Everyone cherishes the image of a tortured writer, laboring long hours, crumpling sheets of paper, drinking in a back room, spiraling into depression. That doesn’t sound like much fun for the writer. I’d rather be someone who writes fluidly and creatively, while engaging with the world, family and friends. A normal person, in other words. […]
Startup Marketing through Content: A Review of Content Inc
Reading Joe Pulizzi’s new book Content Inc is a welcome shock for someone who lives in the engineering-driven, growth-hacking Silicon Valley. The book’s message: start your business by building an audience with content, before you write a line of code. Once you own the loyal audience, figure out what that community wants and build it. Wait—what? Content […]
Marketing and the Free Trial
The free trial is a way to bridge the trust gap. Sales and marketing actions can help or hurt that outcome. The free trial is an essential go-to-market strategy, particularly for subscription-based services and SaaS solutions. But between the trial sign-up and the conversion to a paying customer, the business needs to earn the customer’s trust. Businesses vary widely […]
Should Authors Narrate Their Own Audiobooks?
One of the rewards of writing a book is that it spurs interesting conversations on the topics of writing and publishing. Since publishing my first book earlier this year, I’ve heard all kinds of questions, including: How long did it take to write the book? How long did the self-publishing process take? How much does it cost […]
Subscription Horror Stories
Don’t cover your eyes, because in this post, we’re going to look at subscription horror stories in the context of popular horror, dark comedy, and sci-fi books and movies. Sometimes you need to look your worst fears in the face so you can avoid them. Now you can rent a movie and call it market research! […]
Customer-Inspired Marketing
Your best marketing ideas may come from outside the marketing organization – even outside the company. In the case of Pley, a simple suggestion from a busy parent resulted in a business success and many happy children. Pley is a subscription-based service for children’s toys. In shorthand: Netflix for LEGOs. The company does many things […]