The 10 Customer Service Trends for 2010

2010 Trends

December 15, 2009

By Barry Moltz

In 2010, customer service makes a big comeback. It becomes the new marketing. Forget about paying lip service to offering “great customer service”. Let go all of those “the customer is always right” myths. It’s time to offer outstanding customer service only because it makes economic sense for your small business. It is the only truly sustainable competitive advantage.

What to watch in 2010:

1. We Try Harder: With the economy still struggling to recover and unemployment at record highs, all “customer facing employees” actually will try harder this year to attract, satisfy and keep their customers. Job prospects remain slim in 2010 and every employee wants to keep any job they have. This year, effort from everyone will be in plain site.
2. It’s Not Your Product: Zappos’ tag line is “Powered by Customer Service”. With the company being sold to Amazon for almost a billion dollars, there is no denying that customer service can build companies. Zappos proved that it can make money selling shoes over the internet by offering free shipping both ways. Amazon and Zappos are companies that really just don’t sell products, but a customer service channel to sell any product. All things being equal, I buy from Zappos and Amazon because I know I can count on them. This is the year that all companies will see service as the only way to keep customers buying from them.
3. It’s All About You. Technology has allowed companies to personalize my visit when I go to buy from their web site. When I visit Amazon’s site, they welcome me back by name and suggest things I might want to buy based on what I bought in the past. This is the type of personalization I come to expect when I go to any face to face retail establishment. When I check into a hotel, I want them to greet me by name if I have been there before or I am a member of their frequent buyer program. This always happens when I visit the Portland Paramount but at The Nines hotel in the same city, they never remember who I am. With the immediacy and personalization of this fast paced internet world, great customer service is only what the customer says it is at a particular point in time. The difficulty is raised because this standard varies from person to person. This year, more companies will customize your shopping or service experience either online or in person because that is what you want.
4. Tell the World. Tools like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allow me to tell not seven people but 10,000 my pleasure or dissatisfaction with a company immediately after I interact with them. No more secrets here! Every satisfied customer is now a booster for your company and every dissatisfied customer potentially can hurt your business. Now, there is more of an incentive for every company to get it right for their customer. This year, no bad deed will go unpublished by a dissatisfied customer.
5. The Brands are Listening. You as the customer are talking on Facebook and Twitter, but companies are also beginning to listen. Chances are that if you post a complaint using one of these tools, the company will respond directly to you. I have had this happen with Sears and Lands End. This year, all the major companies will not let any negative comment go by without responding to your concern.
6. Online Service Gets a Face Lift. Forget the lag time of email or waiting for a call back. This year, more and more web sites will allow you to chat directly to customer service people either through chat or video. Want to chat from your phone directly to the company? No problem. Skype them? No problem. Scott Jordan at Scottevest, allows the customer to watch what is going on in his company live on the web every day!
7. Insourcing is In. More and more American companies who outsourced their customer service will bring that function back home either by hiring a domestic company or bringing it in house. The “we can outsource this customer service thing” has hurt companies like Dell and Capital One. This year, look for more of the technology assisted customer service jobs to be transferred back to the US. Companies realize how important it is to their business. Just ask any car dealer the profitability of new car sales to their car maintenance business.
8. That’s Tight. Companies you do business with will want to know everything about you. Tighter relationship with customers will continue as economy remains poor. Companies can’t afford to lose profitable current customers. This goes way beyond frequent flyer programs. Accenture working with Proctor and Gamble has a new technology that tries to predict consumer preferences using optimization engines. This year, companies will continue to track everything about you to make that your relationship as personal as it gets.
9. Fire Them. In 2007, Sprint famously fired 1,000 customers that were clogging up their customer service lines and costing the company loads of money. Not every customer you have is profitable. Look for more companies this year to fire you if you cost them money and recommend you take your business elsewhere.
10. Get Small. All startups used to want to appear big. We bought typewriters and later computers and web sites to make ourselves look the part. Now, everyone company, as Chris Brogan says, wants to be human. I call it getting small. Every company wants to seem like the corner store, but have the global pricing power and distribution of Walmart. Furthermore, big business is now consistently targeting your small business since it is the a sector of the economy that is growing. President Obama will continue to emphasis that small business is the core of American business. You have arrived!

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We continually try to focus on providing our clients with excellent customer service. We have a form you can fill out on our website where you can rate our customer service. It helps us see where we are and what areas we need to improve on. Please fill it out if you have time at www.conceptdesigntudios.com/feedback.html

10 Tips for Saving Your Life From Your Business

by Tim Berry on December 15, 2009

Your business or your life? The nagging question comes up a lot. Recently I saw this startling statement:

Maximizing your chance for success means sacrificing health and family.

That was in this post by Jason Cohen on VentureBeat. He’s serious. He quotes Mark Cuban and one other successful entrepreneur. He says you can’t get it all done otherwise. Build your business first, then build your life. Yeah, right. Like business gets easier at some point? When it grows? Good luck with that.

Logical flaw: for every successful entrepreneur who cites sacrificing health and family as the key to success, there are 10 others who say sacrificing health and family is a tragic mistake. Another logical flaw: millions of people sacrificed health and family and weren’t successful. All their sacrifice did was ruin their lives. Nobody quotes them. They call that survivor bias.

Personally, I don’t buy the passion, obsession, sacrifice all for your business philosophy. Success in life can be something different than purely sales, growth, profits, and celebrity as an entrepreneurial success. Not many of us end up as top-ten world-class entrepreneurs, and, for the rest of us, having a life can be way more important. The sacrifice doesn’t cause success. It’s a rationalization. So I’d like to suggest two sets of rules to help you save your life from your business. The first five are fundamental rules. The second set, five more, are suggestions more than rules; different ways to think about things; reminders.

First, the five fundamentals. I consider these practical, realistic, actionable rules that are good for everybody. For the record, four of the five are rules that I’ve lived with for a long time. Two of them thanks go to my wife and not me; and the fifth, the exercise one, I learned the hard way, by not doing it. I promise you that you can live by all five and not have to sacrifice business success for any of them. These will help you keep your balance:

1. Develop and honor meal times with people you love. For me and my wife, as we built our business, it was about family meals, dinner time, once a day. We made the family dinner a priority. During crunch times, we’d stop, have dinner with our kids, and then go on later (see point 3, below). And you don’t need a marriage and children to make this rule important. Do it your way, not mine. It applies just as well to any relationship that’s important to you.
2. Schedule vacations long in advance. If you like what you do in your business, you’re always going to have trouble getting away. There will always be a good business reason to not go on vacations. If you’re scheduled long in advance, then the vacation is on the calendar. As you talk to clients, schedule business events, and generally work on the business, your vacation shows up, and you naturally work around it.
3. Get used to working at home. So you have a lot of work but you tear yourself away, take your dinner time, spend some time in real life, and then later on, when everybody else is watching dumbing and numbing television, you can get back on the computer and catch up with your obsession. That requires good Internet connection and related tools, like online productivity tools, GoToMyPC, and the like.
4. Don’t obsess; plan. Don’t wander through the rest of life with business thoughts running through your head like a helicopter background noise in your dreams. Take a few deep breaths. To get the business-helicopter-mind out of your head keep the planning realistic. Planning gets a lot of things out of your head and into the plan. When you wake up at night obsessing, go to your planning. Write it down. Relax, and go back to sleep.
5. Get regular exercise. I’ve been there: It’s so easy to put off exercise because you’re worried about the business. “I have too much to do, I don’t have time for exercise,” you tell yourself, and it becomes a rationalization to dive back into that project or those emails. But there’s a trick to exercise: you get more time back, in productivity, than what you put into the exercise. Seriously: put in 45 minutes 3-4 days a week and you’ll get back an hour of productive time for every half hour you spend. It has to do with sleep, stress, and mental health.

