Screen shot of Plugins within a WordPress Dashboard

January 11, 20194Comments

Which WordPress Plugins Should You Use and Why

Every WordPress Site Needs Plugins But which ones? And why? Last night I met someone who was confused about this. I told him I would send him a list of which

by Kevin Carney

Image of old vintage Avis Unique Selling Proposition that really helped grow their business.

Marketing

June 8, 20180Comments

In Closing: Your High Growth Unique Selling Proposition

Getting your USP right is not quick and is not easy, but when you get it dialed in right, it carries your business. It explains to people in very few seconds

by Kevin Carney

Image shows a woman talking into a metal can with a string attached and is representative of communication, or in this specific instance, communicating your Unique Selling Proposition to the market.

Marketing

June 6, 20180Comments

How to Communicate Your High Growth Unique Selling Proposition

Communicating your USP starts while you’re testing it, and continues after you think you’ve got it right. When you come to the realization you’ve got a product that solves a real

by Kevin Carney

Image business meeting representing a customer and/or prospect giving feedback, in this instance on how the USP meets its needs.

Marketing

June 4, 20180Comments

How to Test Your High Growth Unique Selling Proposition

Once you’ve developed what you think is a good USP, how do you test it? There are two ways that make sense. Of course, if you think of more, let

by Kevin Carney

Image shows the iterative process of creating a high growth Unique Selling Proposition.

Marketing

June 1, 20180Comments

How to Craft a High Growth Unique Selling Proposition

Once you’ve got background information on the whole USP thing, how do you craft YOURS? I found a great method described in a blog post titled 5 Ways to Develop a

by Kevin Carney

Image shows a jungle overgrowing and walkway. It is representative of the idea of a High Growth business fueled by a strong Unique Selling Proposition.

Marketing

May 27, 20180Comments

How to Figure Out a High Growth Unique Selling Proposition

So…. How do you create a great USP? The short answer is….. Slowly, through iterations. But…. And this is critical….. If you don’t have data to back up your USP, you

by Kevin Carney

Marketing

May 26, 20180Comments

Examples of Fantastic and Terrible Unique Selling Propositions

Some brands have experienced impressive growth during periods where they used a really effective Unique Selling Proposition (USP), then lost market share later when they stopped. This has occurred often enough

by Kevin Carney

Image shows a Volkswagen Beetle (cira 1960 to 1970 ish) which is representative of an exceptionally great ad campaign which positioned small cars as “cool”.

Marketing

May 23, 20180Comments

Very Important Ideas About High Growth Unique Selling Propositions

Sometimes, for your message to get through, it’s necessary to (metaphorically speaking) hit someone over the head with a message that effectively says “What you know is wrong”. Dispelling Myths A YouTube

by Kevin Carney

Image shows robots being assembled in a factory. It is intended to invoke the idea of “The Customer Factory” which is a model of monitoring and measuring customer acquisition activities.

Marketing

May 20, 20180Comments

How The Customer Factory Helps You Achieve Massive Growth

When you get your USP right, EVERY “flow” of The Customer Factory is better. Monitoring The Customer Factory for your business tells you if your USP is working. The Customer Factory I

by Kevin Carney

Image of giant sequoia redwood tree as a representative of “massive growth” within the context of your business, which is achieved in part by figuring out your Unique Selling Proposition.

Marketing

May 15, 20180Comments

How Your Unique Selling Proposition Fuels Massive Growth

How are your USP and your UVP different? It depends who you ask. When you Google for USP vs UVP, you get various answers. Some people say they’re different. Others say they’re

by Kevin Carney

This image illustrates how focusing on what you provide to your customers that your competitors don’t helps you create your Unique Selling Proposition

Marketing

May 1, 20180Comments

Why a Great Unique Selling Proposition Creates Massive Growth

This article provides examples of how a USP that IS MEANINGFUL, has created massive growth for companies. These are real examples taken from real companies (some old, some new), whose USPs

by Kevin Carney

This image shows a vintage ad for M&Ms candy, with the Unique Selling Proposition clearly identified, which is “The milk chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand”.

Marketing

March 19, 20180Comments

Creating Your Unique Selling Proposition (Brand Strategy)

A great Unique Selling Proposition (USP) will cause the market to pull your business along. You'll have trouble keeping up. A mediocre one makes you just like everyone else. Your USP, is the simple

by Kevin Carney

Image shows how Contextual Marketing is enabled via social media and “lives” at the intersection of how we define ourselves (profiles), and what we do online (behaviors) allowing advertisers to place highly targeted ads in front of people who are very likely to be interested.

Misc

February 26, 20182Comments

How to generate high quality leads with contextual marketing

What Contextual Marketing is Not Contextual marketing is neither Outbound Marketing nor Inbound Marketing, both of which provide a lower ROI today. To better understand Contextual Marketing, it’s important to first understand the

by Kevin Carney

Image showing what “Walking the Controversy Tightrope” is like

Inbound Marketing

January 18, 20180Comments

How to increase blog traffic with controversial topics

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics The topic of using controversy to grow blog traffic and generate leads is, in and of itself, controversial. I’ve read articles online that talk about how well

by Kevin Carney

An image showing a traditional sales funnel.

Marketing

December 27, 20170Comments

How to increase leads and revenue with Pipeline Marketing

What is Pipeline Marketing? At its core, Pipeline Marketing is nothing more than the attribution of “credit” for generating revenue, across various activities that are required to capture a lead, nurture

by Kevin Carney

Link Building

SEO

November 13, 20171Comments

Link Building Tools for Better SEO

What Are Links? The word "link" is an abbreviation of hyperlink, and hyper means “jump”. A hyperlink is a jump from one web page to another. Components of a Link Links have two parts. Attributes of

by Kevin Carney

Image showing the numerous tools a company uses for content marketing, and the sheer number of such tools.

Inbound Marketing

October 9, 20176Comments

The Big List of Content Marketing Tools

This post started as a simple rant about how most Content Marketing tools are too expensive and too complicated for small businesses to make effective use of them, and somehow

by Kevin Carney

An image illustrating the creation of data driven content for your audience

Inbound Marketing

October 4, 20170Comments

What is data-driven content? How is it relevant to your audience?

Data-Driven Content: The New Buzz Phrase Data-driven content is when you pay close attention to the analytics of what you publish (blog posts, social media updates, etc), learn what people show

by Kevin Carney

SEO

September 24, 20170Comments

What is semantic search? How to do SEO like a professional

What is Semantic SEO? The commonly cited concise definition of semantic SEO is a bit cryptic. “Semantic search is a search or a question or an action that produces meaningful results, even

by Kevin Carney

Increased website interaction on various types of devices

Marketing

September 18, 20170Comments

How to increase user interaction on your business website

Best Way to Increase Web Visitor Interaction Increasing visitor interaction has a wide range of benefits online. All other things being equal (which is never fully the case, but the guidelines

by Kevin Carney

Image asking the question “Should you script your videos”?

Video Marketing

September 13, 20170Comments

Should you use a script for your videos? If yes, how?

You WILL be doing video! Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next year (probably by next year), but you will be doing video, and sooner than you think. Why? The

by Kevin Carney

How do you use presuppositions phrases to help sell stuff?

Inbound Marketing

August 30, 20170Comments

How to Sell More Easily and Naturally with Presuppositions

Presuppositional Phrases are the Language of Advertising “Nothing whitens better than Crest” “Why suffer another summer?” “This year, I’ll stop asking ‘Do I look fat’?” Notice the first statement does NOT state that Crest

by Kevin Carney

Optimizing internal website linking to improve SEO

Inbound Marketing

August 27, 20170Comments

What Is Internal Linking and Why Is It Important for SEO?

Overview The internal link structure of your website has a HUGE effect on your SEO. Ideally your internal link structure should be a hierarchy, not a web. The diagram below shows a

by Kevin Carney

Small improvements in conversion rate has a HUGE impact

Inbound Marketing

August 20, 20170Comments

How to choose the right CRO metrics for improved conversions

Conversions and Micro Conversions For a business website, having visitors show up to your website is only the first step. To turn website visitors into prospects, you need some of your

by Kevin Carney

Brand Journalism

August 16, 20170Comments

The importance of creating customer focused content and how to

Better Marketing through Customer Focus We’re busy. We’re bombarded with marketing messages all day, every day. We’re very good at filtering them out. Until we let one through. Customers have different behaviors

by Kevin Carney

What are the steps to continuous content marketing improvement?

Inbound Marketing

August 2, 20170Comments

How to continuously improve your content with Deming lessons

Who was Deming? W. Edwards Deming was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, and a management consultant. He transformed Japanese manufacturing after World War II after American manufacturers thought his ideas were

by Kevin Carney

What are the best SEO tips recommended for Wordpress users?

SEO

July 26, 20175Comments

Need strong SEO? Here is how to set up your WordPress site

Overview While having a website that is properly setup for SEO does not guarantee SEO success, having one that is designed and/or setup poorly can guarantee failure. While the bulk of the

by Kevin Carney

What is the ideal checklist of a great blog post for your business?

Inbound Marketing

July 18, 20171Comments

How to… The Anatomy of writing the best blog post possible

Background We all want to write good blog posts, and most of us fail to do so. The vast majority of what businesses publish on the Internet is crap. While it’s

by Kevin Carney

Brand Journalism

July 14, 20174Comments

How to write the best blog posts possible with storytelling

What makes the best blog post, best? Best is a subjective term, yet the title of this post implies you can follow a “recipe” to create posts of high value that

by Kevin Carney

The MozBar chrome plugin shows the Domain Authority Score

SEO

June 26, 20170Comments

Find better citation links with mozbar domain authority

What is Domain Authority? It is an integer, between 1 and 100, that was created by Moz (an SEO tool vendor located in Seattle, WA) that provides an indication of the

by Kevin Carney

The quality of your website content is NOT as subjective as you thought, per Google

Inbound Marketing

June 24, 20170Comments

Google Reveals How to Rank High with Quality Website Content

Content Quality? Beyond the obvious idea of higher quality content being “better”, it’s important to understand WHY Google is so focused on the concept of content quality and how this is

by Kevin Carney

Glossary

January 18, 20170Comments

Back links

Back links are links from webpages on sites other than your site, than "link back" to pages on your website. The image above should help illustrate the idea. Back links are critically important

by Kevin Carney

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is: "[the] version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort" — Eric Ries.

Marketing

October 16, 20160Comments

What makes a good Minimum Viable Product?

Have you (or has anyone you know) failed with "Build it and they will come."? I'm currently reading The Lean Startup in preparation for us developing a software product which will

by Kevin Carney

It's important that your business blog posts actually say something rather than "just" repeat what others already have.

Inbound Marketing

September 17, 20160Comments

How to Ensure Your Blog Posts Actually Say Someting

Content is King! Yes we know. We've all heard this all before. We don't need to hear this again. I'm not sure anyone believes that more strongly than I do, having direct

by Kevin Carney

Marketing automation companies and software programs

Inbound Marketing

August 31, 20160Comments

Lead nurturing: How to get started with marketing automation

Marketing automation is a form of email marketing that is very sophisticated. It is both the most effective and the most difficult to implement of your email marketing options. What makes marketing

by Kevin Carney

How does social media contribute to the SEO ranking of your website?

Inbound Marketing

August 20, 20160Comments

How Social Media Contributes to Your SEO Ranking

According to Google, Social Media likes and shares are not taken into account when Google presents web pages in a search engine result page (SERP). This was first said by Matt

by Kevin Carney

How do you systematize the publishing of content to your business blog

Inbound Marketing

July 31, 20160Comments

Can (and Should) You Systematize Your Content Creation?

The short answer is yes. In general (there are a few exceptions, but the rule is) Google provides higher ranking for websites that are both updated more often and contain more

by Kevin Carney

Brand Journalism

July 24, 20160Comments

How to make your website your digital hub (under your URL)

Before I get to how, let me first explain why I have personally known business owners who built up an impressive following on their Facebook business page. Lots of followers, lots

by Kevin Carney

Robert Ryan (SEO consultant, Ireland) has proven that blogging is the key to successful SEO.

Inbound Marketing

July 10, 20160Comments

Why Business Blogging is THE CORE to Successful SEO

The discussion of the importance of blogging to SEO can now cease. Robert Ryan, an SEO consultant in Ireland, conducted an experiment whose conclusion is definitive. In summary.... he built up a

by Kevin Carney

Show People That Your Customers Back You Up

Inbound Marketing

July 4, 20160Comments

How to obtain critically important online reviews

Customer tell you they're thrilled with your service. You ask them to provide you an online review. They say they will. They don't. How often does this happen to you? If you're

by Kevin Carney

parallax scrolling websites do hurt SEO, but it's VERY neglegable

Inbound Marketing

June 27, 20160Comments

How to use a parallax website design and not hurt SEO

Parallax scrolling is when the home page of a website is one big page and scrolls up and down and when you select a menu item on the website it

by Kevin Carney

Doing your own SEO is not only NOT crazy, but for small businesses who don't have cash to burn, it can be the only way to launch your online visibility.

Inbound Marketing

March 13, 20160Comments

Doing Your Own SEO is Not Crazy, It’s Inexpensive and Effective

The other day the following post crossed my path on social media. How to do SEO on Your Own (If You're Crazy Enough to Attempt it) The point of the article is that SEO

by Kevin Carney

A structured study now demonstrates that outbound links ARE search signals and do positively impact your website organic search ranking

Inbound Marketing

March 1, 20163Comments

Why You Need Outbound Links in EVERY Blog Post on Your Website

The discussion about should you link to other sites can now be closed. A company named Reboot SEO & Marketing conducted a structured study on the effect of external (or

by Kevin Carney

Brand Journalism

February 28, 20160Comments

How to Ensure Your Small Business Wins with Content Marketing

Small Business Content Marketing Works We've seen time and time again the benefits of effective Content Marketing: Increased organic search web traffic More leads Better leads Engaging with prospects when they're further down their buyers

by Kevin Carney

Low budget small business marketing is possible online when done well. Most do it poorly.

Inbound Marketing

February 18, 20160Comments

How to market your small business on a limited budget: Inbound rescues!

New business? High hopes? Too few leads? You're not alone. The #1 need for ANY business is a steady stream of quality leads. People who both need what you sell and have

by Kevin Carney

Inbound Marketing

February 17, 20160Comments

What is a content manager? Why does your business marketing need one?

Succeeding at generating leads through Inbound Marketing requires publishing useful content at frequent and regular intervals. But... Small business owners are busy, wear many hats, and constantly juggle priorities. Therefore... Most small businesses I've

by Kevin Carney

How do you design landing page form to generate high quality website conversions

Inbound Marketing

February 9, 20162Comments

How to Create Landing Page Forms for High Quality Leads

Before I get to the form part of the landing page, I'll talk a little about landing page design in general. Landing pages should be sparse and contain only what is

by Kevin Carney

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