I have the utmost good fortune to have hung around a lot of smart business people.
Whenever I hear one of these people say something insightful, I write it down.
I’ve amassed a collection of these wise crumbs and leavings.
As a look back, here are sixteen things from my storeroom. I present them to you in no particular order and with no context whatsoever.
- Does your category have a King? If not, then sit on the throne.
- A “Brand” is the sum total of all the feelings, good and bad, that are evoked when I hear your name.
- Letitia “Tish” Baldrige (Lady Bird Johnson’s secretary) “You should never begin a thank you note with the words, ‘thank you.’”
- How do you drive traffic to a website? You create a mystery that only a visit to the website will solve. And you get the customer really engaged.
- In art symbolism water speaks of the unconscious mind.
- Don’t give away what you sell. Give away what somebody else sells.
- Advertising makes the promises that the employees have to deliver.
- If your marketing plan could easily be applied or implemented by other companies in your category, then it’s a weak plan.
- You can write a memoir by answering three questions in this order over and over again: What happened? How did it make you feel? What did you learn?
- When you’re writing an ad about you remembering something in the past, don’t make it about you remembering something you did. Make it about you remembering something someone else did.
- Advertising can’t fix a broken product, service, company, or process. It’s not a magic pill.
- When a customer is upset, ask these three questions: What happened? What should have happened? What can we do to make it right?
- Need to release a video a week, minimum, to build an audience on YouTube.
- Currently, the single biggest thing that affects the open rate of email is the “From.”
- It takes at least 1000 clicks to test a funnel/campaign.
- Real persuasion is a transfer of confidence from you to your customer.
Thanks for making this year better than it would have been without you.
– Zac Smith, VC