And then, after the fundamentals, five fine touches, embellishments, not-so-universal, but maybe still useful:

1. Do something you can believe in. It’s not just finding the best business opportunity; it’s finding one you believe in. There’s quality of work as well as quantity, and high quality makes high quantity easier to live with. Make sure that when you take a step back from it, every so often, you can see how what you do made other lives better.
2. Acknowledge risk. Don’t bet what you can’t afford to lose. Understand the risk you take. Talk about it with the other people in your life, so you don’t feel all alone with the risk. Think about the worst case. Learn to live with it.
3. Don’t clam up. Share carefully. Be able to talk about business problems, safely, with at least one other person in your life. Get out of the let’s solve them mode, and into the let’s just talk about them so creative juices can percolate. People who care about you take silence as being something like walls and barriers. Secrets are stressful. Sharing relieves stress. But be careful, mind the framework and parameters of sharing, people have to know when you don’t want to be told the obvious feedback.
4. Understand that you make mistakes. Acknowledge your mistakes, analyze them, and them package them up in your mind and store them somewhere out of site, somewhere where you can access them occasionally to help avoid making the same mistakes again, but, on the other hand, where they won’t just drive you crazy.
5. Tell the truth. Then you don’t have to keep track of which lies you told to which people. It’s hard enough to manage stress without having to manage complex alternate realities.

None of the above guarantees business success, but none of it is really going to get in the way of your success either, and it may help you stay sane in the meantime. Think about this: my wife taught me, early in our 40-year-marriage, that time is the scarcest resource, way scarcer than money. And some day you’re going to turn 60. Unless you die first.

5 Vicious Lies about Being an Entrepreneur

I grew up working in my parents’ animal hospital. And I vividly remember the day my dad turned to me in frustration and said, “You know, they taught me how to be a terrific doctor in vet school, but didn’t teach me anything about running my own clinic!”

Let’s face it, most entrepreneurs—myself included—start out doing something we know or something we love. But that doesn’t mean we know a thing about running or growing a business.

Worse, much of what we hear about running a business before we start is just plain wrong. Below are five pieces of advice that took me 12 years and four businesses to recognize as the vicious lies they truly are…

Lie # 1 - If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.

My mom was soooooo wrong about this! Sure, in the beginning you might have more time than money and need to do a lot yourself. But the way to be successful—and have a life—is to outsource strategically, ASAP.

My rule is to outsource:

• Anything important that sits on your to-do list for over three weeks.
• Anything you don’t do well or hate doing.
• Anything someone else can do cheaper.

You may think you can’t afford outsourcing. But if you outsource wisely, and spend your newfound time on tasks that grow your business, you’ll make more money AND work less (woohoo!).

Lie # 2 – You have to give up your life to grow a small business.

Many of us start our businesses with the dream of creating a better life…only to find ourselves chained to the business working 50-60-79 hours a week. If you start out with this mindset, you’ll end up creating a business that requires you to work all the time with no end in sight.

It’s true you may need to work long hours sometimes—especially in the beginning. But working yourself to the bone day in and day out is a recipe for burnout. Instead you need a plan for getting yourself out of that trap ASAP (See Lie # 1 for ideas).

Lie # 3 – Once you have a small business you can never take a vacation.

Again, my mom had this all wrong. Three years into my third business I took my first 10-day, totally unplugged vacation. And I was terrified my business would suffer. Instead I had more client work when I returned than when I’d left. Plus I was reenergized and bursting with new ideas.

Staying in “putting out fires mode” isn’t the way to grow your business. If you truly want to move your business forward you have to step away periodically to regroup and recharge. You NEED to take vacations, get away from it all, gain a fresh perspective and give yourself a chance to think.

Lie # 4 – Your business will always suffer like the cobbler’s shoeless children.

When I owned my copywriting/marketing firm, I almost never had time to do my own marketing. So while I was terrific at helping my clients grow their businesses, mine was stagnating.

Eventually I changed my business model and stopped writing copy for clients so I could focus on growing my business. What a difference that made! Soon I’d doubled my revenues and hired other writers to help me.

You need to treat your business like any other client, and schedule time to work on it each week, or you’ll end up always working in it.

Lie # 5 – Being self-employed is the same as owning a business.

Bull! Owning a business and being self-employed are two entirely different things. When you own a business, you make money even when you’re not working. And you can go on vacation or take sick days without everything grinding to a halt.

When you’re self-employed, if you aren’t working nothing happens and you don’t make a dime. Plus you typically end up trading one or two bosses for a bunch of bosses disguised as clients.

It’s more fun, and more secure, to own a business than it is to be self-employed—even if it does take more planning and effort to get there.

Written by Stacy Karacostas

3 Creative Ways SMBs Can Use Social Media for Holiday Discounts

by Jennifer Van Grove (Mashable)

Every year consumers turn to the web to scour for the best holiday shopping deals. Black Friday has practically become a holiday of its own, with retailers jumping on the bandwagon earlier than ever to satisfy deal-hungry consumers.

This holiday season you have an opportunity to leverage social media channels for trackable giveaways and discounts that can not only boost your holiday sales but improve your social media presence.

1. Direct Message Discounts

If you're looking for fun and innovative ways to drum up your follower count on Twitter, or create more engagement between you and your customers, consider offering direct message-only holiday discounts.

Here's how this could work. Come up with a holiday deal that is significantly better than any of your existing promotions and make sure to share it with your entire team. Then use your social media channels to send out shareable clues about the promotion. You could tweet something like, "exclusive holiday Twitter deals on X,Y,Z, DM us for details."

For this type of promotion to work, it's all about the details. First, make sure you follow new followers back so that they can send you a direct message. Also, determine whether or not you want this to stay underground, or whether you're open to having the deal spread online. The benefit of the former approach is that select customers feel privileged, but the downside is that you'll need to generate a new discount/offer code or "password" for each person.

On the flip side, if you have one password/coupon/discount code, then anyone can get it via direct message and share it with their friends, which means you could get more mileage and buzz, but fewer followers. Figure out what your goal is and go with it, full steam ahead.

You might even get more mileage out of the deal if you offer a double deal (double whatever the original deal was) when you hit X amount of followers before a certain date. That could give deal-seeking customers the incentive to promote you in the hopes of saving even more.

2. Facebook Freebies

We're seeing more and more brands use their Facebook Fan Pages for fan-only deals, discounts, and coupons, and there's no reason why you can't use the holiday season to do the same for your small business.

This works for both online and offline retailers, but should you have a physical store, using your Facebook Fan Page to create a holiday coupon for an extra X% off already discounted merchandise would be an instant way to gain more fans and please holiday shoppers on the hunt for a bargain.

