Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurship’ Category
Why Startups Are Still Better at Attracting Rock Star Talent
Maybe it’s the lack of a fully entrenched, overly conservative, business as usual HR departments.
The memorable and engaging tweet was just the beginning. The position description for their Client Services Associate opening starts off like many others, but continues to set the stage both in terms of the speed of your motor and your ability to fit with their culture. I particularly love the “Willingness to work harder than you’re working now” personal requirement and “Non-crappy taste in music” nice to have.
Will they land a rock star? Time (motorhead) will tell. But regardless of the outcome, in a few short paragraphs and bucketed, bulleted lists, Argyle was able to inject their culture and personality into what could have been an otherwise sleeper of a job description.
Find Shawn Graham at CourtingYourCareer, on Twitter @ShawnGraham or via email at shawn(at)courtingyourcareer.com.
Is Your Brand A Maven Or A Wallflower?
It’s official: engagement through social media has created the biggest brands in the world
A fascinating report by Charlene Li, a partner in the Altimeter Group, and Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint, examines the top 100 most engaged global brands as rated by BusinessWeek and Interbrand. It explains how brands fall into one of four engagement profiles depending on the number of social media (SM) channels they have and their depth of engagement in them.
The four profiles are:
•Mavens – brands with seven or more SM channels with high levels of engagement across each. These brands have dedicated SM teams and ‘could not imagine operating without a strong presence in social media’. Examples include Starbucks and Dell.
•Butterflies – brands with seven or more SM channels but lower levels of engagement across each. These brands ‘still struggle with getting the full buy-in from their organizations to embrace the full multi-way conversation that deep engagement entails’. Examples include American Express and Hyundai.
•Selectives – brands with six or less SM channels with high levels of engagement across each. Often hamstrung by the lack of a dedicated SM team, they ‘focus on engaging customers deeply when and where it matters most’. Examples include retail group H&M and Philips.
•Wallflowers – brands with six or less SM channels but lower levels of engagement across each. They are ‘cautious about the risks [of SM engagement], uncertain about the benefits, and therefore engage only lightly in the channels where they are present’. Examples include McDonald’s and BP.
Li and Elowitz apply their findings to the BusinessWeek/Interbrand 2008 list of the top 100 worldwide brands – and the results speak for themselves. The top 13 places are all filled by Mavens. The first Butterfly (Oracle) appears at number 14, the first Selective (H&M) at number 23 and the first Wallflower at a lowly number 51.
For the record, the top 10 are:
1. Starbucks
2. Dell
3. eBay
4. Google
5. Microsoft
6. Thomson Reuters
7. Nike
8. Amazon
9. SAP
10. Intel and Yahoo (joint result)
The most successful brands, by a proverbial country mile, are those that actively engage with their customers through a number of different social media channels. This doesn’t mean employing a vast SM team (Starbucks has just six people overseeing 11 SM channels), but it does prove that simply setting up a Facebook fan page and asking your customers to ‘like’ it isn’t enough.
Engagement is the cornerstone of relationship marketing and this report should provide food for thought for anyone who continues to doubt the engagement-creating opportunities offered by SM marketing.
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Peter Applebaum is the Founder and Managing Director of Tick Yes. Tick Yes is a social media marketing company based in Sydney that uses proven digital relationship marketing strategies to help clients improve brand awareness, increase market share and meet profit objectives. For more information visit our website: http://www.tickyes.com/ or read more articles on our blog: http://tickyesblog.com/ |
Two Branding Gurus Tell Their Side of the Story, Part 2
This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert’s views alone.
Personal branding guru Dan Schawbel and brand identity guru David Brier face off.
BY FC Expert Blogger David BrierMon Sep 27, 2010
I recently interviewed Dan Schawbel, the author of the forthcoming Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future, the founder of the syndicated Personal Branding Blog, publisher of Personal Branding Magazine, and a columnist with BusinessWeek. Recently, Dan was named to the prestigious Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 list.
In this exclusive interview, Dan sheds light on the misunderstood realm of personal branding.
David: First off would you define “personal branding” as distinct from pitching oneself in the ordinary, hit-the-streets approach?
