Cutbacks Force Greater Marketing Accountability

Widespread budget cuts and demands to ‘do more with less’ have forced corporate marketers to step up their accountability and measurement efforts and improve collaboration with other organizational departments, according to a recent survey from Marketing Management Analytics (MMA) and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA).

The study also found that cost-saving measures are causing marketers to shift campaigns away from traditional media toward digital formats, away from brand-building activities toward promotional tactics, and into lower-cost media in general, MarketingCharts reports.

“With the economy still struggling to find its way out of the doldrums, marketing accountability has moved from the category of ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have,’” said Douglas Brooks, SVP and marketing officer for MMA. “Management and finance are getting on board in increasing numbers, and becoming enthusiastic champions of marketing accountability as they see the results in black and white.”

Improving Effectiveness Without Spending

Nearly all the firms in the survey (92%) say they are taking steps to improve marketing effectiveness without spending more in 2009. To do so, they are employing significant tactical changes:

• Shifting investments from traditional to digital media (70% of respondents).
• Shifting advertising investment from brand-building initiatives to promotional marketing (53).
• Shifting into lower-cost media, i.e. local vs. national TV spots, 15-second vs. 30-second, etc (38% of respondents).

Read the full report at;  Cutbacks Force Greater Marketing Accountability, Collaboration – MarketingVOX

- Steve (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

The Five Sentence Email

When you send email, you most definitely want it to be read! With everyone’s inboxes bulging at the seams with unwanted come-ons you face an awful lot of competition in your recipient’s inbox for their attention. Getting read is no small feat,  getting your reader to take action even a greater accomplishment. Lets face it – E-mail that takes too long to respond to results in continuous inbox overflow for those who receive a lot of it.

Good writers know that lean, vibrant language is almost always preferable to verbose, rambling writing. There is virtually no writing in the world so good that it can’t be made better by making it shorter. There are exceptions, of course – a contract needs to cover every possible potentiality, as does the text of an international treaty, but these documents are not really meant to be read, they’re meant to be enacted.  

Writing concisely offers benefits on its own – the short email, particularly the email whose contents fit into the preview pane without any scrolling, has a much higher chance of gaining a reader’s attention than one that starts off with three pages about trivia.

This is what Mike Davidson (five.sentenc.es) figured out – if his recipients were half as slammed as he was, he figured they could use some relief from long-winded emails that ramble on and on in the guise of pleasantries. Instead, he committed himself to writing emails that were five sentences or less, every single time.

That’s all well and good, of course, but how can you make sure you say what you need to say if you limit yourself to five sentences?  You don’t want to leave anything out, right? Fortunately, super-entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki offered this advice - ”whether UR young or old, the point is that the optimal length of an email message is five sentences. All you should do is explain who you are, what you want, why you should get it, and when you need it by.

A good outline for a five-sentence email might look something like this:

1. Who are you?  – This might be skipped if you already have a relationship with the recipient; otherwise, in as little space as possible, explain the relevant facts about yourself.
2. What do you want? – Explain why you’re writing the email, what you expect your recipient to do about it, and any relevant information they need to respond with the appropriate action.
3. Why should you get it? -  Why should they bother? Explain why your request is important, and if relevant, what’s in it for them.
4. When do you need them to act? Open-ended requests get responded to whenever the recipient gets around to it. Be as specific as possible, so that your recipient a) has a sense of urgency, b) feels that their response is important to you, and c) feels inspired to act.

If more information is needed, a formal report, a webpage, or some other document is probably going to be better-suited rather than presenting it than an email. Send an attachment, send a link, or schedule a face-to-face meeting if necessary; don’t blast off a giant email that takes you hours to write in the vain hope that it will be read. It probably won’t!

This material was summarized from Mastering the Short Email by Dustin Wax.

 - Steve (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

Grow and Protect Your Small Business

Most small business owners cherish good advice but few know where to get it at a fair and reasonable price from someone they can trust. This is especially of concern to micro-business – i.e. solopreneurs or home-based businesses. Many tend to be ‘do-it-yourselfers’ who are forced to spend hours, rather than dollars, to grow and develop their businesses.

Recently, GoSmallBiz and Pre-Paid Legal combined their services to offer online business consulting plus business legal services geared toward micro-businesses with limited budgets. I’ve been using it for the last few months and have been very impressed.