Since Facebook is so ubiquitous, if you go this route, make sure to inform your team members to tell customers about the deal while they're shopping. You can even teach employees how to show customers how to become your fan on Facebook from their mobile phones, thereby making them eligible for the extra savings instantly as well as getting a new fan on the spot.

3. Social Media Sharing

Whatever your sales goals are this holiday season, chances are you want to sell more of your products and services, but usually it's your customers and super fans who do all the real selling for you. Here's where social media can help.

Use your email newsletter, Twitter account, Facebook Fan Page, and website to encourage your customers to share what they love most about your small business online. Encourage them to upload a photo, create a video, or pen a blog post about the products or services they love most. Also make sure to instruct them to tag the content with a predetermined tag. You can make the incentive whatever you want it to be, but offering each participant an X% discount off existing sale prices would be well received.

This approach works best if you make the announcement on your own blog and request that participants include a link to their shared media in the comments section of the post. Also, remember that due to new FTC guidelines, you should encourage participants to disclose the deal or discount.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, YinYang

Turning a Service into a Product

5 Steps to Turning a Service Into a Product - So You Can Sell Your Business

By Anita Campbell (Small Business Trends)

Nov 18, 2009 -

If you run a service business and have plans to sell your business someday and cash out, you may be in for a rude shock. The value you thought you were building in your business may not be there.

Why not? A number of reasons. Here are a few:

First, buyers may view you as being too personally tied to the business. They worry that the business is too highly dependent on your personal relationships -- that when you leave, your clients eventually will leave, too.

Second, in a service business it is not uncommon to rely heavily on one large client – and that’s risky. John Warrillow writes on his blog:

When you go to sell your company, an acquirer is going to try and understand how predictable your revenue stream is. One swing factor will be how exposed you are to any one client. If you rely on one customer for 25% + of your revenue, an acquirer is going to take a steep discount on your market price at best, or walk away at worst. Your goal should be to ensure none of your clients make up more than 5% – 10% of your revenue. That way the impact of losing any one customer is minimized.

Third, service businesses often have trouble scaling to grow. You’re constrained by the number of billable hours in a day, month or year. It’s difficult to ramp up growth without adding people – and that can get expensive. Plus, services involve so many intangible factors, and require such a wide range of skills, that finding qualified staff can be tough. You may end up going through lots of trial and error hires (mostly error).

Of course, if you have no plans of ever selling your business, this whole discussion is moot for you.

But -- if you dream of cashing out someday to fund your retirement, or achieve financial independence, or just try something new – listen up. Start working now to transform your business by “productizing” your services. To productize a service means to turn your services into product offerings. In other words, you position your services to resemble products as much as possible. That will build value that an acquirer might be willing to pay for.

Here are 5 steps to turn services into products:

1. Identify something you can replicate repeatedly – The idea behind a product is that you want to be able to get paid for selling a “thing” and not selling your time. Also, you want to sell the “same” thing over and over if you are to achieve operational efficiencies and decent profits. Look around at what you do. Chances are, if you’ve been in business for a while, you have developed a process you follow closely for at least one service. You may not even realize you have a distinct process until you set out to identify it – but you have something. If that something is in reasonable demand, you have the start of a “product.”

2. Document it – Turn your process into a manufacturing-like assembly line. Break it down into steps that can be performed over and over, by people you can train for the job. Document those steps in detail so that you can calculate the costs involved, and so that your knowledge is transferable.

3. Put limits around your offering – Many services are “squishy” and open ended. For a product you need the opposite -- an offering that is well-defined. Set limits to your offering: time limitations; the deliverables included; a flat fee price; a name you can refer to your product by.

About Small Business Canada notes:

“You give it a defined scope, fit it into a limited time period, assign it a definite price tag, and attach a distinctive name. Let's say you are an image consultant, and you've been selling your time for $75 per hour. Instead, you offer a ‘One-Day Makeover’ at a price of $495, and include a wardrobe assessment, color consultation, and shopping trip.”

4. Incorporate technology – A technology component for processing sales or delivering your service further establishes the impression that it is a product. For example, look at how companies such as LegalZoom have put a website front-end on what are still basically services – cementing the perception of a product offering. The website streamlines and automates functions to a large degree, too, with the potential to drive out costs. But the key is that with the help of technology, it looks like a tangible thing, and so customers perceive it as a product.

5. Build an organization – Even if it’s just you today, over time you will need to involve others in producing, selling and distributing your product. No one wants to buy a business that is a one-man or one-woman show – they want to buy a company. Besides, it can’t be just YOU because YOU are not scalable. Add “labor” to “manufacture” your product, sales reps to sell it, and management to run daily operations. Build a team that is skilled and knowledgeable, and able to operate without your daily intervention.

Follow these five steps and you may just have something that grows bigger than you ever imagined – and one day you can sell.

The Holidays and Marketing: Advertising During the Holidays
By Maria E. Andreu

Too many of the clients I talk to write off December as a marketing black hole. After all, people aren't really focused on doing anything but holiday shopping and attending parties, right? Why not preserve your energy for a time when people are ready to buy?

Considering the holiday season a time when marketing should be put on hold is missing a great opportunity to connect with your prospects. True, people are overextended financially and time-wise, are cranky and overshopped and are wondering how they're going to get it all done. But, miraculously, the spirit of the season also survives and gives people more hope, openness and willingness to try new things. Being as it is on the cusp of a great, shiny new year, the holiday season is a golden time to connect with people emotionally about what you do. So, instead of resigning yourself to wait until next year to redouble your efforts to get new clients, ask yourself instead how you can use this unique time of the year to get creative about communicating about your business.

Tie your work in to the season
Ask yourself - what about your business is seasonal? If it's nutrition, talk up a fresh angle on how to eat nutritiously during the holidays. CPA? Focus on important end-of-the-year planning you can do. Divorce attorney? Send a tipsheet on how to enjoy your holidays as a divorced person, plus 3 important legal matters you should attend to first of the year. Virtually every profession can be tied into the end of the year/holiday theme. If you're in a profession that's easily tied into the end of the year (food, shopping, etc.), then your work is done for you. If not, think harder. Ask yourself - what do people need from me during the holidays? Do they need more balance, a time to relax, a plan for how they're going to do something better in the coming year? New year planning and balance are great themes that can be carried across many different businesses.

Let people buy gift certificates for your product/service.
Hey, they're going to be giving stuff - it might as well be yours! Look around to see the kind of packaging product-producers are doing and ask yourself: how does that apply to my service? What is an affordable bundle of solutions I can make available during this season?

Holiday card
It's an old-stand-by for a reason. Insert something that keeps on giving. Challenge yourself to come up with a great "next year at a glance" theme. Or perhaps a gift coupon for your service? A bonus for referring a friend? It's a great time of the year to reach out and show people how much you appreciate them and remind them how your work can help them.

Put together an end-of-the-year and "What's Coming Up" report
Even as people are frazzled and engaged in other things, they are filled with the expectation of what next year will bring. Why not tell them how they'll benefit from your work? What's coming up for you - do you have a new product you're working on, a workshop they'll enjoy, an add-on service, a new strategic alliance you want to announce?

