High Impact Marketing

Build a Powerful SocialPR Platform with Video

2012-03-02T06:41:00.000-08:00

You can build a powerful SocialPR platform upon a foundation of direct-to-camera videos. These low budget videos that you create on a do-it-yourself (DIY) basis make you look real to your customers and prospects. You’re able to start building a relationship with your target market in ways that other media can’t. And you can demonstrate your expertise in your subject area or product line by delivering good, high quality, value-added information before someone gets to meet you in person. Video works for manufacturing companies, professional service providers and trainers.

This week, I’ve covered how video serves you in SocialPR. If you would like to learn more, I have more for you…

FREE Video Series: Each video runs about 10 minutes and covers the basics of how to build your own DIY SocialPR Machine. Begin watching the first video by clicking here.

Coaching/Training: I’ll help you setup your own DIY SocialPR Machine so you can spread the word about your business and expertise. To learn more, please contact me by clicking here.

Outsourced SocialPR: If you need a professional PR partner to handle SocialPR, traditional PR or other marketing communications services for you, please contact me by clicking here.

Next Week
My topic next week will be: When to use direct-to-camera videos. Please join me.

Comment and Share
How is this series on SocialPR working for you? Do you have questions you would like me to address? Any suggestions for making this series better? How does SocialPR work in your industry? Please comment below.

Participate in your own SocialPR by clicking the social media share buttons below. This is your opportunity to provide useful business information to your connections.

What Do You Talk About in Your DIY SocialPR Videos?

2012-03-01T05:12:00.000-08:00

Brief, direct-to-camera videos allow you to focus on a single problem, issue or opportunity that your target market may be struggling with. What do you know that they don’t? How can you help a prospect or customer perform better for their customers? What do you contribute to your customers?

Demonstrate your expertise by talking about the subjects you know best and are of importance to your customers. Choose a single topic and make a few key points about it. That’s it. Speak for a minute or two and then shut up. If your viewers want to learn more, let them click over to your website and contact you or sign up for your email program. The whole idea is to build a customer and prospect database. Once they’re in your database, you can go into direct sales mode and move them through your sales funnel.

Industrial companies use these short little videos as part of their SocialPR program to demonstrate a single manufacturing fact. “To manufacture an aluminum storm door to survive Florida’s hurricane season, specifiy…” The idea is to teach the customer’s buyer, design engineer, plant manager and other decision makers how to produce a better component, assembly or end product by using your solution. Don’t try to sell with these little videos. Stick with the facts so your prospects and customers learn to view you as a reliable source of information.

Going Natural with Video

2012-02-29T07:34:00.000-08:00

Whether you’re a professional service provider or manufacturing job shop owner, you’ll come across with a natural and authentic look when you use direct-to-camera video as part of your DIY SocialPR program. This “amateur” production method starts building a relationship with your target market in ways that print literature or a written blog post can’t do.

With a video, people see you. They hear your voice, not a professional actor. Your customers and prospects can look into your eyes, not the smiling eyes of your professional “spokesperson.” This allows your viewer to make an initial judgment about you as an honest and reliable resource. The viewer feels they know and like you before actually meeting you in person or on the phone.

Sales representatives can use direct-to-camera videos to build relationships, provide value-added information, and begin the initial relationship-building process so important to successful selling. Cold calling is so difficult today that it often makes more sense to find prospective new accounts by simply making it easy for them to find you. With a personal blog focused on a clearly defined business purpose, your sales reps can strengthen their current industry contacts while inviting new contacts from among your target market.

The secret of the amateur, direct-to-camera video is its natural look. The best way to get started is to just do it. You’ll need a pocket camera and some lamps gathered from around the home or office. Use a low cost microphone if you plan to position yourself at any distance away from your camera. You’ll want a tripod to steady your camera and lock it into position. Choose either a tabletop tripod or a professional photographer’s tripod. Supercharge business growth now by taking advantage of video in a world that celebrates online video marketing.

Authentic DIY SocialPR Starts with Direct-to-Camera Video

2012-02-28T05:55:00.004-08:00

Low budget videos, often produced with a pocket camera or camera mounted to a laptop computer, deliver an authentic DIY SocialPR look that allows the viewer to identify with you. The amateur nature of these videos emphasizes the value of the content in a way that a slick production does not. A professional video product ion, with its music, professional narration and high quality video production value, conveys the sense that you are being sold to. It’s a “sales video” people say.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with sales videos. I’ve written hundreds of video scripts for sales presentations. These videos play an important role in providing high value content to prospective buyers and customers. What they don’t do is deliver the kind of authenticity you achieve with a personal little video that makes a quick one-to-two-minute statement.

Professional video sells. Use if for the sale. Direct-to-Camera video informs, persuades and motivates to action. Use it to as an educational tool on your blog. Include a link in your email program. Post it to your website and YouTube. Place it on your Facebook page.

Instant Sales Video
Because of the costs and time required to create a professional video make it impossible to produce on short notice, make a quick sales video tailored to a single prospect or other one-time use using your pocket video camera. In this case, your direct-to-camera video may run longer than a minute or two as you demonstrate your new equipment or new manufacturing process. Plan to shoot in one take to minimize editing.

Use an assistant to help you produce your “amateur” sales video. Your assistant operates the camera and serves as your director as you walk through the plant floor to discuss your industrial process and demonstrate equipment, production lines and products.

Creating a a direct-to-camera sales video is a great way to plan your professionally-produced video. Use it to identify sound and lighting issues for your video production company. Your professional producer will guide you in selecting better shot angles and camera moves knowing more about how your shop looks on video.

Your on camera presentation can provide some of the input for your script writer to use in creating the professional voiceover narration for your professionally-produced video.

Why DIY Video Marketing Works

2012-02-27T05:18:00.000-08:00

Today's video explains how with the proper DIY marketing strategy, your audience will feel they know you before actually meeting you in person. Low budget videos support DIY SocialPR by making you look authentic. It’s one of the best DIY PR tools around because you’re able to start building a relationship with your target market in ways that print literature or a written blog post can’t do. Video allows you to supercharge business growth by demonstrating your expertise in your subject area.

Build SocialPR Upon a Video Foundation

2012-02-24T05:49:00.000-08:00

This week we looked at the importance of video as an online marketing tool for:

Professionals
Manufacturers
Trainers and subject matter experts

But how do you use video in SocialPR? How do you create content for your videos and written materials? One of the big issues with blogging, for example, is you simply run out of things to talk about at some point.

The problem is the blogger doesn’t think like a magazine or newspaper publisher. Have you ever known a magazine to run of things to talk about?

I just launched a free video series that explains the basics of my SocialPR Machine. These three videos will teach you how to create an abundance of material for your SocialPR program. My approach to SocialPR includes video as the foundation of content creation. View the first video, which runs about 10 minutes, by clicking here.

Using video for online training

2012-02-23T06:38:00.000-08:00

Trainers and subject matter experts use online video to provide high value content to their customers and prospects as part of their promotional activities. The idea is to deliver sufficient information for free to entice the viewer into purchasing more in-depth training or information. The viewer wins by gaining a basic understanding of the topic. The trainer wins by gaining new connections and future sales.

The length of this type of promotional video can run 10 to 30 minutes or even longer depending on the subject and the presenter. Ask yourself how much content you want to give away free. If you give too much away, you lose the sale. If you don’t give enough, you lose the viewer.

Inform your viewers that they are receiving your free training because you provide even deeper content on a fee basis. It’s okay to invite your listener to sign up for your email program. You may even want to make one free video available online and then offer an additional video or series of videos for free if the viewer signs up for your email. The key to this type of marketing is to understand that email is the entry point into your sales funnel. Capturing opt in email addresses is essential to long term sales growth. My SocialPR video series is an example of this type of marketing...

Free Video Series Released
My three free videos on how to create a DIY SocialPR program are now available. Begin by clicking here.

Show Off Your Products on Video

2012-02-22T05:27:00.000-08:00

A key to selling a product is the customer’s ability to see it in action. Online video provides a prospect with what may be their first experience with the products you manufacture. If your products aren’t available on YouTube, your website and though other social media sites, your prospect will find video of competitor’s products instead.

Keep your demo video brief, less than five minutes if possible. Explain why the customer should choose your product. In addition to the major features and benefits, think in terms of availability, delivery options and other customer service value adds important to the customer.

Create a separate video to give customers a virtual tour of your plant and equipment so they can get a feel for the quality built into your products. If you have a large plant, position the camera in a high location so you can show off an overview of your facility, and then show close ups of the various steps in your manufacturing process. If you are a tiny garage-shop operation, use close ups of your equipment in action. These tight shots hide the size of your plant while giving viewers a feeling that you are providing quality content by moving in for a close up look at your operations.

Make it easy for your prospect to find you after they view your video online. Include contact information in the video itself by adding your web address and phone number. If your location is important to making a sale, be sure to mention it in the narration with words like: “Conveniently located in the upper Midwest United States.” Notice the inclusion of the country. Keep in mind that the Internet is a global marketing tool so you are likely to have people from around the world viewing your video.

Be careful about showing off proprietary manufacturing methods. Your competition will also be viewing your videos. This is no reason to avoid using videos. Videos are a “must have” in your marketing arsenal. The idea is provide what customers need to know while not educating your competition. It’s okay to say something like “through a proprietary patented process, our equipment can reduce your reject rate up to 80 percent.” You’re not telling your competition how to reduce the customer’s reject rate, but you are telling your customer you can do it. You can provide the details later in a sales call.

Free Video Series Released
My three free videos on how to create a DIY SocialPR program are now available. The series covers how to combine social media with traditional public relations to create a virtual explosion of publicity materials. The videos total to more than 30 minutes of quality information you can use today. Begin by clicking here.

Promoting Your Professional Practice with Video

2012-02-21T06:01:00.000-08:00

Professionals sell their services based on the relationship they build with the prospect before the sale. Video helps to build that relationship before the first meeting. Professional services usually are intangible so the prospect can’t experience a service like they can a product by touching, smelling, hearing or seeing a thing. It’s not possible to take an intangible service for a test ride like you can with a car. Professionals, like management consultants, marketers, accountants, and attorneys, have known for a long time that building a personal relationship with a prospect is required before they can close a sale.

Video is the most powerful tool, other than an in-person meeting, for you to connect with your customer in a personal way. Watching you in action delivering high-quality information builds trust and predisposes the prospect to prefer you.

When creating videos, be sure to provide contact information so that the prospect can follow up with you. This can be as simple as including your web address in the description of a YouTube video. Or it can mean including contact information on your blog page. On your website, encourage the prospect to join your email list so they can receive additional high-value content from you. Your email list is the entry point into your sales funnel.

Who Uses Video?

2012-02-20T06:17:00.000-08:00

The easy answer is "just about everyone." Video is so important to online marketing that you make a mistake not to consider using video to promote your business. Today's video goes deeper into who is using video. Enjoy.

Where Are You Stuck?

2012-02-17T07:49:00.000-08:00

I’ve been talking about SocialPR, particularly online video marketing this week. Social media is the most powerful resource for promoting your business that has come along since the advent of the television age in the late 1940s. It works for B2C and B2B marketers, although they each use it in different ways. Social media works for the largest global corporations as well as the tiny home-based business or independent professionals... and any size business in between.

In this discussion of SocialPR, or the combining of social media with traditional PR, I don’t want to lose sight of your needs. What questions do you have about marketing and business strategy? How can I be of service to you? Let me know in the comments section below or contact me directly by clicking here.

Coming up: I’ll continue the discussion on SocialPR next week. In addition to my blog posts on this topic, I’ll offer a free series of longer training videos, more than 30 minutes in all, that you can access as soon as they are ready. To receive a personal notification for when these videos are posted, join my email list by clicking here. I promise to never spam you or share you with others. And you can cancel at any time.

Have a great weekend and remember to lead, to serve and to go forth boldly.

What is the Impact of Video?

2012-02-16T05:29:00.000-08:00

Video affects an audience in ways that the written word cannot. With video you can demonstrate a product so your audience sees it in action. Service providers can discuss their offerings in what comes across as a face-to-face discussion backed by PowerPoint graphics. With a tangible product, the demonstration facilitates the lead generation. With an intangible service, you generate leads by demonstrating the power of your ideas, your mind, and your personality as you build a relationship that leads to prospect inquiries.

Video affects you in three specific ways:
Audio: you can hear the person speaking so you can evaluate their sincerity, passion and content.
Visual: you can look the presenter in the eye and judge them as trustworthy or not. And you can witness demonstrations or graphic illustrations.
Personal: you can respond emotionally to the presenter going beyond trust and believability to deciding how you feel about the person. Do you like the presenter? Is this someone you want to do business with?

One of the advantages of video is it makes it easier for your target market to either self-select you or self-select no interest in you. And video does this in a way that elicits a strong response, either positive or negative. This means that those having a strong positive response are more inclined to listen to your sales message than if they never saw your video.

Recommendation: Explore online video marketing as a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal.

Can You Afford Video?

2012-02-15T05:08:00.000-08:00

The proper question here may be: Can you afford not to use video? Video is affordable if you can spend a few hundred dollars on a pocket camera.

But what about quality?
Video quality from a pocket camera is more than enough for online video. You don’t want your video to be at the highest quality setting because the files will be so huge that you run into streaming issues. But picture quality isn’t the only quality component in video. Consider the quality of your content. Are you providing quality information your target market can use to improve their business or their lives? Or are you simply pitching your products and services? No one wants to hear a sales pitch whether it comes unannounced on the phone or in a video that promised real content.

Consider the alternative
What can you do besides video? You can write your blog posts and email newsletters. You can write articles for publication. These have almost no cost attached to their online use. You also can reach your audience through direct mail, but then you add in the costs of creation, production and distribution.

Video advantages
Direct mail may be expensive, but it also is highly effective and measurable. The question is not only one of affordability, but also a question of Return on Investment (ROI). As long as the ROI is acceptable, direct mail works. The same is true for online video marketing. The cost is negligible when you do it yourself. You gain the advantage of making a powerful impact when you do it right. Video is the low cost, high impact audio and visual solution.

Recommendation: Include online video in your overall marketing program.

Is Video is Becoming the Most Popular Form of Communication Online?

2012-02-14T07:44:00.000-08:00

Consider the following statistics from 2010:

75% of C-Level execs watch work related online videos at least weekly. Forbes. Learn more.
73% of marketers plan to increase their online video marketing. Social Media Marketing Report 2010. Learn more.
81% of experienced social media marketers plan to increase their use of video. Social Media Marketing Report 2010. Learn more.

This is 2012 and video is no less important today. With video you make an impact that is both visual and audio. You create a sense of presence that the written word can’t match.

Since I’m communicating this blog entry via the written word, I obviously am not advocating the end of writing. However, video has a major role in the SocialPR Machine and it’s past time for business owners and marketers to get onboard.

Two questions worth pondering:
1. If you are not using online video, then why not? The three most likely reasons are:

Cost: DIY video is a low budget alternative affordable for anyone who can spring for the price of a pocket camera
Don’t understand it: Anyone can make a video, but can you do it right?
Don’t have time: Social media, including video, takes a commitment of time. A good way to start is to invest a set amount of time each day. It takes about an hour a day to maintain your social media presence. More during an aggressive campaign. Start with less if you can’t budget an hour a day to start. Then invest more time as you begin to see the value of social media.

