Thanks to Kathryn over at Research Rockstar I’ve linked up to a lot of great blogs centered around marketing and promoting your business over the past couple of weeks, and as a result I’ve stumble across tons of gems of wisdom I’m dying to share with all of you! I came across one particular gem of wisdom based on a cartoon by Tom Fishburne the other day, however, that absolutely, unquestioningly demanded acknowledgement. It was titled “After the Brainstorm”, and it was all about what really happens when you get a great idea.

Or rather, what doesn’t happen, because real life puts on the breaks. With that in mind, here’s a look at how your company can take its marketing plans from inspiration, to innovation, to implementation.

Inspiration

Are you doomed to be just another gray sock?

This is, unquestionably, the most high-pressure issue when it comes to marketing in today’s high tech society. Why? Because if you’re marketing exactly the same way everyone else is, you’re going to be a gray sock tossed in with a whole bunch of other gray socks swishing and swirling in the media. Sure, someone might eventually step in and sort through all those socks to figure out you’re a different shape and fabric entirely, but by that point most people will have given up and moved on to the next load.

And like laundry, cookie cutter marketing campaigns multiply in dark places.

Inspiration is the first step in making your company stand out in a crowd, and it’s the one most people put the most emphasis on. Fortunately, when you’re surrounded by brainiacs who know the industry inside and out, inspiration is pretty easy to come by. That takes us to the next step…

Innovation

Inspiration is good, but what good is a good idea if you can’t figure out how to make it work for your business? That’s where innovation comes in. You’re excited, you’ve got these great marketing strategies laid out in front of you, you’re the man with the plan who knows where he’s going. Now you have to put that inspiration to work and figure out how you’re going to get there.

That’s where the hard part beings…

Implementation

After 3 days of meetings, brainstorms and agonizing moments of brilliance, you’re ready. The plan is set, you have your list, it’s time to take those intense hours you spent isolated away from the grind of day-to-day living and put them to work for your company. Then, suddenly, something goes horribly, horribly wrong. You spend entire days away from the implementation of your marketing plans, tied up in meetings and the day-to-day operations of your company. The next thing you know, the months have passed you by and you’re still just another sock in the basket. That brilliant moment of inspiration didn’t do you a bit of good.

The hardest part of any business innovation is taking it from concept to reality. It’s easy to get busy being busy and let these new, non-vital operations take a back seat. The question is, what can you do about it? More importantly, what can you do to stop it?

1)      Set aside an hour each day to work on your marketing plans. Lock your office door, turn off your phone, ignore your email, and work on what’s in front of you. Just that hour a day will go a long way toward taking your innovation from inspiration to implementation.

2)      Prioritize. Ever feel like you’re drowning under your to-do list? That’s because it’s really, really easy to start getting tangled up in the little details and lose sight of the big picture. When you write out your to-do list each morning, make sure you remember to prioritize.

3)      Delegate. If you’re the only one responsible for implementation and you get tied up, what do you think is going to happen? Yep. Those great ideas of yours are going to slip right through the cracks. Pull in your team and dole out those tasks accordingly.

Yes, it’s hard work, but anything worth having usually is. Just imagine how great it’s going to be when those great ideas of your hit the presses and business is rolling in faster than you know what to do with it!

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Whoever said offline marketing was dead obviously hasn’t taken a good look around lately. Direct mail marketing is still one of the most efficient, effective ways to forge a personal connection with your customers. It reaches them in their homes, it opens the doors to a tremendous amount of personalization and brand identity, it pops up in their mailbox (and really, who doesn’t like getting mail?).

But how do you guarantee that your direct mail marketing materials won’t become just more recycling bin fodder? Try implementing these 15 simple guerilla marketing tips to increase the response on your direct mail marketing campaign:

1)      Less sizzle, more steak. The phrase, “Sell the sizzle, not the steak” has been used for years in the marketing community; however, as online fraud and snake oil salesmen have begun to run rampant and bad sales letters have begun popping up left and right, “buzz” words designed to hype your products and vague product and service descriptions have become a turn off rather than a turn on.

2)      Use attractive graphics designed to catch the customer’s eye.

3)      Clearly illustrate your offer so they see the value the minute they open their mailbox.

4)      Personalize your message as much as possible.

5)      Offer a no-risk guarantee.

6)      Freebies are a great way to get your customers through your door.

7)      Even if you’re targeting a national audience, let them know your physical location. Having a brick and mortar presence adds credibility.

8)      Include reviews and testimonials.

9)      Use bullet points, sub-headings and sub-titles to make your message clear and easy to read.

