POP Marketing Blog & News
Recent Blog Posts
Marketing Fallacies & Misconceptions and How to Guard Against Them
Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? It’s the tendency for people who are least knowledgeable about something to be most certain of their assertions. In today’s age of disinformation and deepfakes, it’s becoming increasingly common and dangerous. While I don’t have all the answers (though critical thinking skills and education can go a long way), today I’m here to address marketing fallacies and misconceptions and how just because something seems true doesn’t mean it is. Unfortunately, as humans, we’re prone to many cognitive biases, and unethical actors in the business, marketing, and other domains weaponize those against us. However, knowledge and self-awareness are the armor we can all utilize to defend ourselves against it and make better decisions for ourselves, our businesses, and the world around us. So, I’ll use my modest platform today to teach you about them in the marketing context, but the good news is
A Father’s Day Blog for Another Roanoke Entrepreneur
The following blog was written by my wife, Felicia Giorgetti about her father, Roanoke entrepreneur, John Whitcomb: My father, John Whitcomb, was my first hero and, in more than one way, inspired Power-up Online Promotions! Magic at Work John Whitcomb started a telecommunications company called RCI in 1975, and he is still running it today in 2025.He was a passionate Roanoke entrepreneur and started with very little in the basement of our tiny home, but he was exceptionally resourceful. He often joked, “I have been doing so much with so little for so long; I am now qualified to do anything with nothing.” As a child, he did seem, from my perspective, to be a magician! I watched my Dad build his company from the basement of our home to a thriving local business leader in his community. Before I was even an adult, I had started a few tiny
Small Business Branding
Let’s talk about small business branding. When most people think of company branding, they think of large corporations with multi-million dollar campaigns and billion-dollar marketing budgets – the kind of companies with instantly recognizable logos, celebrity spokespeople, and Super Bowl ads. And while they certainly have recognizable brands, there’s more to branding than splashiness or even visuals. Branding is for everyone. What Is Branding? Branding is everything that makes a company (or individual) who they are. While we often use the term “brand” interchangeably with a company’s name, it’s much more than that. Another place people get branding wrong is believing it’s all about the visuals. Visuals are a part of branding, but your brand is your whole vibe and the deeper meaning of who you are. Many entrepreneurs and small businesses start their work without having a coherent image of who they are. They may even mistakenly believe that
A Few Keys to Small Business Marketing
At POP, small businesses are our bread and butter. We love helping these entrepreneurs succeed in Southwest Virginia. Small businesses make up a little under half the US economy, but well over half don’t last more than 10 years. So, we’re celebrating National Small Business Week with a few keys to small business marketing. A Note On Small Businesses Here are some staggering statistics: According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and Bureau of Labor Statistics, the most common reasons businesses fail are money management issues, lack of demand, and poor marketing. I can’t help with demand or money management (but I know a guy!), but I am here to help with your marketing needs. While I always recommend talking to a reputable marketing agency, I write most of my blogs for people who aren’t ready to do that yet. So here are a few things to remember when marketing
Human-to-Human Marketing
In a world full of cookie-cutter campaigns, the use of AI, and a focus on the bottom line, one of the things about POP that I’m most proud of is that we have a true focus on human-to-human marketing. There’s an official definition of that, but there’s also a more intuitive definition. The two are closely related, and we fall into both. So today, I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about our empathetic human approach to our clients and their clients. We think it’s the best way to do small business marketing and business in general. If you agree, we’d love to meet you! What Is Human to Human Marketing? Human-to-human marketing refers to the idea that people prefer dealing with real people. They prefer authenticity and being treated like humans. They also like to feel like a human is on the other side of the brand. All of this should sound
Matchmaking or Meeting Your Best Clients with Personalized Marketing Strategies
Happy (belated) Valentine’s Day, my lovely clients and readers! Valentine’s Day is frequently mocked as a made-up holiday that forces people to show their love, but…isn’t every holiday? I digress. Today is about matchmaking because I’m in the matchmaking business. But rather than finding you the one person to spend the rest of your life with, I use personalized marketing strategies to find you the many clients who are already looking for you. So, is marketing really like matchmaking? Is this a thematic reach to fit the Valentine’s theme? And will there be references to Yente in Fiddler on the Roof? The answers to all these questions are, thankfully, yes. Forward! How Is Marketing Like Matchmaking? Look Through Your Book and Find Me a Perfect Match The first thing you need to know about finding customers is that they’re already trying to find you. If you have a viable business,
Introducing Aaron Baldwin – A Super Digital Marketing Partner!