2. If you are using video, are you getting results? Social media efforts can fail for any number of reasons, among them:

Inconsistency: Social media requires a daily commitment. Posting an occasional video with no follow up will not succeed.
No strategy: Think of online video marketing as a business tool that requires a strategy
Poor linkage: Social media works when you link your online presence into a cohesive, strategic program designed to move traffic to your website or to make direct contact with you so you can channel leads into your sales stream. Video is one part of this big picture.

I asked if video is becoming the most popular form of online communication at the start of this blog post. What’s important is that it is very popular right now so you risk losing audience if you don’t use it.

Recommendation: Include video in your social media program.

Why Online Video is Important

2012-02-13T05:43:00.000-08:00

This is the first in my new series on my SocialPR Machine. SocialPR is a term that describes the process of combining traditional public relations with social media. In my SocialPR Machine, I show you how to take advantage of SocialPR to create and distribute a large volume of publicity materials. My approach is based on using short videos and expanding the content into written blog posts, articles, white papers and more. Let's begin with a brief video in which I talk about why online video is so important.

Don’t Confuse Hard Work with Market Acceptance

2012-02-10T11:53:00.000-08:00

A successful business launch involves a great deal of hard work. However, it’s important to recognize that your efforts don’t always pan out. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if you just work harder or longer, you’ll begin seeing sales results. The reality is hard work alone does not deliver success. Good ideas sell. Bad ideas don’t. If you are not finding market acceptance for your new product or service, here is a two-step process for making your go/no-go decision:
Step 1: Re-evaluate your launch. Are you doing things correctly? Review your strategy and your sales activities. Have you skipped any steps? Are there flaws in your product or service that need fixing? What feedback have you been given by your alpha and beta customers? Are you listening to your market? Does your solution solve a narrowly defined pain point? If yes, have you effectively communicated your solution in a way that ties it directly to the prospect’s pain?
Step 2: Re-evaluate the marketplace. If your product or service does not solve a pain point, you don’t have a solution to sell. If your product or services solves a narrowly defined pain point, consider what alternatives your prospects have for eliminating their pain. Think like a customer. Is there a faster, cheaper or better way to resolve the problem? Is the pain really important to the customer or does if fall into the “who cares” category?

Once you have arrived at that very difficult “no-go” point, keep in mind that you are an ideas generating machine. As an entrepreneur, you’re going to constantly come up with new ideas and better ways of doing things. Use your innate creativity to generate those new ideas and come back strong with a better product or service rather than investing weeks or months of effort on an idea that is dead on arrival.

Next up
Since last March this blog has focused on issues related to developing an effective business strategy in order to supercharge business growth. Strategic planning is the first step in achieving significant increases in sales results. Today's blog post completes this series.

May I recommend my video on strategic planning on the Zuk-Lloyd Associates home page? Click here to visit.

Next, I’m offering a series on one of the most powerful marketing tools for achieving successful publicity. It’s called SocialPR. As the name suggests, SocialPR involves the combining of traditional public relations activities with online social media. More next time.

Overcoming Customer Inertia

2012-02-07T07:48:00.000-08:00

The idea in a strategic launch is to offer a solution that is cheaper, faster or better than your customer’s other choices. Look at your pricing structure? Can your proposed solution offer a significant price reduction compared to your customer’s other choices? If not, is the value provided big enough to outweigh the higher cost? Does you solution save time, energy or provide other practical benefits? Is the improvement you offer significant enough to impress a customer?

Customers suffer from a kind of inertia that prevents them from making changes unless the change is significant enough for them to believe it matters. You may be thinking your solution is better than their current system, but they are likely thinking, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” Your solution has to be good enough to convince the customer that their current system is broken precisely because they are not experiencing the significant productivity improvement your solution delivers.

Another factor in overcoming customer inertia is whether your solution is “proven” or not. This throws you into a Catch 22 as you can’t prove it unless they try it and they won’t try it until it’s proven. Alpha and beta testing can help overcome this objection because these tests prove the viability of your solution. It also helps if the customer’s current system is broken to the point where it adversely affects their business such that they have more to gain from an unproven solution than their failed solution.

Is it time to pull the plug on your new strategic launch?

2012-01-26T06:06:00.000-08:00

You don’t always pull the plug on a launch that appears to be going nowhere. You may only need a few tweaks in your product, strategy or marketing tactics to turn the launch around. It depends on what the marketplace is telling you. Finding market acceptance is why you want to conduct a beta launch before you roll out your new initiative big time.

If you hit a no-go point, where it’s clear your new initiative is doomed to fail or has already failed, then it’s time to pull the plug. Here are a few questions to help identify a no-go point:

Is your new product competitive?
Is it cheaper, faster or better than the alternative?
Are you having fun? If the product is causing pain and friction within your team, you won’t support the effort in the long run.
Is the launch worth it? Return on Investment is important but so is Return on Effort. Is this initiative worth the time and energy you invest in it or will you be better off investing in something else?
Was you test marketing a success? So-so results in your test point to so-so results in the big launch.

If you are a regular visitor to my blog, you know I usually post more frequently than I have of late. I'm busy preparing a new set of videos and blog posts. These will launch soon. In addition to the new blog series, the program will include a set of three free training videos. These will be longer videos in the 10-plus-minute range. These training videos will provide practical, value added content you can use right away to build your business. I won't say more about it now, because the program isn't finished yet. Look for the link to the first of the training videos on this blog when the series is ready.

Meanwhile I'll complete the current series of strategy-focused articles over the next week or so. And thank you for following my blog. Be sure to tell your friends about it by clicking on the social links below.

How do you know when to pull the plug on a launch?

2012-01-09T06:56:00.000-08:00

Once you've put your company's lifeblood, sweat and tears into a strategic launch, it's difficult to know when to pull the plug. But if you are not adding customers and achieving good sales results, it may be time to call it quits. Here are some things to think about as you go through your product or service launch.

Piggyback on hot trends

2012-01-04T04:49:00.000-08:00

Ideally you want to find a unique selling space for your business. On the other hand, you don’t want to miss out on industry trends that can lead to lucrative new markets, even if those markets were opened by someone else.

The financial success of a new solution usually involves what is known as a “hockey stick” sales curve. This means there is a long time needed to establish the market before you hit a “tipping point” where the sales curve takes a sharp turn higher. The time to enter a new market opened by someone else is when the other company’s solution breaks into the sharp upswing. By that time, market demand has been created and there is still a lot of upside opportunity. If you wait for the market to mature, you end up having to grow your business by taking customers away from competitors. By timing your entry into the market, you can capture significant market share before it is committed to your competition.

Knowing the trend gives you an edge
Trends analysis helps you predict customer needs into the future. The idea is to be in a position to adapt your products and services to meet the changing needs of your customers and to create new products and services to change with the times.

On the other hand, there is no reason for you to lose customers unless you change your business strategy in a significant way. For example, you may lose customers if you drop a product a line, but you would be dropping it because you see bigger opportunities somewhere else that will more than offset your loss.

Join our email program to receive free white papers, articles and access to videos. Click here.

How can I tell if a trend will last long enough to profit from it?

2012-01-03T05:12:00.000-08:00

Some trends by their nature have a long term impact. Others have no staying power. This is an issue where commonsense and judgment come into play. Try to identify those trends that you resonate with – ones that you care about. These are the trends you are more likely to want to study and are able to make a reasonable estimate of their long term impact.

Consider the problems your customers will be facing in a few years’ time given current trends. If the issues are significant, then take them seriously. How much time and money will you have to invest to develop new solutions you can sell to your customers?

You have to be practical about these things. A small, cash-strapped company has fewer resources to throw at a problem. Try to identify trends and needs where you can make an impact given your size and resources. Don’t try to compete with much larger companies that can throw a huge amount of cash at an opportunity. Also keep in mind that the best solutions are the simple ones. You can compete with larger companies if you can enter the market quickly with a simple, low cost solution.

Free Marketing Solutions when you join our email program. Click here to sign up.

Identify Trends That Lead to Business Growth

2011-12-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

We learned growing up that it’s important to follow the news so that we are aware of what is going on in the world. We were taught this is an important part of good citizenship because a knowledgeable voter is essential in a democracy. But how much time do you spend thinking about the impact of global trends on your customers?

Following the news to identify trends and changes in our world provides an opportunity to consider how certain trends will affect your business, your industry and your customers. The process of following global trends is one way to generate new ideas for products and services that will have value in the market in the future. Keep in mind that I’m not talking about the financial trends you analyze when you review your financials. I’m talking about global trends like the green revolution.

Begin by making a list of global trends based on the news. Try to make a long list so you can reduce it to a few that are most likely to affect your customers in some way. Then ask yourself what new product or service needs your customers are going to have based on the trend. Also consider the possibility of opening new markets with products or services for new customers. These prospects may not have an immediate need for your offering, but if a certain trend continues, these prospects will need your offering to offset a problem created by the trend.

Launch into my new full-length novel
Mary is a teenage girl with a lot of moxie who's just a tad pregnant and has an ex-fiance who says, "Ain't no way that's my baby in there." What's a girl to do? What does she say to her dad? And how can she fight off Satan, the ultimate demon bent on killing her to keep the baby from being born? It's okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. Fulfillment makes a great stocking stuffer! Only $1.99 for your Amazon Kindle. Purchase by clicking here. You can obtain more information, read a sample of the book, and order the slightly higher priced PDF version or the whole lot more priced 288-page paperback version by clicking here.

Enjoy this blog post? Be sure to share it with your friends by clicking the social networking links below. Thank you.

How Do You Decide Which Trends to Follow?

2011-12-19T09:53:00.000-08:00

Bombs exploding, global warming, eat right or die... the world changes rapidly yet it's easy to miss the business opportunities that happen when customer needs change. Even when you follow the right trend, you don't always hit the market quickly enough to beat your competition. This video provides insight into the process of choosing and following trends appropriate to your industry and your business. Enjoy.

Launch into my new full-length novel
Mary is a teenage girl with a lot of moxie who's just a tad pregnant and has an ex-fiance who says, "Ain't no way that's my baby in there." What's a girl to do? What does she say to her dad? And how can she fight off Satan, the ultimate demon bent on killing her to keep the baby from being born? It's okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. Fulfillment makes a great stocking stuffer! Only $1.99 for your Amazon Kindle. Purchase by clicking here. You can obtain more information, read a sample of the book, and order the slightly higher priced PDF version or the whole lot more priced 288-page paperback version by clicking here.

Enjoy this blog video? Be sure to share it with your friends by clicking the social networking links below. Thank you.

Understand Your Market Before You Launch a New Business or Product

2011-12-13T06:47:00.000-08:00

Before investing precious resources in your new product or business idea, scrutinize the competitive marketplace. If you’re not entering the market with something different, better, cheaper, faster or whatever, if there’s not a true competitive advantage to your solution, then don’t launch. That’s a true no-go.

Here are some simple do-it-yourself ways to gain an understanding of the competitive landscape:

Ask yourself what problem your solution solves. Then ask how your target customers solve that problem now. Is your new solution better? Why would your prospect want to switch? If your only answer is lower price, you may not have a good enough solution unless your price differential is huge. Ask yourself why you would switch from a trusted, proven solution to an untried one for a potential minor savings? The risk involved in trying something unproven may not be worth it unless the potential savings is significant.
Visit competitor websites to compare their claims with your own. What are your competitors saying? What are they leaving unsaid? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? How do you stack up against competition?
Talk to your target market. For B2B, ask buyers how they prefer to be approached by a potential new supplier. Ask about their vendor selection process. Describe your value proposition and ask them if they would value a solution that performs the way your new product or idea performs.
Do an alpha launch in which you give samples of your new solution to a few trusted customers to try for free. Or if that’s too costly, ask them to pay your actual cost or a portion of it. The idea is to get a few samples into the real world on a test basis in exchange for feedback from your test customers. This will provide you with valuable feedback on your solution as well as customer quotes and endorsements to use in your promotional efforts.

Launch into my new full-length novel because I'm not just a marketing guy, I'm also a novelist
Mary is a teenage girl with a lot of moxie who's just a tad pregnant and has an ex-fiance who says, "Ain't no way that's my baby in there." What's a girl to do? What does she say to her dad? And how can she fight off Satan, the ultimate demon bent on killing her to keep the baby from being born? It's okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. Fulfillment makes a great stocking stuffer! Only $1.99 for your Amazon Kindle. Purchase by clicking here. You can obtain more information, read a sample of the book, and order the slightly higher priced PDF version or the whole lot more priced 288-page paperback version by clicking here.

If you found this post helpful, please share it with your online social network by clicking the Facebook, Twitter and other buttons below. Thank you for your support.

Does Your Idea Pass The Go/No Go Test?

2011-12-12T05:38:00.000-08:00

Go/no go determinants can crop up at every step in the strategy cycle so make sure your idea actually passes each go point. Even if you’ve spent a lot of time, energy and capital on the idea, move on once it becomes a no go.The marketplace is too competitive to launch something that only has a so-so chance of success. Instead back the big winner, the idea with the best opportunity to succeed.

Ready, fire, aim
When you go to launch, use a ready-fire-aim approach. Don’t spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to make your idea a success. You’re going to learn as you go along. And you are competing with the other entrepreneurs who have the same idea or a similar one to yours. Your job is to get to market first. So set up the business idea quickly, develop your strategy as best you can, and launch. Don’t spend too much time planning.

Launch into my new full-length novel
Mary is a teenage girl with a lot of moxie who's just a tad pregnant and has an ex-fiance who says, "Ain't no way that's my baby in there." What's a girl to do? What does she say to her dad? And how can she fight off Satan, the ultimate demon bent on killing her to keep the baby from being born? It's okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. Fulfillment makes a great stocking stuffer! Only $1.99 for your Amazon Kindle. Purchase by clicking here. You can obtain more information, read a sample of the book, and order the slightly higher priced PDF version or the whole lot more priced 288-page paperback version by clicking here.

If you found this post helpful, please share it with your online social network by clicking the Facebook, Twitter and other buttons below. Thank you for your support.

Use Go/No Go Steps in a Business Launch

2011-12-07T06:41:00.000-08:00

When NASA launches a rocket, it goes through a series of checks that involve making a go/no go decision at each one. If the rocket passes the check, then the launch is a go and the crew moves on to the next check. If the crew hits a no go in one of the checks, then the launch sequence is halted until the problem is fixed and the rocket passes the check. These go/no go checks continue right up to the moment of launch.

Business launches work in the same way. Think of each step in the planning and launch cycle as a go/no go decision point. A no go in a business launch may not be as obvious as an equipment failure on a space rocket. Business launch go/no go decisions often come down to gut instinct. You won’t always have the data you’d like. When you are not sure or hesitant about going forward, ask yourself if you could reasonably expect an outside investor to put money into your new venture at this point, given what you now know. If not, you’ve hit a no go point.

Most no goes are obvious. If your market analysis shows that there are already many products similar to yours selling at a lower price than you can offer, then what’s the point of launching? When you hit a no go early in the process, you save the time and money you would have wasted by going forward. Invest the savings in your next great idea. Unfortunately, the no go often happens near the end of the launch cycle. At that point it’s hard to resist pushing forward despite the no go because you have too much invested to not launch. Remember, the reason it’s called a “no go” is you have sufficient data to indicate your launch will fail. Why blow the rocket on the launch pad when you can recycle the parts back into your next idea?