Tie a promotion in to New Year's Resolutions
A cottage industry for service professionals, New Year's Resolutions can be a great way to make your service real and immediate to your prospects. Ask yourself - what do people resolve to do that I help with? Weight loss and self image? Financial security? Better relationships? Considering these and other broad categories of the kinds of resolutions people make, get creative about what kinds of tips, services and programs you can offer to help people meet their goals.

Party for Business
It's true, you probably won't ink that important deal or get tons of new buyers during the holiday mixer. Still, all of the chances to meet and celebrate with many people are a golden business opportunity. During holiday parties, people are usually jovial and relaxed about having a good time. So instead of thinking about all the deals you won't make during the holidays, focus on the spirit of the season and build relationships. After all, everyone who is focused on getting through the season will "go back to work" in a few short weeks. When the season is over, you can call on your holiday-party connections and evoke the good feeling of having been at a holiday party together, then translate that into a conversation about how to further the relationship. And, as always, when attending a holiday party (or any other business gathering), ask the organizer if there is an opportunity to give something as a door prize. What do you give? Your service or product of course!

Gift-giving
Now's a great time to let your key business contacts know they're important to you. Give your business list a little personal attention and pick out something less generic and more meaningful. Taking the time to find a personally appropriate gift will mean the world to your prospects, referral partners and clients.

Time-sensitive Offers
People respond to deadlines and the end of the year is an ideal time to build those into your service. It's smart to re-visit your prices every 6 months anyway. The end of the year is a natural time to communicate to your prospects: prices are going up next year so now is the time to hop on.

With a shift of focus, you can consider the holidays a wonderful time to build new relationships and breathe fresh ideas into your business. One last important tip: Don't overdo it! Remember, while you can build your business even through the holidays, it's good to tap into the spirit and focus on family and friends. When you do, the rest will come naturally.

Maria E. Andreu is the Founder and President of Andreu Marketing Solutions

A Practical Guide to Branding

Define your brand identity—your product's "personality"—before you spend a dime on advertising or marketing

by Karen E. Klein

Talk to entrepreneurs about their marketing and communications efforts, and they'll often use the words "branding," "marketing," and "advertising" interchangeably. That reflects the pervasive confusion about the terms, says Gail Guge, managing partner of Wilkin Guge Marketing in Ontario, Calif.. "About 15 years ago, 'branding' became a buzzword in the business vernacular, and people still get the words mixed up all the time," she says.

That confusion is unfortunate, because understanding the concepts and how they mesh is vital to every company's bottom line. Studies show companies that market their products or services without first establishing their brand identities are not likely to achieve return on investment. "If you're spending money to advertise and market without being connected to a brand position, you might as well pile the money up and burn it," Guge says.

Rob Frankel, a branding expert and author in Los Angeles, calls branding the most misunderstood concept in all of marketing, even among professionals. Branding, he says, "is not advertising and it's not marketing or PR. Branding happens before all of those: First you create the brand, then you raise awareness of it."

Your Brand is Your Personality

And while many people think successful branding is only about awareness, it's not, Frankel adds. "Everyone knows about cancer but how many people actually want it? Branding is about getting your prospects to perceive you as the only solution to their problem. Once you're perceived as 'the only,' there's no place else to shop. Which means your customers gladly pay a premium for your brand."

Your product or service is not your company's brand and neither is your logo or your business card. Your brand is the genuine "personality" of your company. "It's what your customers think of you and say about you when they've left your company," says Rodger Roeser, president of Cincinnati-based Eisen Management Group, a public-relations and brand-development firm.

Your brand is what your company stands for and what it is known for. "Look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what you stand for. Go around the room with your leadership and ask them what the company stands for. Settle on one or two brand pillars and build your brand around them. If you can't define your brand, your customers won't be able to, either. And the risk is that someone else will define it for you—probably your competitors," Roeser says.

The Promise You Make to the World

Steve Cecil, a copywriter and verbal-branding expert with Where Words in San Carlos, Calif., says a brand is a promise and branding is the act of devising the promise your company makes to the world. Marketing, he says, "is the strategy that differentiates your brand promise from all the other brand promises in that increasingly crowded house called "your category."

Think of marketing like a toolbox containing branding, advertising, direct mail, market research, public relations, and other tools. "Marketing represents the combination of methods organizations use to persuade their target audience toward some specified behavior such as sales," says Stephen Rapier, of Glendale (Calif.)-based The Artime Group.

Advertising, Rapier says, can take many forms: print, as in newspaper and magazine ads; outdoor, such as billboards; online Web banners; and broadcast advertising on radio and TV. "Typically, the goal of advertising is to grab attention, create positive perceptions, and prompt response while conveying information consumers will find relevant to their needs," he notes.

Your Brand Is a Lifestyle

A successful marketing strategy uses all—or most—of the tools in the box depending on the job at hand, Cecil says. "Crafting a winning marketing strategy is challenging enough even when you have articulated your brand promise and is probably impossible if you haven't."

If you have not specified your company's brand, don't spend another dime on marketing until you do. While everyone's familiar with megabrands such as Apple (AAPL), Nike (NKE), and Virgin, small companies can also develop potent brands and market them successfully, says Steve Manning, managing director at Igor, a branding and naming firm based in San Francisco.

"A brand creates an image in the mind of the consumer. It says something is different at your firm, something worth more than business as usual. If your firm is a commodity, your customers will choose you solely on the basis of price or getting something for free. If you've got a brand, you're selling a lifestyle and you can sell anything you want," Manning says.

More elements of this Special Report are available in the related items box on the upper right side of this page.

Karen E. Klein is a Los Angeles-based writer who covers entrepreneurship and small-business issues.

Why Your Advertising Isn't Working

This following article is a great tool for getting your advertising/marketing back on track. Take a good look at what you are conveying through your advertising. Is is what you want your company to be known for? Does it represent you well? As we approach a new year, rethink your strategies and goals. Let us help you start this year out strong!

Hope you enjoy this great article. Great article Steve!

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The vast majority of ads don't register with consumers. Here are seven straight-up reasons why your message probably isn't getting through

By Steve McKee

Recently, an AdweekMedia poll of LinkedIn members posed this question: "Of the ads you see in a typical day, how many engage your attention?" A remarkable two-thirds of respondents said "a small minority of them." Another quarter answered "none of them." Together, that's 91%. Only one in 100 respondents said "most of them."

Ouch. While polls like these have their limitations (we often can't—or won't—tell the truth about our own purchase behavior), I suspect few us would doubt the overall conclusion that a lot of advertising doesn't work very well. Your own advertising may even fall into that category.

If you find yourself nodding your head and wringing your hands right now, keep in mind this simple business axiom: Companies get the advertising they deserve. If your advertising isn't working, it may be you that's the problem.

The good news is that you can take steps to fix it. Certainly the economic environment is playing a significant role in how well (and how quickly) prospects are responding to your advertising, but blaming the recession is ultimately unproductive. After all, you may not like the hand you've been dealt, but your competitors are holding the same cards. It's how you play your hand that counts.

With that in mind, I'd like to suggest seven reasons why your advertising may not be pulling its weight. Use them to evaluate your efforts, but don't rely on your judgment alone. Ask a trusted and objective colleague to give you his or her honest opinion as well.

