Special Sauce

What Is A Brand Promise and How To Write One

Branding jargon is a curse that plagues businesses around the world. It’s hard for me to wade through the bullshit that branding firms and marketing agencies spew out to sound smart—and I’ve been in branding for 16 years.  But not all branding terminology is for posturing and show. Take the concept of a brand promise …

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How To Create Website Content That Opens Wallets

We often obsess over fonts, photography, forms, and SEO and forget the most important function of a website… Your website exists to move someone from awareness to purchase. This is true for billion-dollar brands, freelancers, SaaS websites, eCommerce websites, home builder websites, CPG websites, nonprofit websites, and almost every other website on the planet. The …

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Branding vs Marketing: The Role Of Each In Growing Your Business

You came here to learn the difference between branding and marketing. I won’t dance around the subject. Let’s use sports to make the explanation easy. Marketing gets you to buy a ticket to your first game with a clever, “First 5 beers free” promotion. Ok, it’s probably a first beer free, but I’m allowed to …

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Inbound Marketing 101: Attract Motivated Buyers

I stumbled across the book Inbound Marketing from Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan of Hubspot back in the summer of 2010. It changed the way I think about marketing and paved the way for creating my own demand generation framework.  Inbound marketing is now the driving force in my career. I use it to shape …

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How Famous Brands Got Their Names

I was conducting my evening scroll through Instagram, as I usually do, when I stumbled into a mysterious brand I had never heard of—Bandulu. The name captured my eyes and the “ulu” echoed in my ears as I said it over and over in my head.  What an impressionable brand name—I didn’t know it’s meaning …

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20 Tattoo-Worthy Company Taglines

Last year I finally got the tattoo I had been waiting for. Three years of screenshotting photos had come to a head and it was time to hand over my digital folder to someone who could handle the beast I had created inside my phone. But I couldn’t just trust anyone with this responsibility. After …

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Demand Generation: The Best Way To Grow Any Business

Let’s start with what demand generation is not—it’s not growth hacks or shortcuts. Real demand generation takes a coordinated effort across your organization. When properly planned and executed, it’ll pave the way for market domination. Now let’s look at a proper definition before we dig into how you can use the four pillars of demand …

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The 12 Best Email Newsletters To Feed Your Inbox

I was never a big email newsletter type of person. I don’t like checking my email, and to be frank, it gives me anxiety just watching the notifications add up. Most of the time I resort to hitting “select all” and marking them as read, just to alleviate my OCD itch. I lived by this …

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Your Brand Needs A Rival

“Anytime Michael goes by you — nail him. Put him on the ground on every drive.” – Isiah Thomas People are understandably obsessed with the Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance that’s on ESPN right now. The series is crushing ESPN viewing records. It gives us an inside look into Michael Jordan’s final season with the Bulls. …

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