Launch into my new full-length novel
Mary is a teenage girl with a lot of moxie who's just a tad pregnant and has an ex-fiance who says, "Ain't no way that's my baby in there." What's a girl to do? What does she say to her dad? And how can she fight off Satan, the ultimate demon bent on killing her to keep the baby from being born? It's okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. Fulfillment makes a great stocking stuffer! Only $1.99 for your Amazon Kindle. Purchase by clicking here. You can obtain more information, read a sample of the book, and order the slightly higher priced PDF version or the whole lot more priced 288-page paperback version by clicking here.

Is It Time to Launch Your New Strategy?

2011-11-29T09:41:00.000-08:00

How do you know when it's time to launch your new idea or business strategy? How much time should you take for planning? When do you decide you know enough to launch?

Launch into my new novel
You're sure to enjoy reading Fulfillment, my full-length suspense novel of the first Christmas. It's about a teenage girl with a lot of moxie who's just a tad pregnant and has an ex-fiance who says, "Ain't no way that's my baby in there." What's a girl to do? What does she say to her dad? And how can she fight off Satan, the ultimate demon bent on killing her to keep the baby from being born? It's okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. Fulfillment makes a great stocking stuffer! Only $1.99 for your Kindle. Purchase by clicking here. You can obtain more information and order the slightly higher priced PDF version or the whole lot more priced paperback version by clicking here.

Build on Your Current Customer Base

2011-11-22T11:25:00.000-08:00

We’ve been talking about how to choose between competing ideas for a new business or a strategic initiative for an existing business. Even a start-up business may begin with an “existing customer base” meaning the friends, family and business associates of the founder. A company that’s been around awhile should have a database of customers and prospects. Consider these customers and potential customers as you decide which of your numerous new business ideas to launch. Which idea appeals most to your customers?

The idea most likely to appeal to your customers will meet some or all of the following criteria:

Solves a customer problem
Reduces the customer’s costs
Improves the customer’s products or processes

Is your idea consistent with the products and services you’ve offered in the past or that you currently offer? Your customers consider you the expert in your area. If you change your offering too much, customers are likely to think you went off the deep end.

We’re creatures of habit so stay within the customer’s habit of choosing you for certain types of solutions. If your new idea is a sea change from your existing business, you may be better off launching a new business that targets different customers.

Speaking of Sea Changes
You're sure to enjoy reading Fulfillment, my 80,000-word suspense novel of the first Christmas. It's about a teenage girl with a lot of moxie who's just a tad pregnant and has an ex-fiance who says, "Ain't no way that's my baby in there." What's a girl to do? What does she say to her dad? And how can she fight off Satan, the ultimate demon who is bent on killing her to keep the baby from being born? It's okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. Makes a great stocking stuffer! Only $1.99 for your Kindle. Purchase by clicking here. You can obtain more information and order the slightly higher priced PDF version or the whole lot more priced paperback version by clicking here.

Which of Your Business Ideas Offers the Best Chance of Success?

2011-11-14T08:10:00.000-08:00

Deciding from a mix of new business ideas can leave your head spinning. Having one idea makes it easy as you simply go for it. But with a number of competing new business ideas spinning around in your head, the challenge is deciding which to launch. The following questions will help you think strategically:

Which idea has the least amount of competition? You’re more likely to succeed when you have minimum competition and high demand. Who are your competitors? How are you different? Do people in your target market express an interest in your idea? Which of your ideas faces the least amount of competition and the most interest from potential buyers?

Which idea can you launch the quickest? Speed to entry is key to the success of a new launch. The idea is to build a successful following before you competition enters the market.

Which idea offers the fewest problems to overcome? In order to launch quickly, you want to minimize anything that stands in the way of your success. Do you need investors? Do you need to build a team? Do you need an extraordinary marketing effort? Is your idea easy to explain? The more issues you have to deal with, the less likely you are to succeed. That doesn’t mean it's impossible to succeed with a complex idea. It simply means you have to give it more thought, more time, more energy, and perhaps, more money.

Which idea allows you to offer the most attractive value proposition? When launching a new business, it helps if your offering simply blows away the competition. The idea is to surprise your market with the value of your offering. Lots of stuff, not much money is the idea. Be careful that you don’t communicate the idea that you are incompetent. This typically happens when a professional offers a service far below the market norm. If your price is too low, than prospects may think you don’t know what you’re doing. Instead, focus on the value of your offering. For example, you might offer a consulting service for 10 percent below the market to establish a competitive price point and then add in some freebies, like white papers, special reports, or other solid business content.

Which idea is most consistent with who you are? You are who you are so stay consistent with yourself. Which idea lines up best with your training and education? Which lines up best with your experience and capabilities? Which sounds like the most fun to do? If you are going to own a business, make sure you enjoy what you are doing.

Speaking of enjoying what you are doing
Have you had a chance to download my new full-length novel, Fulfillment, from Amazon yet? You're sure to enjoy reading this 80,000-word story of the first Christmas. It's about a teenage girl with a lot of moxie who's just a tad pregnant and has an ex-fiance who says, "Ain't no way that's my baby in there." What's a girl to do? What's she say to her dad? And how do you fight off a demon bent on killing you to keep your baby from being born? It's a modern look at an old story. And it’s okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. Makes a great stocking stuffer!

You can obtain more information and order the slightly higher priced PDF version or the whole lot more priced paperback version by clicking here.

Launch One Business at a Time

2011-11-08T07:36:00.000-08:00

Starting a business and keeping it on a high growth track is enough challenge without complicating your life with additional business responsibilities. Once you have one business up and running, you may be in a position to launch another. If you do, leave a solid leader managing your first business while you charge off on your new venture.

Some entrepreneurs prefer the serial route where they will sell their first business and use the profits to finance the next business. Rinse, lather and repeat.

Occasionally I meet people who want to start their first business, but they have five or six ideas for the kind of business they want to launch. Some want help deciding which one to launch. Others want to know how to launch all five or six. This second group is usually concerned about spreading their resources or time too thin. That’s a good concern because it hits on the problem with multiple launches.

Launching one business is a full-time endeavor. It will take all the time and resources you can throw into it. Anything less is a formula for failure. Narrow your list of business ideas to the one that makes the most sense to you.

The exception to the full-time requirement is the person who already has a full-time or part-time job working for someone else but they decide to start a “side business.” These side businesses typically are established to enhance the income of the entrepreneur or turn a hobby into a paying venture. The owner might have in mind an eventual full-time career change, but at the beginning, the side business is recognized as simply a means to an end – either to provide a little supplemental income or to grow into an eventual full-time business launch.

If you are in the launch phase for your business, launch just one of your business ideas, the one that looks most likely to succeed. If you are really insistent on launching more than one, ask yourself who is going to run the second, third or fourth business you are planning to launch? Who is going to pay for the marketing and sales effort required to launch four or five businesses? How will you keep from confusing your marketplace with your personal brand (your name) attached suddenly to four different businesses? Launch one business that will lead to the fulfillment of your dream of self-employment.

Speaking of Fulfillment
Have you had a chance to download my new full-length novel, Fulfillment, from Amazon yet? It's the 80,000 word story of the first Christmas retold with Satan added into the mix. It’s okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. And it makes a great stocking stuffer!

You can obtain more information and order the slightly higher priced PDF version or the whole lot more priced paperback version by clicking here.

How Many Ideas Are Too Many?

2011-11-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

What do you do when you have a bunch of ideas for new businesses? Most people would be happy with one good idea, but I have run into entrepreneurs who are attempting to launch multiple businesses at the same time. These folks are what I call "Idea Factories" because they keep churning out good ideas for new business ventures. Here' a brief video that gives you my take on how to deal with multiple ideas for starting new businesses.

Fill Every Need Before Launching a New Strategy

2011-10-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

The strategic planning process involves revisiting your mission and purpose. It may involve a shift in your competitive factors to create a new niche or unique selling space. It can involve gaining a sharper understanding of where the world is headed and your place in a changing landscape. And strategic planning involves reorganizing your team around the new strategy.

Implementing change starts with a plan. But once you have the plan down, make sure everyone on your team is positioned properly, trained in their role in the new strategy, and has a clear understanding of where the company is headed. Before you roll out the strategy to the marketplace, roll it out internally.

Staff fully for the strategy so that your team is up to the challenge of implementation. You can’t sell without a competent sales team, and you can’t meet deadlines without a capable production team. Customer service has to be a friendly face that serves the customers. Make it clear to each team member that their job depends on how well the company serves its customers. An understaffed strategic launch is a formula for failure just as much as an under-capitalized launch.

Marketing in 2012 Without a Budget

Imagine 52-weeks of marketing that costs you nothing beyond the $45 for this workshop!

October 28, 2011 from 8:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at Panera in DaNada Shopping Center, Wheaton, IL

Author and marketing expert Paul R. Lloyd shows you how to build an aggressive marketing program for 2012 on no budget. Workshop includes:

How to Market in 2012 – What you need to know about marketing for the new year
Create a Marketing Calendar – What to include on your calendar. Special FREE Handout: Excel Template Calendar ready for you to fill in.
"Must Dos" for Successful Online Marketing – includes major online marketing options, Paul’s personal recommendations, and an overview of how to use them. Most free online services don’t do much to build your business unless you use them properly. Paul will start you off with the key "must do’s" for each of the major FREE opportunities.

Click here for more information and to sign up to achieve the fulfillment of your marketing ambitions.

Speaking of Fulfillment
Have you had a chance to download my new full-length novel, Fulfillment, from Amazon yet? It's the 80,000 word story of the first Christmas retold with Satan added into the mix. It’s okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. And it makes a great stocking stuffer!

You can obtain more information and order the slightly higher priced PDF version or the whole lot more priced paperback version by clicking here.

Read Chapter One by clicking here.

Build a Team of Competent Players

2011-10-17T08:47:00.000-07:00

Reorganize the company to fill all core competencies. But do so in accordance with a strategy that takes into account your strengths and weaknesses. Consider a basketball analogy. If you have no superstars, then you build a team of competent players who work together as a team to achieve both a strong defense and a strong offense. On the other hand, a basketball team with a superstar scoring machine will build the rest of the team around the superstar. These other players might be selected for their defensive play for example, knowing that the superstar will score enough points to win. Or they may choose to add more strong offensive players so that the whole team is a strong scoring unit – knowing that the team will score enough points to overcome their defensive weaknesses. With the right team in place, you will have a strong force ready to meet any competitive challenge.

For a small business, organizing for success could involve adding part-timers, consultants, coaches, freelancers or other temporary support where people are helping you on an as needed basis. For example, a small business may not need a Human Resources department, but a good HR generalist serving as a consultant or part-time staffer can be the person you need to decide the best way to attract and retain high quality team members. Your HR person is in the best position to help you answer questions like:

Is your pay structure appropriate?
Is there a more cost-effective way to invest your limited employee benefits budget?
What’s the best way to integrate a new employee onto the team (onboarding)?
What do I have to do before I fire someone?
Am I in compliance with government regulations?

While you may have a full-time sales person, a marketing service like Zuk-Lloyd Associates may be an ideal solution for creating your sales literature, website or other marketing materials. We also can help with the day-to-day planning, public relations and social networking necessary to building solid relationships with the people you do business with.

For a larger company, make sure you are filling all of your positions with competent people. Balance "running lean" with "getting the job done." Taking shortcuts can work in the short term, but long-term excellence and viability require having people performing at a high level of excellence on a daily basis. If you cut your team too much, you make the bottom line look good at the expense of the top line.

Winning companies achieve success by offering the best price, highest quality and most outstanding service. You cannot compromise on these things, and today, you need all three. Delivering on your value promise requires an excellent team so you can achieve the fulfillment of your dreams. Otherwise, you are just a so-so competitor.

Speaking of Fulfillment
Have you had a chance to download my new full-length novel, Fulfillment, from Amazon yet? It's the 80,000 word story of the first Christmas retold with Satan added into the mix. It’s okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. And it makes a great stocking stuffer!

What Core Competencies Are Lacking In Your Business?

2011-10-11T07:29:00.000-07:00

As a business owner, you have certain strengths and weaknesses. So does each member of your staff. Build your team so that you achieve a good balance of strengths so that you have a strong professional handling every conceivable business activity.

We'll continue this discussion in a future post. In the meantime, have you had a chance to download my new full-length novel, Fulfillment, from Amazon yet? It's the 80,000 word story of the first Christmas retold with Satan added into the mix. It’s okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. And it makes a great stocking stuffer!

Partner Disagreements? Try Forming Separate Business Units

2011-09-30T06:10:00.000-07:00

If you cannot gain the support of your business partners for a new strategy or venture idea, you cannot move ahead. One solution may be to obtain partner support for forming a separate strategic business unit. This will allow you to initiate your new strategy or idea in the same way you would launch a new business. The core of your business can continue as before. Failing that, you have to choose between abandoning your idea or strategy concept or breaking up the partnership through a buy-out or business dissolution.

Advantages of forming a new business unit include:

Preserving the core business for which you and your partners founded the company
Launching a new business initiative with the potential to significantly increase the overall size of your company’s operations
Expansion of your company’s portfolio of product and service offerings
Expansion of your customer base – making cross-selling techniques possible
Attracting new people to your company more closely aligned with the strategy or vision of your new venture. These new people will bring fresh ideas and initiatives to your new venture as well as your core business as they interact with team members.

Disadvantages include:

Removing one partner from the day-to-day operations of the new business – as you invest your time in your new idea or strategy. This is an issue particularly if your partners rely heavily on you in the core business.
Dilution of your core marketing message as you expand into your new idea or strategy. Consider separate branding, especially if your new venture serves a different market segment than your core business.
Dilution of your capital as you move financial resources into the new venture.
Partner disagreement on the strategic direction of the company may be symptomatic of deeper issues driving the partners apart. It may be best to dissolve the partnership. Keep in mind that it’s a symptom. One symptom does not a disease make. Keep your options open while considering your personal and professional relationship with your partners.

Speaking of Fulfillment

Have you had a chance to download my new full-length novel, Fulfillment, from Amazon yet? It's the 80,000 word story of the first Christmas retold with Satan added into the mix. It’s okay to read my scary story late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it. And it makes a great stocking stuffer!

Is it Time to Make Changes to Your Team?

2011-09-29T06:11:00.000-07:00

The Chicago Cubs aren’t the only team contemplating changes to its roster of team members this week. If you find yourself in a position where some of your team members don’t agree with you, you really need to make some changes and make sure you get the team going in the right direction.

If you are passionate about your new strategy, change your team so that you have 100% support for your new venture. Many small to mid-size companies think of themselves as family and never lay off a team member except for gross misconduct or economic downturns. The reality is any team member who is not on-board for your strategy is going to hold you back and hold back the ability of the rest of the team to succeed.

Competition is too fierce in today’s global economy to retain workers who are not committed to your company’s path. Of course, you want to do everything in your power to communicate your business direction and obtain the team member’s buy-in before you let a recalcitrant member go. You'll be in a better position to fulfill your company's mission when every member of your team is focused on your strategy. In the same way, your recalcitrant staff member that you let go will be in a better position to fulfill their personal destiny by moving on to another employer more suited to their abilities.

This is one area where sports analogies hold up. A baseball team can’t succeed if one player is unable or refuses to play the role assigned. In such a case, the player is traded or dropped from the team to be replaced by a new player selected to fill the required role. Watch the roster moves the Chicago Cubs make this off season for a class on rebuilding a losing team.

