…that you may not have considered Video marketing is a hot topic at the moment, but amidst the talk of search results, conversion rates, mobile adoption etc., the reasons video can be such a persuasive marketing tool often get overlooked. In 1971, Professor Allan Paivio developed his Dual-Coding Theory, which proposes humans can understand and retain information better if it … Read More
Craft a four word story for your brand
You should be able to articulate what your organisation is about in just four words. It’s not easy, but four words is concise enough to allow your audience to process, understand, and then engage with you immediately. More than four words means there is more to process and understand, and any engagement is likely to involve you repeating, rewording or … Read More
Jay Conrad Levinson
The father of Guerrilla Marketing, On the 10th October 2013, we were sad to learn of the passing of Jay Conrad Levinson, who died at the age of 80. Known as the “Father of Guerrilla Marketing”, Levinson wrote many books on the subject of business marketing, advertising, and PR, and here at Tribus we base many of our activities on … Read More
6 tips for effective direct mail marketing for small business
When opening the post this morning, I came across a hand written envelope with an adhesive stamp in the top right corner. Intrigued, I grabbed the letter opener to see who was trying to communicate with us in such a semi-archaic manner. It turned out to be a local restaurant advertising their Christmas menu and encouraging us to book now. … Read More
Those Little Tikes: What WeBuyAnyToyCar teaches us about responsive marketing
Yesterday, WeBuyAnyCar.com, the used car website, demonstrated excellence in timely and authentic responsive marketing. At the weekend twitterer Jamie Jones (@jamieDMJ) (and, as it turned out, aka Adam Jennings) tweeted a photo of a letter purported to be from WeBuyAnyCar in which the company declined to buy his “Little Tikes” toy car. The letter turned out to be fake, but … Read More
How the chain came off Surbiton Cycles’ recent ad campaign
Surbiton Cycles — Ad Campaign Analysis We’ve previously written about how Evans Cycles effectively targeted their audience through clever placement and timing of their advertising — their flyers hooked to the handlebars of bikes in the racks outside Waterloo station was a perfect example of “talking to your customers where they live”, and timed to coincide with the beginning of Spring … Read More
Is your value proposition clear to your customers?
“Our end-to-end solutions deliver a continuous stream of personalized messaging opportunities that craft a customer conversation in which information is captured, analyzed, enhanced and influenced in “real-time” to deliver authentic brand experiences that drive loyalty and positive business outcomes” Did you understand that? We didn’t either. It came from a website we came across recently, and we were surprised at … Read More
Business networking: An often overlooked brand touchpoint for B2B
In the B2B marketplace, good business is built on strong relationships. This is because we buy into the people we are doing business with just as much as the service that they deliver. Face-to-face dialogue, where you shake hands and make eye contact, is arguably the most powerful way to market your business, and that initial conversation could blossom into … Read More
Want to engage your prospects? Tell them a story
How often have you visited a company’s website to read something like “we go the extra mile”, “we give one hundred and ten percent”, or “our product is best in class”? I’ve lost track of the number of companies that make those kind of statements on the homepage, but offer nothing to back them up. All the statements about service, … Read More
Small business marketing: How do you measure return on investment?
At some point, every small business owner asks themselves whether their marketing activities are making a difference, and they wonder if the time and money they are allocating to a marketing channel is yielding any kind of return on investment (ROI). The most effective way to measure return on investment is to build a system of metrics that gauge the … Read More
Brand Storytelling: How to find compelling stories
In an article for the Talk Business Magazine website, I wrote about using brand storytelling to market a company’s products and services. I drew on three examples of companies that had used compelling stories to engage the emotion or imagination of their prospective customers — Saddleback Leather (which I have mentioned before), Waitrose, and one of my own clients (discretion … Read More
The Buying Continuum: How to turn your social media followers into buyers
Have you ever seen those Twitter accounts that are following tens of thousands of people, and are being followed by roughly the same number? It seems to be a growing trend with users of the social network to follow any and every account they come across, in the hope that they receive the same in return. After some digging around, … Read More
The constraints of user experience design
I often find user experience design to be a profession abundant with idealism. Many of us preach about the importance of making websites and web apps that cater to user needs, and we rally behind usability tests, interviews, surveys, content audits, heuristic evaluations and expert analyses, because they help us design systems that bring us closer to the best user … Read More
Email marketing for charities – Part 2
How I raised almost £500 with just five e-mails In part 1, I wrote about how compelling content, bold call-to-actions, and landing pages, can go a long way in persuading someone to donate to charity. In this final part on email marketing for charities, I’ll explain the importance of measuring success (or failure), and how to react and build momentum. … Read More
The Evolution of Joy and Revolution
Just over two years ago we formed Joy and Revolution with the aim of making great websites, for great people. Since then, we have been lucky enough to work with some great clients from around the world. A number of them came to us with concerns that their online brand was no longer an accurate reflection of what their organisation … Read More