10)   Include your toll-free number if you have one. That appeals to people outside your immediate geographical area.

11)   Make promises, then deliver-always. A customer that has a great experience the first time they respond to your ads is exponentially more likely to come back a second time.

12)   Pull in a professional printer for a high quality product.

13)   Partner up with a non-competing business to offer respondents more value for their dollar.

14)   Include discounts or free gifts within a limited response period-for example, a free oil change PLUS the $20 coupon for auto detailing if they come in by the end of the week.

15)   Use a reputable mailing list designed for your target audience. If you’re mailing your direct mail marketing materials to people who don’t care what you have to say, your ROI isn’t even going to be worth talking about.

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I don’t often do a fly-by blog post, but I recently stumbled across an amazing article written by Joel Rubinson and published in his blog on market research (http://blog.joelrubinson.net, if you’re interested). Since I know most of you don’t sit around stalking market research blogs, and that anyone involved in sales, branding, customer service or any marketing position absolutely HAD to see what he had to say, I’m going to keep my own input short and sweet today and recommend you shoot on over to Joel’s blog to find out if your brand has a cold, wet nose!

Click Here to read “Does Your Brand Have a Cold, Wet Nose?”


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When your grandparents were hanging out on the corner of Main Street and wishing their parents would learn how to “chillax”, businesses didn’t invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing each year. They didn’t have to. There were a limited supply of vendors for each consumer need, and most had their own “turf”. Word of mouth, and new customers walking right into their store to see what was up, took care of all of their marketing for them.

Nowhere is it written that you shouldn’t work on pumping up your word of mouth marketing campaign and referral process just because it’s stepped onto Facebook and Twitter (and the rest of the digital world) instead of hanging out by the street corner. Word of mouth is great! If someone’s willing to stop talking about themselves long enough to start talking about you, you know you’re doing something right.

The question is, how do you get your customers moving in that general direction? Here are 11 tips to help you light a fire under your word of mouth marketing campaign. Just make sure you’re braced for impact!

Great word of mouth marketing is like fireworks for your business.

1)      Offer GREAT customer service. No, not good. Anyone can do good. I’m talking about GREAT. Click here to see what I mean.

2) Make your product live up to its reputation.

3)      Launch a referral program. Would you recommend a great service to a friend if there was something in it for you? Of course you would! Guess what? So will they.

4)      Take the time to spend time with your customers. Once upon a time, the guy at the local grocery store knew you, your kids, your parents, your grandparents, your birthday, your GPA, your arrest record and every third person you hung out with in high school. While you might not have THAT much time on your hands, taking an hour or two a day to talk to the little people will go a long way toward encouraging them to recommend your business.

5)      Create a customer community. Whether it’s a Facebook page, an online forum or an open invite to your Saturday night ball game, find a place to bring your customers together.

6)      What have you got that the guy next door don’t? Ooops. I got a little carried away. We’ll let the bad grammar slide this time and focus on what matters-communicating your competitive advantage, better known as letting them know why your company rocks!

7)      Make sure your website is worth a second look. New business is good, repeat business is better. If you have an awesome website that’s got everyone talking, not only will your current customers keep coming back, they’ll drag their friends along with them!

8)      Partner up. Referrals don’t only come from your customers. Go out and find some non-competing businesses to partner up with. They recommend you, you recommend them, and everyone’s happy at the end of the day.

9)      How cool is your office? If you’re doing business out on the web you want your website to be as attractive, interesting and unique as possible, right? Why do any less just because your walls are made with brick and mortar instead of ones and zeroes? Make your office appealing, and bring cookies, because…

10)   If you feed them, they will come. If you’re running a restaurant, catering business or bakery, you’ve probably already taken care of making sure incoming customers are well fed. But what about an accountant? Or a stockbroker? Do you have a pot of coffee on and a plate of Danish sitting by the wayside? It all goes back to how much value you can give them for their time.

11)   Open up the lines of communication. This sort of ties in with the customer community concept, but here we’re talking about a 3 tiered communication model-from you, to them, to their friends. FB statuses are shared. Tweets are retweeted. Emails are forwarded on. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

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Why 72 DPI Website Graphics Just Don’t Make the Grade for Your Printed Marketing Materials

If someone told you that there was a completely free resource sitting right at your fingertips that could provide enough unique graphics to fuel your marketing campaign for, oh, say, the rest of forever, what would you tell them? I can’t put words into your mouth, but I would imagine it would be something along the lines of “Where do I sign!”

It takes a lot more than a single dot to create a 10X10 image on your printer.

