Oil-importing nations have been watching closely for decades. Oil priced at $100 and up will cut profits at airlines, railroads and trucking companies, to name a few. Putting unprecedented pressure on vital infrastructure and services...
Because just as pouring glue into a cassette deck will slow down, and eventually stop the music... pouring higher and higher priced oil into our economy will slow down, and at some point hold America in place to be squashed between history and the pavement.
That's why the Advanced Energy Initiative was lainched, stating:
a national goal of replacing more than 75% of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025
we're on the verge of breakthroughs in two vital areas -- how we power our homes and businesses... and how we power our cars
and a 22% increase in funding for alternative energy research
Yet, skeptics always claim alternative energies cost more -- and can't survive without heavy government subsidies.
Here's an overlooked fact: traditional energy industries are also subsidized by billions of dollars each year. There are oil depletion allowances, special treatment on coal royalties, overseas oil refinery credits, intangible drilling costs, and the list goes on.
"With America on the verge of breakthroughs in advanced energy technologies, the best way to break the addiction to foreign oil is through new technology."
The days of giving breaks to big oil companies are numbered. You see, on November 8, 2006 Democrats swept into the House and Senate poised to ignite an all-out alternative energy revolution. If you don't believe me, just check out House Energy Bill HR6!
Right now it's not hard to figure out which way the wind is blowing...
And you can bet a handful of financial power players recognize it's not a matter of if, but rather a matter of when certain alternative energy investments will take off... they see a government-funding avalanche and favorable treatment for new energy initiatives... that's why:
Wall Street's elite are RIGHT NOW betting billions on alternative energy!
According to The Economist, total investment in alternative energy last year was $63 billion, up from $49 billion the year before, and up from $30 billion the year before that. In other words, total investment in alternative energy just doubled in the last 2 years...
BusinessWeek calls alternative energy "Wall Street's new love affair."
The Wall Street Journal asked Ray Lane -- venture capital backer of Google, Amazon, and Netscape -- if this boom looked to be bigger than the Internet, or as big... "This is bigger than the Internet by an order of magnitude. Maybe two." he answered.
Just how big is that? An "order of magnitude" is an approximation of size using powers of ten. Meaning this legendary Internet investor believes the alternative energy boom will be 10 to 100 times bigger than the Internet revolution!
"The clean-energy business is turning into the next big investment boom."-- The Economist, November 24, 2006
Source: Clean Edge, Nth Power www.cleanedge.com
Another Internet pioneer, Bill Joy -- co-founder of Sun Microsystems -- is so convinced of the profit potential he says he has no doubt "we are at the point of new wealth creation."
In other words, the guys first in line for hundreds of billions during the Internet boom believe the coming alternative energy boom will be at least TEN TIMES as big.
That's why, as we speak, large investment banks are jumping on board... only rather than taking these companies public, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan "are choosing to own these alternative energy companies outright so they can keep the profits for themselves," according to BusinessWeek.
Multibillion-dollar hedge fund groups like SAC Capital Advisors and D.E. Shaw & Co. have started investing in geothermal energy, ethanol and wind power... World leading insurer American International Group is steering private equity investments into alternative energy projects...
This kind of rare potential for profits has some of the world's most successful business leaders investing hundreds of millions -- and in some cases billions -- of their own money as well.
Take a look...
Warren Buffett just invested $385 million in wind power... Bill Gates is betting on fuel additives... Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin are investing in solar... famed Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson is putting $400 million into a biofuel plant... and Jeffery Immelt, CEO of General Electric, plans to put $3 billion into alternative energy ventures by 2008...
With ten times the wealth potential of the Internet boom, it's no wonder the world's most wealthy and powerful elite are piling in!
Yet, most individual investors are still on the sideline
A recent survey by the Calvert Group found that while about 85% of investors believe there is money to be made from investing in alternative energy, only about 20% of investors have brought up the subject with a financial advisor.
Here's the upshot for you: this gap between powerful Wall Street players beginning to invest... and the vast majority of investors STILL A YEAR OR SO AWAY... creates a unique opportunity. With all the characteristics successful investors look for over and over again...
The majority of people aren't paying attention to alternative energy investments -- yet. Few people know how to capitalize on them. This gives us a window of opportunity of about 12 to 24 months before the herd catches on.
Over the next few years, we expect the 4 investments described just ahead to shoot way up in value. And our tight-knit group (more on this group in a split second) to make a Foolish pile of profits when they do...
I promise to tell you everything I can here. Then I'm going to ask you to accept a very special invitation, and I'm pretty sure you're going to like that too.
But first, that tight-knit group I just mentioned... they're called Motley Fool Rule Breakers. And they specialize in finding opportunities that could put you in on the ground floor of the BIGGEST GROWTH STORIES of the next 10 or 15 years!
This forward-looking group is headed by Motley Fool Co-founder David Gardner -- a legendary growth investor with a remarkable knack for uncovering breakthrough companies way ahead of the masses. A few of David's career picks include:
eBay in 1999... Starbucks in 1998... AOL in 1994... Amgen in 1998... and Amazon in 1997!
And more recently, David and his Rule Breakers team recommended stocks up 117%... 127%... 167%... 276%... and 295% -- all in under 3 years!
But I didn't email you to chirp about our recent success. I contacted you to show you what we're recommending next. And how it can have a dramatic effect on your personal wealth.
So if getting in early on the alternative energy boom -- what could be among the greatest investment stories ever told -- is something you might be interested in, I urge you to read on. That's because the Rule Breakers team just completed a powerful new report featuring The Motley Fool's Top 4 Alternative Energy Investments...
But first, a word of warning: the months and years ahead will NOT play out the way a lot of self-described experts are saying. So-called stock gurus, and energy pundits, and their "one amazing stock shot" approach has virtually zero chance of succeeding.
That's because we're moving into a period of dramatic opportunity where different sources of energy will be optimized to meet specific needs. It's why we spent a considerable amount of time and resources -- informed by some of the world's top CEOs, market strategists, and even a noble prize-winning economist -- putting together 4 special corresponding energy investments for the next 10 to 15 years...
INVESTMENT #1:
CLEAN COAL AND NUCLEAR...
this company owns a huge chunk of substantially growing market, is protected by close ties to government agencies, and with 2 breakthrough technologies emerging, this stock has massive upside!
INVESTMENT #2:
SOLAR...
a pure play on the soaring demand for solar power. This company has great margins, a sustainable competitive advantage, and a lit fuse with a wide-open sky waiting!
INVESTMENT #3:
RECYCLING FOSSIL FUELS... this company makes coal dust look good. Revenue is up just 14%, and earnings just jumped 69%!
INVESTMENT #4:
WIND, HYDROELECTRIC, AND FUEL CELLS...
this investment spreads our bets around in a unique way. Giving your portfolio a strong dose of only the most profitable technologies!
I can't wait to give you the full details of these 4 potential fortune makers. And I will... but you still might be wondering why 4 different investments?
As I just mentioned, we project a number of alternative energies will be used in the near future. For example, solar for portable devices. Fuel cells for telecommunications. Wind makes sense in certain places. And so does nuclear... Now consider the gold rush again for a moment. And how you would've profited from owning shares in both the Union Pacific and Wells Fargo.
Also, look for a period of creative destruction and consolidation like in the early automobile revolution... when shares in Ford Motor Co would've been a great investment and would've more than offset an investment in say, Tucker Automotive...
Or consider David Gardner's investments of the 1990s. David had the vision to buy Dell, Amazon and AOL in the early days... That's why he can't be faulted for also buying Wang Computer. You see, his mega-winners more than made up his occasional, and inevitable, losing investment.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
How to Create a Marketing Plan
What is a marketing plan and why is it so essential to the success of your business? Find out here, in the first section of our comprehensive guide to creating a marketing plan.
Firms that are successful in marketing invariably start with a marketing plan. Large companies have plans with hundreds of pages; small companies can get by with a half-dozen sheets. Put your marketing plan in a three-ring binder. Refer to it at least quarterly, but better yet monthly. Leave a tab for putting in monthly reports on sales/manufacturing; this will allow you to track performance as you follow the plan.
The plan should cover one year. For small companies, this is often the best way to think about marketing. Things change, people leave, markets evolve, customers come and go. Later on we suggest creating a section of your plan that addresses the medium-term future--two to four years down the road. But the bulk of your plan should focus on the coming year.
You should allow yourself a couple of months to write the plan, even if it's only a few pages long. Developing the plan is the "heavy lifting" of marketing. While executing the plan has its challenges, deciding what to do and how to do it is marketing's greatest challenge. Most marketing plans kick off with the first of the year or with the opening of your fiscal year if it's different.
Who should see your plan? All the players in the company. Firms typically keep their marketing plans very, very private for one of two very different reasons: Either they're too skimpy and management would be embarrassed to have them see the light of day, or they're solid and packed with information . . . which would make them extremely valuable to the competition.
You can't do a marketing plan without getting many people involved. No matter what your size, get feedback from all parts of your company: finance, manufacturing, personnel, supply and so on--in addition to marketing itself. This is especially important because it will take all aspects of your company to make your marketing plan work. Your key people can provide realistic input on what's achievable and how your goals can be reached, and they can share any insights they have on any potential, as-yet-unrealized marketing opportunities, adding another dimension to your plan. If you're essentially a one-person management operation, you'll have to wear all your hats at one time--but at least the meetings will be short!
What's the relationship between your marketing plan and your business plan or vision statement? Your business plan spells out what your business is about--what you do and don't do, and what your ultimate goals are. It encompasses more than marketing; it can include discussions of locations, staffing, financing, strategic alliances and so on. It includes "the vision thing," the resounding words that spell out the glorious purpose of your company in stirring language. Your business plan is the U.S. Constitution of your business: If you want to do something that's outside the business plan, you need to either change your mind or change the plan. Your company's business plan provides the environment in which your marketing plan must flourish. The two documents must be consistent.
A marketing plan, on the other hand, is plump with meaning. It provides you with several major benefits. Let's review them.
Rallying point: Your marketing plan gives your troops something to rally behind. You want them to feel confident that the captain of the vessel has the charts in order, knows how to run the ship, and has a port of destination in mind. Companies often undervalue the impact of a "marketing plan" on their own people, who want to feel part of a team engaged in an exciting and complicated joint endeavor. If you want your employees to feel committed to your company, it's important to share with them your vision of where the company is headed in the years to come. People don't always understand financial projections, but they can get excited about a well-written and well-thought-out marketing plan. You should consider releasing your marketing plan--perhaps in an abridged version--companywide. Do it with some fanfare and generate some excitement for the adventures to come. Your workers will appreciate being involved.
Chart to success: We all know that plans are imperfect things. How can you possibly know what's going to happen 12 months or five years from now? Isn't putting together a marketing plan an exercise in futility . . . a waste of time better spent meeting with customers or fine-tuning production? Yes, possibly but only in the narrowest sense. If you don't plan, you're doomed, and an inaccurate plan is far better than no plan at all. To stay with our sea captain analogy, it's better to be 5 or even 10 degrees off your destination port than to have no destination in mind at all. The point of sailing, after all, is to get somewhere, and without a marketing plan, you'll wander the seas aimlessly, sometimes finding dry land but more often than not floundering in a vast ocean. Sea captains without a chart are rarely remembered for discovering anything but the ocean floor.
Company operational instructions: Your child's first bike and your new VCR came with a set of instructions, and your company is far more complicated to put together and run than either of them. Your marketing plan is a step-by-step guide for your company's success. It's more important than a vision statement. To put together a genuine marketing plan, you have to assess your company from top to bottom and make sure all the pieces are working together in the best way. What do you want to do with this enterprise you call the company in the coming year? Consider it a to-do list on a grand scale. It assigns specific tasks for the year.
Captured thinking: You don't allow your financial people to keep their numbers in their heads. Financial reports are the lifeblood of the numbers side of any business, no matter what size. It should be no different with marketing. Your written document lays out your game plan. If people leave, if new people arrive, if memories falter, if events bring pressure to alter the givens, the information in the written marketing plan stays intact to remind you of what you'd agreed on.
Top-level reflection: In the daily hurly-burly of competitive business, it's hard to turn your attention to the big picture, especially those parts that aren't directly related to the daily operations. You need to take time periodically to really think about your business--whether it's providing you and your employees with what you want, whether there aren't some innovative wrinkles you can add, whether you're getting all you can out of your products, your sales staff and your markets. Writing your marketing plan is the best time to do this high-level thinking. Some companies send their top marketing people away to a retreat. Others go to the home of a principal. Some do marketing plan development at a local motel, away from phones and fax machines, so they can devote themselves solely to thinking hard and drawing the most accurate sketches they can of the immediate future of the business.