Dan: Personal branding is all about discovering what makes you special, and then communicating it to the right people, through multiple channels. We all have personal brands because we’re constantly being judged based on first and last impressions, and because we always have to sell ourselves in interviews and in social settings. We also have an inherent need for self-differentiation because of how competitive the world is on a global scale and because people love to feel unique in their own way.
In the business world, it’s imperative that we brand ourselves as experts in our field because that’s how you get noticed, and get hired. You need to stand for something, target a specific audience, and base your brand around authenticity and your talents. Since the Internet is the global talent pool, you have to have an online presence, so people can find you, hire you, or do business with you. I recommend a blog under your full name, as well as profiles on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I also recommend that you have your own motto, logo/professional picture, and a unique design that you can leverage across your entire online presence.
David: How does personal branding differ from corporate or product branding?
Dan: Personal branding really exists because people can borrow the same strategies as product and corporate brands. For instance, you get a consistent experience at McDonalds all around the world, and whenever you watch Jimmy Kimmel on TV, you know what to expect from him. While consistency is an important factor in branding, products and people both have to stand for something, have missions, values, and goals behind them. Both people and products base their value and “price” off of supply and demand in the marketplace, and every brand needs a Web site, and a presence in social media.
People need to start acting more like companies and companies need to start acting more like people these days. Consumers are begging to purchase from a human-faced business. You won’t get the same time of emotion and connection with a product than a person you meet and get along with. A person’s body language is more powerful than any product you can purchase on the market too. The biggest difference between personal and corporate branding is scalability. People can’t scale but companies can.
David: What tips do you have for someone who wants to really carve out their niche for their personal brand? Can you cite some excellent examples?
Dan: Some of the people who have excelled at personal branding include Marcus Buckingham, who developed the “strengths movement,” and has become known to the media as “the strengths and personal development expert.” Also, there’s Tim Ferriss, who branded himself as the lifestyle design expert, which was new, hip, and attracted a lot of interest. We can learn a lot from Oprah and Donald Trump, who put their name on everything they do, create and license. When I think about escaping corporate America, I think of Pam Slim first because she’s positioned herself as the top-of-mind brand in that area.
If you want to successfully develop your personal brand, you have to be as specific as you can with the audience you want to go after. Don’t bother being a social media guru, marketing expert, or personal finance expert. You need to be more specific than that if you want to stand out, get noticed, and get job opportunities or new business. Become the top marketing expert in Philadelphia or the top social media guru for reaching millennials. By getting specific, you can differentiate yourself and attract new opportunities. Before developing your online identity, have clear short and long-term goals, and understand your audience as much as you possibly can.
David: How can social media be used as a crutch thus inhibiting someone’s personal brand?
Dan: A lot of people think that just by establishing social media profiles that they will get press and new clients. There are over one hundred million people on Twitter, over five hundred million people on Facebook, and over seventy-five million people on LinkedIn. This isn’t 2005 anymore. You need to work as hard as you can to actually leverage your online presence to pull in new readers, and leads. Having millions of fans on social networks doesn’t mean anything anymore because there’s very little direct revenue impact, trust me. What you need to do is to use them so that you’re connecting only with potential buyers and influencers and then invest as much time as possible to build relationships with them. Also, you need to use social media to pull people into your main Web site because that’s where you can actually convert them.
David: Can the principles of personal branding be applied to larger corporations? If so, what recommendations do you have for larger corporations to make good use of this approach?
Dan: Every single company needs to train their employees to become spokespeople now. You need to get everyone on the same page, with the right message, and to the right audience. There should be guidelines though so people have a reference point. Companies should have a human face so that they can talk to their market like a person, instead of a machine. Press releases and other old media are becoming less relevant, while people (who have personalities) are becoming more relevant over time. Seek people in your company that can bring it to life.
While we both have “our sides if the story” regarding branding, there is the common component of differentiation and refusing to blend in. Additionally, there is a correct assessment of who your audience is.
Done correctly, you will have a brand that knocks it out of the ballpark for all of the right reasons, and not as a result of mere fate. I want to thank Dan Schawbel for joing me in sharing these thoughts with the professional community.
