Archive for December, 2009

This is the time of year that most people take to reflect and look back on the year gone by and resolve to do something better in the new year.  It's also a very slow time for business.

You're not likely to close any sales this week, so why not take a few minutes to take a close look at your customer list and see if you should fire any of them?

Take stock in your customer relationships over the past year.  Are there any that have turned out to be disappointing, annoying, or cause you to lose money? Do they always pay you late? Do you find that they don't appreciate you or your business – that you regularly have to work harder to please them? Unless you can identify something you've done to make them unhappy, pull a Donald Trump and say, "You're fired." Why? You want customers that know, like and trust you, right? The kind that will refer business to you and value your product or service. Unless their receivables are essential to keeping your doors open, you'll be better off in the long run to let them go. You might not be able to do this right away but you can work towards it by getting more "ideal customers." 

So, who's your ideal customer?  Go down your current list of customers and look for the ones that appreciate you and regularly refer you. Check out their demographics. Are they in a market segment that has a need you can fill? What do you know about their attitudes and values?  Importantly can you find more like them? Use this week to think about ways to narrow and focus your target market and make a plan to develop that market in 2010. As you think more about that ideal customer and that target market, you'll probably be more willing to fire those customers that don't fit the profile.

Now that you have a few ideal customers in mind, dig a little deeper and ask them why they like you. Get a testimonial you can use in your marketing materials and on your web site. Does that make you a little nervous? You should get over that. Most people feel honored when you ask them for a testimonial or recommendation. It makes them feel smart that they've chosen to work with a person or company that helps them grow their business. It doesn't have to be anything formal or well-written. You're not asking for a big case study. The next time you see them, ask them to do you a little favor and jot a few sentences on the back of their business card about why they like doing business with you.  It will help them keep their comments short and do it right away. I like to use Linked In to ask people for a testimonial. It can be done quickly and allows people some flexibility in finding a moment to recommend you.  Go to your LinkedIn profile page and find the "Get Recommended" section.  See this tutorial from LinkedIn.  If you're not on LinkedIn, you should be. You can get connected with more ideal clients and prospects there.

Oh, and if you find the client on LinkedIn that you need to fire, it'll be best to avoid asking them to "join your network." Duh.  

Do your eyes glaze over when someone mentions social media as a way to promote your small business? Could this quote be you:

courtesy newmediachatter.com"What, me? Write a blog? No way. Facebook already makes me crazy, and Twitter?  Don't get me started."

But here's the deal.  Social Media as a marketing tool is here to stay. If your company is not doing something online — besides having a static website, you're losing customers — or worse, your competitor is getting yours.  

Following is a guest post by Duct Tape Marketing founder John Jantsch. John refutes the idea that social media is like taking a dose of medicine.  Yes, it's work, but what about marketing isn't?

Be sure to read to the end of this post to learn how you can save $100 on a workshop that will make you a Social Media Pro in 2010!

1) Listening is the best way to develop strategy

Everyone knows they should develop a social media strategy before diving into to every network they can. The problem is, few can tell you how to do this because any real marketing strategy is highly personal and involves your customers, market, competitors, suppliers, products and services. The best way to approach discovering a strategy for your social media participation, and perhaps all of your communications, is to listen really, really well. Social media is one of the greatest listening tools on the planet. Your customers are telling you about their fears and hopes, they’re telling about what they like about your products and dislike about the competition, they’re telling you what they wish someone would make – and now you can hear it. If you do nothing but set-up listening stations, using free tools like Google Alerts and Twitter Search, you can get an enormous return on your time invested.

Once you spend time listening to your market, understanding how people use blogs and just what seems to work and not work onLinkedIn you may be more prepared to develop a marketing strategy, once that based on achieving marketing objectives, than ever. Don’t skip this step for tactics!

2) Nobody really wants to read another blog

I’m fond of telling anyone that will listen that every small business should have a blog. I don’t say that because I think your customers are itching to grab a cup of green tea and fire up what you wrote in your blog today. In fact, if you polled most of your customers and inquired as to whether you should write a blog, most would tell you no. But, those same customers go to search engines like Google andBing every second of every day looking for answers to questions, suppliers in their town, and ways to solve pressing problems. And when they do, guess what most of them find, that’s right, blog content!

I’m not saying you shouldn’t write incredible stuff, with a long term goal of attracting lots of readers – when these readers start linking back to that content your search results will soar – what I am saying is, write what people search in your market and your town, educate with your posts and you blog will pay off faster than any other online play.