GoSmallBiz.com 

Started by Fran Tarkenton (Hall of Fame quarterback), this site is a portal of small business resources on all aspects of running a business (e.g. accounting, marketing, sales, human resources, technology, etc). You can either read the posted articles, browse questions from other business owners, or you can actually submit your own specific questions that will be answered by one of their subject experts. Also included is a small business directory, free website, business forms, a small business newsletter, and other items of interest.

Pre-Paid Legal

Pre-Paid Legal Services (a NYSE company) has been offering home and family legal plans for many years but now offers special small business plans with features optimized for small business. You can consult with a small business attorney on an unlimited number of issues and can also have phone calls and/or letters written on your behalf. Imagine being able to have an attorney review your new lease agreement, advise on your legal obligations with a disgruntled employee, or send a letter to that supplier that hasn’t paid their bills!

Business Plans 

There are currently 4 different plans available that include both GoSmallBiz and Pre-Paid Legal business services. One is for home-based businesses with less than 3 employees while the other three are for different sized businesses up to 100 employees. Some of these plans also combine home and family coverage for businesses where things tend to overlap. Pricing is advertised as ‘equivalent to a cup of coffee a day’. Quite a bargain!

As consultant I am recommending these services to my small business clients who just can’t afford coaching or consulting services yet. For small business owners who are self-motivated to teach themselves what they need to know and get the answers they need, these are great programs that provide a lot of value for the money.

For more information visit:  GoSmallBiz & Pre-Paid Legal Info 

- Steve (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

When Does a CRM Lead Become a Contact?

When implementing a CRM (customer relationship management) system, many business owners struggle to understand how standard definitions relate to their specific business processes. CRM software solutions (Salesforce.com, ACT, etc) typically use terms like lead, contact, account, opportunity, etc. which may or may not clearly apply to your business vocabulary. Usually it’s best to first understand how these terms are generally defined and then decide how (and if) to modify them to fit your specific business processes.

LEAD – anyone you think may be interested in your product or service. Leads are usually tracked by their status (e.g. open, contacted, unqualified, or qualified, etc.) and by their source (e.g.  a referral, networking event, tradeshow, purchased lead source, web enquiry, etc.). Sometimes companies keep another category they call ‘names’ to track purchased mailing lists, etc. that really aren’t leads.   

CONTACT – an individual (associated with an account) usually associated with a unique business opportunity. Contacts are usually tracked by their (duh) contact information (address, phone number, email, etc). Once leads are qualified and considered as potential prospects then are usually converted to a contact/account pair (and usually assigned to a salesperson).

ACCOUNT – generally an organization with whom you do business (could be a customer, vendor, partner, etc). Accounts are usually tracked by their industry (finance, manufacturing, etc.), their type (e.g. customer, competitor, partner, etc) and sometimes many other details like website, revenue, number of employees, etc.  Multiple contacts usually exist within a single account (i.e. for different departments, projects, etc).

OPPORTUNITY – is a specific business potential associated with an account and contact. Opportunities are the source of sales forecasting and revenue tracking. Opportunities are usually tracked by their campaign source(direct mail, internet marketing, etc.), stage (e.g. needs assessment, proposal, closed won, closed lost, etc.), estimated revenue, probability and closing date. Generally your sales team is handed opportunities (not leads).

Remember that the overall goal is usually for marketing to generate (and nurture) leads until an opportunity arises. They then they pass along these qualified leads to the sales team to close. The overall process is running smoothly when the sales funnel is filled with thousands of leads, which turn into hundreds of contacts, and finally into tens of opportunities that keep your crack sales team fully occupied!

For more background information on CRM systems and definitions visit;

CIO Magazine CRM Definitions        Salesforce.com CRM Best Practices

 

- Steve (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

Marketing Your Business On Craigslist – Part 2

 

To maintain the familiar look-and-feel of a local online ad network, CL takes great pains to limit overzealous posting by commercial marketers. One of the biggest challenges for business marketing is getting as many impressions as possible without being tagged as spam. Remember, you’ll get the most response from your ad by having a good quality ad and by posting it as often as you can without getting flagged. Some of the things that CL dislikes and will get you flagged include;

1. Excessive posting.
2. Posting of identical ads.
3. Posting non-local ads.
4. Posting in the wrong category.
5. Promoting affiliate marketing products. 
6. Automated postings.

In my view, we can skirt the rules (somewhat) for items #1 and #2 (and possibly even #3) but don’t even worry about items #4 or #5. Here’s why.