1. It's boring. Yep, boring. Why do we watch TV, listen to the radio, read the newspaper, or go online? Three reasons: information, entertainment, and engagement. Ads that fail to offer at least two of these three benefits flop. Just as nobody reads every story in the newspaper, nobody pays attention to every ad. You have to engage your prospects with something that is interesting or entertaining before they'll give you their valuable time and attention. Creativity has always been the coin of the realm, but in our time-starved culture it's truer than ever.

2. It's boorish. You shouldn't think of your advertising as being about your brand, you should think of it as an extension of your brand. If it's loud, annoying, insulting, offensive, or self-centered, people will think the same of your products or services. Remember the first sentence in the best-selling hardback book in U.S. history, The Purpose Driven Life: "It's not about you." What's true in life is true in advertising; if you focus only on what you can get, you're not going to get much. Instead, focus on giving, and good things will begin to happen.

3. It's safe. The first time I saw a Ford Taurus, I took note, and I suspect you did as well. So did a lot of other people, and the Taurus went on to become the best-selling car in America. If the Taurus had been another in a long line of boxy sedans, it probably would have been just another car. Instead, it turned automotive design conventions upside down and made history. While being different isn't in and of itself a guarantee of success, what you do is a lot more likely to get noticed if it hasn't been done before. And keep in mind that when you do something different, people may not like it—at least initially. Most of us were shocked at our first sight of the Taurus' curved lines, but it went on to have significant influence on automotive design. If you worry too much about offending someone, you're likely to not attract anyone.

4. It's trying to do too much. As the poll results above demonstrated, most people don't engage with most ads. And even when they do, for how long do they pay attention? Thirty seconds? Ten? Five? The best an ad can do is communicate one single, compelling idea, and in the age of the Internet—when people know they can go online to get all the additional information they need—it's crazy to ask an ad to do more than that. Just because you have a lot to say doesn't mean your audience will sit still and pay attention. Do your best to make a simple, singular point. Do it with flair, and given enough exposure (see next point) it might just get through.

5. It hasn't been given time. You can't rush bread out of the oven. You can't hurry a seedling out of the ground. All you can do is prepare the ingredients properly, tend the garden with care, and wait for the loaf to rise and sprouts to appear. The same is true of advertising. If you expect too much too soon (especially on a limited budget) you're sure to be disappointed. Think about your own consumer behavior—how many times do you need to be exposed to a marketing message before you take action? Depending on your prospects' level of interest in the category and frequency of purchase, it could take weeks, months, or even years for your message to sink in.

6. You like it. O.K., this one may sting a bit, but you are not the best judge of your own advertising. You can't be, because you simply know too much about your brand and have too much affection for it to remain objective. Look at Burger King (BKC). Its advertising over the past few years has been quite successful in appealing to the company's core target audience of young men, but many Burger King franchisees could personally do without it. The smart ones recognize that they're not the target and leave it alone. Your advertising is not only not about you, it's not for you. Both points seem counterintuitive, but that's why this stuff isn't for amateurs.

7. It's not an advertising problem. A common mistake many companies make is trying to use advertising to fix another problem. It may be faulty or outdated product design, an uncompetitive cost structure, customer service letdowns, or any number of other things. It's not as if they do so intentionally; it's just that it's a whole lot easier to put on a new coat of paint than it is to fix the foundation that's causing the drywall to crack. No company executes flawlessly, but until you can maintain a solid track record of excellence, spend your money on internal improvements rather than advertising. Paint may mask the problem for a short time, but soon new cracks will begin to appear.

There are, of course, many more reasons why advertising underperforms, from poor media placement to bad strategy to competitive countermoves. But the above missteps are so common—and so commonly misunderstood—that simply putting them out to the curb would go a long way in making advertising better. Not to mention making television much more bearable to watch.

Steve McKee is president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland Advertising, a firm that specializes in helping stalled companies rekindle growth. He is the author of the new book, When Growth Stalls.

Choosing the Correct Font

A graphic designer (new to the field) recently asked me this question:

• "I'm a self-taught web designer who has also spent time getting up to speed with graphic design methodologies. One problem I'm having is how to determine which typeface is best to use for a given project. I realize that weight, style, etc. are involved, but what should be considered. TIA."

This is my response to him. Hopefully you will find it helpful as well!

Each designer has different ideas on choosing typefaces for a certain project. These are some basics that get me started on a new project.

One thing that helps me is having an easily accessible sample of all my fonts so I can quickly peruse the large number of fonts. Using different and new fonts ensures that I am keeping my designs fresh and new. I use AMP Font Viewer to help with the organization of my fonts.

The font choice(s) should reflect the company/piece that you designing for. A tool company isn't going to want to have a script/flowy font throughout their piece because the company is trying to portray strength and durability. The preferred style of the company should also be considered. If a company prefers a modern/contemporary look, then you aren't going to use an old world Typeface with a lot of fine detailing.

Also, if you are going to use multiple fonts in one layout, a general rule is to use a block type font with a serif type font. If you use two of the same "styles" of font, it actually makes it look more cluttered and hard for the eye to take in.

As point size goes, keep your fonts sizes in factors of each other. If your header is an 18 point, and your small header is a 15 point, then do your paragraph in 12 or 9 (factors of 3). Factors of 2 work nicely also. Don't have fonts that are a point or closer together (like a 10 and 11 point) on the same publication. Our eyes like a larger differentiation.

Those are a few basic guidelines that are hopefully helpful. Your creativity and your eye can help you determine what looks best for the piece that you are working on. Sometimes rules will be broken to make a piece more successful but it always helps to know the basics.

11 Ways to Turnaround a Cash-Strapped Business

by Adam Urbanski,The Millionaire Marketing Mentor

This past weekend I received a disturbing message from a dear friend. His business wasn't generating all the income he needed. He's exhausted all savings, started depleting credit card reserves and badly needed money to pay this month's mortgage... Ouch! I wish I knew sooner...Whether it's pride or just human nature that keeps professionals from asking for help sooner, it's just plain silly to keep "toughing it out" when there are so many strategies for generating new business fast.You see, there is really no shortage of new business, there is only a shortage of knowledge how to get this business.So if you are one of those professional folks who could use a few hundred bucks to help out with this month's mortgage, here are a few strategies to get your business buzzing with new customers or clients:

1. Get on the phone!
Pick up the phone and call everyone you know. Contact all clients, prospects, friends and family. Make sure they all know what you do, who you are looking for as a client, and how to "give you away."

2. Get out and meet people!
Sitting in the office, shuffling paperwork and piddling around with emails will not take you far enough fast enough. You need to be talking to people who can buy your product or service. Set a goal of how many people you want to see in person every day and find ways to meet that goal!

3. Stop competing and start leveraging!
Instead of being mad at your competitors for stealing all your business, approach them and offer to help out. At times we all get projects that are too big, too small, or too "whatever" for us to take on.Contact your competitors and ask if they would be willing to outsource their "too whatever" jobs to you - so that you can both make some dough. (Yeah, I know, it sounds like eating some humble bread - but hey, I think it beats living under a bridge ;-)

4. Ask for referrals!
You should be doing this anyway. Have a conversation with all clients (past and current) and help them think of people they can introduce you to right away. Oh, and don't forget - just because a prospect says "no", it doesn't mean he or she doesn't know someone who would gladly say "yes".

