You'd never think that a motorbike zooming through a crowded Asian market would offer a profound marketing lesson (or any kind of lesson for that matter, beyond 'don't ride motorbikes through the market'), yet...during a trip round Vietnam, Al experienced all kinds of weird and wonderful sights/sounds/smells/noises... ...and realised a number of these provide valuable marketing insights for us back home. Episode 11 of The Grumpy Marketers is called '3 Marketing Lessons From The Streets of Hanoi'.

A lot of marketers are coming across like the 1980s 'smooth' guy in white chinos and avatars saying 'hey baby' and sliding a martini across the bar to his 'target'. Are you one of them? Better listen to verify.

What is the most important word in marketing? Is it sales? Customers? Big wads of cash? Ok, that's 4 words...anyway, listen to find out.

It's hard to find the right balance between being one of those obnoxious 'hardcore closers' types who are only interested in making you sign on the dotted line...and being terrified of selling at all. Here's how to do it.

As the title suggests...want to become a millionaire? Listen to Richard and Al.

Richard and Al debate whether 'funnel hacking' is really just ripping off the hard work of other people...and can funnel hackers survive long term?

Al grills Richard on what needs to go into a sales message (whether that be a Facebook post, video, long form sales letter, carrier pigeon etc). When you understand these principles, writing persuasive messages becomes a lot easier.

Is the elevator pitch a waste of time these days, given that everybody seems to be coming out with the same 'I help X person do Y thing' in response to the question 'so what do you do?' Spoiler alert: It's still valid, but only if you follow the instructions in this episode.

We've both screwed up a lot in our time as marketers. Here's the top 3 highlights for each of us. With a bit of luck, you can avoid making the same gut-wrenching, shameful mistakes yourself.

We all know about the customer avatar, where we create a fictional prospect, 'Linda'. 'Linda is 45, a single mother with 3 kids. She works 2 jobs to make ends meet.’ We then pull a random stock photo of a middle aged lady off Google images and woop, our avatar is complete. Except we are missing something. Probably the most important thing. And we're not going to tell you what it is in this description.