Fall is my favorite time of year.

Football.

Lower humidity.

Normal, comfortable temperatures.

Product launches and new clients.


“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”

— Albert Camus


All good things.

So, take a quick break from your busy fall schedule and check out these must-read marketing articles:

• Flywheel Effect: Why Positive Feedback Loops are a Meta-Competitive Advantage, Medium
• 5 Hardest Things in Conversion Optimization, CXL
• 23 Free Blogging Tools That Will Make You a Better Blogger, Jeff Bullas
• Uber's New CEO, Ben Thompson
• The Ultimate Guide to Making Smart Decisions, Farnham Street

Fall of the Wall between Sales and Marketing?

The relationship between sales and marketing is fraught with distrust and misunderstanding. Sales people are reluctant to share any information about their sales activity and funnel, while marketers are blindly messaging market segments without direct feedback from sales teams and their prospects.

This situation may be changing.

The deployment of powerful cloud based tools to sales teams, like Salesforce, and to marketing teams, like Hubspot, have allowed companies to break down these silos and foster trust and communication.

The opportunity now is to build a transparent data-based funnel from lead to close to referral and track how, where and when your sales and marketing dollars are working...and not.

Want to learn more about how Honeycomb works with our clients to build this kind of sales and marketing infrastructure? Email me to learn more.

What caught my eye in the past month?

1. How to Write Engaging B2B Headlines: Analysis of 10 Million Articles Shared on LinkedIn, BuzzSumo
2. How to Write Marketing Blogs Your Clients Will Actually Read, Jeff Bullas
3. 5 Psychological Principles of High Converting Websites, KissMetrics
4. B2B marketing budget planning tips, FierceCMO
5. Learning to Learn: You, Too, Can Rewire Your Brain, The New York Times

Dog Days of Marketing?

This month's Straight to the Point post will be short, as I'm sure most of you want skip over this part and click on links to five awesome marketing articles.

What caught my eye in the past month? 

• Flywheel Effect: Why Positive Feedback Loops are a Meta-Competitive Advantage, Medium 
• Study: Thursdays are best for email engagement, FierceCMO 
• 10 Brilliant Examples of How to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang, Pollock 
• Hooks: An Intro on How to Manufacture Desire, Nir and Far 
• The Daily Routines of Famous Artists and Scholars, The Big Picture 

If you have a question about marketing, the clients we work with, or the services that Honeycomb Consulting provides, just contact me here.

Why Read This Post?

For the past 10-15 years, marketing has been undergoing a series of shifting changes in strategy, tactics, feel and tone.

As you know, the basics of human communication are eternal, but the methods by which we, the professional marketers, reach customers are constantly being tested, improved or discarded.

Keeping up to speed on the latest techniques is a challenge for all of us. The whole reason I started my newsletter, "Straight to the Point" six plus years ago, was to share the articles I felt were important for my fellow marketers and non-marketing business leaders to read.

Here are a few that caught my eye this week:

1. The Best Ways to Market Your Business on LinkedIn [Infographic], Social Media Today 
2. Cognitive Bias Survival Guide: Manage the Mind to Make Better Decisions, Geek Wrapped 
3. 10 Brilliant Examples of How to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang, Pollock 
4. Identifying top analytics talent in a competitive environment, Marketing Land 
5. Words on Words: Books That Will Improve Your Writing, Gregory Ciotti 

If you have a question about marketing, the clients we work with, or the services that Honeycomb provides, just email me at jeff@honeycomb-consulting.com.

New Honeycomb Website!

As last, we finally updated and refreshed the Honeycomb Consulting website. Please take a look and share your thoughts and feedback. Greatly appreciated!

My first marketing projects back in the 1990s were hand coding and designing websites. The technologies available today make that process much easier, quicker and cheaper.

Here are a few client websites we've worked on over the last few years, in various capacities:

• RedSeal- https://redseal.net 
• ParkMyCloud- http://www.parkmycloud.com/ 
• Scarab- http://www.wearscarab.com/ 
• Priveo- http://www.priveo.me

After checking out the new corporate site (www.honeycomb-consulting.com), spend a few minutes perusing these must read articles:

1. 20 of the Best Website Homepage Design Examples, HubSpot 
2. 10 Brilliant Examples of How to Open Your Next Blog Post With a Bang, Michael Pollack 
3. CMO audit series, Part 3: Media channels (it’s not what you think), MarTech Today 
4. 263 Self-Driving Car Startups to Watch, Comet Labs 
5. How the Bitcoin protocol actually works, DDI

Drop me a line if you want to hear about our latest marketing projects or discuss your upcoming marketing priorities in the second half of the year.

Spring Has Sprung...Finally

Sometimes it is hard to concentrate when the sun stays out longer and weather gets warmer.

Take a few minutes and check out these must read articles:

1. 7 of the Best Mother's Day Ads We've Ever Seen, HubSpot
2. Intel, Mobileye, and Smiling Curves, Stratechery
3. 7 steps to help you prepare for a marketing cloud/email service provider transition, MarTech Today
4. This Sales Plan Moves the Needle on Every Success Metric, First Round Review
5. The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything, The Atlantic

April Showers Mean More Must-Read Marketing Articles

Spring seems to have finally arrived.

Regular baseball games are being played and the NBA playoffs have started.

Am I going to pass along some great articles about how to make your marketing better, faster and more measurable?

You bet I am.

Take a few seconds and check out these excellent readings:

1. 68% of consumers prefer brands to communicate via email, Fierce CMO
2. How Google Analytics ruined marketing, Tech Crunch
3. 19 content marketing ideas that aren’t blog posts, 500 Startups
4. Pivot Survival Tactics from Kabam's 3 Near-Death Triumphs, First Round Review
5. Words on Words: Books That Will Improve Your Writing, Gregory Ciotti

If you have a question about marketing, the clients we work with, or the services that Honeycomb provides, just send me an email.

March Marketing Madness- Got your brackets filled out?

Got your brackets filled out?

Should be an entertaining month of basketball with upsets, Cinderellas and, maybe, Villanova winning it all.

A few years ago, Honeycomb client Ostrato just put out a fun video to celebrate the NCAA Tournament. Click the image to watch...



After that video production, we helped Ostrato execute a "startup pivot" and rebranded the company as ParkMyCloud, which has been super successful, leading to high numbers of new clients and a new round of funding.

In fact, ParkMyCloud is a finalist for DC Inno's DC Tech Madness bracket style startup competition. You can vote for them here and check out all of the other successful DC startups.

While your watching your favorite teams and updating your brackets, take a few seconds and check out these articles:

1. The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything, The Atlantic (Good background on “Most Advanced Yet Acceptable”)
2. 7 Email Marketing Predictions for 2017, Campaign Monitor
3. 5 Content Marketing Predictions for 2017, Convince and Convert
4. The Best Time to Send Emails (Here’s What Studies Show), Optin Monster
5. 40 Things Every Startup Should Do To Scale Up, Inc42

Is February The Worst Month?

Cold (-ish).

Dreary.

No football.

February isn't my favorite time of year.

But that doesn't mean I'm not reviewing the new marketing related content and passing along a few posts I like.

Take a couple of minutes and check out:

1. 12 Best Practices For Writing Website Copy That Actually Converts, Reddit Marketing
2. 5 Content Marketing Predictions for 2017, Covince and Convert
3. The Most Surefire Way I’ve Found to Win Enterprise Deals, First Round Review
4. The Best Time to Send Emails (Here’s What Studies Show), Optin Monster
5. 5 tips for sending an email blast without getting blacklisted, Marketing Land