David Brier is an award-winning brand identity designer, author, and branding expert. His firm’s work has won the admiration of peers and organizations but, more importantly, has helped clients jump-start their brands in new and innovative ways, even (and especially) when they’ve failed in previous brand makeovers.
Entrepreneur or Victim?
“Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances….Strong men believe in cause and effect.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every thought you form broadcasts a distinct and particular frequency, and that frequency elicits a response from the quantum universe as surely as a swinging hammer has an impact on the surface it strikes. Things don’t arbitrarily happen to you. Events in your business are the reflection of your thoughts, the echo of your own actions and the thinking behind them. In the East, this truth is reflected in the idea of Karma, and in the West, the Golden Rule. The core of this principle is this—You are at cause in your life and your business.
For many people, this is a challenging principle because it puts you squarely in the driver’s seat. Embracing this principle means you no longer have the luxury of blaming other people or external circumstances for the things that happen in your life.
Here is the flip side of that equation: Embracing this principle also means you have far more capacity to create the events and circumstances in your life than you have ever imagined possible.
When we don’t recognize this principle operating in our lives, it’s easy to start seeing ourselves as being the effect of those events. Rather than seeing that we are making things happen, we start to believe that things are simply happening to us. This easily leads to what is often called victim mentality.
If you are someone who is growing a massively successful business, there is no place for victim mentality in your life. The two states of mind—victim thinking and entrepreneurship—are 100 percent incompatible.
The word entrepreneur derives from the French word that refers to the source of the event, the one who initiates. Building and growing a successful business requires a commitment to being at cause, not at effect.
There are many things you need to know to successfully play the game of business. A great many of them you can learn as you go, and a great many skills and fields of expertise you can bring into your business by hiring or partnering with people who possess them.
But there is one skill you must have yourself, and it is a single most important skill of any successful businessperson, the one without which success is impossible: You must be practiced at creating the thoughts that will serve your business.
Creating a clear business vision is the critical first step to your success, but it’s just that: the first step. No matter how crystal clear it is, simply having a goal doesn’t make it happen. If you want to create financial freedom for yourself, five key elements have to be in place.
The Five Musts are:
- You must find something that stirs your soul.
- You must become excellent at it.
- You must recondition your mind to believe you can have it and achieve it.
- You must understand how to make money at it.
- You must take daily action.
Find more ways to live the life of your dreams as an entrepreneur at
The Answer for you: The right thoughts, held clearly and resolutely, can build your dream business.
Written by John Assaraf: www.johnassaraf.com
Two Branding Gurus Tell Their Side of the Story, Part 1
This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert’s views alone.
Personal branding guru Dan Schawbel and brand identity guru David Brier face off.
BY FC Expert Blogger David Brier
In business, differentiation is one of the watchwords that guide the best and most successful brands. How else can anyone–or any product or business–get any recognition? With the endlessly growing number of voices seeking to be heard on every front, how does one get heard in a world that’s too busy to listen? How does one rise above this rising tide of mediocrity?
A Rare Combination of Minds
Recently, a unique opportunity arose with two branding leaders: personal branding guru Dan Schawbel and brand identity guru David Brier (yup, that’s me). Each is an author with his own industry-leading books as well as regularly writing articles and blog posts. Each is passionate about their respective zone of expertise and that’s where the similarities end. While the areas they solve for a wide range of clients are quite distinct, the principles they each use provide great insight into some universal branding truths.
Dan Schawbel is the author of the forthcoming Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future. He is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, the founder of the syndicated Personal Branding Blog, publisher of Personal Branding Magazine, and a columnist with BusinessWeek. Recently, Dan was named to the prestigious Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 list.
David Brier is an award-winning brand identity designer, author and branding expert. He is the recipient of over 300 industry awards and is the Chief Gravity Defyer (e.g., Creative Director) of DBD International. He is the author of Defying Gravity and Rising Above the Noise codifying the 8 principles of brand elevation with case studies for companies as divergent as Revlon, Legacy Chocolates, Botanical Bakery, New York City Ballet and the legendary Joanna Vargas Salon in New York City.