Marketers, every day can be Christmas when you’ve got an unlimited collection of graphics at your fingertips. Imagine: No more digging for great photographs. No more contracting graphic designers for thousands of dollars a pop. Just log in, log on, and tap into the greatest talent pool on earth! A little copy/paste, a little Photoshop tweaking, and you’ve got posters, business cards, direct mail marketing postcards, logos and pretty much anything else you could possibly need to create eye popping, jaw dropping printed marketing materials.

Right?

Ummm…no. Why?

Because not all graphics are created equal!

What do you know about pixels? And no, I’m not talking about the cute, jabbering puppet from Lazytown. Pixels are the building blocks that make up pictures, the tiny points of color that are manipulated, stretched, shrunk and rearranged to create, tweak and resize your graphics. I like to think of pixels as little tiny Legos. When you have enough of them, you can create just about anything!

Now, let’s talk DPI. Relax, we’re not referring to Damage Per…well, anything. In the print world, DPI stands for Dots Per Inch and represents the number of dots of color the printer is going to put on the page. Now, when you’re talking about DPI I like to think of pixels as little, tiny Legos. The more of them you have, the more intricate and detailed your creation can be. Imagine how much more you could do with 300 little, tiny Legos compared to what you could do with 75 big ones.

That, right there, is the difference between a 300(+) DPI printable graphic and a 75 DPI html image.

See the difference?

When was the last time you tried to open a file containing a high resolution photograph on your computer? It took forever, right? That’s why most web images are 75 DPI. They’re made to  load quickly onto the page, and because they’re opened on a digital platform instead of printed (you know, using paper?) the quality is just fine. The problem is, that same quality isn’t going to carry over into your marketing materials.

Do you really want an excessively fuzzy graphic blown up on your posters for the whole world to see? I didn’t think so.

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How many times have you wished you could turn back the clock to add 7 or 8 hours to your day? Whether you’re overscheduled, haven’t mastered the more intricate components of effective time management or simply fall prey to distractions from the time you get up to the time you go to bed, if you’re constantly ending your day with a to-do list that’s longer than the one you started with it’s time to step back, re-evaluate, and put these simple principles into play to help you crank your productivity into overdrive.

1) Prioritize your day. Sure, you’ve got 100 things on your desk, half of which should have been done yesterday, but what’s really important? What projects are going to cause huge amounts of stress if you allow them to be pushed to the back burner? These are the projects you want to concentrate on first.

2) Make a schedule and stick to it. What time are you going to be in the office? What hours are you available for meetings? When will you be working on specific products, and what times of the day are reserved for routine tasks? If you commit to a schedule you’ll not only get more done, you’ll also feel better when the you get to leave work at work at the end of the day.

3) Kick procrastination to the curb. We all have jobs we don’t want to do every now and then, but putting them off

They tell you not to live your life by the clock, but sometimes it just works.

only makes the misery last even longer. Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can just as easily get done today.

4) Delegate. There’s a reason businesses have “teams” and not soloists. You can’t do it all. No one expects you to do it all. And the sooner you stop trying to do it all and start handing some of the responsibility over to the people who work with you, the sooner the end of that to-do list is going to come into sight!

5) Schedule your distractions. Everything takes twice as long when you have to stop every five minutes to answer the phone…or check your email…or talk to a colleague. Schedule your distractions and ignore them for the rest of the day. The more peace and quiet you get, the more you’re going to get done and the more productive you’ll be.  

6) Take a break. Seriously. You actually get more done when you stop and take small, regular breaks throughout the day than when you push yourself to the point of boredom. Why? Because when you’re rested and enthusiastic you’ll bring some energy to the project, and energy always increases productivity.

7) Shake it up. Don’t work on the same project from the time you punch in until the time you punch out if you can help it. Spend an hour working on one project, then an hour working on another. By not working on the same thing day in and day out you’re not burning yourself out.

8) Carry a notebook. Remember when we talked about managing distractions? Well, not all distractions are outside our head. Some are still up in there, lying in wait for the minute we turn our backs. Ideas, thoughts, to-do lists, phone numbers…all of these take up residence in our subconscious and irritate us to no end when we’re trying to finish our work. By writing them down when they pop into your mind you can keep your head clear and your day moving forward instead of stalling out halfway through.

9) Keep your office clean and organized. Thomas J. Peters said, “If a company has a clean desk policy they’re nuts, and you’re nuts to stay there.” I know I personally prefer controlled chaos to sterility in my working environment, but let’s face it. There’s no way you’re going to get from one to done on your to-do list if you have to spend the entire day looking for the resources you need.

