Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’

What Should A Magic Business Success Box Include?

// June 24th, 2009 // Comments // Business Resources

Image representing Blellow as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

I constantly find myself looking at companies, cool products and studying visionary leaders and marketers.  I have to say that I’m attracted to success and I love trying to understand how to mix the right ingredients for my own success potion.  I also love to share experiences and lessons learned to help others and really enjoy connecting with and collaborating with others, sharing ideas and trying to make a significant impact on this world.

Some times I have the answers some times I don’t.  Yet, one string of passion that keeps a strong hold of me is trying to help other entrepreneurs and small businesses succeed and get to the next level.  So, I got to thinking - if I had a magic box with a handful of success tools given to me, what would it include?

Now, my personal box will probably be a bit different than yours but, there could be a few things that are constant in all business success boxes.  Here goes my short list:

  1. You must have a Meaningful Marketing potion ( here’s a great recipe ).
  2. You must have a Great Team of People with Excellent Leadership, Strong Values & Vision.
  3. You must have a Keg of Passion, a Troth of Determination and an Evangelist that is a network monster who brings in customers and business deals like there’s no tomorrow.
  4. You must have Faith, Belief & Focus if you expect to succeed.
  5. Some cold hard cash and luck are always fantastic but you can do it with lots of elbow grease.

Here are some great resources to consider:

There is a ton more out there and I’m sure that you have some great information and resources to share so please do.  I’m personally working on a Social Media Starter Kit of sorts with Dean & Mark, who are fellow members of building43.com another fantastic resource for learning about cutting-edge internet technology and strategy. And, I would love to add any suggested resources to the starter kit.

What would you include in your business success box?

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

People Do Business, Tools Don’t: How Do You Systemize Social Media?

// June 18th, 2009 // Comments // #TwitterTalks, Social Media Marketing

My social Network on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter...
Image by luc legay via Flickr

I’ve been thinking about some of the things we’ve been discussing on building43 — A community for people fanatical about the Internet — and things that have been bubbling up for a while in other spheres of conversation.

We, as a western business culture, seem to be really caught up and infatuated with the amount of tools we use, not excluding me.  I’m a gadget junkie and tool freak!  I have so many accounts for different web applications and services it’s crazy.  There is so much out there to experiment with and test.  Part of me thinks there is a level of unproductivity because of this behavior another part me thinks there is a lot to learn through experimentation with these tools and technologies.  What do you think?

Well, I read a great post on ProBlogger this week by Nick Thacker called 5 Ways To ‘Systemize’ your Blogging.  It really rang home with me as it is part of the practice I advise clients to take in developing their content strategy.  I admit I need to practice better what I preach with my new blog here.  Why is the this relevant to People Do Business, Tools Don’t?

People are the lifeblood of any business.  People do the work.  People work with customers - people.  People manage people.  People make the plans and people take action or don’t.

Tools on the otherhand — computuers, phones, web applications — are levers to facilitate and increase productivity of people.  Productivity can be measured a number of ways based on what your job is right?

So, what I’ve been thinking about is - how are social media and internet tools making us more productive and getting business done.  How are we selecting the tools we decided to use for business?  How could you and I take the advice Nick gave and apply it to Social Media Marketing?

This is a question that I think should be discussed in collaboration with others as it is a problem that I think many businesses are struggling with today.  How do you systemize the practice of social media?

Please share your thoughts as I would love to put together a collaborative document or “Best Practices” Starter-kit for Social Media or something to help businesses get over the change threshold.  I am going to start working on how to ‘Systemize’ my own Social Media practices and will report back later.

Last, thank you Nick for a great post - you really got me thinking and acting.

>>>> UPDATE:  I’m bringing the conversation that we had today on this topic today on Friend Feed <<<<

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

5 Reasons Why Your Company Needs Video Marketing

// June 16th, 2009 // Comments // Video Marketing

{{legend|#ff0000|1930 to 1939}} {{legend|#ff54...
Image via Wikipedia

For years you have heard about the online video craze.  You have also heard for decades that Television is the most powerful medium for advertising your product or service and generating leads.  Further, you know how expensive buying TV media can be.  Well, I am about to share with you 5 reasons why your company needs to use online video as a marketing tactic.

1. Online Video Is Searchable & Historical

After you spend thousands of dollars producing a TV commercial you have to go out and buy your media placement right?  And, to do this you need to have thousands if not millions depending upon how far and wide you want to distribute the message.

Also consider that after you have spent thousands if not millions on your TV campaign you then have a duration by which your TV spot runs and expires.  Oh, not to mention you have to pay more money if you want to run the commercial again.  Oops, I also forgot to mention that in order to measure the effectiveness of your TV spot you’ll be depending on an archaic metric system — Nielsen Ratings — that really produces a large failure rate yet when you look at the success criteria.  Is the most effective and most expensive of all the traditional marketing media really that effective in terms of ROI?

In contrast, with online video you could spend thousands of dollars on producing your commercial and a few thousand for premium placement on high traffic websites but, you don’t have to!  You also don’t have to pay for media placement when you want to run a spot.  Of the biggest advantages of online video, when you publish it online it becomes a piece of internet history!

Your video is now searchable and on the internet historically.  You no longer have to pay someone to have your spot run in market X for Y number of days - isn’t that cool?

2. Online Video Is Selective Upon Demand

Since your video is now part of the internet forever and searchable when someone is looking for relative content, your video is available to be played on-demand.  This is really important, specifically for the fact that demand driven or opt-in marketing has been invited by the individual - you’re not interrupting the person.  They have given your company permission to market to them.

Since you have been given permission to market, you are more likely to actually sell your product/service to this person.  Or, you could go the traditional route and cast a very expensive net in hopes of getting a few people to respond to your very expensive message.  What sounds more intelligent to you?

3.  Online Video Is Shareable

Ok, so now your prospect or customer wants to tell others about your product or service.  Do you think they can send them a TV commercial via email from the 65″ Plasma?  Well, they could if they watch your video spot on a Web TV and had a shareable video player option. Then, so would their friends, their friends friends and so on.

Customers who become promoters of your product or service, which you want, are  the most powerful marketing medium you could deploy.  And, with online video to go along with their product recommendation you have a very effective marketing strategy in the works.

4.  Online Video Is Immediately Global

Did I mention that once you publish your video online you now are able to reach a global audience?  I just did.

You cannot buy a global TV spot, period.  Ah, but you can produce a global online video spot for FREE if you want and it could be highly effective.

Check out this video commercial on the new iPhone 3G-S:



5.  Online Video Is Measurable & Actionable

Thanks to analytical software offered by companies like Ominture & online services like TubeMogul you can get detailed analysis on who watched the video, where, when, on what type of a computer, type of browser, screen resolution and more.  Most importantly, you can track the user coming to your site or web property to take action that you offered in the video.  Can you do that with TV, direct mail, news paper - no?  I didn’t think so but, if something has changed let me know.

* BONUS * — Your Video is Now Viewable on A Mobile!

With mobile video subscriber expectations to top 534 million by 2014, you have enough time to figure out how to better market your products and services online so you have a better chance at success.


Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]