The Personal Guru Takes on the Brand Identity Expert
Recently, Dan Schawbel interviewed me and asked me about brand identity for people and companies with questions about logos and slogans, and more. Here’s the interview.
Dan: What goes into a corporate brand identity? Would this be similar for a personal brand?
David: The basics of “a brand” are largely misunderstood. While aesthetics, design and appearance are of considerable and noteworthy importance, a brand has as its primary function, differentiation. Why? Because if everyone is doing this and that in our age of information overload, they all blend into one mass confusion or a sea of noise. My most favorite description of this phenomena is “a sea of sameness.”
Here are some facts: People have less time to absorb more information ever than in history. Each year, 26,000 new products will come out. It was mentioned recently that as many as 50 million tweets were posted in a single day. Just the other day, Google reported that 293 million searches were conducted in a single day. One report stated that a new blog is started every half second.
So with that being the marketplace, one must consider what will be “a brand” that will stand apart from the chaos.
A corporate brand must reflect the company but more importantly, it must 1) be distinct from the competition and 2) resonate with the intended audience. Apple’s iPod which was the 3rd or 4th MP3 player on the market became the champion because it tackled both of those points remarkably well. It identified to whom their product would be meaningful: teenagers and those in their 20- and 30-somethings and did it in a way that stood heads and heels above anything before it.
The same holds true for a personal brand.
But in the “personal brand” category, what I see a lot of people do–who may write well or have charisma or are passionate–is ignore the power of design and great overall presentation. The great corporate brands, such as Apple, Harley Davidson or Nike (or Martha Stewart for that matter) know the value and importance of design, language, photography, color and all those components that great corporate brands know. I see these as the most overlooked and abused aspects in personal branding.
I recently wrote a free eBook entitled “The Lucky Brand” which covers some of these points in detail.
Dan: What’s more important, a logo or a slogan for a brand?
David: I wouldn’t say either is more important, and I wouldn’t say its a choice. This is like asking, what’s more important, the shirt or the tie? Or the dress or the shoes. I would say it’s the ensemble and how the pieces work together. You could ask yourself, would Apple be where it is today without its world-famous “Think different” campaign? Yet today, you simply see the icon, no words.
Each brand is its own unique vision and creates its own vocabulary. In the 30 years I’ve been creating brands, sometimes one factor is more important and plays a more prominent role than the other.
But both dress a brand up for success.
Dan: How has your role as a brand strategist changed in the past decade. What are customers looking for now?
David: I would say my role has become more comprehensive.
Ten to fifteen years ago, clients would need branding solutions that were more visually based. Today, there’s this other factor: the channel of social media. I stress this as a channel because some clients have come to us passionate over this new strategy: Social media. I then explain social media is not a strategy, it is a channel upon which the right branding and the right messages can be distributed. So, now I merely add that into the mix of our planning and anticipation to make what we create work on those additional channels.
Still, my role is helping the client focus on this: Give me 4-6 reasons their customers should give a damn about their product. Then converting that into something remarkable, captivating, engrossing and exciting. If you don’t have that, you’ll never arrive at that terrific “dialog” everyone talks about having with their customers. Well, it’s hard to have a conversation of you’re invisible.
Dan: When a company is seeking your help but they have no differentiation in their market, what questions do you ask?
David: Ooh, this is like asking the secrets to making a brand kick its competition’s ass. There are some “usual suspects” I seek out.
Here are some key ones:
- Who are the leaders in their industry?
- Do they offer anything exclusive that their competition does not offer?
- I know you’re great, but so is everyone else (the truth hurts, but the competition also think they’re the cat’s meow). So, why should your prospective customer care about what you’re offering?
- What can be done that will set you apart?
- What “the standard” to which everyone operates?
That’s why Dyson was able to put all the other vacuum cleaners to shame because all them grew complacent making incremental improvements, but Dyson rewrote the rule book. Like Apple did with iPhone.
Dan: How has social media impacted the brand of your business and yourself?