And it that weren’t enough blog software, like WordPress, is so user simple and feature rich that it’s the best way to run your entire web presence.

3) It’s kind of a real estate game

While I started this post off talking about the virtues of a solid strategy, there is a bit of a real estate grab that comes on the front end of getting value from social media. There are many profiles that you can claim and optimize, even if you don’t quite yet know what your development strategy is, and you should claim them. Creating spokes of branded and optimized content in sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Slideshare and YouTube has become standard SEO practice, but don’t forget about taking the time to build very rich profiles on sites like Biznik, BusinessWeek’s Exchange, OPENForum, and BizSugar. (Disclosure: I write for OpenForum)

Your profiles in these outposts will serve as content real estate that you control and can help fill in the gaps when someone Google’s You.

4) Sell awareness and the money will follow

A lot of people will tell you, and perhaps you’ve experienced it first hand, that you can’t sell using social media sites. Let me ask you this, have you ever really have much luck selling anything to anyone just because they happened to be standing in front of you. The only difference is social media makes it easier to stand in front of someone. You can’t really sell anything to anyone until you’ve built trust. The most effective way to build trust in any setting is to show someone how to get what they want and allow them to come to the conclusion that you have something they might want to buy.

Social media, just like the most effective advertising, is a great place to build awareness about your content: blog, white paper, seminar, workbook. If you do that, and your content builds trust, social media is a great place to make money – think of it as another version of  2-step advertising.

5) Networking hasn’t really changed

I really believe that  effective networking on social media sites like Biznik, Facebook, or LinkedIn greatly resembles that of effective networking at in person Chamber or Association events. The key difference being one of a style of engagement and perhaps a different set of follow-up steps.

Before you do, act, or respond in any manner on a social media site, ask yourself if it would be an effective response to a prospect you’ve just met at an business event? You know, you wouldn’t go shirtless, with beer in hand to an association meet and greet, why would you post the same on your Facebook profile? This varies to some degree, but not that much.

6) It makes your offline play stronger

One of the things I don’t hear enough people talking about is how much social media can impact your offline efforts. Most business is still done across a desk, but starting relationships on LinkedIn and then building them much deeper over lunch is the killerest combination.

Social media also allows you to more easily and more consistently stay on top of what’s going on in your customer’s world. A growing number of CRM tools, such as ACT2010! and BatchBook make social media activity a part of a contact’s record.

7) A system is the solution

A well run business is a collection of systems. Marketing is a system and one of the best ways to keep social media participation from becoming your full time job is to create systems and process for how you participate.

I know you see people that spend their entire day on Twitter, but you must understand that they fall into two camps a) people who make a living teaching people how to use Twitter, b) people getting ready to go out of business.

It may seem a bit robotic to talk about social media and engagement as a process, but scheduling routines for your blog posting, commenting, tweeting, fanning and friending is a must, just as scheduling the appropriate time for selling, training employees and meeting strategic partners.

 –Guest Blog post by John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing

Ready to start making a system that works for you?  Register by Dec. 31 to save $100 on tuition for a Social Media Pro Workshop from Moxie Marketing and Duct Tape University.  Make a New Year's Resolution to become a Social Media Pro in 2010!

I don't often say "wow" out loud when I read about a new social media gadget, but today I did when I spotted Contrad Hall's blog post on Technorati about "Gist," 

As they say on their "About" page, "Gist is an online service that helps you build stronger relationships. By connecting your inbox to the web, you get business-critical information about key people and companies."  These Seattle boys and girls are being kind of modest. This is a jaw-dropping online service that allows you to see how your contacts fit into the social media world, and how you connect to each other.  I signed up and took a test drive. Say I want to know what you've been up to lately.  After I enter you as a contact, I click on your name on my Gist dashboard.  It shows recent content about you, including news, blogs, twitter… automatically collected, ranked and grouped.  Here's where my jaw kind of dropped. You can also sync Gist with your Outlook or Google account, and it will record every email and attachment we've exchanged.  It also links to SalesForce online CRM software and you can download a plug-in for Outlook so you don't have to go to the Gist website.  It's all right there in Outlook.

Imagine what having this kind of information will do to help build and manage your business relationships.  "Hey Bill, I just saw the online news post a few minutes ago about your promotion. Way to go!"  Think of the value in not having to sift through reams of emails to find that document attachment Bill sent you five months ago.

Give Gist a try.  Maybe I'll see you there.