Rebel Brown

If you engage people on a vital, important level, they will respond. ~ Edward Bond

Our buyers no longer need us to get the information they need to make purchasing decisions. Today's buyers can research, compare and select products without our ever even knowing they were looking.  In fact - buyers spend over 79% of their purchasing cycle without ever engaging us... only if we make the cut during their research do they invite us into their process.  That's a huge shift that puts buyers in control - and it means that we need to shift our thinking about how we engage with our audiences. That's why I believe that conversations are the new campaigns. 

Given the dramatic shift in the buying process - I think that the concept of "campaigns" is one of the biggest status quo processes in all of marketing today. Yet everywhere I look - I see those push campaigns, especially in my Inbox. 

We're in the age of engagement - empowered by social media...

You get more flies with sugar than you do with vinegar... 

That's a very powerful rule for marketing - in any industry. 

Yet we so often forget the power of the positive spin as we get stuck in the gravity of shock and awe thinking. Ask yourself:

1.  How many of your promotions are based on fear or loss?
2.  How often do your messages focus on eliminating a negative?
3.  When was the last time you said something nice about a competitor? 

Every story has multiple faces....some enticing, some threatening. When we choose the threatening aspect of a story, we risk alienating our audience.  Who wants to hear about scary things they're doing? Would you??? 

Here's an example.

A company is selling to a technical buyer. Their offering empowers their buyers to change the way they do things, increasing their productivity and giving them more options than ever before. Their offering also reduces the vendor lock in we so...

Everywhere I turn I see some new article proclaiming the death of content marketing. What a crock...

Content marketing is not the problem! 

The problem is the chest thumping, blatant self-promotion that vendors claim is  valuable, customer-facing content. Here's a clue. If you're pushing your business and your product - it's not content marketing. It's promotion. 

Content marketing is  one of the greatest assets of any marketing organization. Our content is what creates the perception of our business for today's digitally empowered buyers.  Through content marketing - we can reach out and touch them, share our experiences and knowledge, help them solve their problems so that they trust us. When we actually execute a content marketing strategy - we can be very compelling.  

The problem is  - that's not the content we deliver. As we've transitioned from "traditional" marketing into "content" marketing - the only thing that's changed are...

I ended up in Twitter Jail in under 30 minutes last week. Wow - that's a new record for me.

It was during #bizforum and I got my Rebel Rant hat on over Greed and Pride in leaders.

Since I didn't get to finish my Rebel Rant during #bizforum -  I thought I'd finish it here.

First let's talk about Greed.  Time and again I hear people equate greed with success - from both a business and personal perspective. Say what?

Greed is defined as "a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed."

While that definition pretty much describes the behavior of many of our corporations today -  I don't think it's...