5. Crank up your follow-up!
Do you have a stack of cards from people who turned you down once before? Maybe it's time to resurrect them. Reach out to your "old" prospects - even if you previously gave up on them. Give them a call, send them a postcard or an article, and give them a special reason to say "yes" now!

6. Forgive your ex-clients!
Frequently ex-clients realize they made a mistake by getting involved with another vendor - but they are too embarrassed to admit it. Give them a way to gracefully come back to you and many will do it.

7. Catch a COI!
Form an alliance with Centers of Influence who can introduce to a large number of prospects at once and give you instant credibility. Well thought out and carefully executed strategic alliances with COI can infuse your business with all the new sales you can handle.

8. Educate, educate, educate!
Regardless of what business you are in you can always find things your clients and prospects would appreciate learning from you. How-to tips, informative case studies, industry reports - those are all great tools that can easily attract prospects hungry for your "stuff."

9. Start thinking strategically!
If you are having trouble attracting enough new business, the marketing tactics above should help you get things hopping, but to achieve a long-term sustainable success you'll need to address your marketing on a strategic level.Identify or re-evaluate your ideal target market, clearly describe the benefits your product or service provides, create a compelling marketing message, re-evaluate your business model and re-define your methods of delivering your product or service, etc., etc.

10. Stop getting and start giving!
When you are in the "how I can GET a client" mode, you are focused on you - and that doesn't make you very attractive. Shift your thinking to "how I can GIVE clients more VALUE" and you'll become an irresistible client magnet!

11. GET HELP!
When you are in the midst of a demanding situation you cannot always have the clarity needed to creating solutions. Collaborate with a successful associate, start your own board of advisors or a mastermind group, or hire a marketing mentor to pull you out of the quicksand. Remember, when time and money count - you can't afford the expensive "trial and error" learning curve!Oh, and one final thought - now that you are done reading - get busy implementing!

Want to learn how to implement these ideas in your business? Here is a step-by-step fast-track guide to get you started.

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Great article Adam! Thanks for sharing! Whether you are cash-strapped or just wanting to grow your business...communication with your clients and prospective clients is so important. Let us help you set up an email marketing campaign, a direct mailing campaign or anything else you think would be successful with your clients. We are here to help your business succeed and move to the next level!

Please give us a call/email so that we can help you implement better communication between you and your contacts!

~ Comfort C. Price
Concept Design Studios

How To Become a More Aggressive Website Marketer

Posted by: iyazam

Lets face it: In today's internet marketing marketplace you need to be aggressive. Here is the method that I use when marketing my website:

There are three steps you should have in mind when marketing via social media:

- Market & share your information
- Connect with your niche and re-direct them to your website
- Create a community around your website

1) Create at least one article a day for your website.

2) Take the link of that article - (not your homepage URL) - and post it on:

- Facebook - in the "links" section
- Twitter
- LinkedIn

Here is how you should post it on your Twitter and LinkedIn status, Example:
How To Market Short Term Rentals - Part 2: http://www.iyazam.com/market-short-term-rentals.html

Put the title of the article before the link.

3) Social Bookmarketing - Submit the link of the article to Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit and Delicious.

4) Forum Marketing - Take the article and start a thread on a relevant forum. Get some action going with your article.

5) Article Directories - Post the article on Ezinearticles.com, Searchwarp.com, Articlesbase.com etc..

6) Post your article as a blog post on the various Ning.com - Social Networks that are relevant.

7) Head on over to Hubpages and Squidoo. Create a hub and a lens for your article

If you stick to this method on daily basis you will begin to see results.

You want to focus on marketing and sharing your information in order to provide value for as many people as possible. People like nice people and people respond better when value is created for them.- Social media marketing is all about creating results in the long run. It is all about sticking to specific marketing system over a consisted period of time. Most people don’t understand this.

I am aware of the fact that Google does not like duplicate content. That's ok. All I care about is getting traffic from within the different networks.

Hope this helps!

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Please let us know if you have any questions or if we can help you implement these key steps to marketing your website!

15 Questions to Measure the Strength of Your Home Page

The home page is typically where most site visitors will enter your website. It can determine whether a prospective customer is intrigued and eager to learn more, or is instead confused, frustrated and turned-off. Let’s face it – your home page is one of the “Money” pages on your website, so it better be effective.

Therefore, it would behoove you to spend time revisiting your home page and making sure that it answers these fifteen fundamental questions to drive your business results.

1. Who are you?
Does the home page make it explicitly clear who you are, including your company name, your logo and your tagline? Is it clear if you are a services firm, retailer, wholesaler, manufacturer, B2B firm, or B2C firm, etc.?

2. What are your products or services?
You would be shocked at how many websites do not make this clear on their home page, but instead assume that of course the site visitor knows exactly who they are and what they sell. Big mistake. Don’t assume anything.

3. What can I do here?
Assuming you make it clear what you sell, is it just as clear what the site visitor can do on your site, whether it be a purchase, a download of a free trial, or engagement in a community?

4. What’s your identity?
Are you professional and reliable? Are you cool and cutting-edge? Are you fun and silly? Make it clear on the home page, and then be consistent with your identity throughout the site.

5. Is your design helping you?
Too many small business owners think that just having a website is good enough regardless of what it looks like, and they sacrifice design. Remember, though, that site visitors are real people, and they get it when a site is amateurish.

6. What’s your differentiation?
Clarify how you are different, and the unique value you offer the site visitor. Do you offer the highest quality? Are your prices the cheapest? Do you have the broadest selection? Is your customer service absolutely amazing?

7. What does the website include?
The home page needs to ground the new site visitor. Does your home page provide a clear view as to what’s included in the site from a high level? Does it answer the visitor’s question of “What can I find here?”

8. Are you being a “tease”?
Like the cover of a magazine, your home page should entice new site visitors to want to check out additional pages. This can be anything from special promotions to free eBooks to announcements of upcoming events.

9. You don’t force me to scroll, do you?
Is your home page succinct and to the point? Or are you expecting your site visitors to scroll and scroll and scroll to read everything you have to tell them? Remember, many people do not scroll.

10. Is your home page scan-able?
Most website visitors do not read through an entire page, but instead scan the page. To that end, it’s important that you are providing them with visual cues, such as headers, subheads, images, movies, links, etc. And remember to leave sufficient white space on the page – clutter can be a major obstacle to website usability.

11. Do you provide timely content?
If you are a publisher, do you make the latest and freshest content clear and easy to find? If you are offering a special promotion, is it prominently displayed?

12. Do you weight your home page elements according to importance?
Is every element on your home page the same size and treatment? If so, are you sure you are not paralyzing your site visitors? Are you sure that your home page is scan-able (see above)? Allocate different weights to the different elements on your home page to ensure the page is guiding visitors in line with your business priorities.

13. Why should I trust you?
Many site visitors have no clue who you are, yet they always have options for going elsewhere on the web. Therefore, it’s critical to convey a sense of trust. This can include trustmarks such as from the Better Business Bureau, association membership logos, associated charity logos, a link to your privacy policy, etc.

14. Do you include clear Calls to Action?
Does your home page clarify what the site visitor is supposed to do next, whether learn more, download, view a comparison table, purchase or otherwise?