Which brings us to Fulfillment
So far this blog post has nothing to do with the release of my new suspense thriller novel Fulfillment. It's the story of the first Christmas retold with Satan added into the mix. Think about it. What was Satan up to while God was going about the business of sending his son to save the world? It’s okay to read my scary novel late at night with the rain pounding on your windows and thunder and lightning outside, but leave the light on. You’ll need it.

Who says you can’t buy Fulfillment? It’s only a $1.99 on Amazon. And it makes a great stocking stuffer!

Are your team members headed in the same direction?

2011-09-21T09:04:00.000-07:00

Companies succeed when everyone on the team is headed in the same direction. The best teams share the owner’s passion for the mission. These teams are excited about the opportunities for growth – for the company and for themselves.

But how do you get everyone moving in the same direction? Prepare a written strategy for success. Assign a committee to write your mission and a strategic plan for growing your business. Include all functional areas. Make a list of the factors you compete on and compare the list with the factors your competition uses. Adapt and change your competitive factors to create a unique selling space or narrow niche in the marketplace for your company. Develop a marketing strategy for generating leads and sales. Make sure the production and administrative areas are on board with the marketing strategy. When you have achieved consensus from all functional areas, implement your new strategy.

Communicating your company’s purpose, goals, and strategies are essential to building team support. Help your team understand the passions that drive your business. Explain to your team why you are in the business in the first place. Show them how the company’s success will benefit them personally through higher pay, expanded job opportunities and career growth.

What If My Team or Business Partners Don't Share My Passion?

2011-09-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

My family is back from vacation in our old stomping grounds in Pennsylvania. I met with some friends I hadn't seen in decades and caught up on their lives. And we witnessed some of the flooding. Fortunately we were staying with extended family in Bear Lake above Jim Thorpe. This area is up on a mountain above the flood.

In the Colonial period, people settled along the rivers because inland travel depended on riverboats until the age of the railroads. The towns and cities today are still located along river valleys. When the floods hit, these towns are right in the path of the high water.

In business, the floods of competitive pressure, changing technology and global trends can wipe out your business overnight. In this sink or swim world of enterprise, smart companies make sure their key people are on the same page. I'm not talking about building a team of yes people. Of course you will have differences of opinion. But you want your team members and business partners to share your passion and vision for success. Here's a video to kick off the idea of shared passions. I'll follow up with more thoughts in the coming blog posts.

What Kind of Company Do You Want to Become?

2011-08-30T07:23:00.000-07:00

While deeply entrenched in the everyday struggle to make sales and please customers, you may find it difficult to consider where your company is at present and where you are headed in the next six months or longer. Take time today to grab a cup of coffee (or whatever you’re drinking) and sit back in your quiet place to think about the future. Put aside the rush of today’s activities for just 15 minutes that could change your life.

Consider these questions
Where is your business right now? How does the reality of your company compare with your dream? Reality has a way of shaking dreams. In our dreams things have a way of going perfectly. We launch a business and it becomes an overnight sensation. The reality is we launch a business and nobody notices or seems to care. You have to stick to your marketing over a longer period of time and a deeper budget than you at first thought. Production never goes according to plan so you find yourself bogged down in the details.

Restore your dream
Take a moment to restore the dream. Out of your dream for your company, list the things that are important to you. What do you really care about? How do you want your company to actually operate? What’s missing? What is not happening that should happen?

Implement change
This line of questioning produces a list of changes and opportunities that will help you become a better, more successful company. Pick one, two or three of the items on the list that seem to be the most realistic to implement. Put someone in charge of each item and put them to work making it happen. Your team becomes stronger when you involve them in building your dream company. Go forth boldly.

How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis

2011-08-26T07:36:00.000-07:00

One of the things you can do to narrow your focus on what you want your company to become is to conduct a competitive analysis. Think about what your competition is doing. Here are three places you can gather competitive intelligence:

1. Google and other search engines: Search keywords for your company and find out who is on page one. Visit those websites because these are the companies that have their SEO together. What are they doing on their website that makes them attractive enough to land on page one of your keyword? What products and services are they offering? How do they present this information? What can you learn from this information? Do they list their customers on their website?

2. Sales literature: While you’re visiting websites, see if you can you download a brochure, white paper or other free information from your competition. Print materials and their electronic equivalent provide a different view of your competition than their websites.

3. Trade Publications: Visit the websites for the trade media serving your industry. What do they say about the products and services typically offered by members of the industry (you and your competition). Check out your competitor’s ads. Click to follow the links back to their landing pages. Landing pages can tell you a lot about a competitor that you may not learn from their regular websites. This intelligence might include special pricing, the way your competitor puts products together for a special offer, white papers and other information not otherwise available.

Once you have gathered this information, organize it into a spreadsheet that gives you a good overview of your industry. Treat yourself as a competitor by adding information gleaned from your website to the spreadsheet. How are you the same as your competition? How are you different? How can you change your offering to be truly different than the other companies serving your industry?

FREE BONUS FOURTH IDEA: You can only look at your information and competitive intelligence so long and then it all kind of runs together and doesn’t mean much to you. You’ll walk away with that “so what” attitude. To obtain the most from a competitive analysis, have an outside expert perform it for you. The outsider doesn’t bring your preconceived notions and beliefs to the process so you get an unbiased look that sees things you will miss because you are so close to your industry. For more information on conducting a competitive analysis, contact me.

Grow Out of Your Passions and Capabilities

2011-08-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

As a business owner, you have two things working for you. One is your passion. The other is what you do well. This gives you one plus one, but you have to add it up to three. The third thing is to recognize you have blanks in your business that you are not particularly good at or passionate about. These are best delegated to those who are passionate and perform at a high level of competence.

Start by listing all the things that are important to you. Include everything. Don’t limit the list to business. You may find items that are not part of your company, but you sure would like to add them at some point.

For example, I’m passionate about writing fiction, but what does that have to do with my marketing and strategy business? I write copy for my clients so my fiction helps me become a better writer. What else? What if I use my marketing and strategy skills to promote my fiction? I’m beginning to do that with the launch of my new novel Fulfillment. It launches in September so you’ll be hearing more about how I’m marketing fiction on this blog.

Fiction is particularly difficult to market compared to nonfiction because it’s hard to produce the ancillary products and services that come naturally with a nonfiction book. With nonfiction, you can add video training, webinars, workbooks, blog posts, speaking gigs, articles and more. You also can use a nonfiction book to promote your products and services so you reap additional sales and customers in your regular business.

If this is starting to sound like I’m encouraging you to write a nonfiction book to help promote yourself and your current business, you’re right. If you’re thinking about writing a book, send me an email and I’ll email back more thoughts about writing a book.

Once you have your list of passions, write down your core competencies as a business owner. What do you do at a very high level of capability? If you have trouble making this catalog, think of it as a skills inventory. What are all the things you can do? Once you have that list, cross out or delete anything that you would prefer to delegate or that you know could be performed better by someone else. Narrow the listing to your best stuff.

Next, make a list of must haves for your business that you are either not passionate about or not particularly good at. Don’t include things just because your competitors offer them. You’re trying to eliminate anything from your offering that is readily available from someone else. But there are always things that you must have in order to serve the customer that you would prefer to delegate. Based on this list, identify partners, staff or suppliers who will handle these products or services for you.

Next, make a file of the things your competition offers. Include everything even if they are not particularly good at some of them. Check out several companies because not all competitors are the same. Contact me if you need help with your competitor analysis.

Compare your passions and strong capabilities with the things your competitors say they offer. How are you different? This study should alert you to product and services you can drop from your offering because your competition offers them with passion and great competence. Done right, it will help you identify things you can add to your offering. Some of these may be things that no one is offering. So when you make them available, you become a unique, narrowly focused supplier to your industry.

In the end, you want to separate yourself from competitors so customers will select you based on your unique offering package rather than a simple preference from among similar offerings. A unique offering minimizes the importance of price in the sale while eliminating competition. And these two things combined will help you supercharge business growth.

What Is Your Vision For Your Company?

2011-08-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

Supercharging business growth happens when you have a clear sense of direction for your business. But how do you identify your vision?

Create a Passion-Driven Niche

2011-08-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

If you look and sound like everyone else in your industry, you will fall into the trap every buyer sets for their vendors today: If all else is equal than the only differentiator is price. Here are some ideas for how to differentiate yourself from competition.

Service: What can you do to take a leading position in the area of service? Same day shipping? Two-day turnaround? Production system that tells the customer exactly where their order is in your shop at any time? It depends on your product or service mix, but look for something you can brag about that your competition can’t match.

Quality: Can you offer the longest warranty in the industry? Can you offer something of value that is not easy for customers to find elsewhere? Will your customers value it if you can measure quality at every step of the production process and provide a report, especially if your competition isn’t able to match you without making a significant investment? What is your quality differentiator?

Price: The idea isn’t necessarily to be the low price leader. You want to be the value leader in a way that your customer can clearly see. If your offering more clearly matches your customer’s perceived need than does your competition’s offerings, you put your customer in a position to self-select you. You want your customer to say: “For a little more cost you give us a lot more value.” What value proposition are you giving your customer that your competition isn’t able or willing to match?

Narrow your focus: Review your target market with the idea of segmenting your list of potential customers into groups based on your particular strengths, values and passions as a company and business owner. Target one of these segments by changing your product and service mix to focus on this selected segment. The idea is to market to a smaller group of targets with a message that is tightly focused on their wants and needs.

Change your marketing messages to reflect this narrowing of your niche. When you narrow your niche properly, you set up an offering that is irresistible to your target market because it is so narrowly focused on them. Everyone else in your industry looks like a generalist to your buyer. When you focus properly on a target segment, people within that segment tend to talk about you. And your publicity efforts are more likely to be picked up by trade publications and other media because your offering is “buzz-worthy.

What Do You Care Deeply About?

2011-08-05T06:47:00.000-07:00

Selling today isn’t about price, quality or service. Those three traditional selling foci (focuses?) are givens today. You can’t sell anything if you don’t offer a competitive price, high quality and outstanding service. Don’t kid yourself. It takes all three just to be a player. So what do you sell on?

Buyers are looking for information sources they can trust. To the extent your product is technical or complex in some way, and assuming you are an expert, you can build trusting relationships by becoming a reliable source of information. Knowledge builds a trusting relationship. Since people buy from people they trust, knowledge sells.

But what does this have to do with today’s question? Think like a buyer for a moment. Who would you rather make a large purchase from? A stranger who called you up on the telephone? Or a friend who has spent the past 18 months giving you solid advice without ever sending you an invoice? Most of us would choose the friend, especially since the friend understands the reality of today’s market where you have to deliver on price, quality and service.

How do you position yourself to become that friend to your target market of prospects? Begin by considering what you enjoy learning about and what you enjoy doing. Build your product and service offerings around those things you enjoy because your joy is contagious. You can’t help telling people about the things you enjoy. The people you speak with will enjoy hearing you talk about these things because they will like the excitement in your voice and the depth of your understanding about your favorite subject.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, pick a business you will love being in. You’re going to be in your business for a long time and you don’t want to become stuck in a business you hate five years from now. Whatever business you choose to be in, always remember that you have competitors who absolutely love what they are doing. Just as price, quality and service are must haves to be competitive today, passion is the fourth must have in selling.

Lead with Passion

2011-08-03T05:57:00.000-07:00

People buy a relationship before they buy a product or service. So do the right things to develop that relationship by providing value, showing that value up front, perhaps giving good information to your customers. Show your customers how you want to work with them. People relate to your passions. People relate to those values that you bring to the table. Make sure they’re up front so people can see them.

Passion begins in the heart. When you develop marketing materials, whether traditional printed items or online efforts, lead with your heart. Empathize with your market. Where is your customer’s pain? How can you contribute to solving the pain? How can you show that you care? What can you give away in order to begin the process of building a relationship with your prospect base?

Whatever you do, remember that it’s still marketing and sales. It’s still a numbers game. If you give away 100 free white papers, how many leads will you pick up? How about giving away 1000 white papers? Or 10,000? What if you gave away 12 different white papers, 10,000 copies each?

Does a white paper show you care? Yes, because you put in the time and effort to produce a valuable result. If you’ll do that before a customer even knows you, you’ve warmed up to a stranger. That stranger may eventually move closer to you through the suspect, prospect, customer phases.

Keep in mind that the white paper idea is just that. It may not be a good idea for you. Or it might be. Depends, doesn’t it? The point here is for you to consider what you bring to the table in terms of value before you even think about selling anything. Okay, so maybe you’re always thinking about selling stuff, but you know what I mean. Sell yourself first. If you win the prospect’s heart, their mind will follow. We really do prefer to buy from our friends or other people we know and trust.

Use Passions, Core Values and Competencies to Be More Competitive

2011-08-01T06:21:00.000-07:00

Are you just missing on closing sales? Are you coming in second place instead of closing the deal? Many times, making the sale is a matter of doing all things well, especially the little things. In sports, we often hear that the difference between winning and losing is a matter of inches or split seconds. Business is the same way. You have to get the little things right to win consistently. One of my favorite analogies for this is baseball where the difference between a 300 batting average and a 250 hitter is only one extra hit per week. The 300 hitter is a star player. The 250 hitter is only so-so. Yet, the difference in salary can be millions of dollars per year. Why can't the 250 hitter grab that one extra hit a week when it's worth so much money? If you're feeling like a so-so player in the business world, this video and blog series is for you. By doing just a little bit better at the little things, your income can increase significantly.

How to Stay in Front of Your Competition

2011-07-28T06:15:00.000-07:00

Stay in front of your competition so as they change or adapt to the marketplace, you’re getting there first.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But how does this work in the real world?

Begin by staying alert for needs that aren’t being met in your industry. Ask your customers what’s going on their business. What’s working for them? What isn’t? What could be going better? You don’t have to conduct a formal survey. Just ask the questions whenever you are speaking with your customers or others in your industry. Ask your competitor’s the same questions when you run into them at networking gatherings. You may be amazed at the marketing intelligence your competition will give away if you but ask.

Think about how you can plug into the unmet needs of your customers and prospects. Maybe you can adapt one of your products to a new purpose. Or tailor a service that meets a special need at an affordable price.

One way I blow away competition is to offer my prospects a path to money. Money sells better than almost anything. Over the years I have developed connections in the world of buying, selling and recapitalizing companies. People involved in factoring, vc, angels, etc. People involved in non-traditional funding solutions. I’m not in the money business. I help companies grow through more effective marketing and strategy. A lot of other people sell a similar service. One of the differences between me and my competition is I understand the money side of business growth. I help companies grow their top line, but first I understand their bottom line.

I can bring money to the table. What can you bring to the table that your competition hasn’t thought of? Think about the connections you already have. Think beyond simply making connections for people. Making referrals is great, but can you bring something special to the table because you have the connections to make something happen for your customers?

Never underestimate the power of offering a solution that’s cheaper, faster and better than your competition’s best shot. Study your competitor’s product and service offerings. How can you bring a better solution to the deal?

How can you make a significant difference in quality, price or service? Significant is the key word. It’s difficult to get a prospect to notice a marginal improvement. Marginally better gets lost in the blah-blah-blah of competing sales forces. But when you achieve a significant breakthrough, it’s buzz-worthy. Everyone wants to know about it, and everyone wants to listen.

How to Find a Unique Selling Space

2011-07-27T05:58:00.000-07:00

A unique selling space is a marketing position where you have no competition and high demand for your products and services. An example would be a patented product that solves a problem no one else can solve. Since very few companies outside of the technology space and drug space have this kind of advantage, let’s look at a more practical example for the rest of us.

