Wizard of Ads Partners

How to put the best face on your company and get the outcomes you’re hoping for.

Selling Your Baby: A Practical Guide to Business Exit As the previous post focused on the changing needs of the company and the changing role of the CEO, in this post, I want to focus specifically on what it means to leave the company you started and grew. The two most common reasons for exiting

Epley, Steffel, and Eyal studied this. We think we know what somebody is thinking, but we suck at it.

Boost Sales Conversations and Stop Guessing What Customers Are Thinking Listen to the podcast above, watch the video, or read the script below.   Dennis Collins: Today's topic, "What are you thinking?" Well, the deal is that we human beings have the unique ability to think

I’m always going to believe in the power of sound to resonate and provoke a response months and years down the road.

Achieving Branding on the Brain A few years ago, while enjoying the outdoor music festival splendor here in Austin, I was walking through beautiful Zilker Park during the Austin City Limits Festival, and a melody caught my ear from a stage more than a hundred yards away that caused me to start singing along from nothing more than....

It's the depression and bread costs 10 cents. Pepperidge was fully sold out at 25 cents.

Selling High-End in Hard Times: The Rise of Healthier Bread While struggling in the great depression, Margaret Rudkin was brave enough to offer her healthy bread, made for her son, to the local baker. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts |

Because they sell reach as an advertising platform, why would they give it for free when they can convince you to pay for it?

Social Media Sucks Today Once upon a time, social media was great. Then came the investors, who were just the foot soldiers in front of the evil AI algorithm that ruined everything. Today, posting to social media may show up in front of your subscribers or followers if the evil AI algorithm thinks they should see it in thei...

Should I emphasize limited time or limited quantity? Which is more persuasive? Learn the science on that and more.

The Principle of Scarcity   Listen to the podcast above, watch the video, or read the script below. Dennis Collins: Hi, it's Dennis again. This is Connect & Convert. Insider strategies for small business sales success. We have

Speaking to the masses is the only way to have the masses buy your better mousetrap. And it works like any courtship.

Winking in the dark I bumped into a girl that I had gone to high school with at a house party, eight years after we graduated. Her name was Sandra, and WOW, looking at her was very easy to do. Striking hazel eyes big enough to get lost in causing me

How I found the care home my brother deserved, and the magic that made it successful.

Loyalty Grows When Your Company Commits To "Do With, Not For" We are made to grasp after our best life. It is what we want for our kids, our parents, our siblings, our staff and clients. You started your business to create those possibilities. That is why you are still in business. If not, move on. It is always the building and the hero’s journey of their

Cheaper branded keywords not only have higher clicks and conversions, they also have higher average tickets.

Are You Paying for Too Much for the Wrong Keywords? Yes. Yes, you almost certainly are paying too much for your keywords. And they are likely the wrong keywords to boot. Here’s why: The majority of your keywords are probably generic keywords for your business category. The people searching on those keywords aren’t familiar with your company or br...

Stephen had a chance meeting that led to an adventure in A.I. development. The recreation of the human brain?

Adventures in A.I. – Left, Right and Connected Stephen had a chance meeting that led to an adventure in A.I. development. The recreation of the human brain? Let us know your thoughts. Dave Young: Welcome back to The Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple sharing stories about business building and empires, going from small

95% of your potential customers are not currently looking for you, but they will someday.

Brand Building vs Sales Activation Your potential customers are either actively looking for a product/solution like the one you offer… or they are not. Ty Heath of The B2B Institute says that for most businesses, at any given time, only around 5% of their potential customers are “in market” for what they offer. This means that ...

Digital marketing is too old for excuses like "the algorithm changed," and "it's still new technology."

2024: The Year Digital Becomes “Traditional” There’s nothing I find more mind-numbingly obnoxious than people who create a dividing line between “Digital Advertising” and “Traditional Advertising.” That false dichotomy was invented by smarmy digital ad people to imply “this new shiny stuff is good…that

When you communicate real beliefs, customers drink that tall glass of water and keep coming back for more.

Pretend is bad for business You live in a pretend world where fears, anxieties, and problems are covered with smiles, laughter, and fake conversation. In your pretend world, you post pictures on social media of the beautiful family, the nice car, and that expensive vacation. In the real world, you question your spouse’s fide...

It’s no good to just learn new skills. It's only good if we apply them.

How to Get the Most From Sales Training Events Listen to the podcast above, watch the video, or read the script below.   Dennis Collins: Hi, it's Dennis again. Welcome to Connect and Convert: insider strategies for small business sales success. Today's topic is how

Brave, bankrupt and brilliant. The young model bounced back.

The Michael Kors Story: Adaptability and Building a Brand Michael Kors was always destined for fashion. Modeling at a young age to losing everything and starting again. Open to adapting is his legacy. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts |

If I ask you how many charity dollars you have left, and you don't know, you are digging a dark hole.

