The initial marketing a business does when it starts isn’t marketing and sales. It’s entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is whatever you do at the beginning of a business to see if you have something viable to build a business on. It is a subject on its own and has its own course material covering things like bootstrapping, speed, spending more time out of the office than in the office, begging for money, begging for payments, listening to customers, and growing at all costs. Marketing is when...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
I send this out roughly once a month. The thing that caught my eye most recently is the distinction between “growth” and “maintenance” marketing. Most marketing is focused on maintenance. The objective is to wrap an established brand in cotton wool and keep it protected until the current round of executives retire. The marketing you see daily is primarily maintenance marketing. Big brands. Big budgets. Big creative. They’re telling you they’re still around and it’s still ok to buy them. But...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Someone I know recently told me they never read email newsletters but also never unsubscribe out of fear of upsetting the sender. It got me thinking because I know this person does indeed get my monthly mailer. Clearly they don't read it, and I know they haven't unsubscribed either. It took me down a bit of a rabbit hole investigating what the trend is – it's quite stark when you explore actual engagement behaviour. People have simply stopped reading, and listening. The golden era of content...
2 months ago • 1 min read
June 2026 Marketing nonsense you should dodge Here's a summary of marketing-related nonsense I see quite often and that you should try to avoid. Predictable growth (consultant speak) I see a lot of consultants pontificate that they deliver this: predictable growth. As I posted recently on LinkedIn, the very company that basically invented the term predictable ARR (annual recurring revenue), Salesforce, has seen a massive dive in its own revenue growth rate. There goes predictability out the...
3 months ago • 1 min read