NOTE: I have stopped updating this site. For more recent content check out MarketingBS.com/blog
Here was the original plan for the site:
A Simple Quantitative Approach to Marketing
Every marketing consultant I speak to tells me how complicated marketing is.
I disagree.
I disagree with a lot of the generally accepted beliefs about marketing.
I’ve found that I am spending increasing amount of time making arguments about those beliefs and/or helping fellow CMOs and PE/VC investors simplify their businesses. It was time to write these conversations down.
This site is about simplifying your marketing strategy by focusing on what works and avoiding the millions of complicated, non-proven, marketing ‘best practices’.
I will generally write as if I am talking to a CMO – someone running all of the marketing for their company. That said, I hope the content will still be useful for others (specifically CEOs looking to give direction to their CMOs and more junior marketers looking to improve on their portion of the business). I’m not going to spend time on how to manage uploads on Google AdWords, but I will spend (a lot) of time on how to direct your team on how to use Google AdWords effectively.
Why this site is unique
People put time and effort into blogs for a reason. For most people it’s just to be heard: They want to share their recent trip to Europe or chronicle the challenges of adding an extension to their house. Most blogs focused on business or marketing have a different purpose: One way or another they are trying to make money. They give away free content to get traffic to their site and then collect leads that they can monetize somehow. The money comes from a few common places:
(1) Consulting gigs: They use the blog to show expertise and then sell that expertise to companies that need help in the area
(2) Books/Podcasts/Paid Content/Speeches: Kind of like consulting, but more high level. They generate content and give a lot away on their site. Then they keep some – sometimes specialized content, sometimes specialized formats, sometimes specialized media – and sell it. It’s like the Freemium model used by hundreds of online companies like Pandora and LinkedIn for the content generator.
(3) Product: This type of blog is usually not run by an individual, but it sometimes is. A company has a product, say “Enterprise SEO Platform” or “Premium WordPress Theme”. They give away lots of information on their blog, and then after drawing you in (and hopefully getting your contact information) try to sell you their product or service. It’s a great B2B marketing strategy that I will talk more about sometime on this site.
What I think is relatively unique about this site is that I am doing it as a hobby. I have a full time job running Marketing for “A Place For Mom”. I like the job and am not going anywhere. I don’t have a product to sell and I definitely don’t have time to do a consulting gig or create a podcast (I do have a book for sale on Amazon but it’s about Improv Comedy and unlikely to appeal to the same demographic I expect to get with this site. I wrote it 15 years ago so it doesn’t even have marketing insights hidden in the margins.).
What this means is I have no incentive (or desire) to write daily blog posts in order to maintain contact. I will try to only share what I think is valuable. When I have finished sharing what I think I can help with I will stop. I hope every piece of content I generate on this site is valuable and relatively unique (or at least counter-intuitive and not widely shared by the marketing zeitgeist) . There will be no posts about how you need to believe in yourself or have a stretch goal or hire people smarter than yourself. There are lots of other places on the internet you can go for that. If it’s not unique and valuable, it’s not worth my time to do it.
The selfish reason I am creating this site (And there better be a selfish reason. If there isn’t you will likely find a blog that stops getting updated at some point and disappears into the internet darkness), is to slowly build my personal brand. Like most branding exercises the immediate payout will be low and the final payout will be unknown, but you have to just believe it’s worth investing in. So I’m following my own advice and just doing it.
None of this site is worth reading if you don’t trust the author. You can read about my background and philosophy here.