One way to achieve a unique selling space is to combine a set of services or products in a way that no one else is offering. As a marketer, I could offer a combination of online and offline public relations services to form a unique offer. No one else currently offers the same package. In addition, I would set a special package price below what you could expect to pay for the same services if purchased individually from different sources.

Let’s put a little flesh and bones on this example. The online offer would be to create a set of one dozen mini videos where you answer one FAQ in each video. We’ll post these videos to YouTube once a month to give you a year’s worth of video postings. You then can capture the YouTube coding and post the videos on your website or blog.

Speaking of blogs, let’s add a weekly posting to your blog to the package. This will be a posting we do for you once a week. You’ll have to fill in with additional blog postings on your own because you need at least three posts a week to draw a crowd and make an SEO impact. The blog posts in my package will include your video in week 1 and three brief written posts for weeks 2, 3 and 4. If a month has a fifth week, we’ll throw that one into the package for free. By the way, we’ll post a mention of each blog post to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for you.

Okay, that’s the online part. Let’s add a monthly email campaign to your permission-based database of email addresses. We’ll set you up with a Constant Contact account (or another supplier – your preference). We’ll prepare one article per month. We’ll update your database for you and send out the emails.

Now for the offline part of the package, we’ll repurpose your email article for publication in appropriate local and national media as we see the opportunities for you. For business-to-business clients, we’ll focus on trade media. For local retail and consumer oriented businesses, we’ll focus mainly on local media outlets your shoppers are likely to see.

I don’t know if other marketers offer a package like this. This or something similar may be a common offering from marketing agencies working with mid-size and smaller companies where budgets are tight.

The point here isn’t my package offering but yours.

How can you package an offering for prospects and customers that blows your competition away?

Start by looking at what your competition is offering on their websites and through other media. Talk to your customers and ask how you are doing compared to their other suppliers. Are they offering special deals or packages? Would your customer like to see you offer a special package deal? (Of course they would. You already know the answer. You’re just setting up the invitation to present your package when it’s ready.)

Design your package of products and services in a way that makes it tough for your competition to emulate. When you are ready, launch your new offering. Remember that price is part of the package deal. Without an attractive price, your offer will fall flat.

Send me an email to let me know how you are doing in developing your unique package offering. Let me know if you have other ideas for how to distinguish yourself from competition. I’ll respond personally to every email I receive.

Using Street Smarts to Grow Your Business

2011-07-26T06:57:00.000-07:00

Smaller companies simply don’t have the war chest that major organizations bring to the battle for the customer’s heart and mind. But whether your company is large or small, there are many free or nearly free ways to promote your products or services, thanks to the Internet. One place to start is social networking. Websites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are free resources to spread the word about your business. So is a blog.

While social network sites offer a great opportunity, it’s imperative that you use them wisely. These are not the places to promote or advertise your products or services in the traditional sense. Remember that you are not selling anything on these sites. Instead, you are building relationships by establishing yourself as an expert and trusted advisor. Build the relationship with social networking. Save the selling for after the prospect contacts you to discuss a problem or requests more information about your products or services.

Tie you social networking back to your website so prospects can learn more about you and sign up for your emails. Email marketing is another low cost guerilla marketing tactic. How you use email marketing depends on the best practices for your industry. Consumer marketers tend to email frequently, even daily. Business-to-business marketers email less frequently, with monthly email being the most common frequency I’ve seen.

Your email can be in a newsletter format, using a resource like Constant Contact. But it doesn’t have to be a newsletter. You can send out a simple email message to your list. The important thing is to provide good content targeted to your readers. And you can use sites like Constant Contact to send plain vanilla emails. You don’t have to use the fancy layouts if you prefer not to look like a “newsletter.” It’s your choice.

Street Smarts also involve repurposing content. So your blog posts add up to an article for your email program. Your articles can be posted to sites that accept articles. They also can be submitted to the trade media serving your industry. Over time, your articles can add up to a book that you can publish through a conventional publisher or self-publish.

I’ve covered just a few ideas here. You are limited only to your imagination in deciding the best ways to reach your market with solid content that builds your reputation as a trusted adviser without emptying your marketing war chest.

Are You Vulnerable to Your Competition's Actions?

2011-07-22T07:14:00.000-07:00

Competition changes to meet the demands of your industry. You have to change with it. Even better, get out in front of your competition so they have to adapt to the changes you make. Here are some ideas to jump start your thinking on this topic.

Know Your Customers

2011-07-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

Talk to your customers about your industry. A typical question is to ask how you are doing as a supplier. That’s a good place to start, but extend the conversation. How does your customer feel your industry is doing as a whole? What are your customer’s suppliers doing well? What are your customer’s suppliers doing that they would like to see changed or improved on?

When you make the conversation generic rather than about you, your customer no longer has to worry about hurting your feelings and will be more open about problems, concerns and needs, which as I said, leads to sales opportunities.

Ask prospects the same questions. What needs do they have that are not being met by their suppliers? What issues and struggles are they dealing with?

Can you help in any way? Your expertise as a manager or business owner in providing advice to prospects helps you start or continue to build a relationship that may lead to sales. Are there products or services you can develop to serve their unmet needs? The solutions you add should arise from your company’s core values and strengths as well as your passions as a business owner. As you adapt to the changing needs of your customers and prospects, you move into a selling space that marks you as unique in some ways. With a unique selling space, you are well on your way towards supercharging business growth.

What Does It Mean to Know Your Industry?

2011-07-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

Where is your industry headed? Begin by gathering information about the financial analysts who follow your industry. They have a handle on the big publicly traded companies in your industry. It’s their job to keep investors informed about what’s going on. You can learn about technological innovations, problems the industry faces, and the financial rewards or threats that come with playing in your space. Visit the websites of your publicly traded competitors and download their 10K forms and other government filings.

Follow the trade publications serving your industry.
Today you are more likely to "read" the trades online than through a print magazine, but either way, you’ll learn what experts in your industry have to say about it. You’ll learn about new developments as well as what worries the industry. Your trade association provides this same kind of information along with information about their lobbying efforts. The things your industry are lobbying for in Washington and at the state level can point you to problems, concerns and needs within your industry and the customers your industry serves. Where there are problems, concerns and needs, there are opportunities to sell solutions.

It isn’t enough to have a fuzzy awareness in the back of your mind about industry issues and opportunities. Make a list of concerns, problems, new innovations and new directions your industry is headed in. Look for opportunities that play to your strengths as a company. What new competitive factors can you add to your strategy mix to address needs and opportunities you are not addressing today? Are there competitive factors you want to drop or de-emphasize because the industry is headed away from these things? Adjust your strategy to move with your industry and to keep pace with your customers.

How to Know Your Competition

2011-07-06T06:45:00.000-07:00

Your competition exists at a number of levels ranging from the big multinational corporations down to the garage shop entrepreneurial start ups. The mid-size and smaller companies may be the ones you run into most frequently when bidding on projects, but the multinationals may be the ones who best define the products and services your customers will pay for. Your regional or local competitors are the ones you run into not only in the bidding wars, but also at networking events, trade shows and wherever you meet prospective customers.

Fortunately, your competitors today make it easier than ever to learn about them. Competitive intelligences is as close as their websites. Begin by making a list of competitors. Start with the ones you already know. Perform a Google search on your own keywords and phrases to identify other competitors. Add those competitors showing up on page one to your list. Visit their websites. What are they saying about themselves? What points are they making in describing their products and services? Are they emphasizing quality, price or other factors? What makes them special? Do you see any weaknesses?

Make a list of the factors your competitors list as important to the products and services they provide. Some factors will be common to most or all of your competition. Others may be unique or unusual. What are the key messages they make on most pages of their websites?

Once you understand your competition in detail, look for opportunities to distinguish yourself from them. Step one is to make the list of competitive factors your competitors use. Step two is to make a list of your own competitive factors. Step three is to compare yourself with your competition. What factors are common to all competition as well as yourself? What factors can you borrow from competition – those things you are not currently offering, but should be offering so you can match your competitors? Think about new factors you can add to distinguish yourself to make it easier for prospects to choose you.

What Else Do I Need to Know to Succeed?

2011-06-28T13:44:00.000-07:00

Today's video introduces three groups you'll want to get to know better: your competition, your industry and your target market of customers and prospects.

Wait Before Launching Your Brilliant Idea

2011-06-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

You’ve settled on your next brilliant idea. You’ve considered the competitive landscape. Looked at the alternative ideas. Made sure the idea fits in with your business model and your core values, passions and competencies. You’ve built a team to launch your new baby, even if the team is just only you.

Wait. Before you launch. How much money are you going to make from this new idea? Is there any profit potential? Who is your target market for this idea? Are there 300,000 prospects or 300? How many do you have to convert to buyers before you break even?

Take a hard look at the numbers. If you can't make money no matter how much stuff you sell from this idea, then you’ve hit a No Go. If the potential is marginal at best, you have to decide if the launch is worth the risk. Remember that you are an investor, not a gambler. Maintain a reasonable expectation for success. If the potential is huge, you’ve hit a Go. So go already. Let me know how it works out.

Separating the moths from the butterflies

2011-06-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

Ideas can drain your resources with little or no chance of success. Or they can serve as the launchpad for your next great business success story. Here’s an outline for handling ideas in your organization:

Write down your idea in as much detail as possible. If it makes sense on screen, move on to the next step. If not, delete it and move on to other business matters.
Save your sensible idea in an “Ideas” folder in your computer. Over time, this folder will fill up with little Word files describing your many ideas.
Once a quarter (or month or whatever time period works for you), open your ideas folder and review each idea. Pick the one that strikes you as having the most potential given the current state of your business. This idea should be attractive based on your passions, core values and core competencies. You should feel an affinity for this idea. It should feel right in your heart as well as your mind.
Keep the ideas you did not select in your Ideas folder. They may not sound like the best ideas today, but down the road they may improve with age like a good wine.
Develop your selected idea into a launch-able strategic initiative with a written plan, budget and team assignments, even if the team is just you.
Implement your written plan using a series of Go/No Go decision points.

When an idea lights in your mind, it does so with the beauty of a butterfly. By locking your ideas away in an Ideas folder for a period of time, it becomes easier to separate the moths from the butterflies. Invest in the idea most likely to fly on the wings of success.

Gambling the Company

2011-06-22T07:06:00.000-07:00

Small companies are especially at risk when pursuing innovative new ideas. On the one hand, the small company can react to market conditions faster than larger companies. On the other hand, they may lack the resources to bring the new idea to market. The small business ends up either investing scarce resources into the idea at the sacrifice of the company’s core business or they abandon the idea.

A third approach is often overlooked or rejected by small business owners, yet it offers the possibility of bringing a new idea to market in an affordable and ultimately profitable way. This approach involves partnering with other businesses to share the expense of product development and launch. In this approach, the company with the idea creates a business case for the idea, including all the steps and resources necessary to develop and launch. The owner determines what can be handled in-house without stretching resources beyond the company’s ability to handle.

The owner makes a list of “must dos” and “must haves” required to launch the new idea that will have to be sourced on the outside. For these, the owner solicits partners. The idea is to create a new business, owned by several companies, for the purpose of developing and launching the new idea. The partners each invest “sweat equity” from their areas of expertise or capability.

Choose only the resources you must have to achieve success, the ones you cannot afford to purchase. Limit the number of partners to the most important contributors. Once you have these partners lined up, then purchase the remaining resources you need.

Before pursuing this path, make sure your partners all play nice in the sandbox. Get to know them as people as well as businesspeople.

Create a Development Team for Your Idea

2011-06-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

For the larger company, one of the best ways to approach a truly innovative idea is to create an independent development team to bring the idea to fruition through a series of "Go/No Go" decisions that either lead to abandonment (No Go) or launch (Go).

Give this team the autonomy to act as an independent company within your organization. This means the reporting relationship allows the team leader direct access to top management. It means giving the team the freedom to develop its own vendor resources.

With any new idea, the likelihood of success is greater if you allow the team to choose the best your company has to bring to the table of innovation while avoiding the weaknesses. It means allowing the team to launch a marketing and sales strategy independent of your company’s marketing team, if necessary.

The greatest value to your company in approaching innovation in this way is what it does for your executives and managers. By forming small launch teams, you give the team valuable experience in entrepreneurship. Whether the idea succeeds or fails, your team brings the lessons learned back to your company that will pay off in the years ahead. It’s not enough to give your team the freedom to fail. You also must release them to succeed.

Which idea would you choose?

2011-06-20T06:42:00.000-07:00

What's the best way to choose from among three or four or even more ideas competing for your time, energy and resources? You have to choose the best one, but how do you make the decision? Begin by comparing your ideas with the offerings of your competition. Which of your ideas stacks up best?

Which of your ideas has the potential to succeed in the marketplace compared to current competitive offerings? Can your idea be launched at a lower price? Does it offer greater value or higher quality? Will it make a significant difference to your customer?

Be careful, not conventional
The danger in choosing among the best ideas is to go with your comfort zone. Which idea fits in best with your current product offerings? Which idea is most consistent with your history as a company? Which idea is least likely to ruffle any feathers in the company? Ideation teams face the danger of letting questions like these rule rather than opting for true innovation.

Fight against the tendency of always choosing the safe path. Instead, seek the truly innovative solution.

For a small company, making this choice requires the owner to be daring by focusing on the new and innovative at the sacrifice of the safer route. Depending on the investment involved, the small business owner could end up gambling the company. But there is an alternative.

For larger companies, with sufficient resources, the best approach is to form an independent team to develop the idea through a series of Go/No Go steps. The idea of independence is essential to true innovation, which requires entrepreneurial freedom to act rather than subjugation to the corporate norm. We’ll look at the large business model in my next blog post followed by the small business model.

How Do I Choose Between Competing Ideas?

2011-06-16T09:24:00.000-07:00

Creativity is important in generating new product or service ideas. But how do you choose between two great ideas when neither one of them is proven and they both require investment? Listen to the video for a practical approach to choosing the best idea. We'll continue the discussion in future blog posts. Click here to send me your questions.

Back to the Future with Great Ideas

2011-06-14T04:52:00.000-07:00

To go back to the future with great ideas, you first have to visit your past. You can start with today and work your way backwards to your early childhood. Or you can jump back to your earliest memories and work your way forward.

Write down the important touchstone moments in your life. This could be something your father or mother said or advice a teacher or other authority figure gave to you. Consider lessons learned from experience. If you learned the hard way that playing with matches is dangerous, what did that lesson also teach you about risk taking? How about your experience with the schoolyard bully? What did that teach you about taking risks? Or about how to treat your team? Or how to treat customers?

Think about the subjects you studied in school. What can you learn from the ancient Greeks or Romans? What about the literature you read in high school or college? For example, from Romeo and Juliet you might consider ways to “romance” your products and services to improve customer experience.

Keep your passions, core values and capabilities in mind as you go through this exercise. Open yourself to discovering passions, values and capabilities you forgot about that you can revive for your business.

Make analogies between the activities of your youth and your present business issues. If you grew by standing up to the schoolyard bully, what “bullies” do you need to stand up to today? Customers who automatically respond to every quote with a demand for a lower price are behaving like the schoolyard bully. While you don’t have to punch the business bully’s lights out, you do have to learn how to deal with price demands. While this is too big an issue for a blog post, the short answer is to learn how to establish price expectations from the beginning of the sales process. You can learn how to address price objections as part of your sales training. In the realm of high impact marketing, the look and feel of your sales materials, website and other marketing media contribute to the prospect’s expectation of price.

