Referral Week - do something

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Tired of Hearing About E.D. - then do something.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of all the talk of economic downturn (E.D.) and I think, as a group, small business owners are too.

Therefore we hereby declare March 9-13, 2009 - Make a Referral Week. Make a Referral Week is an entrepreneurial approach to stimulating the small business economy one referred business at a time. The goal for the week is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses in an effort to highlight the fact that this simple action can blossom into millions of dollars in new business. Small business is the lifeblood and job-creating engine of the economy and merits the positive attention so often saved for corporate bailout stories.

Th e-week long virtual event will also feature daily education programs focused on teaching small business owners and other marketers how to tap the power of referral marketing. The featured session includes a live web conference with Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and author Masters of Networking, Bob Burg, author of Endless Referrals and the Go-Giver, Bill Cates, author of Get More Referrals Now. (Here’s the full list of education planned for the week)

No money is exchanging hands, no sponsors are being hit up, it’s just something that we thought needed to be done. If you want to get involved in this small business happening visit the Make a Referral Pledge page and submit your intention now to make at least one referral during the March 9-13 event. (Take this step and you are automatically eligible to receive audio recordings of the entire expert series)

Once you pledge you will also find tools that make it easy to refer friends, post to your Facebook profile and blog about the week. If you would like to actively promote visit the sponsor page for additional tools. During the week of March 9-13 we will activate the Referral-o-meter to track the march to 1000 referrals as small business owners visit and describe who they referred a lead to and why. This is every small business person’s chance to be a part of the solution!

I blogged this in its entirety. Take a look and check back with me for a few local opportunities and a special deal on Referral Flood.

Technorati Tags: Duct Tape Marketing,Referral Week,Referral Flood,BNI,Referral

Competitive Advantage - What is yours?

We all want one? Do we all have one?

Can everyone in your organization name it?

Can everyone of your customers name it?

Here are some tactics in developing one:

1. Reduce product pricing
2. Make it difficult for others to duplicate
3. Make it difficult for buyers to switch
4. Introduce new product or services
5. Differentiate product or services
6. Develop enhancements
7. Establish strong business alliances
8. Leveraging your suppliers
9. Be first in the market place

If you want to stand out from the crowd there is no better way of doing it than have a great competitive advantage. Do you have a few more?

Want a little more background, check out the Business901 Product Marketing Process.

Technorati Tags: Competitive advantage,product marketing,target market

Line-up for Referral Week

A great line-up of guest blog posts and podcast education awaits you during Make a Referral Week - just look at this roster of experts!

Mon 09 Anita Campbell, founder of Small Business Trends on strategic partnering    Michael Port, author of Book Yourself Solid on face-to-face networking.

Tues 10 Scott Ginsberg, founder NametagTV on being more referable     Rich Sloan, author of Start up Nation on low-cost referral strategies.

Tuesday March 10, Noon CST - Special live web conference featuring Bob Burg, author of the Go-Giver, Ivan Misner, founder of BNI and Bill Cates, author of Get More Referrals Now.

Wed 11 Scott Allen, author of the Virtual Handshake on using social media for referrals.    Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing on small business word of mouth strategies

Thur 12 Ben McConnell, author of Church of the Customer on creating customer evangelists    Pam Slim, author of Escape from Cubicle Nation on Personal Branding

Fri 13 Guy Kawasaki, author of Reality Check on the art of the referral    Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies on customer referral strategies

Check out the Duct Tape Marketing Referral Flood System

Technorati Tags: Referral,Referral Week,Referral Flood,Referral Marketing,Duct Tape Marketing

Lean Marketing thru Referrals

Fort Wayne, IN – Business901 has just released a 4-week program titled Lean your Marketing thru Referrals. This program creates a step-by-step, documented Lean Referral System based on your specific target market. Develop marketing tools, letters, and offers that will help you generate a precise strategy for making referrals a core new weapon. The participants can use the templates to determine areas to differentiate their product, better define their ideal client and use present technology to accelerate the process. This program is being introduced in conjunction with Referral Week and will start the following week on March 19th. You can sign-up at http://leanreferralmarketing.eventbrite.com/.com  There is a discount code of "ReferralWeek" that is available till the end of Referral Week.

