Marketing Eye

Expert Marketing Blog - Page 68

Coffee shops seem to be my new thing. Today, I met with a person who I have connected with on Linkedin at Starbucks.

As we pleasantly greet each other, we walked up to the counter to order coffees. He had just read my blog, so he was half laughing when he ordered his coffee and quickly asked what it said about him.

It seems that this marketing blog is getting more mileage than I.

As he ordered, I noticed that he put his phone to a technology gadget and immediately I asked what he was doing. He was in fact paying for the coffees with his Starbucks app.

I am sure that I have heard about this before and since forgotten since I am not a huge fan of Starbucks coffee although I do love their concept and all of their marketing. I was completely amazed that one can just pay for their coffee with an app that you top up whenever you need to. How easy is that. Gosh, perhaps Marketing Eye needs an app like that. I am totally in awe of the marketing genius behind this app - easy, convenient and what I call a "no brainer".

As we sat down and started to chat, he asked all the questions, like the good sales person he is. Then he started to tell me about a tax effective option, which I wasn't quite in the market for, but nevertheless I listened.
Read more about: You can do that - GET OUT OF HERE!
It's already March. In fact, today is the 1/3/13. 

The  year has begun and is going too fast for my personal liking. Having reviewed the figures for the financial year from July 1, 2012, I am impressed that our sales are up 40% and even more pleased that I haven't been in the office for more than 4 months of that time which means only one thing - that the team at Marketing Eye rock! Seriously. Great work.

But on another note, the year is speeding along and I feel as though I need to stop and take a deep breath and make sure that everything is in order to continue down this path of high growth.

Does anyone else feel the same?
Read more about: If you had a blank canvas, what picture would you paint?
Interning at Marketing Eye is no easy task, but is often rewarding and highly valuable in the competitive job market - many of our superstar marketing and graphic design interns have ended up securing paid work for us.

While we've heard horror stories of other agencies taking advantage of their interns by making them fetch coffees or run personal errands, Marketing Eye invests time in our interns and arms them with requisite knowledge that will help them stand out of the crowd. 

Want to nail your own marketing internship, or feeling nervous about starting a new one? Check out our pointers below. 
Read more about: How to nail a marketing internship
Phew! Exhausted. Seriously. Whoever said that expansion was a walk in the park needs their head read.

While the first week was the most exciting time of the year to date, the second week was riddled with sleep deprevation, home-sickness and a case of missing the basic home comforts that I have come to enjoy.

On top of that, I realized that although getting new clients was relatively easy (for today) it is twice as hard to get everything else organized around that from an administrative point of view when you don't have your entire administration team at your disposal.

And... the time difference means that instead of 12 hours a day at work it was now 16 hours a day with little time to spare and if I was really lucky, I would get Sunday off, but probably not, because there is so much to do.
Read more about: When business expansion isn't what it's cracked up to be
"Sounds unbelievable. My Melbourne dancing queen becomes a global business tycoon. I always believed in you. You are a female version of myself when I was your age. Only you have more balls. You are a real entrepreneurial woman and I was too long a successful manager with golden gloves. I admire people like you. I started my own businesses far too late. I am proud to be your friend."

I woke up at 5am this morning to this message on Whatsapp.
Read more about: The Dancing Queen Knows Something About Business
That age old battle - the ego vs the heart - is more relevant now than ever to us marketeers and anyone directly involved in business development. It dictates how you speak to the people you need to be speaking to; how you capture their attention and it applies to every communication you put out there – online, direct mail, posters, brochures, social media.

The thing is though, with everyone communicating to everyone else - shouting, pitching and bargaining for a share of the market - it can be hard, defeating and infuriating for those of us running ethical business operations to compete with ‘get rich quick’ and ‘lose 7kg in 7 days’.
Read more about: How by marketing to egos you will get better sales results
It is with great sadness that on the weekend we lost a friend. A man who had so much to offer the world, yet felt that he had so little.

This is the second time in four months, that a friends husband or partner has chosen to end their life, of their own free will, leaving behind small children who will grow up, never being able to share their happy moments or times when they just need some reassurance from their Dad.
Read more about: Never give up on life
Social Media

It feels like the birth of the sweeping social media phenomenon occurred just five seconds ago, with Pinterest’s viral growth to dizzying heights, Facebook’s takeover of Instagram and Twitter launching the new network, Vine.

The new medium is continuing to grow and evolve, spawning a new phenomenon of its own: visual social media.

Like moths to a flame, humans are innately drawn to visual elements including images, photographs and sensational design. As more of us are increasingly mobile and engaging with social media on smartphones, viewing an image is far less tedious than squinting to read a few lines of tiny text on a moving train.
Read more about: Visual social media - the new phenomenon
An extraordinary thing happened yesterday. I arrived at a client meeting and was greeted by their inhouse / incumbent agency and felt like I had walked into a one-woman war zone.

It was suppose to be a meeting whereby both parties worked together on different projects to accelerate the growth of a company, working on the strengths of each agency - but it didn't quite go to plan.

Firstly, this woman walked into the room, didn't acknowledge me at all and sat down and started typing away on her computer. After 10 minutes, she was faced with having to be introduced to me and as she shook my hand, she nearly broke it. I hear men say that this happens with people who try to make a statement, but in 14 years of business, this has never happened to me. I have never met a woman who has shook my hand so aggressively that my fingers turned blue.

My first thought was about how the meeting was going to unroll and whether it was worth me being there.
Read more about: Are some business women cutting off their noses to spite their face?
Podcast


As business owners and managers in an ever evolving world, our jobs become more challenging every day – every hour – to cut through clutter and make consumers notice our message.


How many times do we find ourselves repeating what we say to co-workers to get a message across?  For most of us, this isn’t a reflection of how we’re gauged as professionals or individuals but 95% attributable to the ‘151 rule’.


They say a person needs to hear new information at least three times before it registers into his/her mind for immediate recollection.  This has been taught over and over again to us and you can test it by saying aloud a new name you come across three times consciously.


When you target a market with a specific message the same rule applies, all except your target isn’t one person and those three times won’t cut it.  It’s all about repetition.  You have no control over which people are listening at what time of the day - so the logical bet is to be accessible and available 24/7/365.

Read more about: How to produce a mind-blowing podcast
It's only Tuesday and I am incredibly tired. I have been a week back in the US from international travels and all of a sudden it has all hit me like a tonne of bricks.

I arrive early to my hotel room, my place of residence until I make time to find a home in Atlanta, and I plonk all my bags down on the carpet, just by the door. Reluctantly, I reach for my bag and pull out my laptop case. As I unzip the case, I walk towards the small table in the corner, with a light beaming into the triangle of the wall.

I grab my Apple MacBook Air, flick open the screen, type in my password and stop for a moment. I am tired. So, tired that my body aches and my shoulder blades feel like I have a knife edged into bone. This is the life of someone who travels.
Read more about: How does a "guru" change your opinion?