The best way to hold customers is to constantly figure out how to give them more for less.

Marketing is becoming a battle based on information than on sales power.

We need to put limits on how much an individual, group or business can spend on influencing an individual legislator or a whole set of legislators. Look at the vast sums that the NRA spends on getting all legislators to be soft on gun control. Legislators find it hard to refuse the NRA's largess when they need contributions to their political campaign wherever they can get them.

Today's smart marketers don't sell products; they sell benefit packages. They don't sell purchase value only; they sell use value.

The Republican Party has consistently opposed Obamacare (as costing more), stimulus spending (as increasing inflation), etc., none of which has happened in spite of seven years of their warnings. Their main problem is that they don't have the character to admit that they are wrong. They don't have enough character to rethink their deeply held assumptions.

Authentic marketing is not the art of selling what you make but knowing what to make. It is the art of identifying and understanding customer needs and creating solutions that deliver satisfaction to the customers, profits to the producers and benefits for the stakeholders.

Thomas Edison had great visions (for lights, music players, movies, etc.) but he knew they didn't count until he could make them work. His statement that creativity is 99% perspiration makes that point. Consider how much time he spent trying to make a synthetic rubber material for tires and never stopped trying but he never succeeded.