Bill’s Blog

Are you viewing potential clients as adversaries?

The anonymity inherent in the online marketing mindset causes salespeople to think of potential clients in an adversarial way. Too many business owners are focusing solely on how they can lure or trick people into visiting their websites with keywords and newsletters. On the Accelerate! Podcast, Andy Paul and I talked about how this behavior… Continue reading

Why your marketing dashboard could be misleading you

The people who designed online marketing dashboards did so knowing full well that data is addictive. They hook you with metrics and numbers and then use that fascination to distract you from what’s really going on with your business—they redirect your focus from sales and progress to activity. Stephen Woessner and I hashed it out… Continue reading

The marketing industrial complex

On his last day in office in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower made a speech in which he warned the nation about the rising influence of what he called the “military-industrial complex.” As America’s top general in World War II and then as president, Eisenhower had seen firsthand how U.S. industrial manufacturing firms had turned our… Continue reading

Why do online marketers tell you to do one thing while they do the opposite?

It’s ironic (and telling) that most online marketers sell with in-person, relationship-based approach while they are telling businesses to try to reel in customers without interacting with anyone. Neil Ball and I talked about this disingenuous approach on The Entrepreneur Way podcast recently. Here’s a short sample clip from the show: Listen to the full-length… Continue reading

How online marketers use your brain against you

One of the things I dig into in “Clicksand” is how similar the concepts behind many online marketing tools are to those used in casino gambling. The dashboards and stats used for online marketing reporting are supposedly there to help business owners make better decisions, but in reality, many of the reports are just designed… Continue reading