The uniqueness of this program is that it takes the best Referral Marketing System developed by Duct Tape Marketing author John Jantsch and combines it with an authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach; Joe Dager. The principles are outlined in a 7-step process that will communicate the basic understanding on how to apply the Referral Flood program as part of a Lean Marketing Process. It offers several tips and tricks that will immediately jump-start a referral marketing program," says Dager. He adds, "The Lean Marketing aspect adds the value of concentrating on your customers needs and the benefits they receive. Ultimately what you are after is not a bunch of cold referrals but targeted referrals."

Make a Referral Week is an entrepreneurial approach to stimulating the small business economy one referred business at a time. The goal for the week is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses in an effort to highlight the impact of a simple action that could blossom into millions of dollars in new business. Small business is the lifeblood and job-creating engine of the economy and merits the positive attention so often saved for corporate bailout stories.

The development of a system that will provide consistent long-term growth may be the single most important factor for your business. When asked most companies will agree that most of their business comes from referrals, as much as 50%. This 4 week program provides valuable material for developing a referral system and is implemented with a DTM coach by your side.

Week by week schedule:

Week 1 - Referral Assessment, Introduction, goal setting and action plan for the program.

Week 2 - Define Target Referral Market and Ideal referral candidates.

Week 3 - Create core referral message, offer and referral education system.

Week 4 - Create referral marketing tools and follow-up system and implementation action steps.

 

About Business901: Joe Dager is President of Business901, a progressive coaching company providing no-nonsense direction in areas such as target marketing and organized referral marketing. As a certified coach of the Duct Tape Marketing Consulting organization, Joe provides practical, information-rich, immediately applicable direction that profoundly impacts the success of small and mid-sized businesses. His experience includes numerous start-ups, several turnarounds in variety of industries to include manufacturing, retail, and professional services to include marketing.

Technorati Tags: Lean Marketing,Marketing Mudal,Manufacturer Marketing,Lean Six Sigma Marketing,Referral,Referral Markeitng

Adding Social Features to Your Web Site

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Adding Social Features to Your Web Site

Theweb has become a terribly social place and that raises the expectation of most web site visitors. The ability to add content, comment, rate, review, interact and share information found when surfing the web has become standard fare.

byadding a few simple scripts and widgets you can easily add tremendous social functionality to any web page or blog. Giving your visitors, prospects and customers ways to share and amplify their voice is a great way to enhance their experience of your business online.

JSKits

- This is one of the dead simple easiest ways to add rating, navigation, polling, chat, reviewing and commenting to any web page. You simply copy a line of code and you are in business. Getting customer reviews and reader comments on web page, usually a blog function is great for static product pages.

Social Ad Units - Popular Media recently introduced something they call Influencer Ads. These banner ad type units allow you to place ads that contain an entire social media follow-up system. When someone clicks on an ad for your webinar, they can automatically post it to Facebook or send it to a friend with personalized follow-up. This is a great tool for contests and registration incentive campaigns. (You can see this in action here)

Meebo Me - This simple IM widget can be embedded on your site to allow visitors to initiate an IM chat instantly when they visit your site. This can be a great way to add customer feedback, help and interaction functionality.

Add to Any - These widget allows visitors to easily subscribe to RSS content, share, bookmark or email content using many of the commonly used services.

This is from Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing, and written by John Jantsch.

Content Marketing Secrets from The Ritz Carlton

These guys are just all over my radar screen lately. Read the rest of this post from Content Marketing Today, and written by Newt Barrett

Supurb In Person Content Marketing: Continuous process improvement enables great people to function in an optimal way. For example, the ability to promise immaculately clean rooms in which everything works is the result of processes that have been established for that express purpose. The successful operation of each hotel property is the end result determining how to optimize each critical process that leads to a wonderful guest experience. Done right, optimum results are achieved with great efficiency of effort.

In Person Content Marketing Lessons You Can Apply to Your Business

1. You need to put the right people in the right positions. For example, at Conditioned Air in Naples, FL, they work very hard to make sure that those individuals who work closely with customers truly enjoy and thrive from regular customer interaction.
2. Developand keep improving processes that make it easy for your team to succeed. Don’t let a lack of process or bad processes make it hard for them to keep your customers happy.
3. Happyemployees who, in turn, makes customers happy will motivate your customers to sell your products for you by sharing their positive experiences. Since so much of that sharing now winds up on the web, the world will soon know how wonderful your company is–or isn’t.

