Build value-added into your web; it’s the media of the future

Easy. Don’t you just love it when things are easy? I participated in an online sign up for a spinning class this week. It was unbelievably easy. Body Language Albuquerque, a relatively new Pilates, yoga and spinning studio integrated their online registration with a service. I mention this as an example of finding an alliance that works for your business.

Woody and Valerie Compton have combined their skills to present a variety of classes, workshops and options for participants. Their newsletter, presented with Constant Contact provides additional information and is a fine example of value-added. By way of disclosure, I have to admit that I have trained with Valerie before and know that she provides high quality services.

Adding newsletters, updating a website and providing value-added services require time and effort, but not considerable expense. It’s a way for small, independent businesses owners to build loyalty and out-service the big chains. Hats off, Body Language! This raises the bar for exercise options in Albuquerque. Now, if only the exercise was as easy as the promotion.

Personalizing CyberMonday for Your Site – Planning 2008

The reality of Web attention continues to interrupt "business as usual." The term CyberMonday, coined in 1995, refers to one of the least productive days of the year, Monday after Thanksgiving; the CyberMonday phenomenon applies to the Christmas shopping season. In reality, your web strategy deserves careful examination for the coming year.

Andy Brudtkuhl, an Iowa blogger for GANB – Get a New Browser - got my attention with his seven item post about budgeting your 2008 web strategy. I like this simple list with a realistic outline of time and money. (Some small business owners tend to discount their time.) According to his numbers, costs range from a low of $1500 to $85,000+ on the financial side and a few hours to at least two hours per week on the time side. Consider Andy’s top 7:

1. Hosting
2. Analytics
3. SEO
4. New Media
5. Internet Marketing and Advertising
6. Legal
7. Production (Design and Development)
8. Intranet

If you're serious about your web strategy, this post outlines a good start. Further, I appreciate that Andy listed a number of resources; the Iowa community of bloggers may well be a model for other states.

That brings me to the third area of comment – the community. In various other posts I’ve discussed community; for example, the Albuquerque Independent Business Alliance is a community in which I participate. How about promoting the New Mexico blogging community beginning there? For starters, I'd call on Mary Schmidt and Leila Johnson, two fellow AIBA board members and business bloggers. Your thoughts?

What do you think of my ad? Five rules to review

Small business owners take pride in their advertising. Rightfully so. Frequently, the advertisement becomes a personal expression, a business personality. In the rush to be clever, however, some of the basics can easily be overlooked. Here are my top five rules for a quick advertising checklist.

Rule #1: give the potential customer a way to find your product. List the store location, add a web site and include a phone number whenever possible. Recently as I looked at an advertisement for a craft show, an artisan friend asked, “What do you think of my ad?” Glancing at the newspaper I asked, “So how do I contact you?”

This friend had used an advertisement inviting people to her booth at a craft show. One option might be to give a booth number in the ad. For those who plan their shopping experience, a web site offers a preview opportunity.

Rule #2: What does your advertising ask people to do? While it may be beautiful to present a pleasing image,One of my personal pet peeves is image advertising. In today’s market, who has dollars to support only image advertising? Get specific and get closer to results.

Rule #3: Add a sense of urgency to your advertisement. Think about the deadlines that compel you to action. Consider the early bird sale, for example. Or, think about adding a bonus for those who act now. These options encourage readers to make a decision.

Rule #4: What makes your product unique? How will you stand out from the competition? One of the simple checks I use is the substitute. If you can substitute your competitor’s logo and name for yours and the advertisement stays true, then you have not defined your uniqueness. Find a way to stand out from the crowd.

Rule #5: Have you proofed everything? One of the professional organizations to which I belong spent four months advertising and promoting the annual conference with countless email blasts, hundreds of flyers and web site promos; throughout it all, one word was misspelled. Not until someone pointed it out after the fact did the error become clear. Moral of the story: have someone with no knowledge of your business proof your advertisement.

These are five simple ideas, any one of which might improve an advertisement for your business. What checklists do you use?

Create Community, Shop Local and Keep it Querque!

It’s been a week to reflect on community, beginning with the AIBA “Keep it Querque” gala at Los Pablonos Inn on Monday evening. Read more at Mary Schmidt’s blog or in Megan Kamrick’s article. (Disclosure. If you’ve read ProfitMeister you might know that Mary mentored me in the blog world; we serve together on the AIBA board.)

