Posts

You can just go build stuff. Ship it and make money.

Let me help brainstorm ways a café could ethically influence customer behaviour and increase engagement. There are something like 26,000 cafes in Australia, and the market can only support like 20,000. Here are my tips to not go broke:

In the competitive landscape of YouTube, your thumbnail is the make-or-break element that determines whether viewers click on your video or scroll past it. Think of it as your video's movie poster – you've got mere seconds to capture attention and convince someone your content is worth watching.

Last week I was driving down New Settlement Road and drove past a car on the side of the road. The window had painted phone number up top and a $ sign of the same typography size just below. And I thought to myself, “hmm, must be in need of cash”.

Just had an interesting conversation with a SaaS vendor that left me scratching my head… 🤔

When I was working on a Pet Food brand in 2020, I came across a great little defensive design (also named The Pratfall Effect) technique in email marketing.

Go basic, text-based design for basic communications, especially in Cart abandonment sequences or flows.

Steven Bartlett runs 5-20 small-budget campaigns testing thumbnails for future podcasts.

The Pratfall Effect is when someone becomes more likeable after making a small mistake.

When we are looking to get value from a high-ticket purchase we tend to see quality in the time something is in our lives.

Got asked the other night at dinner, which lever I would pull first in any business when it came to behavioural science.

We all want a massive return on ad spend (ROAS). We are all talking about growth, some say “at all costs”. But hey, a massive return on our ad spend makes us beat Warren Buffet’s investing record so we should pat ourselves on our backs.

A few years ago I coined the term “Pixel to Revenue Ratio” to depict the amount of revenue designers were removing in their work.

There’s a principle in behavioural science called “Liking” which means if you have something in common with someone you’ll likely have a friendly interaction.

Raymond Loewy (1893-1986) coined the MAYA principle. Most advanced, yet acceptable.

We're currently going through the vetting of architects for our family home. It's an old house and it's nothing spectacular but it requires work.

In the digital world you’ll spend far more per converted customer because it’s easy, shiny and not as laborious as doing direct mail. But you could have a great result just by bothering with targeted direct mail campaigns.

I saw a recent article saying the digital ad industry was using “useless, garbage data” to offer up the targeted ads.

In decision theory and economics, ambiguity aversion (also known as uncertainty aversion) is a preference for known risks over unknown risks. An ambiguity-averse individual would rather choose an alternative where the probability distribution of the outcomes is known over one where the probabilities are unknown.

There’s plenty of modern experimental evidence to show the importance of removing obstructing forces.

Most new people buying marketing services expect someone to click an ad then convert immediately. Akin to walking into a night club and asking the hottest woman in the room to go home with you.

Once you've positioned your business you will still have the typical client that now may not fit your positioning.

You can be seen to be all things to all people but I've never seen it work well.

A peer-referred sale is likely the best marketing you can have. It's free and doesn't require a lot of vetting.

As a performance marketer I'm almost always asked about brand marketing. Oddly enough I don't know a lot about brand marketing. It's one of those things that has a not of muddy definitions and if I can't track it easily, it doesn't make sense.

When I look back on the last few years, I'm reminded that the sharpest I've felt was when I was on a strict carnivore diet and when I was trying to write everyday.

There's been talk of businesses on the internet and how they need to grow or just unsolicited advice around oh "I wouldn't do it like [X]" who is actually doing awesome!

Marketing budget optimisation is an essential aspect of any business, as it allows companies to allocate their resources in the most efficient way possible. With the rapid advancement of machine learning, budget optimisation is becoming increasingly popular, as it allows companies to make better use of their resources and improve their bottom line.

In today's world, data is everywhere. It's collected from a wide range of sources, including social media, online transactions, and sensors, to name a few. This abundance of data has led many organisations to rely heavily on it to make decisions. However, being solely data-driven can be problematic and can lead to suboptimal outcomes. Instead, organisations should strive to be data-supported.

Establishing a culture that accepts mistakes can be a challenging task for any organisation, but it is crucial for fostering a supportive and productive environment. A culture that embraces mistakes allows employees to take risks, learn from their errors, and ultimately improve their performance. Here are some steps to help establish a culture that accepts mistakes in your organisation:

If you’re working in Agile, you’re generally working on implementation. You go to stand ups and you end up working on inputs that make up the whole of another part within the over arching strategy.