When you arrive back to the present, bring your list of ideas together with current lists for passions, core values and core competencies. Think about ways to integrate the good ideas into your business, especially if they can help you distinguish yourself from competition.

Stand Out From Your Competition

2011-06-08T12:22:00.000-07:00

Studying how to supercharge business growth with new ideas and new energy begins with making a list of your passions, interests, core values and capabilities. Review your list for themes, trends or ideas that point to ways to improve your business, products and services.

Think about what makes you stand out from your competitors. How are you different? How are you better? How are they perhaps a little stronger than you? Make a list of your marketing strengths and a separate list of your weaknesses.

This may be starting to look like a SWAT analysis, which is a useful tool, but set that thought aside for the moment. We’re searching for new ideas to supercharge business growth here.

Study those areas of weakness in your business as compared to your competition. What can you do to become stronger in any of them? Is it possible to drop or reduce your focus on weak competitive factors? Eliminate your weaknesses and concentrate on your strengths.

Go back to the lists you’ve made in this exercise. Are there things you can emphasize in your business or things you can add to your business model on the lists? Be creative. This is a time to stretch your mind. Also be willing to take risks. Play lots of “what if” games. For example, what if you incorporated your love of sports into your business model in some way? You don’t have to actually do it. What you’re doing is trying to identify new opportunities out of your experience, preferences and strengths.

This exercise will help you identify things to add, subtract, emphasize or deemphasize in your business model so that you stand out from your competition in ways that make you special. The idea is to make it easier for your prospects and customers to find you and choose you.

This exercise is complex on many levels, so take the time to repeat the process as necessary. If you become lost or confused, let me know by email. I’m here to help you. And be sure to click here to sign up for my monthly Business Growth Ideas.

Discover Opportunities in Your Past

2011-06-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

By looking back on where you’ve been in your life you can pull ideas to grow your company. Begin by making a list of your passions and interests. Add your company’s core values and capabilities to the list. Use this list to help you understand your business as it exists today.

Businesses generally are more successful when they narrow their market. But this narrowing process may cause you to forgo some things you care about deeply. For example, I love to write fiction but there is little opportunity for fiction in marketing. However, I am able to bring fiction writing techniques into my business writing. For example, a good story starts with a hook to hold the reader’s attention. A good article holds attention in the same way. For this article, the title is the hook.

Include the things you care about most on your list, especially those things you may have set aside because they didn’t quite fit into your business model.

Core values include the obvious like honesty, integrity, and dependability. Your core values also include things like taking care of your customers by making sure you charge a fair price and deliver your services on time.

Add your company’s capabilities to your list. You have competencies you use every day, but you also have skills that don’t fit into your current business model. For example, you may be really good at managing people, but have little or no staff in your small business. Include on your list those abilities that are underutilized.

Review the list for things you could add to your business to improve company performance. Do you see any trends or themes jumping out that may direct your business planning? Next time we’ll explore more about how to use this list to supercharge business growth through high impact marketing.

Pull Ideas From Your Past to Grow Your Business

2011-06-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

In my recent posts, I talked about how studying the trends can guide you in growing your business. We were concerned about pulling ideas out of the future to help you supercharge business growth now and in the coming years. For this new series of blog posts, I’ll be talking about how to pull high impact marketing ideas out of your past. Who you are as a person, where you’ve been, and what you are made of can help you shape your company for rapid growth. Let’s begin with a video overview.

Look for Opportunities and Dangers

2011-06-03T07:38:00.000-07:00

Trends help you forecast where the world is headed so you can take advantage of coming changes. In this series of blog posts, we’ve been talking about taking advantage of trends to predict product and service opportunities down the road. If the market changes a certain way, you may have to tweak a product to meet the changing needs of your market. Or you may see an opportunity for a new product. The idea is to begin now to take advantage of the coming changes so you are ready to roll out a solution at about the time the market is ready to buy… and before your competition realizes the market has shifted.

Trends also point you towards danger up ahead for your business. If oil prices continue to climb, for example, will you be able to continue serving your current geographical market or will transportation costs force you to shrink the territory you serve? The danger is you may have to market to fewer prospects. You also may need to shrink your niche to better target your market.

Both changes will reduce the number of potential customers you can serve. But these changes also make it easier for you to sell to the remaining target prospects. By narrowing your focus now, instead of waiting for the inevitable geographical limitations coming down the road, you have a better chance of winning new customers compared to competitors who ignore the trend. The same thinking applies to any trend. Just as there are opportunities, there are dangers.

Fulfillment is coming. Tell everyone!

It Is a Small World After All

2011-06-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

How will current trends affect your business down the road two or three years? It’s hard enough to spot a trend in the first place and it’s even more difficult to predict where the trend is going. But once you study a trend and settle on your best estimate of where the future is headed, it’s time to go to work to prepare for that future. The idea is to have the business model, the products and the services in place by the time the market is ready.

One trend that is not going anywhere soon is the globalization of markets. There’s no reason why your corner grocer can’t be owned by a company based in China or Italy or Pakistan. How does that impact you? It raises two issues, one is a challenge the other is an opportunity.

Challenge: increased competition
The challenge is meeting the stress of more competitors in your space who are well-financed and have the resources of a global company behind them. There are many, many things you can begin doing today to assure you marginalize this competition. One way is to modify your business model to make your company or product offering unique or special in some way. If you are in a small business, you may want to narrow your focus to a more select group of targets. I say “more select” because I’m assuming you already are serving a clearly defined niche. Now consider narrowing that niche further.

Opportunity: it's your world
The opportunity is you can play the same game as the big companies by jumping into the global economy. Maybe you don’t have the resources to open an outlet in downtown Rome or Tokyo, but you can reach customers through aggressive online marketing where you make it easy for someone overseas to make a purchase and receive your products or services. Again, there are many ways to approaching this opportunity. The easiest is to offer something that can be delivered as a downloadable file. But the world isn’t limited to downloadable files. Google searches can lead you to distributors in Europe, Asia or wherever you see a market opportunity.

For more information on growing your business, be sure to sign up for my free monthly email focused on Business Growth Ideas.

No Trend Continues Indefinitely

2011-05-31T13:35:00.000-07:00

That’s the challenge, isn’t it? It’s the nature of trends that they end. Competing forces come along to diffuse or end the trend. The thing that weakens the trend is the same thing that supports and strengthens the new trend.

As a business owner, you’re doing two things. One, you are going with the current trend – riding the wave of opportunity it presents. Two, you are looking to the future in an attempt to anticipate when the current trend will fizzle out and what the next trend will be.

The current trend is easy to follow. Anticipating when to bailout on a trend is the difficult challenge. The trick in following a trend is to not be a pig. Don’t try to squeeze every last dime out of the trend. Instead, quit early and invest in the new trend. Timing is everything, isn’t it? Anticipating the end of a trend is easier if you follow global trends looking for things that point to the coming collapse of the current trend.

One major caveat here – never, ever bet against the U.S. economy. Instead, ride the wave. The American economy has been the world’s greatest wealth generation mechanism from the beginning. This will continue indefinitely, certainly longer than anyone reading this in the year 2011 will live to see.

Discovering the next trend… and determining when to jump aboard the trend… are business decisions you make based on experience, research and judgment. In the end, it comes down to a gamble or investment decision. You can reduce the risk by performing a trends analysis, but there will always be some risk. And if you take enough risks, you’re going to lose your share. But you also will win your share.

Your best chance of supercharging business growth relies on anticipating and betting trends and changes to the trends. And remembering always that no trend continues forever.

Going Against the Trend

2011-05-24T14:44:00.000-07:00

Is there ever a good time to go against the trend? Contrarian investing has a long tradition in our culture, but tradition doesn’t make it necessarily the smart move. There are times to bet the trend and times to bet against it. Let’s kick off the discussion with a brief video and then expand the conversation over the next few blog posts.

Discover the Opportunities in Trends

2011-05-23T07:28:00.000-07:00

Studying the trends will help you identify opportunities with prospective customers now as well as down the road in that two-to-three-year time frame we’ve been talking about. If you can gain insights into where your industry is headed as a result of current global trends, you will be in a better position to help customers and potential customers prepare for the coming changes.

Companies often select a group of most desired target prospects. They plan an aggressive sales and marketing effort geared towards landing at least a few of these half dozen or so large companies. As you target a group of such potential customers, consider their current and most likely needs in the future. While selling into this group, you will be building a reputation as a serious change agent and information leader. Extend this level of insight into the rest of your marketing and selling.

It’s a tough job to distinguish yourself from competition, but one way that’s sure to get you noticed is to show your prospect that you not only have today’s solution, but also have a good handle on where the industry is headed. Demonstrate that you are preparing now to adapt your current offering as well as introduce new products and services that will meet your prospect’s needs long term. The idea here is to position your company as the long-term solution rather than the quick, cheap fix.

This series of blog posts over the past week have focused on looking at trends and bringing what you learn into your business to help you prepare your customers and prospects for the future. Doing so gives you an advantage that’s sure to supercharge business growth, but you have to work at it. There are many, many things you can be doing right now to gain an edge over the next couple of years. This series has just scratched the service to stimulate your thinking.

Moving forward with trend analysis may seem too daunting a task, especially for a small business lacking the resources for a sophisticated forecasting team. So what should you do? For the answer in the form of a deeper discussion on this topic and to learn some simple techniques for forecasting that will work with mid-size and smaller companies, send me an email with “Trends” in the subject line.

New topic next time.

Identify the Changing Needs of Current Customers

2011-05-18T08:05:00.000-07:00

Identify the coming needs your current customers. Your customers will require new, improved or changed products, services and transaction options in the next two-to-three-year time frame because their markets will change in ways that may move them away from your products and services. You’re going to lose them if you don't adapt. If you anticipate the changes and offer new solutions before your competition, you can increase your market share. Here are some things you can do now to serve your customers better in the future:

1. Ask your customers what they are doing to adapt to changes in the marketplace. What do they see happening in the near term future? Do they foresee any changing needs that may require you to adapt your products or services?

2. Study changing technology coming on line today and ask how it will make an impact on your industry down the road. New innovations in communications, software and hardware can cause dramatic shifts in the way companies do business. Online marketing is still evolving. Make sure you stay on top of these innovations.

3. Watch global trends to identify needs in the future. A looming recession indicates that the value of capital will increase as it becomes scarce. Entering a period of recovery opens an opportunity for introducing new products. Global warming may impact transportation creating opportunities for products that run cooler and use less energy. It also creates opportunities for services that can be delivered remotely.

Whatever the trend, it comes shrouded in opportunity. But you have to watch and move swiftly at the right moment.

These are just a few ideas to start your thinking. There are many more things we can talk about to help you prepare for the future. Our Growth Groups strategy mastermind groups explore these and other ways to supercharge business growth. Click here for more business growth ideas by joining my monthly email list.

Hit the Market Ahead of Competition

2011-05-16T06:02:00.000-07:00

Studying trends and changes in your marketplace helps you stay in front of competition. And it allows you to develop products and services in anticipation of where your customers and prospects will be two or three years down the road.

Start by making a list of major trends in the world today. A review of the news should point you in the right direction for global trends like the importance of environmental issues or the increasing cost of energy. Study your industry trade news sources for trends and changes that directly impact your business. Review the trades for the industries your customers serve to identify trends impacting them.

Examine the list with your team to identify which trends offer the greatest potential for your business. Consider what problems or issues will arise if the trend continues. What solutions do you have to offer? What new products will be needed? What new features will your products need to include to meet the changing demands resulting from the trends?

By studying trends and changes on an ongoing basis, you will be in a better position to anticipate customer and prospect needs in the future. Begin now to develop the solution for these future customer headaches and you will be in a better position to hit the market ahead of competition.

Last chance to sign up for my online marketing boot camp on May 18, 2011 from 8:00 am to noon. We'll meet at David Boege, CPA's The Top Floor meeting room in Batavia, IL. No matter what you're marketing niche, you'll benefit by attending this "Do-It-Yourself" training. Be sure to check out all the cool stuff in my bonus package by clicking here.

How Can Projecting Trends Help Your Business?

2011-05-11T04:56:00.000-07:00

For this next series of posts, let’s consider the importance of projecting global trends for your business. I’m not referring to your internal trends like your sales forecasts. I’m referring to what’s going on in the world around you. How important is the green movement to your business? Or the permanence of war in our society? Looking at global trends may help you see product and services needs in your market several years in advance. This gives you a huge jump on competition. We’ll begin our discussion with a video overview of the topic.

Don't forget to sign up for my online marketing boot camp on May 18, 2011 from 8:00 am to noon. We'll meet at David Boege, CPA's The Top Floor meeting room in Batavia, IL. No matter what you're marketing niche, you'll benefit by attending this "Do-It-Yourself" training. Be sure to check out all the cool stuff in my bonus package by clicking here.

List Keepers Win

2011-05-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

Whether you use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software or a simple Excel spreadsheet, your list is the future of your business. Bring focus to your list by cleaning, segmenting and contacting it.

Clean your list
I’m amazed at how many business owners and CEOs do not have control of their company’s prospect list. Some companies leave the list in the hands of the sales rep. In this case, the sales rep “owns” the list. In other companies, no one keeps a list. Or the “list” is a pile of business cards scattered across a desktop. Still other companies start down the CRM path but never complete it so their electronic list is out of date and rarely used.

If you are planning to contact prospects, the first step is to gather a clean list. The list should include all information necessary for mailing, calling and emailing the contact person. In addition to the basic contact information, you want to have their web address, blog address and social networking contacts. Also make note of any contacts the person has had with your company.

Cleaning the list involves updating your list to make sure all information is present and current. This may require a phone call or email to the contact person to verify information. Add names from all those business cards floating around on your desktop as well. Delete names from your list if you know the person is not interested in your offerings.

Segment your list
Segmenting your list involves dividing it into subsets for marketing purposes. You may have a product line that is valuable to certain types of prospects, but not others. No sense mailing promotional literature to someone who can’t use your merchandise. You may want to focus a mailing on geography to make it easier for your sales reps to follow up.

The reasons for segmenting can be anything that makes sense for your business. In order to accomplish the segmentation, you need a data item to center the data sort on. For example, a geographical segmentation can be done based on zip code, state or city, depending on how you want to break it down. A telemarketing campaign may require an area code sort to keep the calls clustered to certain designated geographical locations.

Segmentation can be based on UIC codes to identify prospects by industry. For a customer list, you may want to segment based on certain buying patterns such as SKU purchased or order size.

You may want to segment the list for test purposes to see which headline or price point or other factor pulls the largest response.

Whatever way you divide a list, make sure you have the information in your list to make the sort possible.

Contact your list
Once you have a clean list with lots of useful information about your customers or prospects, you’re ready to contact the people on your list. You can email, snail mail, phone or walk in. Each method has its own rules so learn them and follow them.

Email: Use permission-based marketing. This means your prospect has indicated to you that they want to receive e-mails from your company. Avoid sending spam. (Although as I think about it, I can picture an effective campaign built around sending out cans of Spam. Your cover letter might say something like: “You receive enough spam in your email box so we thought we’d contact you the old-fashioned way. And we hope you enjoy this important message from our company because it’s not all Spam.”)

Snail Mail: The great advantage of snail mail today is it won’t end up in a spam filter. So go ahead and send your cans of Spam or a simple letter or that really attractive brochure you hired Zuk-Lloyd Associates to design for you. Before mailing, it’s a good idea to clean the list and segment it because direct mail is expensive compared to e-mail and telemarketing.

