Everything I've
thought out loud.
Articles, frameworks and podcast episodes about marketing, building businesses, people and why things work. Not a blog in the "we need four posts this month" sense.
Some of this is finished thinking. Some of it is me working something out in public. I will probably contradict myself occasionally. I would rather leave the evidence of changing my mind than pretend certainty is the same thing as expertise.
Looking for Marketing Unzipped specifically? Browse the podcast archive →
You probably don't need more marketing
Most businesses are not short of marketing activity. They are short of a reason for it. Marketing Unzipped is back, and this is where it starts.
Your marketing isn't broken. Your order of operations is.
Most businesses are not short of marketing activity. They are short of a clear answer to one question: what deserves our attention now?
The marketing words that usually mean nobody has decided anything
Not because the ideas behind them are always wrong. Because the words are so often used to avoid saying what we actually mean.
I run a marketing agency and I have ADHD
It gives me energy, curiosity and a brain that can connect things quickly. It also means the spreadsheets are not a personality trait. They are scaffo
The Messy Middle, drawn on one page
The bit between somebody noticing you and somebody choosing you is not a funnel. It is a loop of questions, comparisons, doubts and little moments of
"We just need more leads" is usually the wrong diagnosis
Maybe. But lead volume is one of the easiest numbers to blame because it saves us from looking at what happens to the leads we already have.
The board meeting that made me leave
I did not storm out. I sat through the meeting, went back to my desk and carried on for six more months. That is probably the most honest part of the
The best strategy might be to stop doing something
Revenue is not automatically good revenue. That sentence is much easier to say after you have said no than while you are staring at the forecast.
Nobody plays well when nobody knows the plan
Twenty years of Saturday football has taught me plenty of things I probably should not apply to business. This one transfers surprisingly well.
Business. Strategy. Tactics. In that order.
Most marketing plans begin at the bottom of this diagram. A channel gets chosen, then a strategy is reverse-engineered to justify it.
The data said no. The customer said yes.
I love data. I also think marketing gets into trouble when we forget that data records behaviour. It does not remove the human being who created it.
Organic or paid is the wrong question
One buys speed. One builds memory. Both can create trust. Both can waste money. The useful choice starts with the job, not the channel.
The 3 Pillars of a Scalable Marketing System
A useful starting point if your marketing feels busy but does not feel connected to one system.
Why We Buy: The Psychological Biases Your Marketing Is Missing
The episode closest to The Irrational Marketer. A practical look at the biases that shape decisions before logic catches up.
The Gods of Marketing: David Ogilvy
What one of advertising's most quoted figures still gets right, what has dated, and what modern marketers should actually keep.
Newsletter
One useful marketing
thought a week.
No funnel. No twelve-part sequence. One idea I think is worth your time, usually sparked by something I have seen, tested, questioned or disagreed with that week.
Unsubscribe whenever. I would rather you read it than be counted.