With respect to conducting business, there are going to be a lot of similarities in the coming weeks and months with what transpired after September 11, 2011. In fact, like post-911, some things will never be the same. Travel will be impacted the most in the near term. Beyond travel being a problem based on […]
Product Publicity Leads Directly to Sales
A funny thing happened the other day after walking into my regularly scheduled meeting with Ray Secour at Alliance Scale, Inc. and showing him the January 2018 cover of “New Equipment Digest” featuring publicity we created for a wireless crane scale that he distributes. I love showing clients this kind of valuable exposure! Just as […]
Manufacturing Principles Yield Better Product Publicity
If you’re a manufacturer or distributor and want more OEM sales opportunities: pay attention. Most companies are I-centric with their “advertising” and try to tell their whole story instead of focusing on the problems of potential customers. I’m using advertising as a generic term for publicity too. The first manufacturing principle that a design engineer […]
Why do you get up in the morning?
“A man’s got to have a reason to get up in the morning.” This was a favorite expression of my uncle, an extremely successful entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist. In fact, what got him up in the morning for the last 10 years of his life was giving away much of his fortune. He said […]
Think Outside the Box to Get More Product Publicity
My brother owned an auto parts business and like most small business people the last thing he wanted to do was sit around and chat with salesmen. He didn’t have the time, but didn’t want to alienate his vendors either. In the auto parts business, salesmen liked to stop in a chat and it took […]
Publicity is a Powerful Marketing Catalyst
Marketing will continue to play a greater role in B2B, but not just “inbound marketing.” Marketing defined is “all activities involved in taking a product from manufacture to market.” This, naturally, includes branding, distribution channels, research & development, promotion, advertising, content creation, blogging, SEO, and the rest of the marketing mix, not the least of […]
Entrepreneurship and Product Publicity
Peter Drucker, recognized as the dean of America’s business and management philosophers by The Wall Street Journal, wrote “Entrepreneurship is ‘risky’ because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing. They lack the methodology. They violate elementary and well-known rules. This is particularly true of high-tech entrepreneurs.” I believe this assertion […]
Niche Marketing is About Problem-Solving
We’re all conditioned today to believe that “content is king on the web” and there is a lot of truth to that expression. There is also truth to the fact that there is a lot of content on the web that sucks! Good content is critical and people want to read about how to solve […]
Listen to Your Customers and Solve Their Problems
When I received the October issue of “Fabricating & Metalworking” which featured FABTECH 2015 I was thrilled to see our client, Esco Tool featured in the section entitled “Tube & Pipe Fabrication.” There are many reasons for Esco Tool’s success. Chief among them was the philosophy of Al Brennan who purchased the company in 1975. […]
Stafford 3-D Shaft Collar System Featured in Power Magazine
A product release about Stafford Manufacturing introducing SPARC (Stafford Prototype and Repair Collar), a rapid prototype and repair collar system incorporating 3-D printing, prompted the editor of “Power Magazine” to request more information. This product release was part of a consistent publicity program we’ve been producing for Stafford since 1977 when they were a small […]
Leverage Your Marketing Budget
I’ve been in business long enough to remember the introduction of the fax machine, the word processor, personal computer, mobile phone, Al Gore’s internet, the tablet, smart phone, and all of the related software and apps. There has been no time period which has impacted B2B marketing more than the last 10 years. One phenomenon […]
Biggest Reason B2B Content Fails
According to an article in “Sales & Marketing Management” magazine, “a Forrester Research review of 30 business-to-business websites in six industries revealed that the majority fail to engage users with content. Interesting enough, the review revealed that the biggest problem with these websites is the majority of content talks about the company, what its products […]
Growth of Small Business & Free Enterprise
Growth of Small Business is Our Core value. Most of our clients, especially those small businesses we’ve been partnering with for nearly four decades have leveraged our work. To understand why we encourage them do that, here’s the reason I started Venmark in November, 1976. The following graphic resulted from a six week exercise with […]
Esco Tool’s Products Featured on Two Magazine Covers
Keeping Esco Tool’s products in front of the world has been an honor for me since 1977. During our last monthly meeting, I showed Matt Brennan, their president, the front cover of “Process Cooling” magazine’s 2014 Product Guide Issue which featured Esco’s Battery-Powered End Prep Tool for Welding Pipe. Then he said, “If you think […]
7 Reasons why Product Publicity Fails
1. The copy is filled with superlatives. Many years ago, “The Wall Street Journal” ran an article featuring the 20 words most likely to get a press release rejected. They included terms like unique, revolutionary, and world-class. You get the idea. An advertisement dressed up like a press release is still an advertisement! Lipstick […]