Telemarketing: If you have something intelligent to say, go ahead and call the people on your list. But make sure it’s a message they will welcome. If all you have to say is sell-sell-sell, you may be wasting your time.

Shoe leather: Drop in for a visit. Most office buildings forbid solicitors from cold calling in their facilities. And they have gatekeepers on the first floor to keep you out. Industrial parks don’t seem to have this problem.

Other ways to contact your list
Begin by considering how you garnered your list in the first place. If it’s from that stack of business cards on your desk, you’ve been networking. When you meet a new person, follow up to see if you can build a good business relationship. Be a valued source rather than an annoying sales person. This means you listen, offer advice and help solve problems. You’re part of the solution.

Try the whole concept of attractive marketing. Marketing today has a huge element built around the idea of making it easier for the customer to find you. This is where social networking becomes important.

Your list is going to generate a response rate under two percent. If it was easy to generate a 10 percent response rate, everyone would be in marketing. Make sure your offer will produce profitable business for you with a response rate under two percent. And remember that’s two percent of a clean list.

Sharpen Your Focus

2011-05-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

We’ve talked about the importance of narrowing your niche several times on this blog. Our current discussion revolves around how to refocus your resources to better compete in the marketplace. This topic serves as a reminder that your greatest opportunity for increasing sales happens when you market to a clearly defined, limited number of targets.

Something that’s helped me over the years is to remember that marketing, by definition, involves what you say to prospects in order to get in the door to sell something. Sales involves listening to learn what problem your prospect is willing to pay to have solved and then providing a solution that meets their need. It’s easier to narrow your niche if you remember that once a prospect invites you in for a meeting, it’s okay to expand your niche a bit to address a specific problem, as long as you stay within your skill set.

Here is a quick example of how I narrowed my niche for Zuk-Lloyd Associates – and trust me, I do a rotten job of staying within niche – that’s why I know it’s so important to do so. Anyway, here’s how I do it for my marketing company. To begin, there are two types of markets: business (B2B) and consumer (B2C). Despite my considerable experience in retail marketing with Spiegel, Montgomery Ward, and others, I have far more extensive experience in the B2B world (more than 60 Fortune 500s, hundreds of small to mid-size companies). I have an engineering background (military equivalent to an EE) and training in computer programming. My background and experience led me to conclude that B2B was a better space for me. Another hint in that direction is the retailers I served have all since gone out of business. In all cases, this happened after they ended our relationship, but it’s worth keeping in mind. My greatest successes have come from B2B.

But B2B is still too broad a niche for a small marketing firm. My partner, Lynn Zuk-Lloyd, has extensive experience in industrial advertising as a graphics designer, illustrator, advertising manager, copy writer and creative director. She has worked both on the B2B ad agency side and on the corporate side. Together, we combine with a strong B2B background. Looking a bit closer, we realized we both have a strong industrial and technical marketing background, so we have focused our business on companies that need marketing services delivered by a team that is comfortable with highly technical or complex information.

This narrowed niche has led us to high technology clients including software and hardware providers. It’s also led us to industrial engineering firms. We have worked heavy construction equipment, chemicals, industrial machinery, complex manufacturing processes like aluminum extrusion and die casting. We also have worked with consulting firms and other professional practices since these also involve marketing highly complex services.

Looking at this background, you can see it is in the best interests of my company to focus on the B2B market space with an emphasis on technology and complex products. This focus gives us a sense of direction. It guides us in deciding which networking opportunities to pursue. And it helps us decide what organizations to join. This is the information that guides our marketing budgeting process so that we focus our limited resources where the ROI is potentially the greatest.

By sharpening your focus, you will discover that it’s easier to develop copy for advertising and collateral. You see clearly where the best public relations opportunities are. And you find it easier to identify the best list of prospects.

Next time, we’ll talk about contacting your list of contacts.

Don't forget to sign up for my online marketing boot camp on May 18, 2011 from 8:00 am to noon. We'll meet at David Boege, CPA's The Top Floor meeting room in Batavia, IL. No matter what you're marketing niche, you'll benefit by attending this "Do-It-Yourself" training. Be sure to check out all the cool stuff in my bonus package by clicking here.

Ratchet Up Your Sales and Marketing

2011-05-06T07:35:00.000-07:00

If you are a tiny business, ramping up sales may mean getting out more to networking events. Try to meet new prospects through your LinkedIn Connections. Ask your connections to connect you to anyone on their list of connections who may be a good prospect for you. Set up coffee meetings with past customers or clients to check in to see if they need your products or services. Also ask for referrals. “Who do you know who would benefit from (insert your strongest benefit).” For example, I might ask, “Who do you know who would benefit from never having to worry about promoting their business again?”

One of the struggles for sales people today is finding prospects who will take the time to speak with them. It’s harder than ever to get past gatekeepers and voice mail. If you try spamming, you’ll only ruin your reputation. There has been a fundamental change in marketing and sales in recent years. In the old days, the company sent sales reps out to find new customers. This was the way to move product when Adam and Eve got kicked out of the garden and had to sell tomatoes for a living. But it ended somewhere in the mid-nineties.

Today, your best path to new customers and clients is to make it easy for them to find you. This is where online video marketing, social networking and traditional public relations come into play.

To ramp up your marketing and sales, increase your involvement in the online world. YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs are just the tip of the iceberg. The central element in the new marketing is the e-mail newsletter. Use permission-based marketing. Ah, there’s the trick. If you e-mail people who don’t know you, they will see your e-mail as spam.

How do you collect e-mail addresses legitimately?
Post a sign-up button on every page of your website and blog. Invite people to join your list when you meet them at networking functions. If someone hands you a business card, it’s okay to send a follow up e-mail invitation to a coffee meet up and to invite them to sign up for your e-mail newsletter. Be sure to include all the benefits of your newsletter.

There are more ways to use online video marketing, social networking and public relations than is possible for you to take full advantage of as a tiny business owner. Larger companies, with their own staff of marketers and their marketing agencies, have the power to use more of the Internet, making it tougher for you to compete, but compete you must.

Ramp up marketing and sales by making sure you have:

A good grounding in current marketing and sales theory and practice
At least a basic marketing program that includes elements of online video marketing, social networking and traditional public relations
The ability to ramp up your marketing program to enhance your sales results.

I have spent the past couple of years studying and implementing marketing solutions that combine social media, online marketing and traditional public relations. I’ve gathered the best techniques into a powerful "do-it-yourself" toolkit for getting the word out about your business. Learn the whole thing in my half-day boot camp on May 18, 2011 from 8:00 am to noon in Batavia, IL. Click here to learn more.

Next time we’ll talk about narrowing your focus. The idea is to sell more stuff to a smaller target market.

Reorganize for Higher Profits and Lower Costs

2011-05-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

One of the issues business owners struggle with is finding the funds to invest in effective on-going sales and marketing programs. Tiny businesses especially struggle with this issue. The owner of a mom and pop service business – whether an IT consultant, lawyer, human resources consultant, or other professional – struggles with sales and marketing while at the same time delivering quality, timely service to their current accounts.

Small to mid-size companies struggle with these same issues as they try to budget for production while reserving funds for a marketing or sales campaign. Reducing costs and finding ways to increase profitability are good places to begin to find the resource you need for marketing and sales.

Look at all areas of your operations. For the tiny home business, the opportunities are not that great, but larger companies can take a look at human resources, production, finance, ,marketing – in fact every area of your operations for cost cutting and profit improvement. I’ve prepared a white paper on cost cutting that provides a check sheet for the various functional areas of your company. It’s available free to anyone who signs up for Business Growth Ideas, my monthly e-mail newsletter. You can do so by clicking here.

For tiny companies, one of the first things you want to be sure to do is include marketing in your revenue stream. By this I mean dedicate a portion of every sales dollar to marketing. I recommend beginning with 10 percent of your gross sales for marketing. For example, a professional services provider who earns $50,000 in a year, would have a marketing budget of $5,000 available for direct mail, list purchase, sales literature, etc. A $100,000 annual income would cover a $10,000 marketing budget.

How do you find that extra 10 percent when you don’t wish to take a pay cut? First, increase your billable rate to cover a portion of the 10 percent. The balance comes from directly from your earnings, but you will reap the benefit down the road through increased leads and sales as your campaign matures.

There are any number of free marketing strategies you can deploy to support a small budget. But you don’t have time to take advantage of them all. A $5,000 annual budget allows you to retain our services for an entry-level online marketing program for a year. Supplemented with the time you can spare for online marketing will provide high-impact marketing in support of your business.

More on this topic next time.

Still time to sign up for my May 18, 2011 Online Marketing Boot Camp combining the best of online video marketing, social networking and traditional public relations. Click here to learn more.

Focus Your Resources to Compete More Effectively

2011-05-04T08:04:00.000-07:00

Aligning your limited resources to compete effectively is a daunting task. Many competing interests shape your budgeting decisions. If you are at a point where you must re-focus your efforts on increasing sales, here are some suggestions to help shape your thinking.

We’ll continue this conversation over the next few posts.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been studying how to integrate online video marketing, social networking and traditional public relations. The result is a program to truly supercharge business growth. Learn more by clicking here.

Study the Market

2011-05-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

We’ve been talking about trends and changes in this series of posts. Study the trends so you can identify opportunities for growth. The opportunities may be immediate or in the three-to-five-year range. Study industry trends and global trends.

We also talked about translating trends into new product and service offerings. And we talked about the impact of change on your marketing. The need for change is constant.

The necessity of studying your market is permanent. It’s no longer something you do occasionally or never. Here are some ideas for making information gathering an ongoing part of your business. Set time aside for the following:

Industry News. This comes in the form of trade publications and websites. But it also arrives on blogs and e-mail newsletters from professional service providers. Pick some you trust and follow them regularly. You may sign up for my monthly e-mail newsletter by clicking here and I’ll also send you a free white paper.

Customer News. Follow your customers in the news and online. If your customers have a newsletter, ask to be added to their list. If they have a blog, become a regular reader. Offer comments, so your customer knows you are interested in what they have to say.

Keep an eye on customers through other social media like You Tube, LinkedIn and Facebook so you can stay ahead of your competition on what’s going on with your customers.

Boot Camp Special Offer: Save May 18, 2011 for my boot camp on how to build a highly effective PR program based on online video marketing. This event will be held in Batavia, Illinois, about 35 miles west of downtown Chicago. Location will be David Boege's The Top Floor. I'll teach you how to do it yourself with video and other PR tools. Learn more by clicking here.

Change is Constant

2011-04-29T05:09:00.000-07:00

Keeping up with change begins with awareness. Invest time in learning what’s going on in your industry, your company and your customers. In my last post, I talked about questioning your target market to identify opportunities. What do you do with the information you learned from your conversations with customers and prospects?

Start by thanking the people you spoke with. A thank you email or letter is another touch point in your favor. Don’t waste the opportunity.

Invest in and embrace change. What did you learn that will make you a better supplier, consultant and solution provider to your customers? There are two paths to travel. First, look at your products and services. How can you make them better for your customers? What new products can you offer? What insights have you learned to guide your new product development cycle?

The second path to follow is marketing. How does what you learned from your customers and prospects affect your brand and your marketing messages? Do you address the real pain points of your customers and prospects in your marketing? Or do you sound like everyone else in your marketplace?

Think about ways to distinguish your company from your competition. You may need to change your brand image, your key messages and even your product and service offering.

Keeping Up with Trends

2011-04-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

Is the globe we sit on spinning faster these days? Seems like every time we check our email, there’s something new going on that forces us to think about the way we market and what we sell. I know a software consultant who is concerned that his type of software will disappear into the cloud, along with his consulting practice. How do you recognize trends that affect your business? And what do you do about them?

You know your industry. What do you see on the horizon? What’s the next great innovation? If you can’t see one coming, then look to the problems your technology should be solving but isn’t. In every problem, there is an opportunity. If you don’t jump on it, others will. The new solution will relegate your current solution to the Antique Business Practices Museum located in Detroit.

What’s going on in the broader world around you? Are there new solutions to be found in global trends? Is there an opportunity in launching a “green” product? Now that war seems to be a permanent part of our existence, is it time to pursue Pentagon contracts? What other global trends can you tap into? Make a list of trends from the news and hold a brainstorming session with your team. The goal is to get in front of the curve.

Talk to your customers and prospects. No need to invest in a formal survey project. Instead, ask questions as you’re speaking with your target market. What’s going on in their company? What new initiatives are they launching? Where do they see the market headed? What unmet needs do they have? How can you contribute to their success moving forward?

It’s better for you to be the innovator than the one “Left Behind.” Innovation begins with identifying the trends in your industry and adapting your business model and your products and services. Change is constant so embrace it.

Changing Your Product Mix

2011-04-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

We live in a world of constant change. Today we begin a series of blog posts focused on how to take advantage of changing markets to grow your business. We’ll begin with a brief video.

Why passions and strengths are so important

2011-04-18T06:49:00.000-07:00

New companies are built around the owner or CEO’s passions, core competencies and values. But as the company grows over time, these passions, competencies and values can become lost in the hurly-whirly of daily business activity. As staffers stress over meeting client demands and deadline pressures, you can lose sight of where the company should be headed.

The strategic planning process is a time to pause and consider your company. It’s a time of renewal. Take time to think about your company, where it is headed and how it meets your needs and aspirations as an owner or CEO.

We’ve been talking about developing new business ideas based on your passions and core strengths as a business. Begin by reflecting on the passions that drive you as a business owner or CEO. Make a list of these passions. Next, consider your company’s core competencies. What is your company really good at doing? Are there products, services or other competitive factors you could add based on these core competencies? List the core competencies and any new competitive factors resulting from your thinking.

Study your list of passions and competencies to see if any new competitive products or services come to mind. Take time over the next few weeks not only to think about your passions and core competencies, but also to discuss them with your team and key advisors.

Look for Underserved Markets

2011-04-15T05:02:00.000-07:00

How do you find new product or service ideas? One way is to study the market to identify underserved segments. What do your customers need that no one is supplying? Talk to customers about their struggles. What can you do to help them with an affordable solution?

Cast a wider net by speaking to prospects and companies outside your normal marketplace. You can meet owners, executives and managers at industry trade events and other networking opportunities. By identifying problems and concerns that companies need to resolve, you’ll discover opportunities for new products and services. It’s then a question of parlaying your passions and core strengths into a viable solution with market appeal.

Develop New Ideas Based on Company Strengths

2011-04-14T13:34:00.000-07:00

Your company has certain strengths and weaknesses. Think about these as you pursue new product and service options. How will your company serve customers in the future? What products or services can you add that take advantage of your core strengths?

Begin by listing your strengths. Include customer service strengths, product and service strengths and organizational strengths. Study your list to see if any new ideas jump out at you. Set your list aside for a time to allow your mind time to think up new ideas.

Talk to customers about what they like about you. While you have them focused on what they perceive as your strengths, ask them if they have problems or issues that you might be able to address based on your company’s strengths. Tell them this may involve new products or services. Ask them what an ideal solution would look like. Customer feedback not only leads to new ideas, it may also lead to new projects and assignments.

The only thing better than developing an exciting new product or service is having a customer pay you to create it.

