Goldmine Marketing

Category: Opinion

  • Beware: Mark Twain’s Spider LOVES A Quiet Business

    7:02pm
    Saint Paul

    Business Owner, beware of the lesson in this quote from author and advertiser-for-hire, Mark Twain:

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  • Uber, Elon, and Branding Bad Ideas

    10:15pm
    Saint Paul

    Ever been hoodwinked by Uber?

    Thought you were getting a BMW… but a Honda showed up?

    Yep, that happened to my friend Chuck (who really exists, guys, I promise!)

    But I have as different experience, and one that ties into marketing.

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  • This Dog Ate My Brain

    2:34pm
    Saint Paul

    When I was 12 the neighbor’s dog bit my brother.

    We never had a dog of our own.

    Goldfish, yes. A cat. A parakeet. A skink. A snake. Even a “grow a frog” that escaped its water tank… and a week later, hopped across the kitchen floor.

    So I was never much of a dog person.

    In fact I told myself I was afraid of them. The dog bite and all, you understand.

    And any time I saw a dog, this fear consumed my brain.

    But years ago I decided that was silly.

    So I simply reprogrammed my brain.

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  • AI: What Tools?

    3:03pm
    Saint Paul

    I kick myself for not getting into online marketing when I was 12.

    I laugh at myself for selling my fraction of a bitcoin.

    And I still wonder why I didn’t invest more in the stocks of companies that have performed well.

    Hindsight, huh.

    So when I see these “jump on the AI SaaS bandwagon and get rich!” posts, I wonder…

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  • Bad travel’s the best travel

    2:59pm
    Saint Paul

    When we married, my wife’s friend gave us a map of the world, with pushpins to mark where we’re going, where we’ve been, and where we’d like to go.

    We still use the map, nearly 18 years later.

    It’s fun to remember good experiences: The chef who cooked our fresh fish catch. Old-world architecture. Back-of-the-Pepsi-truck hitchhiked rides.

    But it’s more memorable, and therefore more fun, when not-fun-in-the-moment things happen…

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  • What business are you in?

    3:11pm
    Saint Paul

    I saw this fascinating fact on LinkedIn, in Feb 2025:

    “More than half of job seekers have been on the hunt for six months — if not longer.”

    Now, I’m not super active on Social Media. (Connect with me here on X, or here on LinkedIn now!)

    But, don’t you think some of this “job hunt” blame goes to LinkedIn?

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  • …and THAT’s why Carthage must fall!

    2:38pm
    Saint Paul

    Here’s a 2,171-year-old marketing fact about today, February 5:

    Feb 5 was the end of the third Punic war in 146 BC, marking the destruction of the city-state Carthage by the city-state Rome.

    Why did Rome destroy Carthage?

    And what’s this have to do with marketing?

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  • The Best Direct Response Ideas… for Just 10 Bucks!

    3:02pm
    Saint Paul

    When I spoke at a marketing conference last year, I asked if people were familiar with Dan Kennedy.

    Not a single person in my audience raised their hand.

    Which only sorta surprised me.

    Kennedy is a direct response marketer, through and through. He’s got a ton of business ideas, too–many of which go against the grain of modern business and marketing.

    That’s attractive to me.

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  • Happy Birthday, Computer V1RU5

    1:22pm
    Saint Paul, Minn

    Yesterday, Jan 30 1982, the first computer virus was created.

    Richard Skrenta wrote 400 lines of code and disguised the self-spreading malware as harmless software.

    Here’s the thing:

    Computer viruses generally aren’t good.

    But…

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  • Positive vs Negative Headlines–Which is BEST?

    1:26pm
    Saint Paul

    Let me ask you:

    Which works better as a headline: highlighting a problem, or highlighting a solution?

    I ask because I’m reading John Caples’ “Tested Advertising Methods” right now–4th edition, thank you for asking.

    (Which, by the way, a few years back I could only find the 4th edition in Canada, and the seller would only ship to Canada. Knowing that the 5th Edition sucks (from my own personal experience), I found myself a Canadian mule…)

    Anyway.

    In it, Caples says that headlines that highlight the positive tend to out-pull the negative.

    Because, he reasons… who wants to read an ad about problems?

    And while he has a point…

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