The Blog - Where Business Collides with Human Nature

To hear a "yes, I will buy", everything must line up perfectly. To get the yes, here is your ARUBA Marketing™ checklist:

Potential buyers:

• Are paying Attention
• Find your message Relevant
• Understand the message, language, product and service quickly.
• Believe that it will benefit them
• Believe enough to take Action - by buying and sharing. (and linking)

In short, the acronym to help you remember is ARUBA, where people not only vacation but also represents when people are most comfortable to move forward.  

Oddly enough it was not the personal catastrophes, pain or losses that pushed me to the point of death.  It was instead, the people who believed, who believed in me more than I.

The biggest changes came from two things:  

1. Introductions  - A friend or associate had just enough appreciation to introduce me to another who would change my life.

   And/Or

2. Invitations - They would make an invitation and ask me to attend an event, a club, a meeting, a dinner, etc.

With each introduction and invitation, I have connected with people who leave me humbled and appreciative.  It was not the clever wit that helped to improve connections. Instead, they acknowledged and treasured commitment, compassion, loyalty and action. 

Where can you find such people who have a truly selfless commitment, loyalty and the willingness to take action?

You have searched for images that will set you apart and are coming up empty. Better yet, you hope to find free images or graphics.  Maybe you have resorted to "borrowing" them from another website (which is most likely theft).  No one notices and "everyone" is doing it, so you take a chance.

Recent research shows that B2B (Business to Business) buyers are looking for ten things when visiting a website.  

This survey can become your checklist for serving those who visit you online.

Started in his home, Jeff Bezos started a business and began to reach for his dream. In the video below he will tell his story about how it all began, what it takes to be successful and why Amazon bought Zappos.  This is as much a message to the new Zappos team as it is for you.  

Not every leader is capable of leading their team and creating an excellent culture. This infographic points out the important traits necessary to develop an excellent culture:

Web meetings and conference calls are never perfect and in fact can turn into a disaster.  Now that couldn't happen... could it?  Does a web meeting drive you crazy? How many screens do you have open at once? The video will make you chuckle but you know it's true.

Either you have no time, low skill, or prefer to avoid writing.  You realize that without an article, blog, ebook, white paper, special report or declaration... there will be no progress.  Writing is involved in any form of marketing.  Who can you hire?  Who will help you? 

Entrepreneurs see the possibilities and take action where others sit and wonder.   Intrapreneurs have the heart of an entrepreneur but pursue their vision within a company.  If your spouse is an entrepreneur, you will find it exciting and frustrating.  There is no "off switch" and there is only "go".  What does a successful entrepreneur look like?  

In order to understand bad content vs good content, we need to consider the context.  An inbound marketing pro will tell you that relevance may be the most important piece but even relevance on its own is not enough.  The context of course is related to audience, education, experience, culture, difficulty to create and as Seth Godin will say "how remarkable is it?".  Thus, just as beauty, quality is based on the eyes of the beholder.

"Excellent job!" today does may not look so impressive six months down the road. 

If you introduce yourself as a broker, you may see eyes dart back and forth as the person you are talking to looks for an excuse to escape.  "Broker" in almost any context means "sales person".  The exception is when someone is already interested in buying or when they have something to sell.

Introducing and branding yourself as a broker is similar to branding yourself a doctor.  Doctors are more respected. Both "broker" and "doctor" are generalized labels which leaves more questions than answers.

In the new world of data and media, everything is indexed, including your services. When you dig deeper into Google's keyword ideas tool and ask for suggestions for terms related to "broker", there are many ideas provided: