The Basic Ingredient of Marketing, The Importance of a Handshake and, Ummm, What’s That Smell?

Each month I come across some brilliant videos, quotes, books, articles, etc. (and plenty of crappy ones too!).

Here are three that particularly resonated with me (in a good way) in July:

A Quote: The Basic Ingredient of Marketing

“As a marketer, understanding the depth and urgency of raw need in your target population is critical. This is where world-class sales pitches begin to foment. It’s the basic ingredient.” – John Carlton

In prepping for my recent interview with copywriting legend John Carlton, I read and reread his ebook, “The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Getting Your Shit Together“. This book has gem after gem of invaluable insights about sales and marketing from one of the best. No one I’ve come across has a deeper understanding of consumer pshychology and how to use it to craft incredible marketing pieces than John. I highly recommend picking up this ebook here.

An Article: The Emotions of Smell

This is a short, fascinating article about how retailers use smell to help drive people to buy. Now, I know most of you are not retailers and aren’t going to use smell to influence buyers (at least until people can smell through their computers!). But that’s not the point of sharing this. The point is to see how the retailers are using smell as a way to trigger EMOTIONS in their customers that get them in the buying mood. Read the article and think about how you could tap into your customers’ emotions more in your marketing.

A Video:  The Power of a Handshake

Big wakeup call in a world where our business “network” is defined by how many people we’re connected to on LinkedIn, our “friends” are people we stalk or play Farmville with on Facebook and our “conversations” involve sending 140 character messages to on Twitter. Great lesson here from Simon Sinek for both our business and personal lives.