January 7, 2016

What if I told you I could create a 161% change in consumer perception by simply changing the background of a headshot photo? Would you believe me? Would you believe that something so small could cause such a massive improvement in your consumer marketing programs? And not just any perception, a meaningful one — the

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May 5, 2015

On May 1st, Converse Digital turned five — five years of helping clients turn conversations into customers. But as I sit here reflecting on what I’ve learned over the last year, two overriding lessons overshadow everything else. Such universal truths. Such simple rules. Rules that I’ve spoken of before, but yet, it took the events of

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March 4, 2015

Back in 1950, psychologists Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, and Kurt Back launched a study to investigate how friendships developed among students at the new Westgate Complex at MIT. They found that the strongest friendships developed between students who lived next to each other on the same floor. Where friendships developed between students who lived on

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February 17, 2015

Mardi Gras has, and continues to be, one of the most well known, interesting and misunderstood free festivals in the world. An enormous content marketing and digital marketing opportunity for brands — think brand activation, content creation, brand awareness, social media opportunities and good old fashioned sales incentives trips — Mardi Gras offers it all.

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December 9, 2014

Recently one of my Converse Digital clients, SlideBatch,  a content curation and publication platform, and I had an interesting conversation about the definition of content curation.  After much discussion we came to the conclusion that much of what passes for curation today is actually filtration. This then prompted SlideBatch to launch an interesting Content Curation Project

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November 5, 2014

Everything you once knew about marketing and sales prospecting is wrong. Or at the very least, social selling is quickly rendering it obsolete. Once upon a time, companies treated information about their product as sacred. After all, information is power. The traditionally held belief was that a company’s marketing efforts should force prospective customers to call and

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September 3, 2014

Instagram’s new Hyperlapse IOS app is taking the tourism content marketing world by storm. Heck, it’s got everyone’s attention. Almost overnight (after its release) my Facebook feed switched from a never ending stream of ice bucket challenges to Hypersnap videos. But here are three reasons I recommend brands, and tourism destination marketers in particular, steer clear of

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July 2, 2014

Last week while driving my six year old son to camp, he asked me an interesting question.  “Dad, how do you become famous?” I responded that you do something notable and worthy. He then went on to ask me to define worthy. Which I defined is doing something meaningful for the world. Something that made

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June 11, 2014

While watching Luke Bryan, the headliner closing act on Saturday night, at the 2014 Bayou Country Fest I was struck by two things. First, his pandering techniques (to get the crowd into the show) and second, the number of folks heading for the doors during his encore. This was the headline act, the keynote speaker

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May 21, 2014

There is a scary trend rolling through the digital domain. A trend that if left unchecked, will lead to failed content marketing and lead generation programs. Yet, as you read posts penned by content marketing agencies and lead generation thought leaders, listen to popular podcasts or attend conference session lead by the leading digital minds,

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April 30, 2014

Great design, stellar content and loads of traffic don’t mean anything without sales. And even before that goal is achieved, a step-by-step process of conversion is occurring as prospects move closer to customer or client. And if you want to achieve success, you need to understand and stay abreast of the latest thinking in landing

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April 9, 2014

Content marketing is a widely recognized driver for effective, inbound sales lead generation programs. While largely heralded as a way to drive inbound leads there is another, even more powerful reason that ad agencies should develop a consistent content marketing program. The Traditional Benefit of Content Marketing Content drives all digital marketing lead generation programs.

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March 19, 2014

Last week I showed you a nifty trick to turn any presentation into an instant B2B lead generation tool to help power your social selling efforts. But that trick only generates as may sales prospect leads as people in the audience. So today I’m going to show you how to use that same file to generate

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March 12, 2014

Do you give presentations for living? Do you make sales calls, deliver conference presentations, or even just make internal presentations to your boss or peers. What do you do with these presentation decks after you deliver the presentation?  If you’re like 95% of the people I know, you file them away on a hard drive

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February 26, 2014

The biggest hurdle to an effective B2B content marketing program is convincing the sales force to utilize the content in their lead nurturing process. Most B2B marketing departments incorrectly diagnose the situation as a lack of willingness, support, or desire to engage in social selling on the part of the sales team. But I would