15. Where’s the pizazz?
Your site visitors are real people. Don’t bore them to tears. Add pizazz to your home page, but realize that this does not mean bells and whistles. Focus on delivering a deeply satisfying experience. This could mean an insightful solution to their biggest problem, an amazing client testimonial, a free widget, a free book, a community or a resource center.

Written by: Tom Now

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We would love to help you get started with a purposeful website...or update your exciting site.

We offer beautiful low cost websites that are great for companies that are just starting their web presence but don't have a large budget - starting at just a few hundred dollars.

We also offer Premium websites with all the bells and whistles - starting at a few thousand dollars.

Contact us for your free website consultation!

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

First Steps
Build an account and immediately start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)

Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.

Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.

Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.

Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).

Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)

Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.

Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)

Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.

Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout and @jstorerj from Mzinga.

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet
Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”

Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.

When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.

Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.

Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.

Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”

When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.

Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.

Don’t toot your own horn too much. (Man, I can’t believe I’m saying this. I do it all the time. - Side note: I’ve gotta stop tooting my own horn). Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

Some Sanity For You
You don’t have to read every tweet.

You don’t have to reply to every @ tweet directed to you (try to reply to some, but don’t feel guilty).

Use direct messages for 1-to-1 conversations if you feel there’s no value to Twitter at large to hear the conversation ( got this from @pistachio).

Use services like Twitter Search to make sure you see if someone’s talking about you. Try to participate where it makes sense.

3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.

If you tweet all day while your coworkers are busy, you’re going to hear about it.

If you’re representing clients and billing hours, and tweeting all the time, you might hear about it.

Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.

If someone says you’re using twitter wrong, forget it. It’s an opt out society. They can unfollow if they don’t like how you use it.

Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

The Negatives People Will Throw At You
Twitter takes up time.

Twitter takes you away from other productive work.

Without a strategy, it’s just typing.

There are other ways to do this.

As Frank hears often, Twitter doesn’t replace customer service (Frank is @comcastcares and is a superhero for what he’s started.)

Twitter is buggy and not enterprise-ready.

Twitter is just for technonerds.

Twitter’s only a few million people. (only)

Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing.

Twitter opens the company up to more criticism and griping.

Some Positives to Throw Back
Twitter helps one organize great, instant meetups (tweetups).

Twitter works swell as an opinion poll.

Twitter can help direct people’s attention to good things.

Twitter at events helps people build an instant “backchannel.”

Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).

Twitter gives businesses a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. Remember presence in the 1990s?

Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks).

Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them.

Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are).

Twitter can augment customer service. (but see above)

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Let us know how you have used Twitter and what results you have seen! We have just been on it for about a month now, so we are still figuring everything out! Hope this post has helped you use Twitter effectively for your business.

Marketing Materials Checklist for Small Business

Give each one of these items solid consideration for your initial array of marketing materials for your small business:

Logo
You’ll want to create a polished image from the beginning and some kind of unique visual hook for your company, and then splash it on your business cards, stationery and anything else you can think of.

Business cards
Many marketing gurus say that a great business card can be your most effective marketing tool. Pack it with as much information as it will hold, not just contact information. Maybe put the contact information on the front and list your products or services on the back. Mark Amtower, a Highland, Md.-based expert in marketing to the federal government, suggests considering a fold-over business card for twice the display space!

In any event, your business card “must be different, memorable, and prospects must want to keep it,” says Joachim de Posada, an internationally known expert on small business.

Website
You should get this up and running before you open for business. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on one, with all the site-building options now available. But it should be well-designed and helpful. You might even want to start putting a blog on your site right away to start up a “conversation” with your customers.

“Using the website as a primary ‘marketing material’ for a startup is good because you can’t tell the size of a company by their website,” notes Becky Boyd, a vice president of MediaFirst, a Roswell, Ga.-based marketing agency.

Brochure
This can be a virtual one, in PDF format on the internet, or a black-and-white, two-color or even four-color paper handout. In any case, it’s important to have one, because it can cover a variety of general needs that no other single marketing document can handle, ranging from distribution at a trade show to a handy mailer for people who want basic information about your company.

Company clothing
Be your own billboard! You might want to consider putting this really high on your checklist. Wearing clothing with your company brand can start tongues wagging everywhere you go. “People will ask you what you do,” says Ruth King, small business expert and author of the book, The Ugly Truth about Small Business. “Then you can recite your pitch and ask for the order.”

E-mail signature
Don’t let any e-mail escape your computer without tagging it as a marketing message. Come up with a catchy e-mail signature and include your name, business name, contact information, pithy tag line, a web address and even a one- or two-line announcement at the bottom of the signature about a new book, product, seminar or service offering you’ve announced.

Packets for specialized needs
Depending on the initial focus of your company, you’ll need to develop packages of materials that are formulated around particular needs. If sales are hugely important at the beginning, you may need to come up with a folder full of brochures and spec sheets.

Elevator pitch
Here at StartupNation, the elevator pitch – a strong, 30-second spoken spiel that could convince someone to invest in your business in the space of an elevator ride – is one of our favorite marketing tools.

“This will do more to market a new business than the flashiest collateral materials,” says J.W. Arnold, principal of PRDC, a Washington, D.C., marketing agency. “It’s amazing how many startups get caught up on the ‘things’ of their marketing effort and forget exactly ‘what’ they are marketing.”

Nevertheless, you also can commit your elevator speech to paper, or modify it into a “mission statement,” and hand it out readily along with your other marketing materials.

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Contact us for your logo design, business cards, brochure, website design, company clothing & marketing packets, vehicle graphics, banners, etc.! From concept to final product, we do it all at a price any business can afford!

Business Cards Printing (includes design**, 2-sided, full color, full bleed)
Paper Options: glossy, uncoated, 100% recycled with soy inks (no extra $$ for recycled)
250 - $75
500 - $90
1000 - $105
2500 - $175

Brochure Printing (includes design**, 2-sided, full color, full bleed, fold included)
Paper Options: glossy or 100% recycled with soy inks
500 - $275
1000 - $325
2500 - $575

**does not include a logo design

Give us a call and we can help you with all of your marketing materials!

5 Mistakes to Avoid When Designing Your Website

Written by: Tom Now

For many of you, your business website will act as a central hub for your marketing, branding and communications. It will be a major touchpoint in your relationship with your prospects and customers.

If you plan on being successful, it behooves you to create a website that fuels your business growth.

Then why is it that so many entrepreneurs and small business owners sabotage their own marketing by taking shortcuts with their websites and by not thinking through the ideal website for their business?

Here are 5 common mistakes that you should avoid when creating your website:

No Objective
The very first thing you should do when planning your website is to define the objective of the website. What do you want visitors to do on your site? How will you measure success? Will it be online sales, lead-generation, downloads, subscriptions, Page Views? Know what you want to drive your visitors to do prior to designing your new website, and the design process should progress more smoothly and more in line with your business needs.

No Plan
Just as you start with blueprints when building a new house, you need a plan when creating your new website. Some people go into a site design process by looking at designs, colors, templates and imagery. Although the look and feel of your website is important and should align with your identity, it’s critical to start with your marketing strategy. Who is the target audience? What are their main problems? How will your website help them solve these problems? If you were your own customer, how would the ideal website be organized and what would it deliver?

