The Marketing Detective Agency

31/12/2025

It's been quite a year! Bring on 2026

06/01/2025

There are usually 3 reasons people don't want to niche.

1. They are new and starting out and don't know enough about what clients want their services.

2. They think they have a commodity product or service, one that can't be differentiated from competitors.

3. They think that niching means turning money away.

Niching, or focusing on a specific segment of a broader market, has several benefits:

1. Targeted Marketing: You can tailor your marketing strategies to cater specifically to the needs and preferences of your niche audience, resulting in more effective campaigns.

2. Reduced Competition: By focusing on a specific niche, you often face less competition compared to broader markets, making it easier to stand out.

3. Expertise Development: Specialising in a niche allows you to develop deep expertise and knowledge, establishing you as an authority and trusted advisor within that niche.

01/01/2025

14/10/2024

30/06/2024

What an amazing evening at Awards evening last night. Well done and team. Congratulations to all the finalists and all the winners.

19/02/2024

1. Reciprocity:

Reciprocity works on the basis that if you give something away for free (particularly something that the receiver wasn’t expecting, therefore delighting them…), the receiver feels that they owe you something in return and may therefore be more open to engaging with you.

So providing great value content can cause people to be more likely to buy from you.

Or free membership to a training course (limited modules but you can buy the rest).

Sound familiar?

A warning though: Make sure that the relationship doesn’t begin and end with reciprocity.

25/01/2024

Once upon a time....

A company can create a culture with a memorable story.

The difficulty is that it could have a positive or negative effect.

For example, a story of the boss yelling publicly at an employee and then the employee being fired could result in a culture of always agreeing with the boss to keep your job.

A story of a great company meeting where people raise ideas and which resulted in one brainstorm by the call centre agent that saved the company millions, could result in a culture where everyone is eager to share and generate ideas.

In reality, these stories may not even be true. Or if they are true, these stories may only understand one person's perspective.

But it's a story which gets spread and shared.

My favourite stories about my business involve lots of laughter, me getting lost, and a kareoke bar or two.

And I hope these stories create the work hard, play hard culture I believe in.

What stories do you have about your business? Are they the kind of stories you want?

23/01/2024

Choosing a brand name is a strategic decision.

But all too often business owners make it a personal decision.

It's very easy to be caught up in the emotions of your brand name.

But a great brand name will take your business to new heights.

Things to think about:

👍Ensure the name is capable of evolving as your business grows and expands with new products and services.

👍Choose a name that will last – because it could be an expensive exercise to change it

👍Aim for your brand name to have meaning and relevance for your business and for your customers.

👍Try to have a name that is different from competitors’ names.

👍Ensure your brand name is easy to say, spell and remember.

👍Always check that you can register and protect your new name.

This means check that no one else has the same brand registered, that you can get the URL and that you can trademark the name.

And remember that a brand is more than a name. Think about the logo, colour, font, shape. All of these need to work together.

Human beings are hard-wired to seek meaning in names, symbols and colours. It’s rapid and unconscious.

This is why it’s worth the effort, time and trouble to choose your brand name with care.

How did you arrive at your brand name?

19/01/2024

Why do Western women shave their underarms?

It was all due to marketing.

The Great Underarm Campaign was launched in 1915 to convince American women to shave their armpits.

A 1982 article from the Journal of American Culture by Christine Hope bearing the grand title “Caucasian Female Body Hair and American Culture” explains.

The gist of the article is that U.S. women were browbeaten into shaving underarm hair by a sustained marketing assault that began in 1915.

The initial ads appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, a magazine aimed at the upper crust and featured a woman in a sleeveless toga-style dress reaching skyward. The first part of the ad read: "Summer Dress and Modern Dancing combine to make necessary the removal of objectionable hair."

The ad went on to introduce a depilatory powder, but this would soon grow into an entire industry for women's razors, gels and accessories.

The start of an industry.

When used to its best potential, marketing offers products and services that solve meaningful problems customers face.

On the flip side, marketing can be used to drive greed, and create unhealthy behaviours.

There are numerous examples of both over time.

Our marketing efforts should be contributing to a better world.

Agree?

16/01/2024

Do you have a favicon?

No, not a mythical creature like a unicorn.

A favicon is a small 16×16 pixel icon that serves as branding for your website.

The word favicon is a portamentau made out of the words “favorite” and “icon”

Its main purpose is to help visitors locate your page easier when they have multiple tabs open.

Due to their tiny size, favicons work best as simple images or one-to-three characters of text.

A favicon can actually be either a PNG, GIF, or ICO file.

Favicons appear in Google mobile search results for a page's search snippet.

Favicons also appear in browser tabs and next to a page in a browser's bookmark sections.

A favicon helps with the following functions:

🎉 Branding.
🎉 Easy identification by a user (important for usability).
🎉 Gives a professional look to the site.

When a site has no favicon, the default image that a browser displays is that of a generic globe icon

Some of the typical images used as a favicon are:

👍 The logo or a part of the logo
👍 The first letter of the brand
👍 An image that graphically represents what the particular site is about

What have you chosen for your favicon?