Independent business owner Dale Dekker of Dekker, Parish, Sabatini Architects named names and showed buildings during the program; a who’s who of sorts emerged and the audience felt a sense of pride in belonging to this metro called Albuquerque. A general laugh rippled through the audience when Dale suggested that Albuquerque offered a landscape quite different from Scottsdale, for example. Dale mentioned audience members like Steve Wedeen of Vaughn Wedeen or Linda Wedeen of First Community Bank. Both are AIBA sponsors.

Not everyone can offer perspective of this nature, yet this very friendliness provides a foundational experience to Shop Local. A slide show featuring photos of AIBA members played in the background, further contributing to the sense of fellowship. (See it on the front page of www.KeepItQuerque.org.)

As Dale continued to mention people in the audience, I thought about the opportunity to connect with our community. Consider the variety of Holiday invitations at Pennysmiths Paper for example, or, the ArtBras Exhibition ,at Martha’s Body Bueno, or a cup of chai at Annapurna Ayurvedic Cuisine. Shop Local extends your neighborhood, providing a sense of identity, comparability and even unity. No, I’m not suggesting that Shop Local is the only way. It’s an option, an enjoyable option. At a time of year when our culture emphasizes shopping, Shop Local offers a way to distinguish both the gift and the experience of getting it.

Marketing Agribusiness – Start by Knowing Your Customer

The wealth of information available to entrepreneurs never ceases to amaze me. The Mid-Region Council of Governments provided an informative meeting of the Agribusiness Collaborative today. Ann Simon organized the event.

Discussion focused on product marketing. The usual questions popped up. How can I produce a product that a big company will buy? Can I trademark my recipe? Am I a candidate for International trade?

Dennis Robinson, Food Technologist and International Food Marketing Specialist encouraged a focus on basics. Who is your customer? What do they want? Why do they choose your brand? He emphasized the value in quality and discussed the importance of pricing. A good sale is when you make a profit, he noted, telling the story of a local manufacturer who forgot to include distribution costs in his price.

I teamed up to discuss packaging your product for the media and other customers of note. “Building Brand and Buzz” talks about secrets of highly successful media kits. Again, stories carried the presentation. Local businesses like Cervantes Food Products were featured. The group examined media kits from Perennial Toys and Betty’s Bath and Day Spa. (Disclosure: I’ve done work for each of these businesses and had their permission to use specific examples.)

Participants walked away with specific information that could be put to use immediately. Best of all, the experience was free, provided as an outreach program by the state. I mention this only to point out that you might also have an opportunity to learn, to ask questions from someone who has been there, and grow your business as a result.

What are you doing to raise the bar at your business? Is there an opportunity with your name on it?

Small Business Opportunity. Discipline Required

After nearly 30 years in corporate America, Irene planned to start her own business. She attended classes on entrepreneurship and seemed committed to a goal of launching a pet-sitting business. Leads offered were met with vague comments of dismissals like, “I don’t want to drive to that part of town.”

Penny, on the other hand, responded quickly to a request for information about her pet-sitting availability. She never apologized for the fact that her mother made the information call with her. After all, she was only 15 years old. Instead, she brought her notebook, asked questions, and prepared for business.

The practice of discipline requires an innate sense of urgency, preparedness and a commitment to get things done. Without discipline, any one of us can succumb to distraction. Tasks can easily expand to take one, two, three hours or more. Suddenly the day is gone and the top priorities remain on the list. The discipline of focus allows single-minded concentration that makes real progress possible.

In the words of John Lennon, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Irene is probably just affected by life. She will have to increase her discipline and focus on business in order to win at the game of entrepreneurship. Penny, while lacking in experience, has one big thing going for her: urgency in response to customer inquiry.

Small business success could be as simple as pet-sitting. Just add discipline. Or, as Jim Rohn puts it, “Discipline is the bridge between a goal and results.”

Bits and Bytes Build the Brand

As I’ve blogged before, branding is the compilation of all the little things about you and your product. The making of a brand makes for fascinating study and considerable debate. Yesterday’s Brand You Summit offered an outstanding collection of experts on Branding. This morning, I opened Change This and discovered “Build Your Brand in Bits and Bytes,”a manifesto by brand strategist, public speaker and author, Willian Arruda. Arruda founded Reach, the global leader in personal branding.

Download your copy of the manifesto, Build Your Brand in Bits and Bytes.

In 15 succinct pages, Arruda gives instructions for gauging your personal brand effectiveness on the web. “You’re being googled,” he writes and offers an online tool to evaluate just how your personal brand effectiveness stacks up.

