The business world is changing and how we search and consume information has drastically changed in the last five to ten years.  Possibly no other business disciple has changed more dramatically than that of marketing and staying on top of current trends is becoming increasingly more difficult.

As a company, Marketing Eye invests and trains its people to stay abreast of current trends impacting the market. We find for many of our clients, what has worked in the past as effective marketing and sales, no longer works.  We understand that when operating a business, staying on-top of the ever-changing marketing landscape is not only challenging, but time consuming and in some cases just not possible.

At Marketing Eye Dallas, we have not only owned our own businesses, but we have helped many entrepreneurs who struggle with the new sales funnels, automations, and digital communication landscape.

Deciding to outsource your marketing function is something business owners don't take lightly.  Here are the advantages and disadvanges of deciding to hire someone to manage your business' marketing.

For many years bids have been won based on two factors; one, who you know and two, being the lowest bidder.  If your company was able to perform the work and your proposal came in at the lowest price, you got the job. Over time, there has been a gradual shift towards design-build requests for proposals, along with an increased importance on qualified bidders.

This shift in preference of design-build proposals over lowest-bid proposals, and the increased importance placed on qualified bidders, has created a need for a B2B marketing strategy that did not exist in years past.

Let's face it, we are all busy.  Keeping up with the ever changing landscape of marketing, entrepreneurship, social media can be a challenge with an already full schedule. A tool that I have found that is both educational and entertaining is podcasts.  When stuck in traffic or sitting at an hour and half swim team practice, I really enjoy listening to others experiences in business. Not only is it a distraction from the parking lot of Dallas rush-hour traffic, I usually learn something that I can apply to my own business and life.

A good podcast is more than educational, it is entertaining. The more you listen, the more you really get to know and enjoy the host.  While the podcasts I listen to all have a business, entrepreneur or marketing spin, they also have a personal side. Think  more along the lines of "This American Life", and less like an economics college lecture.

Here are my top ten picks:

In the contest between the two sides to marketing, inbound and outbound, inbound is winning. While traditional marketing efforts have been placed on obtaining customers through creativity, understanding customers' wants and needs, going out and finding the next sale, the sneaky inbound marketers are servicing customers coming to them.

There will always be a need for outbound marketing, but for any company that wants to engage with their customers and is looking to offer a unique customer experience, inbound marketing is really the only way forward.

Most businesses have a marketing component, and if they don’t they should, but what makes a marketing department successful is the quality of the marketing manager.

A great marketing manager can be the difference between success and failure, or growth and stagnation.

I've been around the marketing scene in Dallas for over 15 years and I've worked with the very talented and some who ended up in marketing due to a misaligned company reorganization. In that case, marketing is being lead by someone for whom marketing is a foreign language.

As I continue to grow my firm, I'll be searching for marketing managers who are strong tactically. They can apply marketing and business tactics to real world situations. They are super organized. They understand analytics and they have a great attitude.

What do you do when you biggest competitor has endless amounts of revenue to invest in marketing, and you have very little?  You start a grass roots campaign.

We are still early in the 2017 presidential race, but one candidate has caught my attention.  Not from the issues for which he stands, but the creativity of his grassroots campaign. Bernie Sanders may be this fall's  ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.  He is looking  to get the democratic nomination for the 2017 presidential race and his competitor comes with a big 'brand name' and an even bigger budget. 

No matter what side of the aisle you sit, as entrepreneurs we all have been up against a competitor  with strong name recognition and a large marketing budget?  Tackling the behemoth in your industry may be as easy as rallying your supporters and spreading the word through grass roots campaigning and social media.  This doesn't mean you don't invest in marketing, it just means your investment should be spent in a way to maximize the greatest return.

No regrets. It's not just what I say, it's what most people would say, even you, had you not been so afraid to take the risk.


I often have people tell me about the things they would or could do, but don't. They even ask for advice about following their dreams, but move no further than the idea stage.  The reason, most often, is fear of failure.


Fear and insecurities are the single biggest threat to you becoming successful. It ties you up not just for hours, but perhaps years or a lifetime.

Have you been told you should blog? Maybe you have a website with a link to a blog that sits empty.  I hear many reasons not to blog; time, dislike of writing, lack of topics and ideas, or lack of knowledge about what a blog can do for your small business.  However, there are many reasons to blog and the biggest reason of all maybe linked to your bank account.

Last night I caught a few minutes of America's Got Talent.  In the episode, two magicians do the same trick with dramatically different results.  It reminded me how often we enter the sales process with a similar 'trick' (i.e. product or service) to our competition, but our results are dramatically different, one gets the sale, the other does not.