Ideally, after writing marketing plans for a few years, you can sit back and review a series of them, year after year, and check the progress of your company. Of course, sometimes this is hard to make time for (there is that annoying real world to deal with), but it can provide an unparalleled objective view of what you've been doing with your business life over a number of years.
What is a marketing plan and why is it so essential to the success of your business? Find out here, in the first section of our comprehensive guide to creating a marketing plan.
Firms that are successful in marketing invariably start with a marketing plan. Large companies have plans with hundreds of pages; small companies can get by with a half-dozen sheets. Put your marketing plan in a three-ring binder. Refer to it at least quarterly, but better yet monthly. Leave a tab for putting in monthly reports on sales/manufacturing; this will allow you to track performance as you follow the plan.
The plan should cover one year. For small companies, this is often the best way to think about marketing. Things change, people leave, markets evolve, customers come and go. Later on we suggest creating a section of your plan that addresses the medium-term future--two to four years down the road. But the bulk of your plan should focus on the coming year.
You should allow yourself a couple of months to write the plan, even if it's only a few pages long. Developing the plan is the "heavy lifting" of marketing. While executing the plan has its challenges, deciding what to do and how to do it is marketing's greatest challenge. Most marketing plans kick off with the first of the year or with the opening of your fiscal year if it's different.
Who should see your plan? All the players in the company. Firms typically keep their marketing plans very, very private for one of two very different reasons: Either they're too skimpy and management would be embarrassed to have them see the light of day, or they're solid and packed with information . . . which would make them extremely valuable to the competition.
You can't do a marketing plan without getting many people involved. No matter what your size, get feedback from all parts of your company: finance, manufacturing, personnel, supply and so on--in addition to marketing itself. This is especially important because it will take all aspects of your company to make your marketing plan work. Your key people can provide realistic input on what's achievable and how your goals can be reached, and they can share any insights they have on any potential, as-yet-unrealized marketing opportunities, adding another dimension to your plan. If you're essentially a one-person management operation, you'll have to wear all your hats at one time--but at least the meetings will be short!
What's the relationship between your marketing plan and your business plan or vision statement? Your business plan spells out what your business is about--what you do and don't do, and what your ultimate goals are. It encompasses more than marketing; it can include discussions of locations, staffing, financing, strategic alliances and so on. It includes "the vision thing," the resounding words that spell out the glorious purpose of your company in stirring language. Your business plan is the U.S. Constitution of your business: If you want to do something that's outside the business plan, you need to either change your mind or change the plan. Your company's business plan provides the environment in which your marketing plan must flourish. The two documents must be consistent.
A marketing plan, on the other hand, is plump with meaning. It provides you with several major benefits. Let's review them.
Rallying point: Your marketing plan gives your troops something to rally behind. You want them to feel confident that the captain of the vessel has the charts in order, knows how to run the ship, and has a port of destination in mind. Companies often undervalue the impact of a "marketing plan" on their own people, who want to feel part of a team engaged in an exciting and complicated joint endeavor. If you want your employees to feel committed to your company, it's important to share with them your vision of where the company is headed in the years to come. People don't always understand financial projections, but they can get excited about a well-written and well-thought-out marketing plan. You should consider releasing your marketing plan--perhaps in an abridged version--companywide. Do it with some fanfare and generate some excitement for the adventures to come. Your workers will appreciate being involved.
Chart to success: We all know that plans are imperfect things. How can you possibly know what's going to happen 12 months or five years from now? Isn't putting together a marketing plan an exercise in futility . . . a waste of time better spent meeting with customers or fine-tuning production? Yes, possibly but only in the narrowest sense. If you don't plan, you're doomed, and an inaccurate plan is far better than no plan at all. To stay with our sea captain analogy, it's better to be 5 or even 10 degrees off your destination port than to have no destination in mind at all. The point of sailing, after all, is to get somewhere, and without a marketing plan, you'll wander the seas aimlessly, sometimes finding dry land but more often than not floundering in a vast ocean. Sea captains without a chart are rarely remembered for discovering anything but the ocean floor.
Company operational instructions: Your child's first bike and your new VCR came with a set of instructions, and your company is far more complicated to put together and run than either of them. Your marketing plan is a step-by-step guide for your company's success. It's more important than a vision statement. To put together a genuine marketing plan, you have to assess your company from top to bottom and make sure all the pieces are working together in the best way. What do you want to do with this enterprise you call the company in the coming year? Consider it a to-do list on a grand scale. It assigns specific tasks for the year.
Captured thinking: You don't allow your financial people to keep their numbers in their heads. Financial reports are the lifeblood of the numbers side of any business, no matter what size. It should be no different with marketing. Your written document lays out your game plan. If people leave, if new people arrive, if memories falter, if events bring pressure to alter the givens, the information in the written marketing plan stays intact to remind you of what you'd agreed on.
Top-level reflection: In the daily hurly-burly of competitive business, it's hard to turn your attention to the big picture, especially those parts that aren't directly related to the daily operations. You need to take time periodically to really think about your business--whether it's providing you and your employees with what you want, whether there aren't some innovative wrinkles you can add, whether you're getting all you can out of your products, your sales staff and your markets. Writing your marketing plan is the best time to do this high-level thinking. Some companies send their top marketing people away to a retreat. Others go to the home of a principal. Some do marketing plan development at a local motel, away from phones and fax machines, so they can devote themselves solely to thinking hard and drawing the most accurate sketches they can of the immediate future of the business.
Ideally, after writing marketing plans for a few years, you can sit back and review a series of them, year after year, and check the progress of your company. Of course, sometimes this is hard to make time for (there is that annoying real world to deal with), but it can provide an unparalleled objective view of what you've been doing with your business life over a number of years.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Keeping Up with Your Business Online
Doing business online requires managing and measuring lots of moving parts. And, I always say that what doesn’t get measured gets forgotten.
So, with all the metrics you could monitor, what do you assess? In short, everything. Here’s a list of at-minimum ‘think abouts’ to get you started:
website matrix
How many unique visitors do you have?
How many should you have based on your industry?
How many page views?
How many should you have?
Who are your top three referral sources?
E-mail mailing list.
How many people are on your e-mail mailing list?
How many subscribers do others in your industry with comparable experience have?
What is the percent increase from last month?
What’s a good percentage to increase?
Website lead generation
Does your lead generation tool deliver the “lead trinity”? 1)Positions you as an expert. 2)
Qualifies the lead as a quality lead for your business. 3) Gives you permission to market to them again.
If not, what lead generation tool would?
Does your web site automatically produce leads regularly?
Product/marketing funnel.
Do you put potential clients in the position of either working with you or not?
Do you have freebies for them to sample - without signing up?
How many should you have and what topics should they cover?
Blog activity.
How many visitors does your blog have?
How many posts per week do you post on average?
What are the industry standards?
Are you meeting your blogging goals?
Online marketing.
How many original articles are you posting online?
How much time are you spending adding thought leadership content about your area of expertise?
Online sales.
How much revenue do you make solely online?
How much should you make?
Which is your most profitable product/service?
Which is your least profitable product/service?
Overall direction.
Where are you going with your business online?
By when do you need to ‘get there’?
Who can help you get there faster, easier?
What are your KPIs (key performance indicators) - measurements you can use to see if you’re on-track?
Again, this is certainly not an exhaustive list but it’s more than good enough to get you started. This may seem like a long list of things to consider. And, if you’re just starting out, your answers to these many of these questions might be “zero”. But, that’s OK. Start at the top and take a section at a time. Figure out a way to keep the information you find pertinent on your radar *at least* once per month. Maybe it’s a report. A graph. A spreadsheet. Something. Anything.
Preparing For The worst
There is no crying in baseball, and there are no "sick days" when you run your own business.
Still, there are plenty of ways entrepreneurs can get sidelined--from sudden illnesses and travel delays to pregnancy and military duty. Without a well-defined plan, those leaves of absence can pose a dangerous threat.
"If something incapacitates you, it can be the death knell of your business," says Karla Leavelle, president of Human Capital Advisors, a McLean, Va.-based consulting firm that counsels small businesses.
How do you hedge the risk of lost leadership? Business insurance doesn't help. Property and liability coverage come in handy in case a customer slips and falls in your store or gets hurt using one of your products, and business-interruption insurance covers operating losses if a hurricane reduces your building to rubble.
If you really want things to run smoothly in your absence, you need other protection in place.
Here are some tips:
Have A Point Person
Be it the chief operating officer, outside counsel or even a trusted executive assistant, at least one person should have access to everything that keeps the place running--including passwords, bank account numbers and keys to safes. You might even consider handing over power of attorney in your absence.
Doling out that kind of trust isn't easy, but if something goes wrong while you're gone, you'll wish you had. "Owners are always scared that someone is going to steal secrets of the organization," says John Vyhnanek, a restaurant consultant in Boston. "It's a bit like walking a tightrope, but someone has to keep the business going if you can't be there."
map out the work flows in your organization.
Identify who does what and who can take over certain roles if need be. Start by having employees write out their own job descriptions and the list of activities they do on a daily basis.
"No one can duplicate the charisma of an entrepreneur," says Louis Celli, head of the Northeast Veterans Business Resource Center, which mentors military entrepreneurs. "But if the entire business is systematized, that can sustain the business until the entrepreneur returns."
Better yet, if you codify thoroughly and thoughtfully enough, you might even discover ways of making your business run more efficiently day to day.
Form Partnerships
If you own a medical, law or accounting practice, your clients simply can't wait for you to return. That's why you should draft a written agreement with a local competitor who can cover for you in the event of an emergency (and visa versa).
Hammer out the tough questions upfront, such as referral fees--both for your clients and any they might refer to your stand-in. You'll also want to make sure the fees are comparable, lest your clients blanch at getting a fatter bill than they are used to.
Go Mobile
Even if you aren't a gadget guy or gal, if you run your own business, you have to have access to critical clients and information at any moment.
Doing business online requires managing and measuring lots of moving parts. And, I always say that what doesn’t get measured gets forgotten.
So, with all the metrics you could monitor, what do you assess? In short, everything. Here’s a list of at-minimum ‘think abouts’ to get you started:
website matrix
How many unique visitors do you have?
How many should you have based on your industry?
How many page views?
How many should you have?
Who are your top three referral sources?
E-mail mailing list.
How many people are on your e-mail mailing list?
How many subscribers do others in your industry with comparable experience have?
What is the percent increase from last month?
What’s a good percentage to increase?
Website lead generation
Does your lead generation tool deliver the “lead trinity”? 1)Positions you as an expert. 2)
Qualifies the lead as a quality lead for your business. 3) Gives you permission to market to them again.
If not, what lead generation tool would?
Does your web site automatically produce leads regularly?
Product/marketing funnel.
Do you put potential clients in the position of either working with you or not?
Do you have freebies for them to sample - without signing up?
How many should you have and what topics should they cover?
Blog activity.
How many visitors does your blog have?
How many posts per week do you post on average?
What are the industry standards?
Are you meeting your blogging goals?
Online marketing.
How many original articles are you posting online?
How much time are you spending adding thought leadership content about your area of expertise?
Online sales.
How much revenue do you make solely online?
How much should you make?
Which is your most profitable product/service?
Which is your least profitable product/service?
Overall direction.
Where are you going with your business online?
By when do you need to ‘get there’?
Who can help you get there faster, easier?
What are your KPIs (key performance indicators) - measurements you can use to see if you’re on-track?
Again, this is certainly not an exhaustive list but it’s more than good enough to get you started. This may seem like a long list of things to consider. And, if you’re just starting out, your answers to these many of these questions might be “zero”. But, that’s OK. Start at the top and take a section at a time. Figure out a way to keep the information you find pertinent on your radar *at least* once per month. Maybe it’s a report. A graph. A spreadsheet. Something. Anything.
Preparing For The worst
There is no crying in baseball, and there are no "sick days" when you run your own business.
Still, there are plenty of ways entrepreneurs can get sidelined--from sudden illnesses and travel delays to pregnancy and military duty. Without a well-defined plan, those leaves of absence can pose a dangerous threat.
"If something incapacitates you, it can be the death knell of your business," says Karla Leavelle, president of Human Capital Advisors, a McLean, Va.-based consulting firm that counsels small businesses.
