What Do Successful Small Businesses Do That You May Not?

Found on Duct Tape Marketing:

In an article published in the January issue of Investment Advisor magazine several points in an article called Stepping Up – How the best advisors take their firms to the next level jumped off the page.

Compared to the market as a whole, firms that dominated their market:

• Are 60% more likely to have annual sales goals
• Are twice as likely to use business development specialists
• Are 30% more likely to proactively seek referrals
• Secure one-third more clients through strategic partners
• Are three times more likely to have formal agreements with referral partners

Are you doing all of these – any of these?

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day–taken from Branding Strategy Insider

“If you make it all about money, I will make it all about price.”
- Your Customer

Book Review: Small is the New Big

This is an intriguing piece that isn’t organized like your typical book. It’s very thought provoking, but it’s not a step-by-step manual or something you can read front to back in a weekend that some may desire. You’re not going to walk away after reading this with a laundry list of things to do that will propel you to another hemisphere professionally. You will likely have a lot of thoughts percolating in your brain that may seem far fetched at the moment but are likely legitimate ideas to expand upon. That’s what this book does—it takes you out of your mental comfort zone and expands your thinking. To me, that’s the mark of a good book so I love it. Others may find it a bit bizarre because it’s not organized in a logical start to end fashion.

I’d suggest keeping notes of your thoughts as you read this collection of blog postings, and please don’t try to read it all at once. Your brain will hurt! That being said, I highly recommend this book if you’re someone who enjoys stretching your mind and considering various perspectives.

Want to get your own copy? Click this link: Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas

Interesting Tidbits for 1/5/2007

Since I’m preparing to head out of town shortly and haven’t posted in a couple of days, I figured I’d share the interesting things I’ve been reading today.

Companies making the news today:
1) Wal-Mart: Would you like some glass mixed in with your trail mix? Yet another reason NOT to shop at Wal-Mart.  As if the long checkout lines weren’t enough?!

2) Google: Let’s take China & Baidu on!  Baidu has been called the “Chinese Google” for quite awhile, but it seems as though the real Google has had enough of that.

3) GM: Fighting #1 position against Toyota
I’m not anti-American by any means, but I think our car manufacturers need to pay greater attention to our foreign rivals on how to make better cars that people enjoy driving.  Mass producing inexpensive junk isn’t the path to success, but that’s all GM & Ford have been doing for years.  It’s finally catching up with them, and I hope it inspires them to finally create better products for a change.  It may be a little too late though.  Can we please put Buick to bed?  The 80+ demographic will find another car to drive, likely a Camry though, but that wouldn’t be a bad thing in my opinion.  Then again, they might just hold onto their 1989 Buick LaSabre for another ten years.

4) Apple: New product musings

Here are some tips to make your new year happier.

Who is Rachel Ray anyway?  Interesting post on the BS Observer.  I don’t watch Rachel, but I’m already sick of her because she’s everywhere.  I’m all about promoting one’s self as a brand, but there is definitely a fine line between building the brand and over-saturation.  It sounds as if Rachel is going to be promoted even more across more product lines.  Enough already!

The language of persuasion.  Another Conversation Agent blog posting that’s always thought provoking.

Have any thoughts on any of these stories?  If so, please comment away!

Google Planning to Incorporate Ads with You Tube Videos

I read today on Marketing Shift where Google is planning to capitalize on You Tube videos with paid streaming advertising. Supposedly the ads are going to be related to the video tags, but you knew it wouldn’t be long before You Tube went from being fun, new, and interesting to becoming the next mass marketing device. The beauty of You Tube was the sharing of videos without the annoying sponsorships before, during, or after the videos.

I understand Google didn’t buy You Tube to keep it “as is,” but it wouldn’t surprise me if somebody starts up another You Tube like video sharing service that prohibits any sponsorship whatsoever. Many of the videos on You Tube are commercials themselves, but they are commercials the user community elects to watch. There’s a value in that—why can’t Google capitalize on the videos that are already commercials and charge people based on the click rate of their ad? Then we won’t have to be force fed messages we really don’t wish to see in the first place. Maybe I’m naïve to think things can work well this way for any extended period of time, but I’d like to see someone at least try to pull it off for a change.

Am I an idiot? What are your thoughts?

Attempting to Buy Word of Mouth? Bad Idea!

I’m sure many of you have read or heard about the Microsoft blogger “scandal.” If not, click here to read an E-Week piece on it if you wish. To summarize, Microsoft and AMD sent some prominent bloggers a honking Vista based laptops for them to test out. Initially they said the folks receiving the machines could keep them, give them away, or send them back upon completion of the “testing.” The next day, after some public outcry, they requested the PCs back. Good marketing idea; bad execution. Or was it really a good marketing idea? I say it’s terrible especially because of the execution–it backfired completely!

What were Microsoft and AMD really attempting? They were hoping to buy a favorable review from a few influential bloggers and gain some word of mouth marketing. This isn’t uncommon, but it’s a delicate tightrope to walk in order to keep things pure. The key to word of mouth marketing is honesty and the natural progression of the message. Once the public gets a sniff of anything that smells remotely of dishonesty, the word of mouth suddenly turns against the offender. Why is that? You’ve made the people who thought they were spreading something natural and believable look foolish. You’ve jeopardized their reputations. Buying word of mouth won’t work–it’s unnatural, and it makes people feel sleazy for engaging in such tactics.

Microsoft has been a pretty good marketer over the years, but this is a misstep for them that is disappointing to say the least. What did they really think would happen? Did they think the people getting the souped up laptops would write completely honest reviews after receiving a “free” machine? Of course not. Receiving anything of value for free is always well received, and it’s a great way to initiate a word of mouth campaign. If the goal was to gain positive word of mouth, the machines should have been given to some random folks in some sort of drawing without any mention of a review or how the machine was to be used. Let people naturally decide what they wish to do with the thing and if they determine they wish to write a good or bad review, let it occur naturally without trying to influence it in any way. Imagine how much someone would talk up such a product if they “won” the thing fair and square in a drawing of some sort. By picking out people with popular review based blogs, the motivation behind such product placement is rather obvious so any reviews would likely be met with a heavy dose of skepticism unless the products were sent without any prompting whatsoever.

Imagine answering your door and seeing UPS there with a set of boxes that you had zero idea about before hand. Your first reaction would probably be “I didn’t order this” then you’d probably open the boxes, look for clues as to what was in the boxes, then you’d try to convince yourself that someone made a big mistake in your favor. Eventually you’d begin to use the goods in time or try to send them back to the sender. Unless of course there was a letter outlining expectations–that’s where Mr. Softy screwed up. They obviously engaged the review bloggers in some sort of sign up process prior to sending these laptops out so there were expectations implied. That ruined the whole thing.

If you’re hoping to initiate a word of mouth campaign, allow it to happen organically and surprise people by doing something out of the ordinary. Then back away and let things progress on their own. That’s the best bet if you want things to spread quickly and keep foul play suspicions out of the equation.