10) Don’t forget to sleep! When you’re rushing from the time you get up until the time you go to bed, it’s easy to let little things like sleep fall to the wayside. Unfortunately, that also means that you’re running at something slightly less than your best the next day. Take the time to get a good 8 straight and watch your productivity go through the roof!

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Okay, before we go into the ins and outs of improving your customer service, I want to ask you a question. A serious question. One that could, coincidentally, inspire you to chime in below and let us know, because…well, because we really want to know!

What am I talking about? I’m talking about how much time each week you spend catching up on the latest news in the business world. Do you scout the headlines every morning? Every other morning? Religiously sit down and devour the business section of your local paper?

Studies show that the most successful companies in the world are the ones that encourage their employees to keep up on current events, which is precisely what inspired this particular blog post.

When I was sitting down with my coffee this morning and scanning to check out the day’s headlines I stumbled on an article titled, “Customer Service isn’t Dead After All”…or something to that effect. The topic? The importance of good customer service for the continued life, health and happiness of your business!

One of my favorite quotes came from a small business owner who stated, “It’s easy to get busy being busy.” There are never enough hours in a day to get done everything we need to get done. As a result, we end up trying to cram 27-28 hours’ worth of work, projects and social interactions into a 24 hour day. That means things get rushed, and our customers don’t always get the personal, one-on-one attention they deserve-the personal attention you promised them when you sent out those direct mail marketing pieces we talked about earlier this week!

How do you keep your customer service from slipping so your customers keep coming back for more? Just follow these 5 simple steps to see a guaranteed improvement in your employees, your business and the reputation your company earns for customer service:

1)      Educate your employees. Nothing leads to bad service like service people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Make sure any employee interacting with your customers knows all of the ins and outs of your products, and make sure every employee knows where to go for answers when they don’t (whether it’s their job or not).

2)      Stay adequately staffed. Leaving 2 service people to try and do 3 people’s jobs is an instant recipe for disaster. They’re going to be so rushed trying to do everything they need to do in a day that they’ll never have time to give your customers the personalized customer service they deserve.

3)      Don’t be afraid to host a customer service training program. Encourage your employees to actively expand their education when it comes to pleasing your customers. Role playing, seminars and yes, articles/blogs like this one will go a long way in helping smooth the rough edges of their customer service skills. While you’re at it, why not teach them all of those upselling skills you wish they’d come with in the first place?

4)      Employee autonomy isn’t a 4 letter word. Customer service is most effective when your customers don’t have to sit around waiting for management to give the A-OK. Give your employees a certain amount of latitude to make their own decisions. Within reason.

5)      Always keep a back-up on board. Waiting tables and washing dishes paid my way through college, and I can’t count how many times in those very, very long years I stepped in to help a co-worker when a customer was tap dancing on their very last nerve. Always have someone ready and able to step in when you’ve got an employee that needs a time out. It might seem self-defeating, but I promise: It’s all for the best.

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Business blogging is the MySpace marketing campaign for the 21st century. Everybody and their brother is running a blog to go with their business. That blog provides a free channel directly to their readers, an opportunity to get out and have a little fun with their advertising (because really, how often does the company CEO get to go out and just talk to their customers?) and a never-ending supply of fresh content for their website.

Don't forget to mind your manners when you're traveling the Blogosphere.

The rush in business blogging has done something else, too. It’s offered today’s businesses a chance to expand their personal and professional networks by commenting on other businesses’ blogs. Suddenly you have a whole community of people with thoughts and opinions to offer on the topic du jour, an endless number of people willing and able to answer your questions, a warm, willing, receptive audience for your thoughts…and oh, yeah, a great place to get backlinks and find a toasty pool of sales leads for your next product.

You’ll notice two drastically different schools of thought in the list above. There are those that consider blogs to be a community tool for conversation, and there are those that look at a blog as a means to an end. The first group is made up of the kind of blog commentator every business blogging group wants on their website. They’re intelligent. They’re articulate. They’re anxious to get involved. They have something to contribute. They help transform an ordinary blog into a community, which is exactly what a good blog should be.

Then there’s the second group, the kind that inspires blog administrators like me to kick out blogs about business blogging because they completely ruin the purpose of trying to build a community through your blog. I’m not saying every person that comments on a blog in the interest of building their business is doing it wrong, but it’s this group that gave rise to the practice of blog SPAM and generic blog comments that don’t do anything but take up space and make admins spend precious seconds remembering how to push “Delete”.

