marketing mix Archives

9 Marketing Lessons Learned from the Iceland #Euro2016 Football Team

(who incidentally beat England! ;) )

Not to repeat what has been written and said in media all over, Iceland’s win against England was huge. A true David kicked Goliath’s ass moment! But make no mistake, it was not down to luck. There are a number of factors that lead to Iceland’s win against the most expensive team in the tournament, a team with some of the highest profile and most expensive players in the world.

What I find interesting is how many of them directly relate to business, and marketing to be precise, and how we can learn from the Icelandic team’s achievement and apply as small or medium sized businesses or startups to kick the assess of the Goliaths of big business! Who’s with me? ;)

Here are 9 things which you can learn from the Icelandic national football team and their results in the Euro 2016:

Organization and Planning

Read a few articles that cover the Icelandic team and you will come across the word “organised” a lot. The team keeps their 4-4-2 formation no matter what, which makes their defence stronger than the Tower of London. Having a game plan that everyone adheres to and trusts in is crucial, in football and in business. [Read more…]

The Marketing Strategy that Earned Me $16k in One Month!

Have you ever considered webinars to sell your products online? Maybe you’ve had a go and nothing came of it? Well…

Recently I had an open enrolment period for my Marketing Untangled Training program. I don’t have that big a list. I’ve only just started building it outside my native Iceland, and in a country of 330 thousand people, building a huge list of people interested in marketing and branding for entrepreneurs and small business is, well … :) Add to that a cultural difference between us Europeans and USA, which means that I have found that many marketing strategies and tactics that work like a charm State side need to be, let’s say, adjusted and softened somewhat on this side of the pond. Webinars are something I have done before on a number of occasions, and they’ve done well for me, all things considered. Well, ok, but I knew I could be doing much better. I have seen people out there increasing their revenue dramatically in that one hour during a webinar, sometimes by 5 and 6 figures and I wanted to do the same.

So, a little over a month ago, I decided it was time to do this webinar thing properly. And the best way to do that? [Read more…]

Marketing Your Product or Service by Putting Lipstick on a Pig

Recently I did a talk for a lovely group of people. One of the things that came up in our discussions was how marketing is not just for business. There are so many other things that need marketing, because marketing is about fulfilling people’s needs and solving their problems and about communicating to them how you can do that. Hence, most things can benefit from marketing thinking and methods. Here are a few examples:

Schools can use marketing to attract students – and teachers – believe me, Ivy league schools don’t get the best students and teachers “just because”
Hobby clubs can use marketing to attract members
Sports clubs can use marketing to attract better players, or attract an audience (paying or not), or attract better (volunteer) coaches
People can use marketing to raise awareness for social causes
Public services can use marketing to create awareness and educate users
Government organisations can use marketing to raise awareness of their services, improve their image, or educate their users so that things run smoother
Activist groups can use marketing to spread their ideology and recruit fighters for the cause
Individuals can use marketing to get their dream job
Individuals can use marketing to get their dream partner ;)

The list can go on and on and on… I actually challenge you to give me an example of something that you think could not benefit from marketing thinking and methods ;)

Nobody Wants to Kiss a Pig!

However, at this talk, a gentleman asked me about their particular club, and whether it could be marketed to not only get more members, but to get younger members, as the membership group is getting older. I promptly answered that yes, that would of course be possible. And it is. What I did not say at the time, as it was not appropriate, was that [Read more…]

The Marketing Process

It is important to understand the process your prospective customers go through before they are ready to buy from you. If you understand that process, you are better equipped to put in place marketing activities that support it, and help lead people through it and towards buying from you.

The first step is for people to know you exist, so awareness is the first thing. I don’t just mean people seeing you once or twice, but actually noticing you. Actually registering that you exist. It’s pretty hard to get people to buy from you if you don’t exist, right? ;)

But even if they know you exist, they may not be in any way interested, and if they are not interested, the process stops there. You must gauge their interest in order for them to be open to what you have to say. Only if they find you interesting will they move on to check you out by, for example, coming to your website or checking you out on social media, or popping into your store the next time they are in the neighbourhood.

What if they don’t like what they find when they check you out some more? Then you’re dead in the water. [Read more…]