Happy New Year all! So many of us use the changing of the calendar to commit to big changes, though we sometimes later fall short. Well, this year, POP is starting with a bang: In the next several weeks, we will bring on Aaron Baldwin, who’s been with POP as a part-time account manager for a while full-time! While that’s great news for us, it’s also excellent news for you because you’ll have more time with a conscientious digital marketing partner! About Aaron Baldwin Most POP clients have already met Aaron, though if you’re brand new or were one of our first clients, you may not have had the pleasure. So, this month’s blog will introduce you to him. I’ll start with how I met Aaron. I was working at an animal shelter when Aaron came in to volunteer. He was a minor then, so he needed a parent with
Marketing v Advertising: The Difference Between Advertising and Marketing
What is the difference between advertising and marketing? Aaron Baldwin, POP right-hand man, Peter Parker to my Tony Stark, and Wesley to my Fisk, recently said something to a client that summed up the difference between advertising and marketing well. All advertising is marketing, but not all marketing is advertising. There’s a time and place for advertising, but you should always be marketing. Well said, Aaron Baldwin! POP is a marketing company. We do advertising as part of our marketing, but our primary goal is to create awareness around your brand. There are also some excellent advertising companies that only do advertising – creating ads for various mediums and placing them there. So, what is the difference between advertising and marketing? Let’s get into it. Brand Awareness To quote someone else, this time a random marketing meme, social media isn’t just lead gen; it’s reputation gen. And I would broaden
This Marketing Agency is Still Thankful…
It’s November, so it’s time for my annual Thankfulness blog! What does that have to with a marketing agency? Well, we can all use to take a moment away from the daily ground to notice our gratitude, right? A rare holiday blog, we decided to postpone publishing Thanksgiving blog until today, Thanksgiving. We doubt that’s when you’ll read it, but we hope you enjoy it whenever you do. I’ve said it to everyone who’ll listen -November is my favorite month. It’s my anniversary month, the weather is cool, fall flavors are everywhere, and, of course, it has Thanksgiving, arguably the least controversial holiday of the year. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I do a big to-do every year where I make turkey, stuffing, all the Thanksgiving foods, and anything else I’m given the green light to feature. As a kid, we sometimes had Italian food beside American food, with a
Power-Up Means Ethical Marketing – What’s In Our Name?
This might come as a shock, but we’re a little geeky at POP. I know, I know, writers who represent themselves as superhero cartoons seem so cool from the outside! But our comic book theme and name, “power-up,” also has a deeper meaning. Power-up is our code for the positive use of power – ethical marketing for all of our Southwest Virginia (& beyond!) small business clients. Why Heroes Listen, like I said, I’m a geek, so there’s no denying that’s a big part of the comic book appeal. But heroes are more than that, too. They’re something to strive toward. Since I was a kid, I was captivated by Superman, and even as I came to enjoy other heroes in various forms, from the Tim Burton Batman movies to the MCU, Superman still held a special place in my imagination. It wasn’t the power thing, at least not just
Business Marketing Questions: Volume 2
One of the most popular formats for a business blog is Q&A, though I didn’t often take advantage of it myself until my blog, Answering Your Burning Small Business Marketing Questions: Volume One. In writing that blog, I realized I couldn’t get to nearly as many questions as I thought, so I promised a follow-up, and here it is: Answering Your Burning Small Business Marketing Questions: Volume 2: More Burning, More Business. Since I’ve answered the basics, today I will go a little deeper about social media. Do You Need To Be On Every Social Network? Here’s an easy one…and you’ll like the answer! No! You don’t need to be on every social site. We all have limited time, so don’t stretch yourself so thin you give up. It’s kind of like exercise. If you say you’re going to run 10 miles a day and you’ve never run more than
Elements of a High-Quality Website
What makes a good website? A good marketer? No, that’s who makes a good website. And while the simplest way to get a high-quality website is to hire your friendly neighborhood marketer, today’s blog is about the elements that go into building a good site. Know Your Purpose As always, before doing something, you should know why you’re doing it. I’ve written extensively about understanding your website’s purpose in a previous blog, so this won’t be a deep dive. For now, understand that most websites do one or a combination of 3 things: sell, inform, or persuade. Once you understand why you have a site, you can create the elements that will give you a high-quality website that delivers on meeting the purpose(s). Visuals When many people think of websites, they primarily think about visual aspects. (Unfortunately, this misses a lot, but we’ll explain that more below.) Visuals are frequently the first thing people notice,