A simple table demonstrates where your brand ranks on the digital scale; answer five questions and Arruda’s easy-to-use tool calculates the answer for you. Even better, he explains how to implement a plan to develop the online brand you want to portray. I encourage you to take the test. Are you digitally disguised, dissed, disastrous, dabbling, or distinct?

Once again William Arruda has provided high content, easy-to-understand branding information that can take you to the next level in your ongoing quest to a positive web presence.

Change: Reprioritize and Resume, or Risk Everything

• A bright, ambitious, 21-year old senior engineering student on his way to class is hit by a drunk driver. His mother, a manufacturing entrepreneur, suddenly sees casting concerns in a new light. Note: It happened last week; the company is in year three.
• A confident, powerful doctor sprains his back; the resulting pain leaves him in a state of near-incoherence. The clinic immediately scales back marketing plans. NOTE: Another true story that happened this week; the business had just implemented a strong advertising and marketing campaign.
• A world-class Talk Show Host and self-made billionaire, Oprah Winfrey, confronts a messy sex scandal at her school. NOTE: This incident, unlike the two previously mentioned made every news show this week.

Change makes a powerful impact when it dumps on your doorstep. It requires instant re-prioritization. Do you have a Plan B?

It's likely that Oprah didn’t plan for this particular scandal, but she handled her press conference with typical aplomb. Hollywood Today noted that she took her own advice about confronting the situation. Your choices about what to do when disaster strikes, regardless of your public position, say a great deal about you and the future of your business.

Meatball Sundae Alive and Well

Meatball Sundae. Is Your Marketing out of Sync? Seth Godin, author of Permision Marketing, Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside and other business marketing books, offers yet another relevant and irreverent view presented just in time to make a difference for 2008: Godin’s Meatball Sundae discusses ways of using new media and prepares us for the revolution that most people prefer to ignore.

Ignore? It hasn’t arrived in some places. A recent road trip through the heartland of America – up U.S. Highway 54 – convinced me that uninterrupted cell service and high speed internet hadn’t even arrived in some areas. “All bars showing,” is highly overrated. In North Kansas City, a large metropolitan area, I had trouble finding either fee or free wireless sites. No question, though, about things changing.

The revolution Godin discusses involves new ways of communication that bypass traditional media and methods. It’s no longer a top down world, he explains, going on to say a company can’t just pretty up the marketing, add a new media piece like a blog, and go on. Godin identifies 14 threads that companies must address. Lisa Barone, who writes for Bruce Clay Internet Business Consultants posted a commentary prior to a Search Engine Strategies Seminar which warrants a read. Her longer-than-expected blog post continued through the Q&A with Seth.

Q: As an Internet company exploding in growth, how do you convince the CEO with
no marketing background that blogging, social sites and making our company
transparent are a priority?

A: The thing is, it’s not easy. If it was easy it would have happened already. Plenty of big organizations have watched their marketing evaporate. …(More here.)

And then later:
A: Marketing is about sharing ideas and sharing ideas about marketing isn’t easy. Something like marketing ethnography is a really useful tool to help people understand how to think differently about marketing.

So, how’s the meatball sundae from your perspective?

Media Plan 2008 Pending?

With fewer than 60 days left in the year, I find that my clients are at least open to thinking about 2008. Creating a media plan for 2008 may seem like an onerous task in part because it’s difficult to find the time, you don’t know what next year will bring, and you don’t see any reason to go through yet another planning session. The solution could be reframing the task.

• What does a successful 2008 look like for you or your company? (Define your goals?)
• How might you improve the results you got in 2007? (Rate the events from 2007 on a scale of 1 to 10.)
• If you could achieve only one thing per month, what would it be? (Once you establish the specific target you can then begin to list action steps required to achieve it.)

With these questions in mind, I set out this week to learn how other experts plan. Most of that time has been spent with Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound. She offers a complete guide to media planning with templates, outlines, and guidance from experts in her newest “grad” course for publicity. It’s good, solid content. It’s up-to-date, presented with pizzazz, and it offers real life solutions. Not surprising, in my opinion. Check out the Publicity Hound’s Tip of the Week, an ezine featuring tips, tricks and tools for generating free publicity. Subscribe at http://www.publicityhound.com and receive by email the handy list “89 Reasons to Send a News Release.”

If you do nothing more, consider thinking differently about 2008. After all, the definition of crazy is doing the same things and expecting different results. I find that putting ideas on paper crystallizes thinking and forces a focus uncommon to most sole proprietors. What steps are you taking to succeed next year?