Preventing excessive posting or identical ads is certainly needed to maintain the usefulness of CL. At the present time, CL will keep a post active for about one week but allow you to re-post it after about 48 hours. CL examines each post and, if the content looks too close to a previous post, it blocks it. So how do people get around this? Well they either use the same ad with different titles, use more graphics (which CL can’t really identify), or simply add some random text to each new post. For most of us, simply remembering to post every few days is usually sufficient.

CL uses many different techniques to identify who the poster is and where they are located. They may put cookies on your computer and probably monitor your IP address to help prevent abusive posting and to prevent posting non-local ads. Posting in wrong categories is basically user monitored. Every user can flag mis-categorized postings so don’t waste your time trying to do so. Automated posting is prevented by using human-readable text checks and/or email confirmations of postings.

For most of us (casual) CL users I’d recommend the following process;

1. Put together your ad using a great title, an attractice graphic, and a call to action.
2. Store the graphic file on a free public, online storage site (e.g. MSN Skydrive).
3. Put together the appropriate HTML code that points to the URL where your graphic is hosted.
4. Add an Outlook task that reminds you to post twice per week (e.g. Mon and Thurs).
5. Include the ad title, HTML code, and text in your Outlook reminder so you can simply copy and paste it into CL.
6. Register for a free CL account and note the best categories to post.
7. Continue to post your ad for a few months and then change it to remain fresh.

There are two ways to measure the success of your ad. The first is to simply monitor phone calls to your business and ask how they heard about you. The second is to put a link to your website in your ad and then monitor your website activity using Google Analytics to see how many were referred by CL.

Craigslist continues to attract over 50 million users each month so there is absolutely nothing like it out there for local small businesses.

     Marketing Your Business on Craigslist – Part 1

For more information on Craigslist try this site;

      http://www.craigslist-book.com/blog.html

- Steve (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

10 Easy Ways to Grow Your Website – FREE eBook

 
I’m always a big fan of free things and also firmly believe that most businessess do not take full advantage of their website.

For helpful tips on planning and designing your business website, download this free e-book on “How to Build a Website That Sells”.

Microsoft Office Live Small Business and Entrepreneur Magazine are working together to help entrepreneurs start and nurture their businesses by providing solutions that can be put into action immediately. 

This 54-page downloadable e-book (in PDF format) includes tips, techniques, and tools to help you design an effective and engaging Web site.

Download the e-book via;

   Build a Website That Sells: 10 Easy Ways to Grow Your Website

- Steve

PS – Get more information on our Websites and Internet Marketing

Marketing Your Business On Craigslist – Part 1

Craigslist (CL) continues to be one of the best websites for online classifieds, with an amazing 12 billion page views per month! It’s available in over 550 cities (worldwide) and continues to be free for all services other than job ads (priced at a reasonable $25 each). CL is designed to have a simple, local feel for users looking for special deals from people looking to sell their ‘excess stuff’. While it is not intended for business advertising, the huge number of visitors makes it irresistible to marketeers looking for free advertising.

While Google presents its listings to users by search-criteria relevance, CL presents listings chronologically. This means that to get a ’top listing’ on CL you have to post continually so you are on the first page when a visitor is searching. Obviously CL has gone to great lengths to prevent this so their service retains its small-town local feel.

So how do you get started advertising with Craigslist?

First visit www.craigslist.org and then select the city you live in. Now double click on ‘Services’ and then enter a few different descriptions of your business to see (1) what is already listed and (2) which category it is listed in. See how the ads are written, note how their services are described and their call to action. Businesses that do well on CL seem to be ones that offer good ‘perceived value’ to visitors. Remember that people searching CL are usually looking for a ‘deal’ on something so make sure your product/service looks like something they cannot do without.

I would recommend signing up for a CL account. All it requires is a valid email address. The benefit of having an account is that you don’t have to respond to a CL confirmation email for each post. It also allows you to keep track of all your posts.

The simplest way to get started posting is with plain text. Your call-to-action can either be a phone call or an email response to the post (you have the option of hiding your email address from spammers). Your ad has three separate sections. The first is the Title. This must clearly articulate what you are offering and do so in an interesting and appealing way. The second is the ad Body. Keep it short and emphasize what the customer gets by using your product/service, not your features and specs. Finally, you need a clear Call-to-Action.  For more information on how to post an ad visit  www.craigslist.org/about/help/how.

Want to make your ad stand out from the crowd? Fortunately, CL recognizes basic HTML commands so you can actually embed such things as graphics, illustrations, hyperlinks, bold items, bulleted lists, etc. It doesn’t take a lot of work to put together a colorful ad, with exciting text copy, and then send users to your business website for more information.  For more information on posting using HTML visit  www.craigslist.org/about/help/html_in_craigslist_postings/details.