How do you hedge the risk of lost leadership? Business insurance doesn't help. Property and liability coverage come in handy in case a customer slips and falls in your store or gets hurt using one of your products, and business-interruption insurance covers operating losses if a hurricane reduces your building to rubble.
If you really want things to run smoothly in your absence, you need other protection in place.
Here are some tips:
Have A Point Person
Be it the chief operating officer, outside counsel or even a trusted executive assistant, at least one person should have access to everything that keeps the place running--including passwords, bank account numbers and keys to safes. You might even consider handing over power of attorney in your absence.
Doling out that kind of trust isn't easy, but if something goes wrong while you're gone, you'll wish you had. "Owners are always scared that someone is going to steal secrets of the organization," says John Vyhnanek, a restaurant consultant in Boston. "It's a bit like walking a tightrope, but someone has to keep the business going if you can't be there."
map out the work flows in your organization.
Identify who does what and who can take over certain roles if need be. Start by having employees write out their own job descriptions and the list of activities they do on a daily basis.
"No one can duplicate the charisma of an entrepreneur," says Louis Celli, head of the Northeast Veterans Business Resource Center, which mentors military entrepreneurs. "But if the entire business is systematized, that can sustain the business until the entrepreneur returns."
Better yet, if you codify thoroughly and thoughtfully enough, you might even discover ways of making your business run more efficiently day to day.
Form Partnerships
If you own a medical, law or accounting practice, your clients simply can't wait for you to return. That's why you should draft a written agreement with a local competitor who can cover for you in the event of an emergency (and visa versa).
Hammer out the tough questions upfront, such as referral fees--both for your clients and any they might refer to your stand-in. You'll also want to make sure the fees are comparable, lest your clients blanch at getting a fatter bill than they are used to.
Go Mobile
Even if you aren't a gadget guy or gal, if you run your own business, you have to have access to critical clients and information at any moment.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
The art of the one-on-one presentation
************************************
You may think you're not in the business of giving presentations. Hey, you haven't ever spoken to a group bigger than your marketing department, right?
But whether you're giving the latest financial report to your boss or chatting up an important industry contact at a party, you need to master some key skills.
The most important thing to remember is that you want to get your message across - simply, succinctly, and clearly. Don't worry about impressing your listener. Just get your information across in the best way possible. Here are five ways to do it. (And, by the way, these suggestions work for presentations to larger audiences too.)
1. Cut to the core. When you plan what you want to say, imagine having to write a headline and the first three sentences of a newspaper article on your topic. This will help you focus on your core message.
2. Edit your story down to the three most important points. Too many points and you risk either boring your listeners or emphasising your three least important points.
3. Don't be abstract. Specifics are always better. If you must use an abstraction, describe it with vivid imagery and an analogy. It's much easier for people to visualise an abstraction if you put it in a story.
4. Don't be tempted to script out everything you'll say. If your speech reads well on paper, it'll most likely sound bad. If you must write it down (to make you feel more comfortable), forget about making it "English-teacher" perfect or you could end up sounding dull and robotic.
Keep it conversational. Whether you're presenting to a room full of marketing execs or giving your one-minute "elevator" pitch to a potential partner. Avoid overly big words and stiff, formal language. Be friendly, use contractions, and treat your presentation as if you're talking with a good friend.
************************************
You may think you're not in the business of giving presentations. Hey, you haven't ever spoken to a group bigger than your marketing department, right?
But whether you're giving the latest financial report to your boss or chatting up an important industry contact at a party, you need to master some key skills.
The most important thing to remember is that you want to get your message across - simply, succinctly, and clearly. Don't worry about impressing your listener. Just get your information across in the best way possible. Here are five ways to do it. (And, by the way, these suggestions work for presentations to larger audiences too.)
1. Cut to the core. When you plan what you want to say, imagine having to write a headline and the first three sentences of a newspaper article on your topic. This will help you focus on your core message.
2. Edit your story down to the three most important points. Too many points and you risk either boring your listeners or emphasising your three least important points.
3. Don't be abstract. Specifics are always better. If you must use an abstraction, describe it with vivid imagery and an analogy. It's much easier for people to visualise an abstraction if you put it in a story.
4. Don't be tempted to script out everything you'll say. If your speech reads well on paper, it'll most likely sound bad. If you must write it down (to make you feel more comfortable), forget about making it "English-teacher" perfect or you could end up sounding dull and robotic.
Keep it conversational. Whether you're presenting to a room full of marketing execs or giving your one-minute "elevator" pitch to a potential partner. Avoid overly big words and stiff, formal language. Be friendly, use contractions, and treat your presentation as if you're talking with a good friend.
7 Ways to Turn a Profit Online
These simple business models can help you get started, whether you want to create a Web site for your existing company or start from scratch with a new e-business.
Going online can be a great adventure--and a lot of fun--for any small business. But if you want your Web site to be more than a hobby, you need to put some thought into how to make it profitable. No matter what your business is, you should always be thinking about ways to diversify your revenue streams to boost your profits.
So to get you thinking about new strategies, I've put together a list of the seven ways you can earn income on the Web, and then I've explained how you can incorporate all of these methods to create success.
Online Profit SteamsWhether you're just beginning to develop your business model or simply analyzing an existing business, your chief focus should be on how you're going to generate income. There are seven ways to generate revenue on the Web:
· Sell your own products
· Sell your own services
· Drop ship products
· Recommend affiliate products
· Sell ad space
· Create a joint venture with like-minded businesses
· Start an affiliate program
Let me explain each of these a little further:
1. Sell your own products.
The main advantage to selling your own products is that you ultimately control how much profit you make on every sale and you therefore have the potential for the biggest profit margin. You know exactly what each product costs, and you can try out different price points to see what works the best. People appreciate good value, and removing the middleman is a great way to provide your customers with competitive prices that keep them coming back for more.
2. Sell your own services.
Whether you're a small-town dentist, a high-priced online legal consultant, a real estate agent, a tutor, a landscaper, a bed and breakfast owner, an auto-mechanic, a caterer, a fitness trainer or anything in between, you can profit from selling your service online. It's easy to get started selling a service online, but your revenue potential, in most cases, is limited. That's because, unlike someone selling a physical product that can be stored and shipped on demand, you can only provide as many services as your time allows.
When you sell a service, you're essentially selling a relationship with yourself. And this requires that you spend more time and effort establishing your credibility and developing rapport with your visitors than is typically required on a site selling a physical product. You not only need to establish the benefits of the service you're offering, you also need to establish the value of you providing this service.
3. Drop ship products.
If you want to sell products without the hassles of tracking your inventory, setting up warehouse space and maintaining a confusing shipping/receiving infrastructure, drop-shipping may be the choice for you. Drop shipping lets you sell quality, brand-name products on your site for a hefty profit, while the drop shipper takes care of fulfilling the order. They warehouse the stock, pack the orders and ship them out to your customers.
4. Recommend affiliate products.
Recommending affiliate products creates a "no-risk" partnership that allows you to promote another company's products or services on your site to earn a percentage of their sales. As one of the company's "affiliates" or promotion partners, you earn a commission each time someone you've referred to their site makes a purchase. To advertise their wares, you might post a banner on your site that links to the affiliate program's site, or you might publish an article about the company and their products in your newsletter.
5. Sell ad space.
Once your site has lots of highly targeted traffic, or a large, targeted opt-in list, you may be able to sell advertising. Advertisers are willing to buy ads when they're being directed at large numbers of their target market. Nowadays, though, advertising revenues are a lot less than they used to be, so I don't recommend you plan on making this your sole source of income. Selling ad space can be a great additional profit stream, but it's unlikely to keep your business afloat on its own.
6. Create a joint venture with like-minded businesses.
Joint ventures are all about related businesses teaming up and combining skills, products, services and resources to create new streams of income and profit. One great way to profit through joint ventures is to seek out products or services that would benefit your visitors, and then approach the companies that provide those products or services. Ask them if you can recommend their product or service on your site for a portion of the profits. Most companies will gladly agree to this arrangement--after all, there's no risk for them since they only pay you when you refer a paying customer.
7. Start an affiliate program.
With your own affiliate program, you can recruit an army of people (your affiliates) who will recommend your product on their web site for a percentage of any sale they refer. You have the power to exponentially increase your income as more and more affiliates sign up and you continue to teach your existing affiliates how to increase their commission checks (and your income).
It's one of the most powerful forms of online advertising I know. It allows you to grow your profits while keeping your business small, since you don't have to go out and spend money on salespeople and advertising. Your affiliates do the advertising for you, and you only pay them when they make a sale.
There's no reason why you can't incorporate several of these different income opportunities into your business model. The key is to focus on one, maximize revenue from it and then move on to the next.
Of course, this choice should be made with extra consideration to your budget. If, like most small-business people, you have a limited budget, you'll want to focus on revenue streams (like selling products or recommending affiliate products) that will produce results quickly.
These simple business models can help you get started, whether you want to create a Web site for your existing company or start from scratch with a new e-business.
Going online can be a great adventure--and a lot of fun--for any small business. But if you want your Web site to be more than a hobby, you need to put some thought into how to make it profitable. No matter what your business is, you should always be thinking about ways to diversify your revenue streams to boost your profits.
So to get you thinking about new strategies, I've put together a list of the seven ways you can earn income on the Web, and then I've explained how you can incorporate all of these methods to create success.
Online Profit SteamsWhether you're just beginning to develop your business model or simply analyzing an existing business, your chief focus should be on how you're going to generate income. There are seven ways to generate revenue on the Web:
· Sell your own products
· Sell your own services
· Drop ship products
· Recommend affiliate products
· Sell ad space
· Create a joint venture with like-minded businesses
· Start an affiliate program
Let me explain each of these a little further:
1. Sell your own products.
The main advantage to selling your own products is that you ultimately control how much profit you make on every sale and you therefore have the potential for the biggest profit margin. You know exactly what each product costs, and you can try out different price points to see what works the best. People appreciate good value, and removing the middleman is a great way to provide your customers with competitive prices that keep them coming back for more.
2. Sell your own services.
Whether you're a small-town dentist, a high-priced online legal consultant, a real estate agent, a tutor, a landscaper, a bed and breakfast owner, an auto-mechanic, a caterer, a fitness trainer or anything in between, you can profit from selling your service online. It's easy to get started selling a service online, but your revenue potential, in most cases, is limited. That's because, unlike someone selling a physical product that can be stored and shipped on demand, you can only provide as many services as your time allows.
When you sell a service, you're essentially selling a relationship with yourself. And this requires that you spend more time and effort establishing your credibility and developing rapport with your visitors than is typically required on a site selling a physical product. You not only need to establish the benefits of the service you're offering, you also need to establish the value of you providing this service.
3. Drop ship products.
If you want to sell products without the hassles of tracking your inventory, setting up warehouse space and maintaining a confusing shipping/receiving infrastructure, drop-shipping may be the choice for you. Drop shipping lets you sell quality, brand-name products on your site for a hefty profit, while the drop shipper takes care of fulfilling the order. They warehouse the stock, pack the orders and ship them out to your customers.
4. Recommend affiliate products.
Recommending affiliate products creates a "no-risk" partnership that allows you to promote another company's products or services on your site to earn a percentage of their sales. As one of the company's "affiliates" or promotion partners, you earn a commission each time someone you've referred to their site makes a purchase. To advertise their wares, you might post a banner on your site that links to the affiliate program's site, or you might publish an article about the company and their products in your newsletter.
5. Sell ad space.
Once your site has lots of highly targeted traffic, or a large, targeted opt-in list, you may be able to sell advertising. Advertisers are willing to buy ads when they're being directed at large numbers of their target market. Nowadays, though, advertising revenues are a lot less than they used to be, so I don't recommend you plan on making this your sole source of income. Selling ad space can be a great additional profit stream, but it's unlikely to keep your business afloat on its own.
6. Create a joint venture with like-minded businesses.
Joint ventures are all about related businesses teaming up and combining skills, products, services and resources to create new streams of income and profit. One great way to profit through joint ventures is to seek out products or services that would benefit your visitors, and then approach the companies that provide those products or services. Ask them if you can recommend their product or service on your site for a portion of the profits. Most companies will gladly agree to this arrangement--after all, there's no risk for them since they only pay you when you refer a paying customer.