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December 17, 2013

Today I read a piece in Ad Age where the CMO of a major restaurant chain said, “In the past, over 80% of the marketing plan would be executed the way you originally planned. Now, it’s like 20%,” so you better be agile.” I have to say – I completely disagree with this point-of-view and

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December 3, 2013

Inbound Marketing is overly focused on winning page one SERP (Search Engine Results Page) on Google and to a lesser extent Bing. Inbound Marketers preach that if your company can rank your website for your keywords, then leads, conversions and sales will follow. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t really want you to rank organically and that creates

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November 26, 2013

Today I want to introduce you to the secrets of making more powerful video content marketing. In my book, The Invisible Sale, I interviewed professional video creators to uncover their secrets for making more effective marketing videos. Videos that grows businesses, increases sales and moves buyers to action. They gave me tons of incredible insight

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September 17, 2013

The talking head interview video is a staple in any B2B video content marketing campaign. But far too many B2B Marketers incorrectly believe that this all important content marketing service needs to be outsourced to achieve great quality. That’s simply not true and today, I want to show you how you can create beautifully shot

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August 13, 2013

What do you do when you’re not getting as many leads from your website as you think you should? Should you advertise more? Should you activate PPC (Pay-Per-Click advertising) or should you focus on creating outstanding content marketing to drive inbound marketing leads? It’s a classic chicken and egg discussion — one that I just

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July 23, 2013

The first step in developing a Propinquity Marketing Strategy is defining your key Propinquity Points.  The technique varies by category, industry and prospect but here is a repeatable four-step process that can serve as your starting point. It’s the same process I use with my clients and we find it to be an excellent jumping off

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July 9, 2013

I spend Chapter 5 of my new book, The Invisible Sale, discussing the strategic shift content marketing oriented sales & marketing teams must accept to find and win the invisible buyer. Today’s buyers are looking for advice not advertising and the brands that figure that out and successfully deploy that strategy first will enjoy enormous first mover

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July 2, 2013

According to a 2012 Edison Research Study on the Podcast Listener awareness of podcasting has grown 105% since 2006 and the percentage of people indicating they have listened to an audio podcast has grown 163%. But access to a growing audience isn’t the only reason to consider adding podcasting to your social selling toolkit. Here are three key

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June 4, 2013

The one thing almost all successful blogs have in common is a commitment to publishing regularly. But as anyone who creates content marketing will tell you, sometimes the words are there and others, well they just don’t come to you. Instead, you get the dreaded, writer’s block. But the schedule demands that you publish something,

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May 21, 2013

Studies show that self-educating buyers regularly download white papers and eBooks as part of their pre-purchase research. They’ll gladly trade an email address for good information that helps them make a buying decision or just makes them smarter. But far too many companies today are making a huge mistake with their white papers and ebooks.

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May 7, 2013

I love the creative freedom that my iPhone provides. And nowhere is that freedom better expressed than in photography. I’m sure you’re quite familiar with Instagram and the creative filters that go with it, but if you really want to “go pro” with your mobile photography, grab these five iPhone apps — and find plenty

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March 12, 2013

The single most important thing to think about when crafting your  website or blog — is not how beautiful it is but how well it functions as a lead generation machine. Probably the single biggest mistake companies and people make when crafting a website is that they focus entirely too much on the physical beauty

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March 7, 2013

[fve]http://youtu.be/7tciDDwJICA[/fve] YouTube is the second most searched website in the world but one of the biggest challenges that most folks have is converting that viral video into website or blog traffic. It would be a lot easier if YouTube just let you embed links to your blog or website in the actual video. But alas,

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February 26, 2013

In sales organizations around the globe sales & marketing executives are debating the merits of inbound marketing versus outbound marketing B2B approaches. Unfortunately, many of the discussions are akin to hardcore democrats versus republicans with each side trying to paint the issue in black and white. While I wish it was that simple, it’s not.

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January 24, 2013

Research from Google shows that now more than ever, Woody Allen was right – Showing Up is 80% of social selling success. Today’s self educating B to B buyer is increasingly turning to sources other than salespeople for information. Number Of Sources Buyers Consult Google’s ZMOT Research, released in 2011 revealed that consumer shoppers consult

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