How Deploying a Land-and-Expand Strategy Saved a Company
Working with a client, they were struggling to find product-market fit with one of their new products. With limited resources, they didn’t have a large enough budget to penetrate the market and compete with market leaders in their category. They also didn’t have a long capital runway i.e. they needed to fill pipeline fast! So […]
Small Fish in a Big Pond? How Small Teams Can Compete and Win Market Share
If you run a small company in a category dominated by big players, you’re at a huge disadvantage. ❌ You don’t have the same person power / talent ❌ You don’t have the same budget ❌ You don’t have the same brand recognition, loyalty, trust… … the list goes on. So how do you compete […]
The Future of Work
As a science-fiction author, I spend a lot of time researching, thinking, and writing about the future. Here are some of the things I came up with: 👉 In two of my books, I have an advanced AI running every function of society. I think this is inevitable. Of course, there are ethical concerns with […]
Price Anchoring and the Ps of Marketing
If you study traditional marketing textbooks, they talk about the “4 Ps of Marketing”, which are Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. More modern texts have updated this to the “7 Ps”, which include Physical evidence, People, and Process. One often overlooked P in marketing is Price, and it’s an area I’ve studied quite a bit […]
The Future is Now: How Brands Can Use AI to Push Creative Boundaries
In the next decade, we’ll undoubtedly see an explosion of creative output materialize in all areas from sneakers, fashion, automotive, construction, etc. With Mid Journey and other AI tools creating concepts in seconds, there’s no question the designers of the world will use these tools to create new products that push the boundaries to the […]
The Fundamental Question in Growth Hacking
How do we deliver that ‘aha!’ moment? This is the fundamental question us growth hackers ask ourselves. No amount of marketing can save a bad product. That’s why it’s super important to get your product to deliver on its promise. For mobile apps and SaaS products, we use data (cohort analysis, engagement metrics, referrals, etc.), […]
How to Influence Consumers
Philosophical question – where does want or desire come from? For example, why does a person like one brand over another? I think it starts with the 5 Stages of Awareness – Do they know they have a problem, do they know a solution exists, do they know your solution exists, does your solution satisfy […]
Why I Love the Decoy Pricing Strategy, and Why You Should Too!
A lot of ink has been spilled on pricing strategies, but here’s one I love. It’s called the Decoy Strategy. Essentially, you create a cascade of choices where the upgrade is incrementally more expensive, but a far better deal. In effect, you can get people to spend more money than they otherwise would because the […]
If You Don’t Plant Seeds, There Will Be Nothing to Harvest
If you don’t plant seeds, there will be nothing to harvest. What does this mean? I’ve been standing on my branding and content marketing soapbox lately. This is a result of careful reflection on the state of marketing and what works and what doesn’t. To me, branding and content marketing are a lot like planting seeds. Will it […]
It’s Fine to be a Specialist, but Marketing is a Complex Ecosystem
It’s fine to be a specialist, but marketing is a complex ecosystem. Take running ads for instance. To truly be effective with ads, you also need to consider: 👉 Copywriting – not just for the ads themselves, but also for the landing page. Have you done the proper market / customer research, have you determined your buyer’s […]