7 Steps to Developing a Powerful Brand Positioning Statement
Most brand positioning statements fail for a reason that has nothing to do with writing. They are written to be agreed with. The draft goes round the leadership team, everyone shaves off the edges that make them uncomfortable, and what comes back is a sentence that no competitor would refuse to sign. “We deliver innovative, client-focused solutions that drive measurable results.” Nobody objects, which is the problem. A statement that nobody could disagree with is […]
Incompetency & Fakeness Is Amplified in the Digital World
In a world where the existing jobs are fewer than the many people who need them, many people will do all it takes to secure jobs, compete, over-promise, lie and come across as someone they are not to get ahead. This is faking incompetency. I work predominately on the world wide web. This is mostly an unregulated open field for anyone and everyone to claim themselves as experts. I am going to go out there […]
3 Go-to Social Media Channels For Technical Brands
Most industrial social media programmes get cancelled in their first year, and the reason is nearly always the same. Somebody bought social media expecting lead generation, and it did not generate leads. It was never going to. That is not a failure of execution, it is a category error about what the channel does. Here is what it actually does for a technical brand, and here is how I would choose where to spend the […]
How Our Brains Work
My Morning Coffee Routine I want to take some time to explain how marketing, directly and indirectly, impacts consumer behaviour, attitudes, and purchases. This is quite powerful if done right. To help explain this better, I am going to walk through my morning coffee routine to work. Who doesn’t like stories? I wake up in the morning and I am already struggling out of bed. My brain is still in sleep mode and wants me […]
Creating Buyer Personas – Detailed Guide
Most buyer personas are fiction with a stock photo attached. “Marketing Mary, 42, VP of Marketing, enjoys yoga and podcasts, values efficiency.” Nobody has ever made a decision because of that document, and most of them end up in a slide deck that is never opened again. The reason they fail is not that the research was lazy. It is that they describe the wrong thing. They describe a person. What actually predicts a purchase […]
Testimonial Videos – Ultimate Guide
A testimonial video that says “they were great to work with, I would recommend them to anyone” is worth nothing. Everybody has one of those. The viewer discounts it before it finishes, because they know it was selected, edited and approved by the company paying for it. The testimonial that works admits something. It says what the customer was worried about before they signed. It says the part of the project that went badly. It […]
Taking A Deep Dive: Marketing Technical or Complex Engineering Brands (With Examples)
Technical companies usually think their marketing problem is that the product is hard to explain. It almost never is. The product is explainable. The problem is that the people deciding do not all understand it, and they are deciding anyway. Forrester’s 2026 study of nearly 18,000 business buyers found an average of 13 internal stakeholders plus 9 external participants influencing a purchase. Some of those people are engineers who can read your spec sheet. Most […]
Top 5 Channels – Social Media Marketing for Manufacturing Companies (Stats & Benchmarks)
Most manufacturers approach social media by asking what would be interesting to post. That is the wrong question and it produces the wrong content, which is why so many industrial feeds are stock photography and award announcements nobody reads. The right question is narrower. What can we post that literally nobody else can? For a manufacturer the answer is almost always the thing you find boring, because you see it every day. The line running. […]
Videos On Homepage That Work & Video Storytelling Framework (With 5 Examples)
The homepage video has one job, and it is not the job most companies give it. It is not there to explain what you do. Text does that faster and the viewer can skim it. It is there to prove that a real company with competent people stands behind the page, which is something text cannot do at all. That distinction decides everything about how the video should be made. If the job is explanation, […]