Look for New Ideas Out of Your Passions

2011-04-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

As a business owner, consider your passions first when seeking new ideas for product or service offerings. Spend time thinking about those things you care about most. How do they fit in with your business. Not all passions will necessarily fit. And sometimes the fit may not be obvious. But with thought come new ideas as you try to integrate more of your passions into your business.

Do you have a passion for working with people? Do you like building teams and managing them? Then consider developing service offerings that involve you in working with your customer’s teams or that require you to build teams for your customer.

Like me, do you have a passion for writing? Then add writing services to your offerings. Or write more of your own marketing and sales literature. Or start a company blog, Your passion for your business will come across in your passionate writing. People will be drawn to you because people are naturally drawn to passionate people. We care about people who care.

Whether its writing, crunching numbers or playing baseball, consider how you can serve customers with products and services built of a foundation of passion.

Finding Something to Sell

2011-04-12T05:49:00.000-07:00

Where do you find the new ideas for products and services to offer? You want to stay in front of competition, but finding just the right idea can be tough. Listen to the video to get this week's conversation started.

Re-brand and redefine your market

2011-04-08T04:45:00.000-07:00

Brands can grow stale, especially in light of bad press, underperformance or other negative issues. Your company has a brand. You can revitalize it through a new corporate image program and marketing campaign. Give your customers a new way of seeing you. Change their focus from your traditional value proposition to a focus on new or different benefits. How are you cheaper, better, or faster than you were before? Emphasize these improvements in your new branding along with the benefits the customer will receive.

Markets change so make sure you are changing with them. Take a hard look at your target market. Write a description of your target market. Does that description point you in new directions or suggest prospective customers you may have been overlooking? Who are your customers selling to? And what does that tell you about your customers?

Who are your competitors selling to? Have they found marketplace opportunities in industries you may have overlooked?

Has the industry changed in ways you may have missed? Look at what customers are saying about the way they do business as reported in the trade publications and websites serving their industry.

Are you effectively using online marketing and social networking? The trend for online buying is well established. Business has moved onto the Internet. If you haven’t taken online marketing seriously or if you have been ignoring social networking, you are losing customers to the new way to do business.

Review all these issues to see where you can make changes to better serve your customers. Reach your customers the way they want to be reached – online – or risk losing them.

Revisit your niche and value proposition

2011-04-07T06:37:00.000-07:00

Customers were here yesterday, but now they are gone. Where’d they go? How can I find more?

Customers come and go all the time, but if they are mysteriously disappearing, take a hard look at your company. Part of your recovery process involves taking a close look at your niche and value proposition.

Study the niche you serve. Is it still viable? Is the pool of possible customers large enough to support your business? Or has the market shrunk? Be careful with your niche. The tendency is to expand to reach a wider range of customers.

Most of the time you are better served by narrowing your niche. It’s counter-intuitive, but it usually produces the best result. The reason it works is the more you narrow your niche, the sharper your focus becomes. With a clear, focused message, customers can make a quick choice to either select you or move on to someone else.

Confusion is the biggest enemy of effective marketing
With a narrow focus, you minimize the risk of confusing your customers. Muddled customers tend to go away, especially if they are visiting your website.

How are you doing on delivering what you sell? Check your quality. Test your customer service response. Compare your prices with your competition. Are you promising something you can’t deliver? Your marketing materials may be implying something that isn’t true. So check your promotional copy for accuracy. Check it again for any implied promises that you are not delivering on. For example, are you unwittingly practicing bait-and-switch tactics with your special offers? What you consider an upsell from a special offer may appear as a rip off to your customers.

Are you able to produce what you sell or are you overpromising and under delivering? Sometimes in the heat of the competitive bid process, you may make or imply promises that you have no way of delivering on. Make sure your customer has a clear understanding on what they are purchasing. You may need to review what the project includes as well as what is not included.

Dealing with Vanishing Customers

2011-04-06T04:04:00.000-07:00

What do you do when you run into a situation where your customers are disappearing and your sales fall through the floor? Or what do you do now that the recovery is moving forward, but your sales are not? Welcome to the second in this series where we solve the case of the vanishing customers.

Root Causes
Begin by identifying root causes and performing a thorough competitive analysis of industry trends and changes. Find out where the market is going and why you are not keeping customers. Is your market shrinking due to changes in the industry? Or something the competition is doing? Have they introduced a more competitive solution? Have you reduced quality or customer service? Have you increased price? Or have you kept prices stable while competition has lowered their price?

Studying the root causes involves taking a hard look at your people, processes, pricing, and products. What, if anything, has changed in the way you sell your products and services? Talk to your customers. Why are they not buying from you? You may learn that you’re not doing anything wrong other than not changing with the times. Products and services have a life cycle. Eventually something comes along to render your best work obsolete.

What things can you change to make your company more competitive? Study industry trends to see if you are missing out on opportunities. And take a hard look at your competition. What are they doing differently? Identifying root causes is the first step in solving the mystery of vanishing customers.

How to deal with vanishing customers

2011-04-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

This week we're talking about vanishing customers and what you can do to become attractive to customers once again. Here's a video to stimulate your ideas on this topic. The video runs 1 minute 43 seconds.

Quit when you’re launch is not bearing fruit

2011-03-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

When your marketing and sales efforts clearly are not bearing fruit – or when your target market tells you your value proposition is not acceptable – it’s time to bailout.

This is the final segment of our topic addressing when to bailout on a new product or service launch. From the outset, you should be making sales to the early adaptors. If that’s not happening, it may be a negative indicator for future results.

Keep in mind the three steps in any new business launch:
Who are you? Prospects need to become comfortable with you before they will seriously consider making a purchase. Take the time necessary to build the relationship.
Are you still here? Prospects want to know you have staying power in the marketplace. They don’t want to make a big ticket purchase only to have the supplier disappear before they need service or warranty repairs.
What did you say you are selling? Once the relationship is solid and you’ve had enough contacts with the prospect that they are comfortable you are not going away, then the sales start happening.

This three-step process helps to explain the hockey stick phenomenon of business growth. It takes a lengthy ramp up before serious sales happen. Be patient with your launch. Don’t bailout too soon. But expect to make some sales starting fairly early in the launch. Expect sales to grow over time, with a significant run up once your market is comfortable with you and your product or service.

Remember, your new product or service launch is an investment. Like any investment, there is no guarantee of success, but failure isn’t guaranteed either. You’re the one who has to make it happen. It's your money and your investment.

Bail when the Return on Investment isn’t there

2011-03-30T06:04:00.000-07:00

Today, we’re continuing our conversation about when to bailout on a business launch.

If you’re not achieving a good return on investment, bailout. Also consider what I call “Return on Effort.” This is the time and energy invested (wasted?) in your new venture. You're taking time away from other business when you launch. Is it worth it when you consider the lost opportunities in those other company activities?

Before your launch, work with your financial team to develop a five-year pro forma for your company that includes your projected investment in your new product or service. Based on this study, make a Go decision only if your projected ROI is attractive. If the ROI is not attractive, repeat the strategy process until you can project an attractive ROI. After the launch, use actual results compared to your pro forma to determine if it’s time to bailout based on ROI.

Measure Return on Effort (ROE) based on the product’s growth potential, non-financial resources required, impact on current business, and your ROI projection. ROE is more complex than I can cover here, so email me if you would like to learn more.

Reaching a “no go” point

2011-03-29T12:51:00.000-07:00

We’re talking about when to bailout on a new product or service launch that isn’t going anywhere.

When you realize you’re at an impasse with your marketing, and something is telling you that your product or service isn’t a go, then it’s time to bailout. It could be a lack of sales after the launch, but it can happen before the launch when you’re testing your product or service. You may learn your solution doesn’t solve the problem the way you thought it did, for example.

Remember it takes about 30 touch points to acquire a new customer so give your launch time to succeed. Budget your launch so you are viable for as long as it takes to achieve those 30 touch points with a clean target market database. Be sure your database includes a universe of possibilities large enough for success. If only two percent of your target market buys from you, will that generate enough sales to mark your launch as a success?

Sometimes companies stay with a new product launch even after failure is inevitable. This may be the result of the passion the owner or team has invested in the new product or service. We’re naturally invested in the success of our products and services. We want them to succeed. The hard reality is you may have to kill the little darlings (the products, not the team).

When should I bail out on a strategic initiative or new product launch?

2011-03-28T05:57:00.000-07:00

This week we’ll be looking at making one of your more difficult marketing decisions. You invested time, money, energy, passion, love, sweat and tears into your new product launch and despite your best efforts, you are not achieving the results you expected. In the words of former President Bill Clinton: “This dog don’t hunt.” How do you know when it’s time to quit? We’ll begin with a brief video introduction. I’ll expand on this topic in the next three blog posts.

What's Holding You Back?

2011-03-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

Is something holding you back from success? Stay in touch with your passions. Revisit them. Find the one thing that you want to accomplish more than anything else this year – or in the next 12 months – and focus on accomplishing that. Line everything else up in a way that will give you that one thing. Do not pursue wealth, rather pursue your most important single dream and let the money happen.

What is your dream?
It does not have to be a lifetime dream, such as retiring to an island paradise. It should be something tangible and objective so you can explain it to others and know exactly when you have achieved it. Remember that this is not a money goal. It is a real goal that burns in your heart. Once you have that goal in mind, you will know how you can serve the people you meet while you are networking. You’ll quickly and precisely cut through the crowd to find those who can help you achieve your passion. Go forth boldly into your next networking event… but first, re-discover your passions.

Why Does Your Company Exist?

2011-03-23T07:06:00.000-07:00

Ask a business owner this question and you may hear something like:

To make the best widgets
To serve customers with quality widgets that meet their specifications
To be the low price leader in our industry

These are all important points. You want to make the best widgets. Customers expect your product to meet their requirements. And everyone loves a low price as long as they get something of value.

However, every one of those points is wrong when it comes to stating why your company is in business. Your company exists to sell something. Period.

When you put the focus on the widgets or quality or price or any other important business factor, you are feeding a mindset that focuses on those points, not sales. The reality is all for-profit companies exist to sell something. Every employee in your company needs a little button or t-shirt that says, “Our company exists to sell (fill in product or service).” Everybody’s job is to support the selling effort of the company.

With this in mind, let’s look at those points again. Why does your company exist?

To sell the best widgets on the market
To sell quality widgets that meet or exceed customer specifications
To sell our products at the lowest possible price (or to sell products with the highest possible value)

See the difference? When you change to the language of selling, you enable a culture focused on supporting the sales effort.

Ask any employee what department of the company they work in, they should respond “sales.”

“Hey, I’m a CNC machinist. I work in sales by helping the company sell the best widgets ever. That can only happen if this part I’m machining is perfect. We only sell the best.”

An Idea is Like a Crystal Glass

2011-03-21T08:42:00.000-07:00

A crystal goblet begins with a glob of molten glass. The glassmaker shapes a base that is flat and will not wobble; pulls a stem that is thin, tall and eloquent; turns a bowl that is delicate, yet holds water. When tapped, the crystal glass rings true.

Think Clearly
Your business product or service idea works the same way. Shape it under the heat of clear thinking. Give it a logical base to stand on so that it will make sense to your target market. Why does your idea solve the problem? Why should anyone care?

Promote your idea
Shooting out of the base is a tall, thin eloquent stem. This is the effort you put into your idea to let the world know immediately your idea is no ordinary mug.

An idea that holds water
At top, your idea must hold water. Shape it for a practical application in the market. When a prospect taps your idea, does it ring true? It does if your product or service is the best solution to the problem at hand.

Market one good idea
Having an idea is not enough, for in the rough it is like a glob of glass that shatters easily. Refine your idea so that it has a solid base to stand on, a simple, direct way to reach the market, and a validity that will hold water.

Develop one such business idea and sell it over and over again. Make sure it has a high perceived value and solves a real problem. Your solution has to be better than an ordinary cup.

Once you have your idea crystallized into a product or service that meets a need in the marketplace, you are ready to go to market.

Pitcher, Catcher, Batter and Marketer

2011-03-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

The baseball season is coming up so what better time to consider how much marketing is like baseball? The pitcher and catcher are on the same team. The hitter is the enemy, not the catcher. In the same way, you are the pitcher and your target customer is the catcher. The batter is your competition trying to knock away or deflect you from delivering what your customer needs.

The idea is to pitch your products and services to the catcher so that they arrive where the catcher calls for them. Work with your customer so that you hit the mark every time with the ball popping into the catcher’s glove.

Pitchers and catchers work together by agreeing beforehand on the kind of pitch to deliver and where the ball will meet the glove. Come to terms with your customer ahead of time so you both are able to keep your eye on the ball throughout the assignment. Don’t forget about the batter. And don’t forget it’s the batter – the competition – who is your enemy, not the customer.

Happy Birthday wishes to my brother Patrick. Happy St. Pat's Day to all.

Narrow your niche to expand your market

2011-03-16T05:52:00.000-07:00

Sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? How can you expand your market by going after a smaller base of targets? By focusing on a tighter, more clearly defined segment, you will be tailoring your messages more for that group. When you do so, you’ll win market share within that sector from your more expansive competition.

What if your niche is narrow already? Can you tighten it by reducing the geographical area you serve? Can you reduce the number of industries you serve? Is there a sub-niche or sub-industry you can focus on? For example, instead of serving the restaurant industry, can you focus on fast food chains? Instead of marketing your company as a national or global job shop with a single plant located in Hammond, Indiana, try focusing on serving the transportation industry in the upper Midwest. But ask yourself if the segment makes sense for your company.

Study your competition to see if you can identify areas where they are weak. Make those weaknesses your strengths. Focus on business attributes that feed off your strength. Think about what customers hate about your competition and deliver the opposite.

FREE WHITE PAPER
I have prepared a white paper complete with forms to make it easier for you to plan ways to compete more effectively in your marketplace. The forms will work for mid-size and smaller companies – even at-home businesses and professional practices. Sign up for my monthly newsletter and I’ll email the white paper to you free.

Up next: It's spring training time so let's think about how pitcher, catcher and batter interactions make an analogy for the marketing process.

Is it time to expand your marketing and sales activities?

2011-03-15T04:51:00.000-07:00

This is the second of three articles dealing with emerging competition.

Facing increased competition? Try expanding your marketing and sales activities so you are able to get your message out in a deeper and more consistent way. More people will be hearing about you and choosing you and your services. Here are some things that may help to expand your marketing effort without significantly increasing costs.

Take a close look at your current marketing budget. Can you reduce your investment is some areas to add other areas? Consider how your marketing team spends its time. Can you trade a traditional public relations person for social networker? You don’t have to replace anyone if a team member is willing to learn.

Is your website optimized for the search engines? Does your web design and navigation encourage the visitor to take an action? Does your website reflect your current products and services?

Direct mail is making a comeback as people are discovering that it may be the only way to reach busy business people who never answer the phone and don’t read unsolicited emails.

Social networking costs only the time it takes to do it. Assign a marketing staffer to spend their day on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, your company blog, and other appropriate business-friendly social sites.

Build a permission-based email list and distribute a monthly email newsletter. You save the mailing and printing costs and reach a receptive audience.

Include traditional promotional efforts. I mentioned direct mail above. Include print trade media in your news release distribution. Trade show attendance may be down, but people still show up. You should too.

While you are refocusing your marketing budget, take a look at your brand image. Is it time for an update?

Putting your marketing program together is a bit trickier today than in the past because you have so many options and the world is changing so fast. Are you ready for text advertising to cell phones?

Send me an email with your marketing questions and concerns or comment here.

Up next: Narrow your niche to expand your market.