7. Start an affiliate program.
With your own affiliate program, you can recruit an army of people (your affiliates) who will recommend your product on their web site for a percentage of any sale they refer. You have the power to exponentially increase your income as more and more affiliates sign up and you continue to teach your existing affiliates how to increase their commission checks (and your income).
It's one of the most powerful forms of online advertising I know. It allows you to grow your profits while keeping your business small, since you don't have to go out and spend money on salespeople and advertising. Your affiliates do the advertising for you, and you only pay them when they make a sale.
There's no reason why you can't incorporate several of these different income opportunities into your business model. The key is to focus on one, maximize revenue from it and then move on to the next.
Of course, this choice should be made with extra consideration to your budget. If, like most small-business people, you have a limited budget, you'll want to focus on revenue streams (like selling products or recommending affiliate products) that will produce results quickly.
Advertising On the Internet...
4 Easy Ways to Get Advertisers on Your Site
To make your site attractive to companies looking for ad space, you'll need to have a great niche market, tons of traffic and the promise of good ad placement on your site. However, if you don't have all these elements in place yet, there are still ways for you to make money from ads on your site. The easiest--and often the most successful--include:
1. Promote an affiliate product on your site.
Joining another company's affiliate program is one of the simplest ways to get started with internet advertising. While affiliate links aren't technically ads, they allow you to make money by promoting someone else's product. As an affiliate, you earn a commission each time someone you've referred makes a purchase. To encourage sales, you might post a banner on your site that links to the affiliate site or publish a newsletter article about their product.
Different affiliate programs offer different payout options. Some might offer 10 percent commission for each sale, while others pay up to 50 percent of each sale. You'll want to shop around for the best deal for you and the best fit for your site. To find good affiliate programs, check out the following directories:
· Associate Programs
· Affiliates Directory
· Refer-It
Some internet advertising pros are actually making all their income from signing on with multiple affiliate programs. They don't even have a product of their own! This isn't a strategy for beginners, however, so take some time to check out different programs before committing to this option.
2. Use targeted advertising with Google AdSense.
Google's AdSense program allows you to make money advertising on your site by placing targeted text ads generated by Google on your pages. The ads appear in rectangular boxes running down the side or across the bottom of a web page with the words "Ads by Google" over the top. These ads are paid for by businesses that use Google's pay-per-click program, AdWords. These ads reflect the content on your site, so if your site sells a book on how to recognize authentic baseball cards, for example, the ads that appear on your site might be for baseball card retailers.
As a Google AdSense publisher, you earn money every time a visitor to your site clicks on one of the AdWords ads on your site. If you're getting a lot of targeted traffic--and if these visitors are interested in the products being advertised--that could mean a healthy new source of extra income for you.
Best of all, Google AdSense is free to join. It's easy, too. Google does all the work of finding relevant ads for your site--you just collect the payments.
A word of warning: Google ads don't work for all sites, so if you add them, be sure to test them. You don't want to lose credibility with your target market.
3. Approach companies directly to ask if you can advertise for them.
If your site is already getting lots of traffic, try looking for sites that offer complementary products and target the same niche market as you do. For instance, if you own a bridal shop, you could approach a local florist to see if they'd like to advertise their wedding bouquets on your site. An ad on your site would also be seen as an implicit recommendation of their product, and it could send a ton of brides to their site. And the more successful your ads are, the more you can charge for them.
Be sure to contact potential internet advertising partners in a professional manner. Call them on the phone instead of just e-mailing them so your communication is more personal and professional. Be ready to supply them with information about your business and your site traffic. The more information you can give them, the more likely they'll be to consider your offer. And above all, make sure they have a solid reputation. If you partner with a questionable company, their activities could reflect poorly on your business.
4. Sign up for a blog-specific ad program.
If you have a blog, consider signing up to feature blog-specific ads on your site. The key is to consider the kinds of ads your target audience will find valuable. Here are some great ways to attract advertisers to your blog:
· Sign up with a context-based ad program like Google's AdSense that will automatically generate ads for your site that you can put up within minutes of being accepted to their program. Crisp Ads offers a similar program, but only for blogs.
· Place Amazon Associates ads on your site, and feature ads for products you personally use or are happy to endorse. That way, your customers are responding to your recommendations.
· Get advertisers interested in your blog with a link they can use to contact you for rates and requirements. This link can be a simple message saying "Click here to find out how to advertise on this blog!" That way, anyone visiting your site is free to discuss advertising opportunities with you.
· Sign up with an advertiser-publisher connection program like BlogAds or AdBrite, and get listed in their publishers' directory. One important note: With these types of ads, the advertisers look through listings of thousands of blogs to choose the right people to promote their products. Unless you're getting thousands of visitors a day, they might not be all that interested in doing business with you.
Making money from your site isn't a matter of putting up a few ads and grabbing a paycheck--it takes a lot of research and testing on an already established site to make even the best internet advertising strategies truly pay off.
Even then, you may find that your audience resists the presence of ads. If you're putting people off by placing ads on your pages, you could end up losing more customers and revenue than you actually gain. To make sure this doesn't happen, test every aspect of each new ad campaign you run.
Once you do discover the internet advertising strategies that work best for your site, you can try promoting another product, and then another. Soon, all those added revenue streams will combine to swell your profits.
To make your site attractive to companies looking for ad space, you'll need to have a great niche market, tons of traffic and the promise of good ad placement on your site. However, if you don't have all these elements in place yet, there are still ways for you to make money from ads on your site. The easiest--and often the most successful--include:
1. Promote an affiliate product on your site.
Joining another company's affiliate program is one of the simplest ways to get started with internet advertising. While affiliate links aren't technically ads, they allow you to make money by promoting someone else's product. As an affiliate, you earn a commission each time someone you've referred makes a purchase. To encourage sales, you might post a banner on your site that links to the affiliate site or publish a newsletter article about their product.
Different affiliate programs offer different payout options. Some might offer 10 percent commission for each sale, while others pay up to 50 percent of each sale. You'll want to shop around for the best deal for you and the best fit for your site. To find good affiliate programs, check out the following directories:
· Associate Programs
· Affiliates Directory
· Refer-It
Some internet advertising pros are actually making all their income from signing on with multiple affiliate programs. They don't even have a product of their own! This isn't a strategy for beginners, however, so take some time to check out different programs before committing to this option.
2. Use targeted advertising with Google AdSense.
Google's AdSense program allows you to make money advertising on your site by placing targeted text ads generated by Google on your pages. The ads appear in rectangular boxes running down the side or across the bottom of a web page with the words "Ads by Google" over the top. These ads are paid for by businesses that use Google's pay-per-click program, AdWords. These ads reflect the content on your site, so if your site sells a book on how to recognize authentic baseball cards, for example, the ads that appear on your site might be for baseball card retailers.
As a Google AdSense publisher, you earn money every time a visitor to your site clicks on one of the AdWords ads on your site. If you're getting a lot of targeted traffic--and if these visitors are interested in the products being advertised--that could mean a healthy new source of extra income for you.
Best of all, Google AdSense is free to join. It's easy, too. Google does all the work of finding relevant ads for your site--you just collect the payments.
A word of warning: Google ads don't work for all sites, so if you add them, be sure to test them. You don't want to lose credibility with your target market.
3. Approach companies directly to ask if you can advertise for them.
If your site is already getting lots of traffic, try looking for sites that offer complementary products and target the same niche market as you do. For instance, if you own a bridal shop, you could approach a local florist to see if they'd like to advertise their wedding bouquets on your site. An ad on your site would also be seen as an implicit recommendation of their product, and it could send a ton of brides to their site. And the more successful your ads are, the more you can charge for them.
Be sure to contact potential internet advertising partners in a professional manner. Call them on the phone instead of just e-mailing them so your communication is more personal and professional. Be ready to supply them with information about your business and your site traffic. The more information you can give them, the more likely they'll be to consider your offer. And above all, make sure they have a solid reputation. If you partner with a questionable company, their activities could reflect poorly on your business.
4. Sign up for a blog-specific ad program.
If you have a blog, consider signing up to feature blog-specific ads on your site. The key is to consider the kinds of ads your target audience will find valuable. Here are some great ways to attract advertisers to your blog:
· Sign up with a context-based ad program like Google's AdSense that will automatically generate ads for your site that you can put up within minutes of being accepted to their program. Crisp Ads offers a similar program, but only for blogs.
· Place Amazon Associates ads on your site, and feature ads for products you personally use or are happy to endorse. That way, your customers are responding to your recommendations.
· Get advertisers interested in your blog with a link they can use to contact you for rates and requirements. This link can be a simple message saying "Click here to find out how to advertise on this blog!" That way, anyone visiting your site is free to discuss advertising opportunities with you.
· Sign up with an advertiser-publisher connection program like BlogAds or AdBrite, and get listed in their publishers' directory. One important note: With these types of ads, the advertisers look through listings of thousands of blogs to choose the right people to promote their products. Unless you're getting thousands of visitors a day, they might not be all that interested in doing business with you.
Making money from your site isn't a matter of putting up a few ads and grabbing a paycheck--it takes a lot of research and testing on an already established site to make even the best internet advertising strategies truly pay off.
Even then, you may find that your audience resists the presence of ads. If you're putting people off by placing ads on your pages, you could end up losing more customers and revenue than you actually gain. To make sure this doesn't happen, test every aspect of each new ad campaign you run.
Once you do discover the internet advertising strategies that work best for your site, you can try promoting another product, and then another. Soon, all those added revenue streams will combine to swell your profits.
low-cost steps at making that best guess.
Step 1: Can You Brand It?
Say you are selling applesauce. The range of market prices is massive--from about 28 cents per 4-ounce cup for America's Choice brand at the local A&P to $3.10 for the Earth Best Kidz Organic brand at a Wild Oats grocery store.
Setting a price starts with a basic question: Is yours a branded or generic product? If it's generic, stop reading, charge the market rate and run your operation as lean as possible to preserve what little profit margin remains. If you think your product has unique features--a new health benefit, greater convenience, sexy style--that you can charge more for, read on.
Step 2: Do Qualitative Research
Start to hone in on the right price by running focus groups to get a sense of what customers are willing to pay.
If it's applesauce you are selling, ask consumers about what they like about applesauce and what they don't; that way, you will know if your marketing message will hit home. Don't ask them directly what they would pay for a particular kind of applesauce (customers tend to low-ball their answers), but instead ask how much they think such an applesauce would sell for in a store.
Whatever way you do it, run at least two identical sessions to confirm your findings.
Step 3: Do Quantitative Research
You've done the soft stuff--now it's time for some hard numbers. This step involves in-person or Internet surveys, or perhaps product trials with feedback forms. Sample questions: What price do you pay for applesauce? Would you be willing to pay a higher price for an applesauce with certain characteristics?
This research is even more costly that the qualitative kind, so you'll have to come up with your own questions if you want to save some dough. When it comes time to blast out the surveys, check out SurveyMonkey.com or InstantSurvey.com, which charge from $300 to $2,500, depending on the number of people you want to contact.
Step 4: Plan Your Attack
Before you set your price, decide how you want to attack the market. Will you try to hobble competitors by going low and stealing market share? Rupert Murdoch tried to do by charging a quarter for The New York Post to compete with hometown rival The Daily News at 50 cents; the Post's circulation has gone up, but profits haven't.) Or, do you charge a higher price and capture a smaller, but perhaps more committed--and profitable--customer base?
Step 5: Pull The Trigger
At this point, a big company like Procter & Gamble or Johnson & Johnson might pour huge sums into running tests in a bunch of markets to figure out the optimum price for a new product. Small companies simply can't afford to do this. So take what information you have, marry it with your strategy and pick your price.
Step 6: Don't Let Success Go To Your Head
So your applesauce is selling like gangbusters and you figure: Why not raise the price and bank a few more bucks? Be careful: It's much harder to jack prices than it is to lower them; indeed, you could send shoppers running the other way.If sales are sluggish, consider lowering the price--but not by too much. For consumer packaged goods, even a 1% decrease in price can lead to a 5% increase in sales, says IRI. Slash prices, though, and you could tarnish your brand's image permanently
Where You Stand, Is Where You Fall.
What is your value proposition?
This is the single most important question of the bunch. If you can't explain--in three, jargon-free sentences or less--why customers need your product, you do not have a value proposition. Without a need, there is no incentive for customers to pay. And without sales, you have no business. Period.
What differentiates your product from the competitors'?
