![cat[&]tonic](https://cat-tonic.com/wp-content/uploads/candt_logo-rw.png){kind=logo}
An Ode to Partnership
Owning a business is hard. Owning a marketing business is dog years hard. You need grit and persistence plus a sense of humor and people who support you and challenge you by your side. From this perspective, I believe I am absolutely blessed to have had a marketing business with [...]
B2B sales and marketing – why sales and marketing should work together for best results
Being in the marketing industry, we get in the habit of anticipating trends and important changes in industries. One of the shifts happening is that business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing strategies that have typically been treated as separate, need to work together more than ever. B2B sales is a different [...]
So, you want to sell something: make email content relevant or don’t hit send
As a company owner, I receive a lot of email sales pitches. Written below are a handful of real lead sentences from recent pitches. Presumably, they’re intended to pique my interest to take the next step in the sales process – would you? “I want to create a relationship with [...]
Why smart (and clear) content and B2B sales go hand-in-hand
In a fascinating article by MarketingProfs, they detail a business to business (B2B) study conducted by Showpad in June of 2018. In this study, they asked respondents questions about what things affect the length of their sales cycle – what helps and what slows it down. This information is gold [...]
6 content tactics for engaging and helping credit card customers
WalletHub recently did a survey of consumers to identify the state of credit card debt in the U.S. Overall the indicators are that people are using credit, and individual debt has risen to level we haven’t seen since just before the great recession. As those of us who have been [...]
Marketing or charitable giving? 5 considerations when touting giving
Last week I received an email from a restaurant that I go to occasionally. The subject line was “_____ Cares about Smile Network International”. Cool. Like many others, I like companies that care about something beyond their own business needs. I eagerly opened the email to find out more. There [...]
Marketing inspiration from all over the globe
Once again this year I was gratified to be chosen as a judge for the International ECHO Awards, a prestigious awards competition that pulls entries from talented marketers internationally. What makes this competition different from the vast number of other awards competitions that have cropped up in the last 10 [...]
Why I want marketers to stop pinkwashing me
This week, I was gratified and honored that my good friend Sheila Riggs, who is one of the most accomplished people I know (notice I didn’t say “women”), invited me to a lovely networking lunch of powerful executives, the Minnesota Women’s Economic Roundtable. This was a roomful of remarkable individuals [...]
Get past jargon and buzz(words) for marketing enlightenment
Marketing shouldn’t be about using jargon to baffle a potential client. It’s about using the smarts and tools available to build the best campaign results for clients’ businesses to meet their goals. I was taught that, in order to truly help clients, it’s important to explain marketing concepts without relying [...]
Branding, marketing and the Coffee Stain Theory: Do you have a stain on your brand?
For years, we’ve been surprised – as a marketing company who produces content – that one blog post about the Coffee Stain Theory has been read more than any other post in our blog. And although we don’t know why, we believe it’s that the theory is the easiest way [...]
