So Here’s Your Challenge
Provocative questions, innovative models & new thinking on growing your business in a 5-minute action-oriented podcast. Insights on Business Growth, Thought Leadership, Digital Strategy, and Trust. Each episode focuses on solving one issue, gives perspective, practical tactics and a motivating call to action. Randall Craig is a serial entrepreneur, former public company executive, and author of 8 books and over 600 articles on business growth. He has advised over 100 major organizations, including global financial institutions, professional service firms, publishers, entrepreneurs, and not-for-profits. Recognized as #10 in Feedspot’s 30 Best Business Strategy Podcasts list: https://blog.feedspot.com/business_strategy_podcasts/
Episodes
Tuesday Mar 01, 2022
Today Marketing or Tomorrow Marketing
Tuesday Mar 01, 2022
Tuesday Mar 01, 2022
While the increasing speed of change is not new, how we market around it is. Today, marketers have two key responsibilities: the ‘today’ marketing of today’s products and services, and the ‘today’ discovery of tomorrow’s products and services. Unfortunately, because of the very real pressure to drive current quarter sales, most marketers focus exclusively on the today. Tomorrow is someone else’s problem.
Tuesday Feb 22, 2022
Money Now or Money Later
Tuesday Feb 22, 2022
Tuesday Feb 22, 2022
Where do you spend your organization’s budget? Should it be on communications, or on training? Should it be on infrastructure, or on people? Inside the organization, or to partners?
While these may all be good questions, there is merit on reframing it – especially when it comes to questions around growth.
Tuesday Feb 15, 2022
Building your Marketing Stack
Tuesday Feb 15, 2022
Tuesday Feb 15, 2022
Most marketers think of themselves as builders. Their work grows the organization, grows market share, grows the portfolio of products and services. A bit more tactically, the marketer builds page views, conversions, and social engagement; underlying all of these activities, the marketer builds trust, and builds relationships.
But is there merit in growing marketing itself? Not the ad spend or departmental head count, but the number of simultaneous marketing initiatives that the organization can successfully run?
Tuesday Feb 08, 2022
Choosing your Marketing Voice
Tuesday Feb 08, 2022
Tuesday Feb 08, 2022
Have you ever considered why some of your content resonates, and some seems just a bit off? Too often emails – especially ones that form part of a marketing automation sequence – fail because of one thing: voice.
Tuesday Feb 01, 2022
Blog and Podcast Intentions
Tuesday Feb 01, 2022
Tuesday Feb 01, 2022
With so many people and organizations getting on the blogging and podcasting bus, it seems that blogging must be very important. But why? Deciding on a strategy helps clarify the underlying purpose of the content itself, and provides focus to the creative process.
Tuesday Jan 25, 2022
The Host - Networking technique
Tuesday Jan 25, 2022
Tuesday Jan 25, 2022
Who do you prefer being – the host or the guest?
When you are asked to be a guest at an event, it is a validation of your skills, experience, and your importance. Of course, being a guest has it’s obligations: if the invitation is a personal one, you often will bring a small gift. If it’s professional, you are expected to contribute your professional attention to the purpose of the event.
Tuesday Jan 18, 2022
Skip the Market Research
Tuesday Jan 18, 2022
Tuesday Jan 18, 2022
At its core, the rationale for market research is to help make better decisions. Market research can discover, validate, and reduce risk. It can improve ROI, improve management confidence, and expose competitive threat. And it can also be the worst thing that an organization can do.
Even when done perfectly, traditional market research – both qualitative (focus groups, interviews, etc) and quantitative (surveys) – has one inherent flaw: it takes time.
Tuesday Jan 11, 2022
Trust: Earning the Right to Ask
Tuesday Jan 11, 2022
Tuesday Jan 11, 2022
Today, we see digital marketing techniques (such as “squeeze-pages”) that also presume too much: How many sites have you seen that exhort the reader to “Sign up for our promotional newsletter, and we’ll give you a free ebook.”
Unfortunately, this approach is completely backwards: the marketer is asking for something – your contact details – without earning the right to do so. Even worse, they are trying to bribe you (the so-called ethical bribe) to participate! If the goal is to build trust, the “transaction” must be completely different: First give, then get.
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
Social Media: Buy or Rent
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
Tuesday Jan 04, 2022
What do houses, cars, and Social Media all have in common? For one thing, they all share a primary question: Buy or Rent. Buy a house, or look for a rental? Buy a car, or lease it? And should we rent our Social Media, or build our own?
Most leaders don’t even think about this last question, because they don’t consider that Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube (and in fact, every Social Media site) is rented space.
Tuesday Dec 28, 2021
Re-looking at the rush to digital
Tuesday Dec 28, 2021
Tuesday Dec 28, 2021
Does the trend to digital mean that traditional communications are effectively… dead? That all of your traditional communication tools (newsletters, magazines, brochures, booklets, etc) are destined for the trash heap?
One only needs to look at the sorry plight of the newspaper business to see that the future doesn’t look rosy. The world has changed.