No Differentiation Strategy
Online, it’s super easy to jump from one website to another. Therefore, expect that your prospective customers will check out the competition. With that in mind, it’s surprising how many people do not think through a well-defined differentiation strategy for their website. Will your site offer unique, amazing value? Will your site focus on building a unique community? Will your site be clearly unique from your competition?

Sacrificing Professionalism
Whether you use a designer, agency or template, look at your site with a critical eye and make absolutely sure that it’s professional in appearance. Just because your next door neighbor’s kid can program HTML and PHP doesn’t mean that he understands marketing and can create a website that will fuel your growth. Remember, trying to save a few dollars in the wrong way now may wind up costing you tens of thousands of dollars in revenue down the road. This is not to say that you necessarily need to spend lots of money on your site design — rather, you just need to ensure that whatever direction you go in results in a website that represents you effectively.

Infatuation with Technology
Some people go into a site design process thinking that they “need” a Flash website. Or they “need” the latest feature du jour. The reality is that technology comes and goes. Instead, focus on providing your visitors with real solutions to their real problems. Focus on making: 1) the navigation intuitive; 2) the site easy-to-use; 3) the content of great value, and 4) the user experience fulfilling. Then, apply the appropriate technology to support these aspects of your site.

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Check out our website info sheet if you are thinking about starting a website or rethinking your website. It has a few questions to get you started and then we can help you the rest of the way with getting the website you want!

Visit http://www.conceptdesignstudios.com/webdesign.html to get more information about our website design.

We have custom options for every business! Some are just starting out and don't have a lot to invest in a website. Others are established businesses that want to focus on a strong web presence as part of their marketing strategy. Either way, we can help you reach your website goals!

The Best Internet Marketing Books Ever

Article by Zeke Camusio

There are hundreds of books on Internet Marketing. With so many options, how do you know what to read and what to bypass?

Today I’m going to share with you the same books I recommend to my clients, and I’m going to tell you why I like them so much. If you read these books, you will know more about Internet Marketing than 90% of your competitors. You’ll learn the rest by putting what you’ve read into practice. Read and enjoy!

Best Internet Marketing Books

Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords
A great guide to understanding Google AdWords.

Don’t Make Me Think
By far, the best web usability book ever written.

Building Findable Websites
This book will teach you to build web standards-compliant websites.

Search Engine Marketing, Inc.
A great Search Engine Optimization (SEO) book for beginner and intermediate users.

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
This book will teach you almost all you need to know about web analytics.

A Practical Guide to Affiliate Marketing
Are you a merchant looking to benefit from affiliate marketing? Do yourself a favor and read this book.

The Adweek Copywriting Handbook
By far, the best copywriting book I’ve ever read. I absolutely love it.

Call to Action
I love this book. It will teach you a lot about web usability, copywriting and calls to action.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR
A great read that will help you understand how the Internet is changing the way people and companies do marketing and PR.

The Facebook Era
Thinking about getting into social media marketing? Read this book first!

Twitter Power
Go from Twitter-laggard to Twitter-expert in only two days with this great book.

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
If you want to become a professional blogger, this one is a must.

The Truth About Profiting from Social Networking
My favorite social media marketing book ever.

The Social Network Business Plan
David Silver is one of the most knowledgeable people when it comes to online communities. Learn from the master; read his book.

Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day
A very easy to understand guide for people that want to get started in the social media marketing world.

The 4-Hour Workweek
This book is not about online marketing per sé, but it will give you a few ideas about living your life at its fullest when you start growing your profits from your online efforts.

Top 4 Sites for Social Media for the Small Business

By Lisa Barone, April 28, 2009

I know. You don’t care how important the so-called “experts” tell you social media is. You’re a small business owner and that means you’re busy. You don’t have time to be everywhere or to try the “next big thing”. Luckily for you, you don’t have to. If you’re a small business owner you can still use social media to find new customers without letting it take over your life. And below you’ll find what I think are the top social media sites to help you do that. The trick is navigate through the clutter and find the ones that will work best for you.

Yahoo Answers
There are a lot of Question/Answer sites out there, but Yahoo Answers stands out due to its impressively large user base and its ability to put you in contact with folks asking service-based questions broken down by location. For example, there’s a guy in Boston looking for a painter, someone in New York City looking for a wedding dress shop and a guy in San Jose looking for recommendations on a new car. Those are all opportunities for small business owners to reach out and respond to targeted service queries. You just have to know they exist and how to find them.

Yahoo Answers is also valuable for businesses where your expertise is what you’re selling. By going in and answering questions that benefit the community, you brand yourself as an expert in that category. If you’re looking for a guide to Yahoo Answers, look no further because Matt McGee has already written the book on it.

Twitter
It’s hard to talk about small business and social media these days without mentioning Twitter. Twitter is about conversation. It’s about finding the people talking about you and what you sell and forming relationships with them. One of the most underutilized aspects of Twitter for most businesses is the Advanced Search feature that allows small business owners to search for specific keywords located near a particular zip code. Companies have used it to ward off customer service complaints, to answer questions and to create an awareness that you’re not only an expert, but you’re an expert in their local area.

For example, say you run a day camp and are looking for summer labor. You can perform a search for [summer job near:02116 within:25] and find folks located 25 miles outside of Boston looking for a job for the summer. There’s even a sentiment feature that attempts to determine if they’re happy about not having a job or sad, so you know which users to go after. There are many, many ways to harness the power of Twitter for local businesses, you just have to know where and how to jump in.

Wordpress
A blog is a powerful sales tool for small businesses because it acts as a differentiator between you and your competition. Your small business blog will not only act as a customer service and educational tool, but it will encourage customers to interact with you, will be crucial in crisis management, and can even help you pick up rankings for keywords you’re not targeting with the rest of your site. A lot of businesses lose out on customers by failing to establish a point of difference or personal story. Your blog enables you to do that. It’s your space to show your customers who you are, to listen, and to connect with them on a more personal level. As far social media outlets go, creating a blog is often one of the best investments you can make to boost your business and retain and attract customers.

Flickr
Flickr provides an avenue for small business owners to find customers with product-based needs (different from Yahoo Answers, which targets service-based needs). By going into the Groups section and searching for your particular area, you can find a list of groups that deal with topics either related to what you do or parallel topics that may share a common customer base.
For example, a search for Boston may reveal a group of car lovers looking for classic car parts or a gem in perfect condition someone’s looking to sell. A local group for photography may be seeking recommendations on new camera types. You should try to join the groups related to your area to help monitor the conversations and find places where it makes sense for you to join in. To make this task easier, subscribe to the RSS feed so that you’re automatically updated once a new discussion topic is added. You can also use Flickr for new content strategies.

Other Notable Mentions for Small Businesses:
GetSatisfaction: A hub for small businesses to address customer service issues head on before they become larger problems.
YouTube: Create product demos, how-to videos and engage customers in a way that separates your company from the herd of “me toos“ out there.
LinkedIn: Create a profile for both yourself and your corporation and take advantage of the Question/Answer feature similar to Yahoo Answers.
Facebook: Offers strong demographic targeting options both in the advertising opportunities (very high conversions for local businesses!), as well as with corporate Fan pages.
Social media remains a cost effective way for many businesses to reach out to customers. Because of your small size, you can create more targeted, more manageable online communities that convert both online and off. The trick to tackling social media is not to be everywhere, but to instead be everywhere your customers are.
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