While thinking about moving Soloist Systems to a personal blog, I came back around to the idea of the digital garden, a personal online space, similar to a blog, but with a focus on the ongoing, iterative process of learning and knowledge building. I want to leverage the way I have been using LogSeq to save personal notes about technologies and philosophy in a way that I can share to benefit others.
We need to talk about how you’ve been justifying your marketing budget. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but if your brand awareness campaign isn’t converting, you aren’t accomplishing your marketing goals. Sure, there are companies that can afford to inundate the public with their brand, but I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this, you don’t have that kind of budget.
The longer I conduct business, the more obvious it seems that running a business is not, in fact, a competition. And if business is not a competition, competitive analysis is rendered an utterly pointless pastime of the entrepreneur.
It goes without saying that technological advance and modern conveniences have changed the way we live dramatically in the past couple decades. With so much of our capacity for creativity now freed up by these conveniences, it would be logical to conclude that society is capable of more creativity than ever. Unfortunately, logic has no horse in the race when it comes to creativity. Therefore, creativity is still a relative rarity. Take it from me, a self-proclaimed creative, professional marketer, and musician since age 9. What you’re looking at might not be “creativity”.
As a creative problem solver by trade, the golden goose I find myself chasing time and time again is a simple elegant solution that seems so obvious, it’s surprising that nobody thought of it first. I’m a creative person: I know this because people have told me so my whole life. So why is this simple, elegant solution I seek so impossibly unattainable? The answer is perspective and time.
Do you need a website? Of course you don’t need a website. You need 2 things in business: something to sell, and someone to sell it to. Chances are if you’re reading this, you already have a bit of both, but if you’re just starting out, here’s what that means:
As a marketer, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that you have the power to single-handedly propel a product or service to success, a.k.a “move the needle” if you’ve been talking with business executives. However, a seasoned marketer knows that this perspective can be misleading, and downright dangerous. The key to effective marketing lies in understanding that products and customers tell the story, while the most skilled marketers invest in understanding and documenting that story to engage with others.