I saw electric bicycle company Van Moof had a lot of problems sending their bicycles abroad. My buddy Jesse over at Bento was one of these customers.

A post I read on LinkedIn earlier in the week.

By leveraging a Marketing Data Scientist, a Marketing team can eliminate waste and target customers in ways that maximises income, improves cost and improves customer experience.

As someone who has made hundreds of personas throughout my career in my past life as an Experience Designer, I've come to loathe them.

Want to improve data strategy? You've come to the right place for data, decision-making and business improvement.

One of my core tenants in my decision-making framework is "Elimination", which removes the majority of decisions.

I wanted to layout every decision-making framework I know of. I don't use all of these frameworks personally, I think it's wise to pick and choose which suits you though.

The real reason businesses pursue data help is to make better decisions.

Most businesses want a level of confidence in the data before they proceed with an initiative.

I've been tired of how much effort I have to go to to make a useful CLV model.

Whether your website is live or not, if it's not doing what you want it to do, than I would class that as being 'down'.

If you're trying to appease everyone with every little piece of data tracking, you're not going to be spending much time on analysing that data to find out what the next step should be in the business.

I was at Bunnings the other morning early picking up a new Allen Key for the baby's cot because the thread was shot.

The saying 'get back on the horse' is a throwback to the 1800's when you'd break your femur and have a 35% chance of dying then go back to horse riding because it was the only way of getting around.

I thought I'd send this immediately after I've done it.

I had a fun discussion with my accountant's dental client last week. He enquired about doing some pre M&A work.

Last week I got into who the customers were and what their behaviours to start predicting this whole thing.

The family had our first bout of COVID over the last week. We are all back in fine form now.

Last week I told you I wanted to get you focused on metrics. Being focused helps your overall strategy and if you've got a good strategy I imagine you're all over these metrics and you're actively pursuing them.

Adding the Google Analytics snippet and think you're capturing the right metrics are you?

So my last post I spoke about TAM, SAM and SOM. That was a fun game. Now to wake you up, what is your opportunity?

Who are your customers? Do you have clear personas? Do you know how many there are of them?

What's the best decision-making tool in your toolkit? I'm genuinely interested?

About 21 months ago when the pandemic started, I had hundreds of the thousands of dollars wiped from my pipeline.

While catching up over the holidays with a bunch of families with children, one of the fathers didn't go along.

My wife keeps messaging me COVID-19 case numbers. I'm only looking at hospitalisations and death.

I recently discussed how I could help an organisation and all they cared about in the end was how much work on their exact tools I'd done.

Sitting around with my data science lecturer I noticed him and I have a unique point of view on execution.

Recently looking into new product feature cohort data I was asked if the product should be pursued from a Subscription invoice product.

The Value Triad is defined as making money, saving money, and emotional contribution.

If you make a decisions without data, it's just opinion. And everyone has one of those.

I can log into LinkedIn right now and see marketers pandering to audiences to get attention.

The way you get the most visibility is what I like to call "getting people into your sphere of expertise".

In a top top ASX 200 business I was recently told to stop asking about the outcomes and stay in my lane.

Most smaller businesses don't think big enough, it's time to slow down and think about how you performed in the 2 main functions that matter, marketing and innovation.

Customer: Oh that's easy to do with [X] software, we will just do it internally.

You probably set your pricing and forget about it. Commercial airliners change their pricing 11,000,000 times per day.

Netflix has one product, but has enough profits to improve that one product to disrupt a whole industry. The product is an app with videos on your home screen with a subscription layer.

Years ago I attended a UX Australia conference, and albeit not getting many takeaways from an insufferable bunch of communists, I left with a huge feedback loop nugget from a small business app for photographers.

I'm currently reading Lean Customer Development. I've longed for better ways to track what the main traits of who and what our customers are and I've had some great systems in the past.

That’s not how running a business works.

Don't just think better. Think different.

I was in a discussion with a small restaurant last week. They were looking (or screaming) for help on Facebook.

I've been looking at acquiring online businesses that require positioning.

A customer comes in, they look around, realise the best product you sell is this extravagant and luxury item. It's a luxury for a reason, like most luxury items it's not a need.

I find it to be quite foolish to disrespect basic mathematics in online businesses. Also when you seek metrics like CPA's and others you tend to be obsessed with how you're performing based on quantitative metrics.