My other post about Content Marketing

 

Technorati Tags: ritz-carlton, marketing,in-person content marketing,customer service,quality,process improvement,

Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way

Improve your Sales Process

Win more of the Right Customers

Lower Your Cost, Boos Your Margins

This is what Michael Webb, author of Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way, promises on the outside cover of the book. Does he deliver? You betcha! This is one of my top reference books that sits either on my desk or my shelf immediately adjacent to my desk. I use it, deface it, bend corners or the stuff that an author would love to hear about his book.

If you have followed my blog, you can understand that this is not just a ho-hum recommendation. It is a great book, the best of any of his writings, and allows you to really study your sales and marketing process. The book is even written in a fashion that you can just sit down and have an enjoyable read. However, the charts and the procedures he recommends are really great guidelines to use and you will find yourself referring back many times to the material.

If you want to learn how to start the Lean Six Sigma Marketing Process this is a great companion book. Of course I would also recommend Duct Tape Marketing for the marketing side.

Technorati Tags: Lean Six sigma,six sigma,marketing,lean,Lean Marketing

One Page Management, really?

Are your employees productive? Do they have specific objectives and measurements? One Page Management offers a system for all personnel and a key to high production and realized goals. In a growing company finding quality personnel is one of the most difficult task. As a result, managing that talent has become a more difficult and demanding task.

You must develop your personnel through outlining their objectives, strategies and actions. Critical information must be gathered, linked and displayed. This allows time for information to be used instead of gathered. Focus, feedback and Management that allow managers to see a total overview by giving them only the information they need. Achievers must become readily visible, problems must be spotted before they cause real trouble, and managers gain greater control over their own performance.

Managing your team is a great opportunity to access and develop their strengths and skills, to share your goals and objectives and so achieve your business aims. It is a continuous process which includes regular review discussions, action plans and success.

Ok, you know all this but how do you go about it. I use the The One Page Business Plan® not as a business plan but as a performance plan. Review the layout and tell me what you think. I think it is a winner for this.

Technorati Tags: One Page Business Plan,Business Plan,Perforamce Plan,Organization Planning

How to Stage An Effective Protest - Rohit

Ok, I ama product of the late 60's and early 70's. I read anything about a protest. It is in my blood. Read the entire post from one of my favorite bloggers: Rohit

Marketing is where it lives or dies. So in case you ever find yourself in the situation of having to stage a protest (street side or otherwise), here are a few marketing rules you might want to remember:

1. Align your own people.
2. Ask for what you want.
3. Market bad PR for someone.
4. Give people a way to support you.
5. Prove your longevity.

 

This is syndicated from Influential Marketing Blog, and written by Rohit.

Take a look at my latest marketing tips.

How To Create A Content Marketing Strategy

If you haven't heard the term "content marketing" - you soon will. Authors of Get Content. Get Customers.) talked all about using content to impact your bottom line. To give you a taste of what we'll talk about, here is my quick checklist of the questions you should ask yourself as you start to build your own content marketing strategy:

1. What is the problem you will try to solve? Great content marketing focuses on answering a key challenge or question that relates to your business.
2. Howcan you make it about more than you? This is not a sales pitch. It needs to be useful and offer more context beyond just how great your product/service is.
3. Who'sgoing to care to read and share it? It needs to be interesting, but the sharing is particularly important, as great content marketing should be something people can't help sharing.
4. What'sthe best platform and format to use? Think about video versus blogging versus downloadable PDFs and what will be easiest for your audience.
5. Howwill you promote it? Plan to spend quite a bit of time thinking about how people will find your content, as it is completely useless if no one can locate it.
6. Howwill you know if it's working? Your metric for success may be directly tied to sales, or awareness, or consideration. Whatever it is, know before you start how you'll tell if it was successful.

And just in case you can't make it, there will be a full archive available from our host Elizabeth Marshall at http://www.authorteleseminars.com.

This is from Influential Marketing, and written by Rohit.

Review some of my posts on Business901 in Social Media for more information.

One Page Management, really?

