You have 15 seconds to get people’s attention before they bounce. Is your content generating a high bounce rate? You’re probably missing a good lede. We’ve covered above vs. below the fold — the numbers are clear. You lose a good chunk of your audience before the reader leaves the first page. The average bounce rate is around 50% across all Continue Reading...

13,001 cars in 15 years. That’s how many Chevrolet cars Joe Girard personally sold at his dealership in the 1960s and 70s. Not in bulk. One at a time. Every year Girard commissioned 12 personalized greeting cards for each customer, which he addressed to them personally. That kept people coming back — and buying cars. Girard used direct Continue Reading...

There’s a saying in marketing: “If something is free, you are the product.” It’s derived from a mid-1970s interview with artist Richard Serra. Serra said that the advertiser was the consumer of TV, and everyone who was watching was the product. The advertiser was buying attention. Social media is the same today. When the big social Continue Reading...

People don’t read the newspaper as much as they used to — but its legacy is still with us. For a couple of centuries, the newspaper was the primary source of news. People read the paper with their morning coffee, digesting the day’s headlines along with their breakfast. And the top headlines, the ones you really needed to know about, were the Continue Reading...

Marketers go where the attention is — and that means social media. Over 4.59 billion people on this earth have a social media account. It’s the easiest way to get people to know who you are, and most businesspeople know that. But social media isn’t the whole meal. It’s part of a balanced diet. I talked to several people recently who seemed Continue Reading...

“What you call love was invented by guys like me … to sell nylons.” So said Don Draper, the most famous (fictional) adman in the world. Millions of people tuned into Mad Men every week, and it shaped public consciousness about how advertising worked. But Don Draper would have needed to adjust his approach if he lived in the 21st Continue Reading...

Keeping up with your engagement channels can be overwhelming. You have to worry about your own website, podcast, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram … the list goes on and on. Each social media channel has its own flavor and its own audience, and you can’t just publish the same content across the board. The solution to the problem Continue Reading...

Most musicians are bad marketers. As a musician and music fanatic myself, I’m signed up for updates from a lot of artists. That means I should get a lot of emails. I don’t. Most of the time, the only emails I get from bands are concert tour announcements. There’s no conversation. It’s solely used for sales. And music isn’t the only field Continue Reading...

The most valuable design lesson I ever learned came at a study party in college. As I was wearing out my yellow highlighter on my history textbook, one of my friends walked past the spot where I was sprawled on the carpet and stopped me. “You’re highlighting too much,” he said. “If everything is important, nothing is.” I’ve never forgotten Continue Reading...

Remember Vine? Second Life? Google+? These platforms were powerful. They grabbed media attention and attracted large audiences. And it wasn’t just users that invested in these — companies plowed money into them. People built audiences there. And then they disappeared. If your web presence lived on one of those platforms, your audience died Continue Reading...