In Part 2 of this post we’ll talk about how to set up a system to post regularly and get maximum exposure for your small business.

- Steve   (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

Social Media for Small Business – FREE eBook

  

When used properly, social media can be a great tool to help your business reach untapped, potential customers and stay connected to current ones. But there are a few things you’ll need to know to help you get the most out of social media as well as your online presence in its entirety. Microsoft Office Live Small Business sponsored the creation of this eBook in an effort to help break social media down into easy-to-understand pieces, so you can make sense of and make use of this powerful resource in a way that grows your business.

In “Let’s Talk: Social Media for Small Business,” respected author John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing, breaks the concept of social media down into easy to understand pieces. With the help of this e-book you’ll generate new business and capture the hearts and minds of new customers.

via Social Media for Small Business ebook: Microsoft Office Live Small Business

- Steve  (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

Small Business Marketing Challenges

Over half of small business owners say generating new customers is a challenge, yet nearly two-thirds do not use outside support for marketing assistance, according to a survey of US small businesses from the Yellow Pages Association (YPA). 

It found that the smallest of businesses — those with one to five employees — are most likely (70%) not to consult with anyone when making advertising/marketing selections. On the other hand, half (51%) of businesses with six to 10 employees and only one-third (34%) of those with over 11 employees do not consult with outside sources. 

Surprisingly, it also found that 26% of respondents did not use any type of ROI tracking to measure the success of their marketing efforts. Other areas frequently perceived among the toughest challenges include limited advertising budgets (17%) and the lack of knowledge when it comes to where to advertise (10%). The report also found that urban businesses have a better understanding of marketing but are much more likely to face challenges generating new customers than businesses located in rural areas where business may not be quite as competitive.

These findings are interesting and seem to confirm what most of us believe about small business marketing. 

1. Finding new customers (and retaining current customers) is key challenge for all businesses but is essential to survive and grow.
2. Getting the best results for your marketing dollars is crucial, especially in these tough economic times.
3. Keeping up with the many different marketing strategies in this new internet-driven business environment is not easy.  
4. Urban businesses face a more competitive environment where marketing is even more critical.
5. Larger companies (which by definition are usually more successful) are more prone to using outside marketing resources.

Conclusion? Marketing effectiveness is more important than ever for small business success. The key to marketing effectiveness is, of course, knowing all the different marketing strategies available but more importantly, having a plan and keeping score to make sure you do more of what’s working and cut your losses on what isn’t.  

To see the full report and findings visit; 

   Two-Thirds of Small Businesses Go it Alone for Marketing

- Steve  (www.SPMsolutions.NET)

Should Small Business Owners ‘Uninstall’ MS Office and Use Google?

Is it finally time to start thinking about web-based business applications and uninstall MS Office (once-and-for-all)? Tired of worrying if  Office 2003 can read files produced with Office 2007? Not sure you’ve downloaded the hundreds of updates and security patches? Always worried about what would happen if your hard drive crashed and/or a nasty virus invaded one of your documents?  

Think about the risks that many small business owners face every day by having their entire business data on a PC or notebook that can easily be damaged, infected by a virus, or corrupted by a wide range of issues. Even with all the warnings, very few of us backup our data regularly. And what if we wanted to access our data from more than one computer (e.g. at the office and at home) or we were a small business who couldn’t afford to buy software for all our employees? Well, the time may be right to look into using on-line, web-based software applications that essentially run in your browser. 

So is it possible to run a small business with the FREE on-line business applications now available from Google?  

Here is a short list of  the typical business applications that most small businesses require. Now check out the FREE web-based solutions offered from Google. 

• Gmail - for email communications and your customer address book
• Google Calendar – for keeping your business calendar and scheduling
• Google Maps – to get directions but also to see local business listings
• Google Docs – to create, store, and share your business documents, spreadsheets, and presentations (MS Office compatible)
• Google Sites – to create basic websites
• Google Blogger - simple blogging software and hosting

So if I were running a small business I would seriously think about using one of the on-line, web-based business applications. Certainly there are many other vendors, but for the price (i.e. FREE) and the breadth of products, you just can’t go wrong using Google.

Note: A similar online office suite is also available from Zoho. Keep in mind that neither Google or Zoho online applications are perfectly compatible with MS Office. <Click here> to see a detailed comparison between MS Office, Google, and Zoho. 

- Steve   (SPM Business Solutions)