Few companies can rely on--let alone afford--clever marketing schemes to separate themselves from the competition. Yes, Starbucks made people believe they wanted $4 caffeinated concoctions, and Louis Vuitton lulled people into shelling out $1,500 for denim handbags, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule. If you want to win in business, you need to offer something tangibly valuable that the competition doesn't.
How much cash do you need to survive the early years?
It doesn't matter how much money your business might make down the road if you can't get out of your garage. Plenty of business plans boast hockey-stick-style financial projections but run out of cash before the good times kick in. (Remember all those busted dot-com companies from the tech boom?) Three words: Mind the cash.
What are your strengths?
How big is the threat of new entrants?
If you're smart enough to spy a profitable business opportunity, you can bet competition isn't far behind. Some barriers to entry--patented technology, a storied brand--are more fortified than others, but eventually someone will find a way to do what you do faster, cheaper and maybe even better. If not a direct competitor, then a substitute technology might take a chunk out of your hide. (Think what digital film did to Kodak.) The trick: building a loyal following before that happens.
How much power do your suppliers have?
Convincing customers to buy your products is tough enough without suppliers breaking your back. Basic rule of thumb: The fewer the number of suppliers, the more sway they have. Take the steel industry, which relies on a handful of companies for its iron feedstock. If two of those big guys should get together have been discussing--they would have significant pricing power, potentially crimping steel producers' margins. On the flipside, beware getting hooked on low-cost providers who don't keep an eye on quality. ("Lead-laced" Barbie, anyone?)
Does the business scale?
Bill Gates plowed piles of money into developing the first copy of Microsoft Office. The beauty: Each additional copy of that software program costs next to nothing to produce. That's called scale--and it's the difference between modest wealth and obscene riches. What models don't scale? Think service businesses, where the need for people grows along with revenues.
What price will your customers pay?
Get this answer wrong and you could leave bags of money on the table--or worse, send customers running into the arms of the competition. When Apple sliced the price of its iPhone by a third after only two months on the market, even loyal customers screamed, forcing chief Steve Jobs to apologize and offer a partial rebate. Consultants get paid handsomely to help companies arrive at the right price. For more affordable advice, check out .
How committed are you to making this happen?
An audience member asked what life looked like at the helm of such a colossal firm. Prince responded that, save for a few exceptions, every evening for the next five months was already accounted for. Fair warning: If you want to run the show, get ready to give everything--and then some.
This is the single most important question of the bunch. If you can't explain--in three, jargon-free sentences or less--why customers need your product, you do not have a value proposition. Without a need, there is no incentive for customers to pay. And without sales, you have no business. Period.
What differentiates your product from the competitors'?
Few companies can rely on--let alone afford--clever marketing schemes to separate themselves from the competition. Yes, Starbucks made people believe they wanted $4 caffeinated concoctions, and Louis Vuitton lulled people into shelling out $1,500 for denim handbags, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule. If you want to win in business, you need to offer something tangibly valuable that the competition doesn't.
How much cash do you need to survive the early years?
It doesn't matter how much money your business might make down the road if you can't get out of your garage. Plenty of business plans boast hockey-stick-style financial projections but run out of cash before the good times kick in. (Remember all those busted dot-com companies from the tech boom?) Three words: Mind the cash.
What are your strengths?
How big is the threat of new entrants?
If you're smart enough to spy a profitable business opportunity, you can bet competition isn't far behind. Some barriers to entry--patented technology, a storied brand--are more fortified than others, but eventually someone will find a way to do what you do faster, cheaper and maybe even better. If not a direct competitor, then a substitute technology might take a chunk out of your hide. (Think what digital film did to Kodak.) The trick: building a loyal following before that happens.
How much power do your suppliers have?
Convincing customers to buy your products is tough enough without suppliers breaking your back. Basic rule of thumb: The fewer the number of suppliers, the more sway they have. Take the steel industry, which relies on a handful of companies for its iron feedstock. If two of those big guys should get together have been discussing--they would have significant pricing power, potentially crimping steel producers' margins. On the flipside, beware getting hooked on low-cost providers who don't keep an eye on quality. ("Lead-laced" Barbie, anyone?)
Does the business scale?
Bill Gates plowed piles of money into developing the first copy of Microsoft Office. The beauty: Each additional copy of that software program costs next to nothing to produce. That's called scale--and it's the difference between modest wealth and obscene riches. What models don't scale? Think service businesses, where the need for people grows along with revenues.
What price will your customers pay?
Get this answer wrong and you could leave bags of money on the table--or worse, send customers running into the arms of the competition. When Apple sliced the price of its iPhone by a third after only two months on the market, even loyal customers screamed, forcing chief Steve Jobs to apologize and offer a partial rebate. Consultants get paid handsomely to help companies arrive at the right price. For more affordable advice, check out .
How committed are you to making this happen?
An audience member asked what life looked like at the helm of such a colossal firm. Prince responded that, save for a few exceptions, every evening for the next five months was already accounted for. Fair warning: If you want to run the show, get ready to give everything--and then some.
Right Moves
Procedures, Protocols, and Processes:
Right now, because of the surge in business, we are doing a bad job of entering and fulfilling orders. We have to move our fulfillment out of house and learn to manage service companies. We also have to get our accounting and customer service departments working more smoothly. We need a VP of operations - someone really good and very detail-oriented (because we aren't) - and we need that person ASAP.
Based on that quick assessment of the business, it was easy for us to see the importance of hiring two more superstars - one to help us get operations in order and the other to take a lead in marketing so we can grow our prospect file as it needs to be grown. If we make it a priority to fill these two positions, we can have it done in 30 to 45 days, and then begin the process of integrating and educating our new people. In six months, if all goes well, we will be ready for the next step up - to the $5 million level.
Companies fail for a host of reasons. Bad luck plays a role, sure, but disaster usually strikes because of a more fundamental flaw--in the original idea, the strategy, the execution or all of the above.
When it comes to building a business, even Warren Buffett would agree that no one can spot every opportunity or anticipate every threat. There are simply too many variables. And in an increasingly competitive global economy, those variables are changing faster than ever before.
What entrepreneurs can do is ask the core set of tough questions that govern the fate of any enterprise. Armed with those answers, they stand the best chance of beating some fairly dire odds: Studies estimate that just two-thirds of all start-ups survive the first two years, and less than half make it to the fourth.
Make no mistake: Digging for those answers is a grueling exercise--one that takes serious intellectual and emotional honesty. With any hope, the process begins long before money's been spent, products are built and customers are lost.
Right now, because of the surge in business, we are doing a bad job of entering and fulfilling orders. We have to move our fulfillment out of house and learn to manage service companies. We also have to get our accounting and customer service departments working more smoothly. We need a VP of operations - someone really good and very detail-oriented (because we aren't) - and we need that person ASAP.
Based on that quick assessment of the business, it was easy for us to see the importance of hiring two more superstars - one to help us get operations in order and the other to take a lead in marketing so we can grow our prospect file as it needs to be grown. If we make it a priority to fill these two positions, we can have it done in 30 to 45 days, and then begin the process of integrating and educating our new people. In six months, if all goes well, we will be ready for the next step up - to the $5 million level.
Companies fail for a host of reasons. Bad luck plays a role, sure, but disaster usually strikes because of a more fundamental flaw--in the original idea, the strategy, the execution or all of the above.
When it comes to building a business, even Warren Buffett would agree that no one can spot every opportunity or anticipate every threat. There are simply too many variables. And in an increasingly competitive global economy, those variables are changing faster than ever before.
What entrepreneurs can do is ask the core set of tough questions that govern the fate of any enterprise. Armed with those answers, they stand the best chance of beating some fairly dire odds: Studies estimate that just two-thirds of all start-ups survive the first two years, and less than half make it to the fourth.
Make no mistake: Digging for those answers is a grueling exercise--one that takes serious intellectual and emotional honesty. With any hope, the process begins long before money's been spent, products are built and customers are lost.
The P Game...
Programme: B+
We have a good idea how to make the initial sale (where to go to find prospects, how to intrigue them, how to sell them the first time) and how to sell them after that.
Product: A
We have great products. Really great products. Walt creates them, and he understands what makes a product great.
Prospects: C
So far, we are only scratching the surface in terms of identifying good media for our advertising. We are gradually expanding our marketable universe each month by about 2,000 prospects, but we should - and will one day - be growing our prospect file by 10 times that number. That is something we have to work on in a serious way.
Proposition: A-
The offer - what you charge for your product, the payment terms, and the guarantee - is critical to any business. In Walt's business, we have a very good idea of what that should be. That idea is based on my experience - more than 10 years in the industry - and from being able to see what our competitors are doing. There are certainly things about the offer that we can test - particularly in the area of continuity sales - but, for the most part, we believe we understand how to form our selling propositions.
People: B-
The employees that we have are very good, but to do a better job of expanding the business's marketable universe and improve operations we will need two more superstars. Getting them is our top priority right now.
Promotions: A
feel confident that you have the creative power to produce good promotions now and in the future.
We have a good idea how to make the initial sale (where to go to find prospects, how to intrigue them, how to sell them the first time) and how to sell them after that.
Product: A
We have great products. Really great products. Walt creates them, and he understands what makes a product great.
Prospects: C
So far, we are only scratching the surface in terms of identifying good media for our advertising. We are gradually expanding our marketable universe each month by about 2,000 prospects, but we should - and will one day - be growing our prospect file by 10 times that number. That is something we have to work on in a serious way.
Proposition: A-
The offer - what you charge for your product, the payment terms, and the guarantee - is critical to any business. In Walt's business, we have a very good idea of what that should be. That idea is based on my experience - more than 10 years in the industry - and from being able to see what our competitors are doing. There are certainly things about the offer that we can test - particularly in the area of continuity sales - but, for the most part, we believe we understand how to form our selling propositions.
People: B-
The employees that we have are very good, but to do a better job of expanding the business's marketable universe and improve operations we will need two more superstars. Getting them is our top priority right now.
Promotions: A
feel confident that you have the creative power to produce good promotions now and in the future.
Money-Making Business
"It's almost like a management report card. By getting a valuation done on some periodic basis, it can give a business owner a sense of how much their business increased or decreased during some certain time period."
BB, the legendary copywriter and one of my biggest clients, is a constant articulator of powerful, business-building ideas. Recently, in a memo to his senior executives, he discussed the difficulty of starting and growing new businesses, and offered a brilliant synopsis of "what it takes to make
(such) businesses work."
"You have heard about the Four P's of salesmanship: Promise. Picture.
Proof and Payoff.
Those are very effective guides in creating sales packages that produce. But I have five more P's I'd like to share with you.
These could be helpful in launching and/or growing your business."
BB's Five P's of business-building are...
1. Programme: You need a business model that works - one that can produce reliable, long-term profitability with an acceptable level of investment and risk.
2. Product: You want to sell products that are easy to sell the first time and even easier to sell thereafter. In other words, you want to sell products that give people what they are looking for at a price they can rationalize.
3. Prospects: You need people to sell to. And you need a sufficient number of them to meet your business's long-term goals. They have to be plentiful.
And they have to be profitable. Where do you find such quality customers?
Mailing lists? Websites? Keyword searches? Telephone calls? Finding potential buyers is a big part of any business.
4. Proposition: Every market is unique. So is every product. Figuring out the optimum way to sell your unique product to a given market segment is your first and most important priority. Until you do that, you can't produce profits.
5. People: Every business, no matter what it does, where it's located, or how automated its processes are, depends on people to create and maintain its profits. Taking a business to the next level - even to keep it from falling backward - is most easily accomplished by the hiring, promotion, training, and nurturing of a team of key people who can work skillfully and efficiently. You have to find them and then motivate them and then hold on to them.
To BB's very good list, I would add four more P's that you have to pay attention to...
6. Promotions: Discovering the right proposition for your business is the first - but only the first - priority of selling. To be able to keep your business profitable, you have to be able to produce a continuous flow of successful, customer-grabbing promotions (sales offers that attract attention, offer benefits to the customers, and persuade them to buy your products). A business that can't produce breakthrough promotions on an ongoing basis is a business that is doomed to mediocrity or even failure.
7-9. Procedures, Protocols, and Processes: If you get the first six P's working right, your business will never suffer from a lack of sales. But if you don't have effective operations - order-taking, fulfillment, accounting, and customer service - your profits will always be half of what they should be, and your stress will be double what it needs to be.
"It's almost like a management report card. By getting a valuation done on some periodic basis, it can give a business owner a sense of how much their business increased or decreased during some certain time period."
