Credit Debt Banking News | CDBN

I talk to a lot of companies that are still hunting for customer #1, or a few sales have been made but the ball isn’t rolling yet.

Most of them are making the same mistake: Their public persona is exactly wrong.

I know, because I made the same mistake! But I learned my lesson, and I’d like to share it with you.

Even before I had a single customer, I “knew” it was important to look professional. My website would need to look and feel like a “real company.” I need culture-neutral language complimenting culturally-diverse clip-art photos of frighteningly chipper co-workers huddled around a laptop, awash with the thrill and delight of configuring a JDBC connection to SQL Server 2008.

It also means ..read more

TV stations should pay for local programming, since they have the advertising revenue to support it. But they’re crying poor and saying that costs should be subsidized by cable TV and satellite TV operators.

The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission agreed and told the cable and satellite companies to set up a local programming improvement fund (LPIF). But it didn’t tell them they had to absorb the cost.

Result: Consumers pay the bill. The carriers just downloaded it onto us.

Many customers of Rogers Cable wrote to me after receiving letters about the new charge. But Bell is also asking customers to pay without even advance notice by mail. Instead, it has a notice at its website.

You have to wonder about a government agency that imposes a ..read more

Do you read business blogs where the author has failed three times without success?

No, because you want to learn from success, not hear about “lessons learned” from a guy who hasn’t yet learned those lessons himself.

However, the fact that you are learning only from success is a deeper problem than you imagine.

Some stories will expose the enormity of this fallacy.

Bullet holes: A brain teaser During World War II the English sent daily bombing raids into Germany. Many planes never returned; those that did were often riddled with bullet holes from anti-air machine guns and German fighters.

Wanting to improve the odds of getting a crew home alive, English engineers studied the locations of the bullet holes. Where the planes were hit most, ..read more

Everyone says “be remarkable” is the best marketing advice.

It’s easy to say, but how exactly do you go about doing it?

Although not planned this way, this was the main theme when I was interviewed?by Justin Vincent and Jason Roberts over at the?techZING!?postcast.

Click here to listen.

Yeah 90 minutes is a long time, but we covered a lot of ground, including some topics I haven’t written about yet, like how writing a paperback book — and giving it away for free — transformed marketing and sales at Smart Bear.

P.S. Some of you had asked for more audio content; is this satisfying your craving? Leave a comment and let me know if you’d like to see more of this.

I’ve been guest-posting over at the Avangate blog on the subject of increasing sales conversions for software sold over the web.

This five-part series covers downloading, installers, follow-up, and user interface design.

The first two posts are up now:

Losing Trials at the Installer — why a huge percentage of people who download never get a trial started, and some tips for improving the conversion.

Collecting Data from the Download — why collecting a tiny amount of data at the point of download is better than none (contrary to popular wisdom), how to make a form that isn’t a barrier to download, what hidden information to collect, and what you can do with that data.

I’ll let you know when new posts are up, but consider subscribing ..read more