Marketing Insight
Fresh ideas to grow your business: Sail conference was rich in creative marketing thought
I’m saying it again: I’m all in when it comes to professional development. The minute you stop learning is the minute you start down the path to obsolescence. Change cracks the whip at lightning speed.
Will the social media tide float all boats?
During a recent dinner with a colleague it dawned on me that although it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken, it takes a very resourceful and persistent marketer to successfully reach out and touch someone.
A promising route to Google supremacy ‘Content marketing’ can deliver a listings breakout
All joking aside, depending on the topic, maybe you’ll turn to a trusted colleague, friend or family member.
Time for marketers to snap to attention: Data point to social video as the wave of the future
Snapchat went public the day I wrote this column, opening at $17 a share, handing insiders a windfall as its IPO closed at more than $24, making its founder a billionaire and valuing the company greater than American or United Airlines, Hershey or Hilton.
An enlightening, transformative IMBC: Valuable insight into new markets and transparency
Had I been content with traditional marketing practices, my career likely would have gone down the same path as the blurry Polaroid photograph, the typesetting machine or my trusty IBM Selectric III.
A memo to the powers that be: Our marketing needs bold ideas, wider reach
Have you ever pulled up a barstool, turned to the guy sitting inches away from you and said, “Hey, aren’t you … ?”
Are we finally taking off the blinders?
An outreach to nontraditional markets is getting legs
Marketing trends just over the horizon
Good marketers know their markets inside and out. Great marketers succeed time and again by knowing how, where and to what extent their markets fit within a wider world that is constantly changing.
Is your marketing IQ stuck in analog?
A 21-point self-test to see whether you’re falling off your game.
CAPITOL LOOKOUT: A common-ground political solution
Industry should get to know poll-tested Policy Playbook
Biker tour yields three ‘power lessons’
Thanks to all who took a virtual ride on the 2016 Boaterz n Bikerz of America Hull of a Tour: Pacific Coast Rush. It was an eight-day, 2,000-mile boating and motorcycling extravaganza from Seattle to California’s Big Sur, looping back to San Francisco.
A boating-themed ‘branded’ playlist West Marine’s experiment with Pandora radio
Like many of my fellow baby boomers I like classic boats, classic cars and classic rock. That said, I am not a fan of classic technology or marketing tools that lack a digital component.
Mrs. Smith goes to Washington — reluctantly — and a skeptic is transformed into an ABC cheerleader
I hate politics. I hate everything about it. I hate the positioning, the slippery maneuvering, the glad-handing and the lack of authenticity.
Secrets of the super-motivated
Interest in painting the walls inside your home can creep up on you.
A message to millennials: The sharing of ideas trumps going it alone
As boomers age, boating’s sweet spot is fading, much like the memories of many members of this much-discussed generation. For example, who was it that said, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept people like me as a member.”
A sprinkling of marketing magic in the pixie dust: some lessons from the masters at Disney
I lived in Orlando for 32 years and, like most locals, loved the magic and the pixie dust.
The next frontier is now within sight: It’s time to sell the sizzle
A marketing campaign can only do so much when the seas around you are receding and your market is shrinking.
Online focus groups bring new flexibility to a tried-and-true market research tool
Looking to validate important opinions about a product or service you are offering, or perhaps considering?
The slippery slope of ‘native advertising’ Episode II: The Force (as in FTC) Strikes Back
Native advertising first sailed into the public consciousness in the summer of 2014, the butt of satire on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with John Oliver.”
Preparing your marketing plan for 2016? First measure the results for the past year
Whooooooooshhhh — the year has blown by at warp speed! Does it feel as if everything is more compressed and just moves faster to you, too?
Facebook’s fascinating evolution into a powerful marketing platform
On any given day, over a billion people — one of every seven inhabitants of this planet — log on to their Facebook accounts. For our purposes as marine marketers, one of every two to three active Internet users are on Facebook.
Solicit, develop and promote powerful customer testimonials
When you’re considering the purchase of a new home or vehicle, an expensive toy or even where to go for your family’s next vacation, I bet you solicit opinions from trusted friends, family or colleagues.
Our boats need to become as cool as boating itself is
Pulling up to a stoplight the other day in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., I looked around at the sea of cars surrounding me and was struck by what I saw — white cars to the left of me, black cars to the right and silver and gray cars in front and in my rear-view mirror.