BB, the legendary copywriter and one of my biggest clients, is a constant articulator of powerful, business-building ideas. Recently, in a memo to his senior executives, he discussed the difficulty of starting and growing new businesses, and offered a brilliant synopsis of "what it takes to make
(such) businesses work."
"You have heard about the Four P's of salesmanship: Promise. Picture.
Proof and Payoff.
Those are very effective guides in creating sales packages that produce. But I have five more P's I'd like to share with you.
These could be helpful in launching and/or growing your business."
BB's Five P's of business-building are...
1. Programme: You need a business model that works - one that can produce reliable, long-term profitability with an acceptable level of investment and risk.
2. Product: You want to sell products that are easy to sell the first time and even easier to sell thereafter. In other words, you want to sell products that give people what they are looking for at a price they can rationalize.
3. Prospects: You need people to sell to. And you need a sufficient number of them to meet your business's long-term goals. They have to be plentiful.
And they have to be profitable. Where do you find such quality customers?
Mailing lists? Websites? Keyword searches? Telephone calls? Finding potential buyers is a big part of any business.
4. Proposition: Every market is unique. So is every product. Figuring out the optimum way to sell your unique product to a given market segment is your first and most important priority. Until you do that, you can't produce profits.
5. People: Every business, no matter what it does, where it's located, or how automated its processes are, depends on people to create and maintain its profits. Taking a business to the next level - even to keep it from falling backward - is most easily accomplished by the hiring, promotion, training, and nurturing of a team of key people who can work skillfully and efficiently. You have to find them and then motivate them and then hold on to them.
To BB's very good list, I would add four more P's that you have to pay attention to...
6. Promotions: Discovering the right proposition for your business is the first - but only the first - priority of selling. To be able to keep your business profitable, you have to be able to produce a continuous flow of successful, customer-grabbing promotions (sales offers that attract attention, offer benefits to the customers, and persuade them to buy your products). A business that can't produce breakthrough promotions on an ongoing basis is a business that is doomed to mediocrity or even failure.
7-9. Procedures, Protocols, and Processes: If you get the first six P's working right, your business will never suffer from a lack of sales. But if you don't have effective operations - order-taking, fulfillment, accounting, and customer service - your profits will always be half of what they should be, and your stress will be double what it needs to be.
Private Money
12 More advantages of private money…
1. The ability to get money fast often allows you to snap up good deals at a discount.
2. There are no credit checks, and the loan doesn’t show up on your credit report.
3. You have access to a potentially unlimited source of funds.
4. Since you set the rules, you’re in control - not the bank.
5. You can help your friends and family make extra money, and meet a great network of people.
6. You can get some of your profit when you buy property by borrowing more than the cost of the property.
7. You’ll have the flexibility to do deals that banks might question (like my no-furnace bargain).
8. You can make offers with confidence. No worries about bank delays or being denied financing.
9. You can structure quick and more profitable exit strategies.
10. You’ll save money on the deal in the short run and long run.
11. Private money loans are cheaper than investing with a partner.
12. You can build the foundation for a very profitable brokerage business.
Best of all, if you treat your private lenders right, they’ll be there for you again and again when you find hot opportunities in the future.
Many investors have watched a deal slip through their hands while they waited for a bank to approve their loan. Once you have private money available, that won’t happen to you. You can make an offer knowing you can go ahead and set a closing date… and leave your competition wondering how you did it so quickly.
************************************
To be a successful entrepreneur, you need five things:
1. A product that delivers a benefit people already want at a price they’re willing to pay…
2. A strategy that puts your sales copy in front of your best prospects…
3. Great headlines and lead copy that compel them to read your sales message…
4. Sales copy that convincingly presents the reasons why the prospect should buy and overcomes any objections he might have, and…
5. A quick, easy way for him to order.
1. The ability to get money fast often allows you to snap up good deals at a discount.
2. There are no credit checks, and the loan doesn’t show up on your credit report.
3. You have access to a potentially unlimited source of funds.
4. Since you set the rules, you’re in control - not the bank.
5. You can help your friends and family make extra money, and meet a great network of people.
6. You can get some of your profit when you buy property by borrowing more than the cost of the property.
7. You’ll have the flexibility to do deals that banks might question (like my no-furnace bargain).
8. You can make offers with confidence. No worries about bank delays or being denied financing.
9. You can structure quick and more profitable exit strategies.
10. You’ll save money on the deal in the short run and long run.
11. Private money loans are cheaper than investing with a partner.
12. You can build the foundation for a very profitable brokerage business.
Best of all, if you treat your private lenders right, they’ll be there for you again and again when you find hot opportunities in the future.
Many investors have watched a deal slip through their hands while they waited for a bank to approve their loan. Once you have private money available, that won’t happen to you. You can make an offer knowing you can go ahead and set a closing date… and leave your competition wondering how you did it so quickly.
************************************
To be a successful entrepreneur, you need five things:
1. A product that delivers a benefit people already want at a price they’re willing to pay…
2. A strategy that puts your sales copy in front of your best prospects…
3. Great headlines and lead copy that compel them to read your sales message…
4. Sales copy that convincingly presents the reasons why the prospect should buy and overcomes any objections he might have, and…
5. A quick, easy way for him to order.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
"How can I grow this thing and make it strong?"
1. Understand that money fuels growth
even for non-profits. You need money to get started and money to expand.
2. Recognise where that money is coming from.
For the most part, it will come from two different sources: affluent do-gooders and governmental agencies. These, then, are your "customers." For the first few years, you will have to spend most of your time and effort "selling" them on donating money to your non-profit. Most non-profit entrepreneurs don’t do that. In the early stage of their venture, they spend the lion’s share of their time developing programmes - more programmes than they need to get the money
.
3. To get government money, it’s a relatively simple process:
Investigate grants that would apply to your concept, and apply for them. It will be cumbersome and time-consuming - but if you are willing to follow the rules, you should be able to get some funding.
4. Will that government funding be fast enough and big enough to float your boat?
Probably not. And that’s where private money comes in. To get private sources to fund your dream, you are going to have to come up with a very engaging USP (unique selling proposition). In other words, you’ll have to come up with a concept that is in some exciting way new and different from that of other, similar non-profits.
5. To come up with that USP, I’d recommend that you find out as much as you can about organisations that support young girls in urban centres.
There are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of them. Find out who they are and which are the most successful. Call the people heading up the most successful ones and interview them. Be gracious. Make friends. They will help you later.
6. Study the theory behind organisations like these.
Be able to quote persuasive data in casual conversation. Give yourself the goal of becoming one of the world’s top experts in the niche you are entering. If you spend 5,000 hours studying and talking to professionals in your field, you will rise to that level.
7. Locate affluent people in your community. Find out where they socialise.
Find out where they work. Meet them at parties and events and chat them up. Send them personal letters. E-mail them. Your initial goal should not be to raise money. If you come at them directly, they will back away. Remember, wealthy people are always being hit up for donations. They are good at refusing - but less so when they are being asked by someone they like and trust. You have to become that someone. How can you do that? By developing relationships with them that are based on them talking to you.
1. Understand that money fuels growth
even for non-profits. You need money to get started and money to expand.
2. Recognise where that money is coming from.
For the most part, it will come from two different sources: affluent do-gooders and governmental agencies. These, then, are your "customers." For the first few years, you will have to spend most of your time and effort "selling" them on donating money to your non-profit. Most non-profit entrepreneurs don’t do that. In the early stage of their venture, they spend the lion’s share of their time developing programmes - more programmes than they need to get the money
.
3. To get government money, it’s a relatively simple process:
Investigate grants that would apply to your concept, and apply for them. It will be cumbersome and time-consuming - but if you are willing to follow the rules, you should be able to get some funding.
4. Will that government funding be fast enough and big enough to float your boat?
Probably not. And that’s where private money comes in. To get private sources to fund your dream, you are going to have to come up with a very engaging USP (unique selling proposition). In other words, you’ll have to come up with a concept that is in some exciting way new and different from that of other, similar non-profits.
5. To come up with that USP, I’d recommend that you find out as much as you can about organisations that support young girls in urban centres.
There are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of them. Find out who they are and which are the most successful. Call the people heading up the most successful ones and interview them. Be gracious. Make friends. They will help you later.
6. Study the theory behind organisations like these.
Be able to quote persuasive data in casual conversation. Give yourself the goal of becoming one of the world’s top experts in the niche you are entering. If you spend 5,000 hours studying and talking to professionals in your field, you will rise to that level.
7. Locate affluent people in your community. Find out where they socialise.
Find out where they work. Meet them at parties and events and chat them up. Send them personal letters. E-mail them. Your initial goal should not be to raise money. If you come at them directly, they will back away. Remember, wealthy people are always being hit up for donations. They are good at refusing - but less so when they are being asked by someone they like and trust. You have to become that someone. How can you do that? By developing relationships with them that are based on them talking to you.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Learn to Market More Creatively
Knowledge of your industry can bring originality to your business.
The Nestle Corporation in Geneva, Switzerland, asked Leo Burnett Advertising in Chicago, Illinois, where creativity came from. The answer was revealed by asking the same question to artists, dancers, writers, musicians, poets, engineers, and architects. All gave the same answer to the question. They said that creativity comes from knowledge. The more knowledge you have, the more creative you can be. Applying creativity to the arts listed above has the purpose of human enjoyment. Applying creativity to your business has the primary purpose of generating profits. If it doesn't generate profits, it's not creative.
Don't ever go down the garden path of beauty and creative expression in marketing. Sure, it's a plus if your audio and visual materials look and sound great. But that's not their job. Generating profits is their job. Get your artistic kicks in the concert hall. There's no place for them in the boardroom.
The Knowledge You Need
Direct your creativity towards the accumulation of knowledge you need. The path to that knowledge is illuminated by research, the start-up point for the start-up guerrilla. That training as well as your own adventures as a guerrilla marketer starts with information you've really got to have. Much of it is published on the internet. Lots of it is yours for free at your local chamber of commerce. Bookstores and libraries are bulging with just the information you need, and professional associations and groups will share it with you. Our favorite is the University of Google.
There's only one thing that accessible information lacks--specific information about your customers. It's laden with data about groups, but as a guerrilla, you're more interested in data about individuals.
Research Your Consumer
The best way to get that data is to get it yourself. Do your own research. Prepare customer and prospect questionnaires (a different one for each group) that ask a lot of questions. Have a notation at the top of the questionnaire that you're sorry to ask so many questions, but the more you know about them, the better service you can be to them.
Ask Specific questions
With answers that open new doors, such as what is your favorite sport? Favorite rock group? Favorite baseball team? Do you have a hobby? Do you have any pets? The answers to these questions can help you add immense power to your e-mail and website. There is an old proverb: "It is better to know something specific about your spouse than know everything about marriage." The same holds true for buyer-seller relationships. The "something specific" is what you get with research and the way to switch a start-up marketing campaign into a higher gear.
If you want a place to exercise your creativity, it's in your customer questionnaire. Most business owners know most of the right answers. Guerrilla business owners also know most of the right questions. Knowing the right questions to ask and then asking them is one of the arts of the start-up guerrilla marketing campaign.
Examine the Answers
Processing what you learn is what it's all about because that's where the action begins taking place. You notice a great number of customers in three zip codes. That spurs a mailing to those codes. You must be doing or saying something right. What can it be?
There are still many other areas deserving of further exploration. First on that list are your prospects, those people who for some silly reason haven't yet purchased from you. Hey! Hold on a second. Maybe it wasn't a silly reason. Maybe it was you doing a silly thing or missing an important detail in customer service.
Always look at it like this:
If your prospects aren't your customers, there's got to be a reason. Find out what that reason it and then correct it. Be relentless. Be pig-headed and single-purposed, but do everything you can do to transform all of your prospects into customers. That may not happen exactly. But your efforts won't go unrewarded. My boss and idol Leo Burnett said, "When you reach for the stars, you might not get one, but you're not likely to come up with a handful of mud either."
The best marketing builds confidence and invites a purchase. Best and most unique of all, the best marketing gets through to people.
That's why knowing a lot about your prospects will help you stand apart from your competitors and shine in the minds of your prospects and customers.
Once you've learned all you can about your customers and your prospects, what's the next area worth researching? A smart place to focus is your own industry. Research that industry--how did the world function before Google?--and get a feel for what the winners are doing, the latest trends, and for signs of any competitors you might have.
Look at Industry Winners
One of the secrets to market domination is knocking yourself off. NOT cloning yourself, but creating a new unique selling proposition in the same market.