 

Are your employees productive? Do they have specific objectives and measurements? One Page Management offers a system for all personnel and a key to high production and realized goals. In a growing company finding quality personnel is one of the most difficult task. As a result, managing that talent has become more difficult and demanding.

You must develop your personnel through outlining their objectives, strategies and actions. Critical information must be gathered, linked and displayed. This allows time for information to be used instead of gathered. Focus, feedback and Management that allow managers to see a total overview by giving them only the information they need. Achievers must become readily visible, problems must be spotted before they cause real trouble, and managers gain greater control over their own performance.

<?xml:namespace prefix = pstyle="text-align />Managing your team is a great opportunity to access and develop their strengths and skills, to share your goals and objectives and so achieve your business aims. It is a continuous process which includes regular review discussions, action plans and success.Ok, you know all this but how do you go about it. I use the The One Page Business Plan® not as a business plan but as a performance plan. Review the layout and tell me what you think. I think it is a winner for this

Technorati Tags: One Page Business Plan ,Business Plan ,Performance Plan ,Organization Planning

This is from Business901.

Top 10 Small Business Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

 Via "ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom dedicated to Marketing, Advertising and the Creative Process" - 1 new article

from Top 10 Small Business Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Got this in an email from Mantra.com:

By Susan Burnash

Marketing is critical to the success of every business. Unfortunately, many businesses discount the effect it can have, and they forgo marketing because they believe they can't afford it or simply don't have the time or energy to create a plan. Perhaps this is why a high percentage of small businesses fail. But you don't have to be a statistic when you approach marketing with the importance it deserves. Below you will find some of the most common marketing mistakes businesses make.

Mistake #1: Not Developing a Marketing Plan

Mistake #2: Not Planning a Marketing Budget

Mistake #3: Not Targeting a Specific Target Audience

Mistake #4: Not Developing a Clear and Consistent Marketing Message

Mistake #5: Believing Your Product or Service Will Sell Itself

Mistake #6: Not Clearly Defining Your Product or Services' Benefits

Mistake #7: Underestimating the Value of Your Existing Customers

Mistake #8: Thinking that Advertising is Marketing

Mistake #9: Ignoring the Benefits of Public Relations

Mistake #10: Expecting Too Much, Too Soon

Who runs your Marketing? - Phil Myers

 "The problem with marketing is that everyone thinks they're an expert". -- Everyone outside of the marketing profession.

Just this week, we saw four examples of what the bailout 'golden handcuffs' look like:

1. Citigroup paid $400m for the naming rights to the new Mets stadium.
2. Wells Fargo cancels partners club in Vegas. 

What ever happened to being market-driven?

But, in truth this problem is of our own making. If our motives were pure from the start, there would never be the kind of programs in the public eye that everyone can point to as a non-essential waste of money. There are so many disciplines that are undergoing a transformation right now. This smells like the beginning of marketing's. And it starts with realizing that our motives need to be more authentic.

This is from Tuned In: Uncover the extraordinary opportunities that lead to business breakthroughs., and written by Phil Myers.

I think Phil is making a good point here and you should read the entire post. But it is a good example of why your marketing should be authentic and transparent. Lear more about the Business901 Product Marketing.

Duct Tape Marketing - 7 Step Webinar

This week and the following 2nd and 4th Thursdays, I will hold a newly created webinar for 2009 based on the  Duct Tape Marketing - 7 steps to Small Business Success. During the webinar I will go over the 7 -star principles and at the end offer you several special deals. More information on the webinar can be found on the registration page. 

Technorati Tags: Duct Tape Marketing,Webinar,Small Business,7-steps,Seven Steps

Back to the Fundamentals

Palo Alto Software is proud to present an on-going series on getting your business "Back to the Fundamentals". With all the information out there on what you should be doing, this series is focused on giving you actionable items that get you moving toward success today!

Free Webinar - Simple Marketing Tactics presented by John Jantsch on February 11, 2009 at 12:00pm CST

Let's get back to basics and start utilizing simple, effective and affordable marketing tactics to create momentum that carries your business through the tough times and allows it soar in the good times.

