Unfortunately, like most budgets, marketing budgets are finite. You only have so much to spend and want to maximize your returns. This causes many otherwise intelligent and rational people to do something very stupid. Instead of focusing on a single promotion, one that consumers will understand and respond to, people try and cram multiple offers [...]

Before you hire a copywriter, there are a number of questions you should ask to be sure the writer will be able to deliver. Many people call themselves copywriters without having any real experience in the field. I’ve often had to clean up the mess left by these folks. Businesspeople hire them in good faith, [...]

What’s the ultimate point of creating marketing materials? It’s to sell a product or service isn’t it? So, if this is the case, judging the success of a campaign should be fairly easy. It can be judged a success if it brings in a certain number of customers and a failure if it doesn’t. Though [...]

People start out with high hopes when they market their product or service. They anticipate new, high-quality leads, more sales and improved profits. Unfortunately, expectations are disappointed much more often than they’re fulfilled. Why is that? Why does so much marketing fail to persuade consumers that they should buy? The answer is fairly simple and [...]

Everyone can write. That’s why there’s so much terrible marketing copy out there! Because most of us have gone to school, learned the language and have written essays, letters and emails, people have a tendency to write their own marketing materials. Or get an employee to write them. But there’s a difference between writing and [...]

I was born and raised in Toronto. Over the years, I’ve travelled around the world. I’ve lived in the Middle East, visited Africa and spent a huge amount of time in Ireland, my mother’s birthplace. Of course, like many other Canucks, I’ve gone down south to Mexico for some sun and fun and headed out [...]

If you pay attention to ad industry magazines or blogs, you’ll read news about ad agencies losing major accounts fairly regularly. We’re talking big names here, both on the client and agency side. BBDO, Ogilvy, Leo Burnett etc. on the agency side. Coca Cola, Heinz, GM etc. on the client side. It’s never called ‘firing’, [...]

The following is a brief excerpt from my soon to be released eBook: The Art and Science of Email Marketing… Enjoy! The most critical part of email marketing is building a targeted list. That is, finding people who are going to be interested in your product or service at some point. As we all know, [...]

Joseph Sugarman, a copywriting legend, talks about the goal of each element of a written piece. It’s quite simple in theory and Sugarman calls it ‘The Slippery Slide’. He states that each written line in a marketing or advertising piece has a single purpose: to get the prospect to read the next line. So, the [...]

Most have us have been on at least one horrible date in our life. Afterwards, when you called a friend to tell them about how it all went wrong, you might have started by saying something like: “He just wouldn’t shut up about himself. He talked about how great his job was, how fast his [...]