That's why Toyota created Lexus. It's why McDonalds started Chipotle. It's not just big companies either; it's just as true with "little" guys on the internet. In some of the most competitive markets imaginable, you see 11 real ads on the first page, and most people don't know that two parent companies might be responsible for five or six of them.Hey, if you've successfully gained a foothold in one market--and you understand that market deeply--and want to grow your business why go to the trouble of learning a brand-new niche?
Do something in the one you're already in. Create a new offer that's so appealing, it takes its place along with the other top dogs: New product, new website, new Google account.
Don't ever forget that on the any search term there's a whole spectrum of tastes and desires that the keyword represents. One website and one ad can only cater to a handful of them. There are still others you're not serving. But you can.
Do Field Research
As lush and fascinating as the internet may be for research, we can't help but point you in the direction of trade shows where you'll not only get a state-of-the-moment feel for your industry but you'll also get a lot of inside information not yet published online. The networking at these shows may be more valuable than anything on the trade show floor.
The product or service you offer also merits abundant research time. The better you know your offering, the better equipped you'll be to talk about it, understand it, market it. Eventually, you'll be called upon to prepare a benefits list, that actual in-writing list of the benefits people gain by buying from you. We urge you to put a lot of effort and creativity into this list because it's what you'll be communicating to your prospects and customers. They'll then make their decision to purchase (or not to purchase) based upon the benefits you do (or don't) convey.
Understand Your Competition
Your next point of research will be your competition, which you'll already know pretty well because of your forays into studying your industry and your product. Learn what they say and where they say it. Maintain vigil here because they'll tip their hand frequently by how they adjust their message and their media. You don't want to copy them but you do want to be aware of what they're up to. You can be sure that they're checking up on you. You might even buy the product of the leader in your industry. Get to see firsthand its sales presentation, display, packaging, follow-up, and product itself. Learning from leaders is a guerrilla strength.
Explore Media OpportunitiesDon't fail to research life outside your own industry. Get to know the media, online and offline available to you. Get to know the internet on an intimate basis within your industry. Start-up guerrillas engage in a monthly half hour surf of the internet to catch the best that's online--in and out of their industry. The research you put in looking for media opportunities for your company will pay off every time.
Study the Latest Technology
That research should include researching the latest technology that might empower your business. The move in entrepreneurship is toward automation. Happily, automation is not expensive. Your company can give off the vibes of a huge, lavishly funded corporation with a constantly busy staff, when the truth is it's just little old you pushing the right button on your automated customer profitability center. Technology can help you in the areas of marketing, production, finances, distribution, and a whole lot more. Skip it if you don't need it, but don't miss it if it can contribute to your profitability. It probably can. More people earn money while they sleep than ever before.
We didn't explore a totally different kind of research, one that we applaud and respect. But assuming you aren't yet a wealthy and thriving company, we nudge you in the direction of free research, which has been outlined above. Later, when you've taken this advice and are a wealthy and thriving company, look into paid research, which takes over the entire research function, from asking the right questions to analyzing the answers. The right question can be the making of a company.
Knowledge of your industry can bring originality to your business.
The Nestle Corporation in Geneva, Switzerland, asked Leo Burnett Advertising in Chicago, Illinois, where creativity came from. The answer was revealed by asking the same question to artists, dancers, writers, musicians, poets, engineers, and architects. All gave the same answer to the question. They said that creativity comes from knowledge. The more knowledge you have, the more creative you can be. Applying creativity to the arts listed above has the purpose of human enjoyment. Applying creativity to your business has the primary purpose of generating profits. If it doesn't generate profits, it's not creative.
Don't ever go down the garden path of beauty and creative expression in marketing. Sure, it's a plus if your audio and visual materials look and sound great. But that's not their job. Generating profits is their job. Get your artistic kicks in the concert hall. There's no place for them in the boardroom.
The Knowledge You Need
Direct your creativity towards the accumulation of knowledge you need. The path to that knowledge is illuminated by research, the start-up point for the start-up guerrilla. That training as well as your own adventures as a guerrilla marketer starts with information you've really got to have. Much of it is published on the internet. Lots of it is yours for free at your local chamber of commerce. Bookstores and libraries are bulging with just the information you need, and professional associations and groups will share it with you. Our favorite is the University of Google.
There's only one thing that accessible information lacks--specific information about your customers. It's laden with data about groups, but as a guerrilla, you're more interested in data about individuals.
Research Your Consumer
The best way to get that data is to get it yourself. Do your own research. Prepare customer and prospect questionnaires (a different one for each group) that ask a lot of questions. Have a notation at the top of the questionnaire that you're sorry to ask so many questions, but the more you know about them, the better service you can be to them.
Ask Specific questions
With answers that open new doors, such as what is your favorite sport? Favorite rock group? Favorite baseball team? Do you have a hobby? Do you have any pets? The answers to these questions can help you add immense power to your e-mail and website. There is an old proverb: "It is better to know something specific about your spouse than know everything about marriage." The same holds true for buyer-seller relationships. The "something specific" is what you get with research and the way to switch a start-up marketing campaign into a higher gear.
If you want a place to exercise your creativity, it's in your customer questionnaire. Most business owners know most of the right answers. Guerrilla business owners also know most of the right questions. Knowing the right questions to ask and then asking them is one of the arts of the start-up guerrilla marketing campaign.
Examine the Answers
Processing what you learn is what it's all about because that's where the action begins taking place. You notice a great number of customers in three zip codes. That spurs a mailing to those codes. You must be doing or saying something right. What can it be?
There are still many other areas deserving of further exploration. First on that list are your prospects, those people who for some silly reason haven't yet purchased from you. Hey! Hold on a second. Maybe it wasn't a silly reason. Maybe it was you doing a silly thing or missing an important detail in customer service.
Always look at it like this:
If your prospects aren't your customers, there's got to be a reason. Find out what that reason it and then correct it. Be relentless. Be pig-headed and single-purposed, but do everything you can do to transform all of your prospects into customers. That may not happen exactly. But your efforts won't go unrewarded. My boss and idol Leo Burnett said, "When you reach for the stars, you might not get one, but you're not likely to come up with a handful of mud either."
The best marketing builds confidence and invites a purchase. Best and most unique of all, the best marketing gets through to people.
That's why knowing a lot about your prospects will help you stand apart from your competitors and shine in the minds of your prospects and customers.
Once you've learned all you can about your customers and your prospects, what's the next area worth researching? A smart place to focus is your own industry. Research that industry--how did the world function before Google?--and get a feel for what the winners are doing, the latest trends, and for signs of any competitors you might have.
Look at Industry Winners
One of the secrets to market domination is knocking yourself off. NOT cloning yourself, but creating a new unique selling proposition in the same market.
That's why Toyota created Lexus. It's why McDonalds started Chipotle. It's not just big companies either; it's just as true with "little" guys on the internet. In some of the most competitive markets imaginable, you see 11 real ads on the first page, and most people don't know that two parent companies might be responsible for five or six of them.Hey, if you've successfully gained a foothold in one market--and you understand that market deeply--and want to grow your business why go to the trouble of learning a brand-new niche?
Do something in the one you're already in. Create a new offer that's so appealing, it takes its place along with the other top dogs: New product, new website, new Google account.
Don't ever forget that on the any search term there's a whole spectrum of tastes and desires that the keyword represents. One website and one ad can only cater to a handful of them. There are still others you're not serving. But you can.
Do Field Research
As lush and fascinating as the internet may be for research, we can't help but point you in the direction of trade shows where you'll not only get a state-of-the-moment feel for your industry but you'll also get a lot of inside information not yet published online. The networking at these shows may be more valuable than anything on the trade show floor.
The product or service you offer also merits abundant research time. The better you know your offering, the better equipped you'll be to talk about it, understand it, market it. Eventually, you'll be called upon to prepare a benefits list, that actual in-writing list of the benefits people gain by buying from you. We urge you to put a lot of effort and creativity into this list because it's what you'll be communicating to your prospects and customers. They'll then make their decision to purchase (or not to purchase) based upon the benefits you do (or don't) convey.
Understand Your Competition
Your next point of research will be your competition, which you'll already know pretty well because of your forays into studying your industry and your product. Learn what they say and where they say it. Maintain vigil here because they'll tip their hand frequently by how they adjust their message and their media. You don't want to copy them but you do want to be aware of what they're up to. You can be sure that they're checking up on you. You might even buy the product of the leader in your industry. Get to see firsthand its sales presentation, display, packaging, follow-up, and product itself. Learning from leaders is a guerrilla strength.
Explore Media OpportunitiesDon't fail to research life outside your own industry. Get to know the media, online and offline available to you. Get to know the internet on an intimate basis within your industry. Start-up guerrillas engage in a monthly half hour surf of the internet to catch the best that's online--in and out of their industry. The research you put in looking for media opportunities for your company will pay off every time.
Study the Latest Technology
That research should include researching the latest technology that might empower your business. The move in entrepreneurship is toward automation. Happily, automation is not expensive. Your company can give off the vibes of a huge, lavishly funded corporation with a constantly busy staff, when the truth is it's just little old you pushing the right button on your automated customer profitability center. Technology can help you in the areas of marketing, production, finances, distribution, and a whole lot more. Skip it if you don't need it, but don't miss it if it can contribute to your profitability. It probably can. More people earn money while they sleep than ever before.
We didn't explore a totally different kind of research, one that we applaud and respect. But assuming you aren't yet a wealthy and thriving company, we nudge you in the direction of free research, which has been outlined above. Later, when you've taken this advice and are a wealthy and thriving company, look into paid research, which takes over the entire research function, from asking the right questions to analyzing the answers. The right question can be the making of a company.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Marketing for a charitable cause can benefit your company.
Join Forces
Research shows that two-thirds consider companies' business practices when deciding what to buy, so what are your actions telling prospective customers about you? In today's cause-conscious era, nearly 90 percent. consumers say they would switch from one brand or vendor to another if the other were associated with a good cause, according to the "2007 Cone Cause Evolution Survey."
The term "cause marketing" describes a partnership between a business and a charitable cause and the surrounding promotional marketing campaign. It's a superior tool for conferring credibility on a company and can benefit growing businesses that want to earn respect and build name recognition and overall company awareness. Consumer loyalty increases when customers believe you stand for something worthwhile or that their purchases further a worthy cause. Cause marketing is a win-win, and entrepreneurs are using it to make a difference while building their businesses.
For true success, a quick-fix association with a cause or simple lip service won't do the trick. You need an integrated campaign that incorporates an issue-related message. Follow these guidelines for a campaign that will serve your business and the community.
1. Identify potential causes. Your business has a culture and a mission all its own. So select a cause that matches your company's values and allows you and your employees to share time, effort and support that comes from the heart. Your marketing campaign will be most effective if the cause you select relates to your company or its offerings. A clothing boutique, for example, could form an alliance with an organization that provides winter coats for children.
2. Define the partnership. It's vital to select a nonprofit partner that provides mutual support. Choose an organization that's capable of formalizing and carrying out an agreement that will achieve your goals for increased visibility and brand awareness. Define how the organization will use your company logo and name in its press releases, on its website and in other informational materials. Negotiate for opportunities to jointly promote to the organization's constituency through its newsletters, e-mails and events. Also, agree on how your company will be permitted to use the chosen organization's name and logo in your marketing campaign. Select an organization that you can team up with to create new, mutually beneficial marketing campaigns. Then plan for a long-term alliance you can build on year after year.
3. Create an integrated campaign. Cause marketing is all about motivating an audience to take action, usually to raise money or collect goods. That means you need an integrated campaign that educates the audience about the need for their support and how they can help. Make the campaign an integral part of your company's overall marketing strategy and allocate advertising and promotional funds, plus time to run the PR component of your campaign. You can foster interaction between your company and its audience via your website, or you can create a unique site specifically for this purpose. Pantene, for example, created a campaign encouraging women to donate their hair to create free wigs for cancer patients and promoted it via a multifaceted PR effort, events, public service announcements and a campaign website. Once your campaign gathers momentum, you can share the positive results on your site and through the media.
Research shows that two-thirds consider companies' business practices when deciding what to buy, so what are your actions telling prospective customers about you? In today's cause-conscious era, nearly 90 percent. consumers say they would switch from one brand or vendor to another if the other were associated with a good cause, according to the "2007 Cone Cause Evolution Survey."