Blog SPAM might sound like a good idea-after all, it is a quick, automated way to build your backlinks. The problem is, web administrators are rapidly realizing that it’s quality, not quantity, that matters in a blog. Take this blog, for example. Just this morning I deleted not one, not two, but five pieces of blog SPAM from someone trying to sell hair products on the web. On a marketing blog? That has nothing to do with hair? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s a fair number of people out there reading this that have threatened to yank their hair out at some point or another that would benefit from a hair regrowth formula, but we shouldn’t be viewed as your primary target audience.

Nor are web administrators going to continue to allow you to post pointless backlinks attached to comments you didn’t even take the time to write.

My personal rant aside, business blogging is made up of a community of businesses and should be handled with the same finesse you would use if you were at a cocktail party with Fortune 500 CEOs that couldn’t care less about your business when you first walk in the door. Manners. Timing. Social skills. A genuine desire to integrate yourself into the pre-existing social framework. Master those skills, and business blogging will finally begin to work for you.

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Welcome back! I’m hoping the reason you’re here is that you tuned in yesterday for our discussion on direct mail marketing and catching your neighbors’ eye. If you missed out on yesterday’s post, make sure you stop by there after you’re finished here. In the meantime, here are the highlights:

1) No one really has time to get to know every business owner in town personally the way they used to.

2) Businesses are all looking for that personal connection when they’re looking for someone to do business with.

3) Direct mail marketing offers the best of both worlds; an easy, hands-off way to reach local businesses and a venue with which to express your willingness to build a personal relationship with your clients from the very beginning.

So How Do You Turn Your Average Direct Mail Postcard into a Paragon of Modern Marketing?

It’s the million dollar question-literally. Direct mail materials can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in business, but only if you know what you’re doing. With that in mind, here are a few simple tips to turn your direct mail marketing materials into million(ish) dollar money makers:

• Choose an image that your target audience is going to relate to. Using your company image on the cover might sound like a good idea, but it’s not going to inspire the same irresistible urge to flip the postcard over and sneak a peek at the back as a postcard bearing an image from their industry.

• Talk to your customers, not at them. Yes, granted, it’s not like you’re going to get a whole lot of immediate feedback from a direct mail marketing piece, but that doesn’t mean your customers need to feel like they’re trapped in a used car lot with a rabid car salesman and nowhere to run!

• Be personable while remaining professional. There seems to be a mistaken belief out there that when you create a direct mail marketing piece you have to be a cut-and-dried professional. There’s plenty of room out there for warm, friendly sales teams, so don’t let the opportunity pass you by!

• Be true to your brand. The whole point of personal service and building a relationship with your clients is to convince them that you’ve got what they want. There’s no possible way you’re going to be able to do that if your direct mail marketing pieces don’t reflect who you and your company really are!

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Thanks to the power of the Internet, global commerce has become the name of the game. Local market targeting is slipping through the cracks in many small business marketing campaigns, partly because the Internet creates the option for something so much more than local commerce and partly because many businesses simply can’t get a handle on how to advertise to their community.

Welcome, my friend, to the land of direct mail marketing.

Let me ask you something (and feel free to add your thoughts and comments in the comment boxes below). In your opinion, what is it that local businesses are looking for? Are they looking for someone who’s going to give them a good price? Someone who’ll create a great product? Someone who knows what they’re talking about? The answer is…yes, yes and yes! More than any of that, however, is their genuine, undeniable desire to connect, network and build a lasting relationship with a business that’s going to treat them right.

Are you passing out the right marketing materials to reach your local business?

Look at it this way. If a business just wants a good deal on their products, they could go out on the web and get it. There are companies out there that operate in a strictly digital environment, which means their overhead is…well, next to nothing. How are you going to compete with that? You don’t. You build your business platform on something a lot more solid: Direct mailing materials that offer your clients the personal touch.

Back before the advent of the Internet, how do you think businesses introduced themselves to their neighbors? They went door to door. They spoke to the owners. They took them (and their families) out to dinner. By the time it was all said and done, all of the small businesses operating in a single community knew each other personally and not only did business together, but also willingly referred their customers back and forth to provide the highest quality of services and variety of products possible in their small town.

At the end of the day, everyone went home happy.

Now, unless you live in a town with a population of less than 200, you probably don’t have time to personally introduce yourself to every business owner in a ten mile radius. But you want them to know that you’re willing and able to bring that personal touch to each and every one of your B2B transactions. How do you do that? By creating direct mail marketing materials that say exactly what you want to say, exactly when you want to say it.

Tune in tomorrow to find out how to create B2B direct mail marketing materials designed to bring your clients the personal touch they’ve been waiting for.

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