I've had the opportunity to work with a small business that had never set a budget and listening to their challenges has really cemented for me how important the budget process is. Not … Continue reading Marketing Roadmap Step 2: Plan your budget

One of the habits that many small businesses can find themselves in is just rotating the same marketing activity over month on month, year on year, without doing a proper business assessment on whether it's working. An assessment can be simple but also very enlightening - and it's important in small business to ensure that … Continue reading Marketing roadmap step 1: assessing your spend.

We've all recently heard about the plastic bag ban enforced by supermarkets to remove the amount of plastics ending in our tips. The response by the supermarkets, and other retailers is after years of feedback from consumers and, of course, enforcement by state government to ban non re-usable plastic bags. This ethical standing by the … Continue reading Ethical marketing – whose ethics do you follow?

Advertising your products and services is so important in a retail environment and, being a small retailer, it allows you to reach out to your local community and entice them to shop with you over bigger retailers. But, just like big retailers, you have an obligation to meet the retailers code of conduct and not … Continue reading Keep your advertising honest.

Today, customers have the ability to access information from sources across the globe which is having a significant affect on how they research and shop for both products and services. The World Wide Web has provided us with extensive resources and placed us, the consumer, in control of our own purchasing and buying behaviour. But, … Continue reading The importance of customer lifecycle management: recognising defection before it happens

Many companies get very wound up in making sure they are constantly marketing their business but sometimes become so busy in the constant push that they forgot the importance of their existing customers. Developing a customer database is so important to business success. It's a simple way to reach your customers, keep them engaged and … Continue reading Communication versus marketing