Strategic Giving: A Guide for Local Businesses I still twitch. Ten years later I still work to repress the urge. The muscle memory pulls at me to furtively glance around, decide which pocket or bag it would fit in, and pick it up. “Leah – I’m not a piece of garbage. Look at me! I’m at least 10 cents. Maybe 35!!

We all have a blind spot, and it’s shaped exactly like us. – Junot Diaz

Finding Your Blind Spots We all have a blind spot, and it’s shaped exactly like us. – Junot Diaz There are two reasons why most of us became aware of the concept of blind spots soon after sitting behind the steering wheel of a car for the first time. The first is purely

90 percent of what we do is System One thinking, and these 7 principles speak directly to System One.

Harnessing the Principles of Influence to Boost Sales Listen to the podcast above, watch the video, or read the script below.   Hi, it's Dennis again and it's time to Connect & Convert. About 20 years ago. I had the great fortune and honor

With free samples and a patent, how a family created a tradition from thin air and held 90% market share.

Poinsettia's Billion Dollar Rise to Become a Christmas Icon Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Amazon Music | Blubrry |

You don't want a race car built for speed but missing tires - it will just slide around with nowhere to go.

To Unlock Success Prioritize Effectiveness Over Efficiency A sleek, powerful race car roars down the track, engine screaming, ready to conquer the race. But as it takes the first turn, it skids out of control. Without tires on the wheels, it’s just a metal chassis sliding aimlessly. No matter how powerful the engine or how aerodynamic the design is, it wi...

Empty your bank account and give it all to Google. The click still goes to the known brand 8 out of 10 times.

MYTH: Everyone goes to Google first  “When I’m looking for something, I just Google it.” That’s a phrase that seems obvious because it matches our personal experiences. With 8.5 billion Google searches each day, yours are at

4 factors of messaging that make rivals clutch their pearls and whine at their inability to effectively counter you.

Military-Grade Persuasion for Your Branding Yup, we’re going to delve into some military propaganda and persuasion techniques and how they might be applied to your branding efforts. Specifically, we’ll look at modern Russian propaganda techniques, as described by the RAND corporation under the title “The Firehose of Falsehood”. But do...

How to avoid hires that make you feel sick and recruit a healthy (and profitable) culture.

Hiring Strategies to Avoid Bad Apples Please, if you are sick, stay home. Don’t cough in my coffee, sigh, and tell me that you should be home in bed. Coughing your left lung into the crook of your elbow doesn’t help. We all hate the C word. It doesn’t matter if it was a plot to

Dr. Adam Grant’s breakthrough research drastically improved results - repeatedly - and fostered purpose with context.

Cultivating a Purpose-Driven Sales Team Listen to the podcast above, watch the video, or read the script below. Hi guys. It's Dennis again. How would you like to learn a sales hack? Yes, a sales hack that's easy

New Ideas are like butterflies, beautiful but fleeting.

I had a brilliant idea for my daily post.
I put that idea on hold in my brain.
Then I let my dogs out to play.
I walked back in and my idea was gone.

Our short-term electrical memory is no place to store new ideas.

So, if you have a new idea, write it down.
Then let the dogs out.

I help business owners learn from the experiences of others.

I'm Craig Arthur
Your Business Growth Wizard
[email protected]

They opened 100 markets in 18 months but users weren’t discovering Angie’s online.

Offline Marketing for an Online Business: The Angie's List Strategy Bill Oesterle just wanted an easier way to renovate his home. Angie Hicks was a bright young intern. From answering phones to half of a Billion dollars. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts |

How to get attention? Simple. Speak to the dog in the language of the dog.

Classical Conditioning: Pavlov’s Dog in Advertising Why do advertisers use vivid imagery and sensory vocabulary in their ads? Simple. Because businesses want to associate their products with positive emotions and experiences in the consumer's mind. As a result, whenever customers come across those products in real life, they will recall the feelings....

Whether cartoons or ads, magical things are created when geniuses are given complete creative freedom.

Happy Happy, Joy, Joy Self-professed as***le without a filter is how Bob Camp, one of my idols, describes himself. My kind of people because I'm a bit of an as***le too. Some say you should never meet your idols. I prefer to say, "Recognize your idols are ordinary people who've done extraordinary things." He created the....

Buyers want to hear what’s in it for them. They also need to know "why can I trust you."

When Good Advertising Advice Conflicts — And How to Reconcile It In many ways, the following tweet can be seen to represent solid advertising advice: Note though, that this advice is more innovative and entrepreneurial in nature. The tweet is telling you how to introduce a new product or service to the market. And her advice is to focus

Who to serve first. Is it humans with actual eyeballs? Or do the web-crawling spiders that fuel search algorithms win out?

Robots or Eyeballs? Whether or not you’re a resident of the lovely city of Georgetown, Texas, stop me if you’ve danced to this song before. While using your trusty Internet device of choice to look for a plumber, the top search engine result is some robotic blog post with a headline