Mike Sweeney

Finding and retaining the best talent is hard, even in an employment market that would seem to indicate otherwise. As a small business, we rely on some basic tools and assets to aid in finding the right people – emails, LinkedIn searches, phone calls, networking, social media properties, job posting sites, and of course…the job description. If you haven’t written a job description, know that it’s not easy to write a good one. Even harder to write a great one. Nearly impossible to write one that stands out in the sea of sameness, marked by phrases such as “great opportunity for the right candidate that is driven by success” or “candidate should be able to deliver multiple projects on time and on budget.” On the flip side, it’s not easy to write a good cover letter. I haven’t had to do that in quite some time, but I remember hating every single minute of it. Writing... (more)

This Is Why You Pay Your Marketing Leadership the Big Bucks

We live in a business world, and in particular a marketing world, that is dominated by what lots of people call “solutions”.  Software solutions.  Automation solutions.  Content management solutions.  Social media solutions.  You name it, and someone, somewhere is peddling the latest solution to fill the needs of the enterprise space, the small business space, the startup space, or perhaps the going out of business soon space. Can you tell I am not a big fan of the word solutions? Marketing has not become any easier over the last 15 years.  That’s right.  I’d argue that marketing... (more)

How Successful Customer Acquisition Programs Can Ruin Your Brand

We recently wrapped a client project that involved us delivering a complete marketing evaluation and recommendation, covering areas such as overall marketing strategy, user experience, customer acquisition tactics and consumer messaging. The project required extensive competitor research and evaluation; we looked at everything from competitor creative execution to third-party analytics to social media trends . Of all the competitive research we did, the most revealing task was becoming an actual customer of a few of our client’s competitors. I am not going to name the client, th... (more)

Hiring a Strategic Marketing Firm – 6 Common Missteps

Around this time every year, I am engaged in at least a half a dozen conversations with companies that are looking for a marketing firm to help them reach their goals for the upcoming year. Some know exactly what they’re looking for, and are fully prepared for the selection process. Some don’t know exactly what they’re looking for, but think they’ll know it when they see it. And sadly, some just enter this process with trepidation, because they’ve been burned in the past. Fear – and in particular the fear of making a mistake –  is a very strong force. For a select few, it can be... (more)

Here We Grow Again: Allison Novak Joins the Right Source Marketing Team

Welcome Allison Novak:  Right Source Marketing’s New Marketing Associate Over the past month, the Right Source Marketing team put together our strategic plan for 2012. While we pride ourselves in helping clients with strategy and planning, it was quite an eye-opener to go through this process for our own company. One of the most important components of this plan is a set of core values that we adhere to, or what we refer to as the guardrails that keep us on track even in moments of chaos or confusion. Those guardrails also guide decisions on the people we want to work with, inclu... (more)