Congratulations to all of the winners at the 2018 Australian Marketing Institute's night of nights. I felt privileged and honoured to be a judge of this year's awards. 

Having a professionally prepared marketing plan can help you to stop wasting money on promotions that don't work and start getting pro-active about where you really want to be in the market.

Old school is the new school. 

Seriously, in a world that is obsessed with digital technology, the old school brochure is making a comeback.

I love planning out the big picture on a big picture. I think that's why I love a good whiteboard! If you love a good big yearly planner, then this free download is for you.

Can you believe there are only 9 more sleeps left until the new financial year? Wow! That's just over a week to squeeze everything we can out of this one.

Can you believe we are in the final quarter of this financial year already? With 3 down and 1 to go, I'd love to share a few pointers to help you maximise the final quarter of 2018:

I love a great planning session! 

I have developed a tool to help you map out your plans for 2018. It's simple, it's old school, it's ... a wall planner!

​And here's yours to download for free.

​You can print this on paper if you have a jumbo printer, or better still, send the file to your local signwriter and have it made into a whiteboard. Here is what you will need to tell your signwriter:

When promoting our business, it can be easy to get caught up in trying to impress the wrong crowd. Most often, I find that crowd is our competition. It's natural to want to impress our peers, we invest a lot to ensure we are leaders within our industry. But when creating communication for our business, this is definitely not who we should be thinking about.

Most business owners I speak with all mention that word of mouth is one of their most impressive sources of business however, most don’t resource customers with anything to make their job easier.
 
When happy customers want to tell their family, friends and colleagues about you and your business, giving them a helping hand can increase the effectiveness of the recommendation. 

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Hard selling can be difficult and yucky. Persuading someone to buy something they don’t need is just icky – whichever way I look at it. When Dr Flint McGlaughlin, an American academic and business leader used the phrase ‘clarity trumps persuasion’ it certainly resonated with me.
 
As contemporary business owners, I believe we need to understand that our audience is quite educated. They have a plethora of choice and the internet searching device they are holding in their hands is giving them all the tools they need to carry out extensive searches in a matter of seconds. In response to this, I believe we need to consider moving out of persuading mode and into clarity mode – if we’re not already there.
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