Kristin Zhivago
SEO for CEOs: What you need to know
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the more mysterious aspects of digital marketing; difficult to understand or manage, driven by arcane rules, and dominated by “leave me alone in my cave and let me work my magic” vendors. But it’s important; y...
How to increase sales without salespeople: A real-world use case
I need to share a Big Truth that I’ve learned as a revenue coach, helping hundreds of CEOs market and sell more successfully: The behavior of the business leader making decisions about marketing and sales makes an incredible difference to the success o...
Business Owners: What 2021 will require of us
If you are a business owner, and especially if you are a small business owner, 2020 was a very challenging year. Even more so if you were in an industry directly affected by the pandemic. There is hope, though. In fact, there is always hope…
Death by website: 5 website design mistakes to avoid
A good website design will grow your business; a bad website design will kill it. It is definitely possible to create a website and then watch it suck revenue right out of your company. We wouldn’t like that to happen to you. Here is our…
Real-world branding strategy: Your brand is the promise that you keep.
I have a real-world definition of branding strategy, based on working as a revenue coach for hundreds of companies and interviewing thousands of customers. It is this: “Branding is the promise that you make; your brand is the promise that you keep.” To...
Digital marketing strategy: What you can expect—and how to manage it
We’ve all heard the management adage: “You can’t manage what you don’t understand.” Unfortunately, digital marketing has gotten so complex, specialized, and fast-moving that it’s harder than ever for busy CEOs and entrepreneurs to understand what is re...
Digital marketing and cybersecurity: A very practical checklist.
Kristin Zhivago, revenue coach, is the president of Zhivago Partners, a digital marketing management company, and author of Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy. Zhivago and her team of digital marketing specialists focus ...
Essential management skills in the Age of Apps
We are living in the Age of Apps. I guess you could call this the App Age, like the Industrial Age and the Agrarian Age that came before. All business is now run on apps (or applications, which is how many people refer to software…
Wondering how to increase sales? Answer the buyer’s most important question.
Lately we have been talking about the customer’s Mindset and the critical role it plays in your marketing. If you really want to know how to increase sales, that’s the factor that you need to focus on first. I’ve been defining the customer’s M...
Why is Mindset-Driven Marketing so important for your digital marketing?
I’ve been defining the customer’s Mindset as the desires, concerns, and questions that they have when they set out on their buying journey. These desires, concerns, and questions are top of mind for them, and if you don’t address these burning issues, ...
Mindset Immersion! An example of Mindset-Driven Marketing.
In my previous blog article, we introduced the concept of Mindset-Driven Marketing. It’s a marketing strategy that gets right to the heart of the matter: Properly addressing your customer’s current and very specific mindset is what is going to drive yo...
Introducing “Mindset-Driven Marketing”
Why do so many marketing efforts miss the mark? Because they focus on all the wrong things, such as “personas,” “positioning,” and “providing value.” They do not address what is actually driving the purchase: the very specific mindset of the customer. ...
Why “selling” is really, truly dead—and what you should do instead.
Ever since Google made it possible for anyone to find anything online, the need for smile-and-dial salespeople has been seriously diminishing. I’ve said it before (in 2011!), and I’ll say it again: selling is dead. By selling, I mean making cold calls; “hunting,” making...
The high cost of a bad manager
There are good managers and there are bad managers. People working for managers know perfectly well which type of manager they are working for, usually within the first couple of days. Too many people end up putting up with the bad manager, for too lon...
Kettle & Fire: Website Engagement on Steroids
Most websites are brochures on a screen. Which is kind of silly, given that the visitor is more than happy to click around, take advantage of offers, and even answer a few questions, if you ask at the right time and in the right way.…
Digital marketing trends from the customer’s perspective
There are plenty of people (about 12,000 a month) searching for “digital marketing definition” in Google. And the results served up focus on the channels (social, online ads, SEO, etc.) with barely a mention of customers—except to say that their behavi...
Marketing Strategy 101: How to overcome the politics of marketing to be more powerful...
You’re in a conference room with the company’s management team. You’re presenting your marketing plan. About halfway through, one of the top execs says, “I don’t think this part is going to work. I don’t think our customers care about that, and I don’t...
Finally! Someone selling software gets it right.
For years I’ve wanted software companies to show their screens on their sites. It should be Rule #1 in any guide on “How to Market Software.” Instead, they get in the way—with lots of words . . . cute graphics . . . faceless-people illustrations…
Is your developer holding your site hostage?
Do you know where your site is hosted? Where your domain is hosted? Where your email is hosted? Do you know if you are paying for that hosting directly via your own credit card? Do you have sign-in information for each of these sites and…
Marketing and sales: You will only win if you go all out
It’s easy to get lost in all the details of digital marketing. It’s complex; there are a lot of channels, choices, rules, costs, and varying opinions on what you should do for your business. It gets even more complicated when you endeavor to combine th...