Register Here

By the way, I have another blog that I use to re-purpose material for contractors, take a look sometime, Your Marketing Machine.com

Technorati Tags: Marketing Plan Pro,Duct Tape Marketing,Marketing Tactics,Back to the Fundamentals

Amazon is beatable

I tried this week to beat Amazon on the Duct Tape Marketing search term. I finally did it in the ninth inning, Friday at 4:00 PM. I checked it before shutting my computer down. It was a challenge to me and actually I was just having fun with my site to prove a point. It is all about content and doing some things correctly with SEO but certainly not laboring to much on the point. So, I made it, would you like to find out how?

Technorati Tags: Duct Tape Marketing,SEO,Amazon

Republishing with RSS

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing, I encourage you to read the entire post:

Republishing with RSS

It’sbeen far too long since I’ve allowed my geeky passion for RSS to spill forth.

As a reminder, let me say again - anything that throws off an RSS feed (oh, and that’s just about any online tool) presents some interesting republishing opportunities.

There publishing of RSS feeds for you own content creation purposes involves two steps 1) locate or generate the RSS feed, 2) produce the code to publish the feed as HTML somewhere.

Some example of RSS producers - blogs, online calenders, blog categories, and custom searches for starters.

This is from Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing, and written by John Jantsch.

Social Media Hierarchy Revisited

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Social Media Hierarchy Revisted

Awhile back I wrote a post that outlined what I called the hierarchy of social media. In that post I compared the tools commonly employed in social media to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. The primary notion being that certain tools were more suited to someone just getting started, meeting basic needs, than someone deeply evolved and more suited to more advanced needs.

So my new hierarchy or pyramid has evolved to this

Plan,listen, join and grow!

Can I beat Amazon on Google?

 

Ok, this is a relatively unimportant blog post but you have to have some fun sometime. One of my goals occasionally is to find out where I can get to on Google Search. Well, the last few weeks I have been trying to beat Amazon on two Google search terms: One Page Business Plan and Duct Tape Marketing.

I was able to do it for One Page Business Plan, 4 of the last 6 days but Duct Tape Marketing has stumped me though. I just can’t do it.

Now for the fun part. I am not a neophyte when it comes to SEO but let me tell you something. I don’t even try. But you tell me, why is my ratings so good or not so good? Give me some suggestions, I need help!

Technorati Tags: Amazon,One Page Business Plan,Duct Tape Marketing,Business901

This is from Business901.

Managing from TwistImage

 Good Suggestions from Mitch Joel:

Why is it that most businesses are fine with either keeping things just as they are or cutting back on what they had planned to do?

Not a day goes by that we don’t see one of the many major companies out there releasing their numbers, and then proclaiming that they are either going to stay the course? or reduce their marketing and overall spending. How do you get ahead and increase revenues if all you’re doing is cutting?

Other Topics in post:

This might be the perfect opportunity to think a little differently.

Do it while everyone has their heads in the sand or are covering their eyes.

“The time to buy is when the blood is running in the streets.�?

These digital tools do make a difference.

 

Lean Your Marketing

Remember the old adage about marketing - only 50 percent of your marketing works, you just do not know which 50 percent? Many marketers are still under that philosophy.

Today’s companies are innovative and focuses on waste reduction, improved lead time, maximized flexibility and upgraded quality using lean principles. But few are transferring these principles to their marketing practice.

One of my post on the American Express Open Forum, take a look and make a comment.

Technorati Tags: Lean,Lean Marketing,Lean Six Sigma Marketing

Guest Post - Handling Negative Comments On Your Blog Post

I encourage you to read the entire post via Chris Brogan:

The following guest post comes from the talented Jason Alba of JibberJobber.com

Ifyou are like me, you don’t write blog posts to fish for negative comments.

But negative comments are really hard to deal with. It doesn’t help that most comments on my blog are positive and supportive of what I have to say. “Right on!” “Totally agree!” “Excellent post!” This is good for my ego, but bad to prepare me to handle anything negative.

1. Take time to cool off.
2. Justbe quiet and let your contacts defend you.
3. Ignorethe comment, or reply with a very short, non-combative response.
4. Clarifythe intentions, OFF BLOG.
5. Don’tapprove, or delete, the comment.

What would your advice be?

Jason Alba designed JibberJobber.com to replace his job search spreadsheet. He also wrote I’m on LinkedIn — Now What??? and I’m on Facebook — Now What??? You can follow him on Twitter here: @jasonalba

Photocredit _gee_