More on marketing buffoonery from the entirely wonderful Tom Fishburne

Few people comment more perceptively or hilariously than Tom Fishburne on the assorted lunacies of marketing.

One, of course, is that promotions are a quick fix - but, like cocaine, a long-term killer - with one exception, which I shall come to in a moment.

Another is that all you need is a website - and away you go. The fact is that most websites suffer from two dire diseases.

First, people don't give enough thought to how they get people to their website in the first place. That is why I have persuaded Bradley Long to analyse and give five pieces of personalised free advice on SEO to every EADIM attendee.

The other is that once they've got people there they do damn-all with them. They don't find anything about them. They don't do anything to keep them there longer. They don't harvest names. They don't do tests. Often they don't follow them up. And even when they do, they don't persist for long enough.

That is why I've got Ben Hunt to come to EADIM http://directmarketingcourse.com/, discuss what ails your website and reveal the seven deadly website sins. In fact we have a whole day devoted to how you can do better online.

But enough of this sales talk. You are surely the exception to these rules, and torrents of people are flooding into your site, staying for hours at a time and buying by the bucket-full.

Anyhow, here's the answer to the question I posed just now.

The only time promotion doesn't kill your brand is when everyone else is relying on it too. Then you must do two things.

1. Come up with better promotions than the competition.

2. Do something to build your brand.

One of our clients is doing that with record results in this depression. If you're interested, we'll touch on that, too, at EADIM http://directmarketingcourse.com/

By the way, don't run away with the idea that I do everything right myself. I don't.

I kid myself I am an example of the tailor being the worst-dressed man in the room. On balance, though I fear I am best placed somewhere between the absent-minded scientist and the village idiot.