The term "cause marketing" describes a partnership between a business and a charitable cause and the surrounding promotional marketing campaign. It's a superior tool for conferring credibility on a company and can benefit growing businesses that want to earn respect and build name recognition and overall company awareness. Consumer loyalty increases when customers believe you stand for something worthwhile or that their purchases further a worthy cause. Cause marketing is a win-win, and entrepreneurs are using it to make a difference while building their businesses.
For true success, a quick-fix association with a cause or simple lip service won't do the trick. You need an integrated campaign that incorporates an issue-related message. Follow these guidelines for a campaign that will serve your business and the community.
1. Identify potential causes. Your business has a culture and a mission all its own. So select a cause that matches your company's values and allows you and your employees to share time, effort and support that comes from the heart. Your marketing campaign will be most effective if the cause you select relates to your company or its offerings. A clothing boutique, for example, could form an alliance with an organization that provides winter coats for children.
2. Define the partnership. It's vital to select a nonprofit partner that provides mutual support. Choose an organization that's capable of formalizing and carrying out an agreement that will achieve your goals for increased visibility and brand awareness. Define how the organization will use your company logo and name in its press releases, on its website and in other informational materials. Negotiate for opportunities to jointly promote to the organization's constituency through its newsletters, e-mails and events. Also, agree on how your company will be permitted to use the chosen organization's name and logo in your marketing campaign. Select an organization that you can team up with to create new, mutually beneficial marketing campaigns. Then plan for a long-term alliance you can build on year after year.
3. Create an integrated campaign. Cause marketing is all about motivating an audience to take action, usually to raise money or collect goods. That means you need an integrated campaign that educates the audience about the need for their support and how they can help. Make the campaign an integral part of your company's overall marketing strategy and allocate advertising and promotional funds, plus time to run the PR component of your campaign. You can foster interaction between your company and its audience via your website, or you can create a unique site specifically for this purpose. Pantene, for example, created a campaign encouraging women to donate their hair to create free wigs for cancer patients and promoted it via a multifaceted PR effort, events, public service announcements and a campaign website. Once your campaign gathers momentum, you can share the positive results on your site and through the media.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
THINK BIG AND SCORE BIG
"The Greatest Secret of All
By David Gardner
. I'm glad you found it, because it is your lucky day, dear Fool: The greatest secret to easy riches in the stock market is contained right here, below.
I won't say you can't find it anywhere else. Maybe it's there in books like You Can Be a Stock Market Genius or How to Make $1,000,000 in the Stock Market Automatically. Maybe Robert Kiyosaki writes about it in Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Maybe not. I wouldn't know -- I'm not going to read those books. I don't need to, because I already know the most important secret. And I'm more than happy to give it all away below.
I learned it for good on the very day I turned 25On my 25th birthday, I discovered the truth. The powerful impression it made on me changed my investing forever, and my investment returns went from so-so before that to skyrocketing ever since. Three years later, I bought and held AOL all the way to 200-bagger status. Three years after that, I paid $3.18 per share for Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), which may not be trading at its 52-week high of $101, but still puts a smile on my face at $77. Both of these positions I still hold -- though, fortunately, I've given away a lot of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) (AOL) shares to charity, because they haven't been much worth holding these past few years!
More recently, I've now picked 71 stocks as monthly picks for six years at Motley Fool Stock Advisor. Their average return is 70.5% -- more than 50 percentage points ahead of the comparable S&P 500 return of 19.7%. Had I not had the experience I'm about to relate, none of these real-world numbers would be the same.
Here's what happenedWhen I turned 25, I was the fortunate beneficiary of a trust from my grandfather Gardner's estate, divvied up among each of his grandchildren. Having gotten married at age 24 without any official employment at the time -- you can imagine the rehearsal-dinner toasts -- I should probably have been more interested in this inheritance than I was. But if I recall correctly, I didn't show a great deal of interest or attention when my father began presaging this event in occasional phone conversations.
The money had been put in the primary care of my uncle, money manager Gene Gardner of Lancaster, Pa. (His firm, Gardner Investments -- now Gardner, Russo & Gardner -- is a respected and successful value-focused operation.) I had grown up with three primary ideas about my Uncle Gene: First (and most important), he is a very funny uncle; second, he is a champion bridge player; and third, he is an excellent money manager.
On the fateful day of the distribution, I made a trip to Lancaster with my dad to visit my uncle and sign documents transferring the investment portfolio. I cannot now remember the exact setting or particular circumstances. Sixteen years ago already seems like another era -- it was pre-Internet, for one thing. But it was during this trip that I would be greeted with an image that has seared itself into my memory -- and will now sear itself into yours as well, if I convey it to you properly.
I am not here to talk amounts, portfolio theory, or asset-allocation models (although if you're interested, the portfolio was mostly in stocks, probably about 25 different positions).
I am not here to talk individual stocks. I can't tell you definitively what many of the stocks were, but most were well-known or respected firms with strong long-term records.
Here's what I sawExpressed in easy-to-read black and white on a page or two of numbers was an astonishing demonstration of long-term investment success. Almost position by position, stocks that were trading for $30, $40, $50 a share on that day had been held for years and years, invested at cost bases of $1.57, $2.34, $0.88.
What I saw that day is what every young investor should see: Finding good companies and holding those positions tenaciously over time can yield multiples upon multiples of your original investment. That's what great investors do. Warren Buffett has done it with classic American brands Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) and American Express (NYSE: AXP); Philip Fisher did it with Motorola (NYSE: MOT) and Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN); Shelby Davis did it with American International Group (NYSE: AIG). The act of doing it is part of what made them great investors. And after finding good companies, boy, do you ever work a lot less than people making dozens of trades a week, following fast-talking TV gurus or somebody's overpriced charting software.
I'm happy to say that when I combined what our dad himself invested (also brilliantly) for us from birth with the estate I came into at 25, there was no immediate pressure for me to seek a job. Instead, my brother Tom and I had the freedom and opportunity to do something really special. Two years later, we started our own company -- The Motley Fool. (Thank you, Dad, and thank you, Uncle Gene.)
The greatest secret?Is the greatest secret of all even a secret? Maybe not, but judging by the short-term mindset of many investors -- individual and institutional alike -- it may as well be.
So scribble this down and put it on your fridge door: Find good companies and hold those positions tenaciously over time to yield multiples upon multiples of your original investment.
That's how to go about finding the real stock-market winners -- the mega-winners that multiply over time -- and it's what I'm doing, teaching, and advising at Motley Fool Stock Advisor every day. Five of my stocks have more than quadrupled, and that's even including their declines in the big sell-off over the past few months. Two of them are seven-baggers. (And that's just my side of the scorecard -- my brother Tom is also whomping the market with the 71 stocks on his side.)
We are focused on the long term. Let the day traders work all day for their 5% blips here and there, and fret when the market sells off for a month. Boo-hoo-hoo. We play an entirely different game -- a game measured by huge percentage points of profit, and counted in years.
Why not become part of the team? I invite you to join me for free at Stock Advisor with a 30-day guest pass. Come and see all of our recommendations, join us on the message boards, and, best of all, start practicing the greatest investing secret of all. David Gardner is co-founder of The Motley Fool and co-advisor of Stock Advisor. David owns shares of Amazon and Time Warner. Amazon and Time Warner are Stock Advisor recommendations. Coca-Cola is an Inside Value recommendation. The Fool is investors writing for investors
By David Gardner
. I'm glad you found it, because it is your lucky day, dear Fool: The greatest secret to easy riches in the stock market is contained right here, below.
I won't say you can't find it anywhere else. Maybe it's there in books like You Can Be a Stock Market Genius or How to Make $1,000,000 in the Stock Market Automatically. Maybe Robert Kiyosaki writes about it in Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Maybe not. I wouldn't know -- I'm not going to read those books. I don't need to, because I already know the most important secret. And I'm more than happy to give it all away below.
I learned it for good on the very day I turned 25On my 25th birthday, I discovered the truth. The powerful impression it made on me changed my investing forever, and my investment returns went from so-so before that to skyrocketing ever since. Three years later, I bought and held AOL all the way to 200-bagger status. Three years after that, I paid $3.18 per share for Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), which may not be trading at its 52-week high of $101, but still puts a smile on my face at $77. Both of these positions I still hold -- though, fortunately, I've given away a lot of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) (AOL) shares to charity, because they haven't been much worth holding these past few years!
More recently, I've now picked 71 stocks as monthly picks for six years at Motley Fool Stock Advisor. Their average return is 70.5% -- more than 50 percentage points ahead of the comparable S&P 500 return of 19.7%. Had I not had the experience I'm about to relate, none of these real-world numbers would be the same.
Here's what happenedWhen I turned 25, I was the fortunate beneficiary of a trust from my grandfather Gardner's estate, divvied up among each of his grandchildren. Having gotten married at age 24 without any official employment at the time -- you can imagine the rehearsal-dinner toasts -- I should probably have been more interested in this inheritance than I was. But if I recall correctly, I didn't show a great deal of interest or attention when my father began presaging this event in occasional phone conversations.
The money had been put in the primary care of my uncle, money manager Gene Gardner of Lancaster, Pa. (His firm, Gardner Investments -- now Gardner, Russo & Gardner -- is a respected and successful value-focused operation.) I had grown up with three primary ideas about my Uncle Gene: First (and most important), he is a very funny uncle; second, he is a champion bridge player; and third, he is an excellent money manager.
On the fateful day of the distribution, I made a trip to Lancaster with my dad to visit my uncle and sign documents transferring the investment portfolio. I cannot now remember the exact setting or particular circumstances. Sixteen years ago already seems like another era -- it was pre-Internet, for one thing. But it was during this trip that I would be greeted with an image that has seared itself into my memory -- and will now sear itself into yours as well, if I convey it to you properly.
I am not here to talk amounts, portfolio theory, or asset-allocation models (although if you're interested, the portfolio was mostly in stocks, probably about 25 different positions).
I am not here to talk individual stocks. I can't tell you definitively what many of the stocks were, but most were well-known or respected firms with strong long-term records.
Here's what I sawExpressed in easy-to-read black and white on a page or two of numbers was an astonishing demonstration of long-term investment success. Almost position by position, stocks that were trading for $30, $40, $50 a share on that day had been held for years and years, invested at cost bases of $1.57, $2.34, $0.88.
What I saw that day is what every young investor should see: Finding good companies and holding those positions tenaciously over time can yield multiples upon multiples of your original investment. That's what great investors do. Warren Buffett has done it with classic American brands Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) and American Express (NYSE: AXP); Philip Fisher did it with Motorola (NYSE: MOT) and Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN); Shelby Davis did it with American International Group (NYSE: AIG). The act of doing it is part of what made them great investors. And after finding good companies, boy, do you ever work a lot less than people making dozens of trades a week, following fast-talking TV gurus or somebody's overpriced charting software.
I'm happy to say that when I combined what our dad himself invested (also brilliantly) for us from birth with the estate I came into at 25, there was no immediate pressure for me to seek a job. Instead, my brother Tom and I had the freedom and opportunity to do something really special. Two years later, we started our own company -- The Motley Fool. (Thank you, Dad, and thank you, Uncle Gene.)
The greatest secret?Is the greatest secret of all even a secret? Maybe not, but judging by the short-term mindset of many investors -- individual and institutional alike -- it may as well be.
So scribble this down and put it on your fridge door: Find good companies and hold those positions tenaciously over time to yield multiples upon multiples of your original investment.
That's how to go about finding the real stock-market winners -- the mega-winners that multiply over time -- and it's what I'm doing, teaching, and advising at Motley Fool Stock Advisor every day. Five of my stocks have more than quadrupled, and that's even including their declines in the big sell-off over the past few months. Two of them are seven-baggers. (And that's just my side of the scorecard -- my brother Tom is also whomping the market with the 71 stocks on his side.)
We are focused on the long term. Let the day traders work all day for their 5% blips here and there, and fret when the market sells off for a month. Boo-hoo-hoo. We play an entirely different game -- a game measured by huge percentage points of profit, and counted in years.
Why not become part of the team? I invite you to join me for free at Stock Advisor with a 30-day guest pass. Come and see all of our recommendations, join us on the message boards, and, best of all, start practicing the greatest investing secret of all. David Gardner is co-founder of The Motley Fool and co-advisor of Stock Advisor. David owns shares of Amazon and Time Warner. Amazon and Time Warner are Stock Advisor recommendations. Coca-Cola is an Inside Value recommendation. The Fool is investors writing for investors
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