David: Social media has been interesting and very beneficial because there’s that much more of a channel of communication to convey what you’re about. It’s also wide open virgin territory, where you can reach the world with greater ease. The trick is having something to say in a unique way.
For example I wrote the book entitled, “Defying Gravity and Rising Above the Noise.” To make that work as a brand, my URL is risingabovethenoise.com and my title is Chief Gravity Defyer. That snowballs into a communication that’s more memorable than “brand specialist” or “brand identity expert.” Those would be accurate (with a gazillion others using those same words and titles) but those wouldn’t differentiate. This comes in handy with social media.
I kind of fell into social media. I’m not a first adopter when it comes to technology but when I get on, I start to create wildly. So, now I am an expert blogger on two continents. The U.S. one is on Fast Company magazine. I am the number one submitter of information on about four categories on BusinessWeek’s Business Exchange (I think its Brand Identity, Brand Strategy, Graphic Design). I have a steady stream of business owners who purchase my book and my free ebook, “The Lucky Brand.” I also have had thousands of people view my presentations on Slideshare. So, there are a lot of avenues not including articles you can find. Video will the next area to majorly tackle.
Here’s a great example of the power of social media: I submitted the work we created for one client out of Napa Valley which subsequently got onto about 20+ blogs resulting in their getting inquiries from France to sell their product. Without social media, that would have never happened.
Part 2 is here.
David Brier is an award-winning brand identity designer, author, and branding expert. His firm’s work has won the admiration of peers and organizations but, more importantly, has helped clients jump-start their brands in new and innovative ways, even (and especially) when they’ve failed in previous brand makeovers.
10 Mistakes That Start-Up Entrepreneurs Make
When it comes to starting a successful business there’s no surefire playbook……..
that contains the winning game plan. On the other hand, there are about as many mistakes to be made as there are entrepreneurs to make them.
Recently, after a work-out at the gym with my trainer—an attractive young woman who’s also a dancer/actor—she told me about a web series that she’s producing and starring in together with a few friends. While the series has gained a large following online, she and her friends have not yet incorporated their venture, drafted an operating agreement, trademarked the show’s name or done any of the other things that businesses typically do to protect their intellectual property and divvy up the owners’ share of the company. While none of this may be a problem now, I told her, just wait until the show hits it big and everybody hires a lawyer.
Here, in my experience, are the top 10 mistakes that entrepreneurs make when starting a company:
1. Going it alone. It’s difficult to build a scalable business if you’re the only person involved. True, a solo public relations, web design or consulting firm may require little capital to start, and the price of hiring even one administrative assistant, sales representative or entry-level employee can eat up a big chunk of your profits. The solution: Make sure there’s enough margin in your pricing to enable you to bring in other people. Clients generally don’t mind outsourcing as long as they can still get face time with you, the skilled professional who’s managing the project. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists often churn out how-to business books and fancy themselves as management gurus, but few see their methodologies adopted. Eric Ries is experiencing something different. He speaks with WSJ’s Pui-Wing Tam.
2. Asking too many people for advice. It’s always good to get input from experts, especially experienced entrepreneurs who’ve built and sold successful companies in your industry. But getting too many people’s opinions can delay your decision so long that your company never gets out of the starting gate. The answer: Assemble a solid advisory board that you can tap on a regular basis but run the day-to-day yourself. Says Elyissia Wassung, chief executive of 2 Chicks With Chocolate Inc., a Matawan, N.J., chocolate company, “Pull in your [advisory] team for bi-weekly or, at the very least, monthly conference calls. You’ll wish you did it sooner!”
3. Spending too much time on product development, not enough on sales. While it’s hard to build a great company without a great product, entrepreneurs who spend too much time tinkering may lose customers to a competitor with a stronger sales organization. “I call [this misstep] the ‘Field of Dreams’ of entrepreneurship. If you build it, they will buy it,” says Sanjyot Dunung, CEO of Atma Global, Inc., a New York software publisher, who has made this mistake in her own business. “If you don’t keep one eye firmly focused on sales, you’ll likely run out of money and energy before you can successfully get your product to market.”
4. Targeting too small a market. It’s tempting to try to corner a niche, but your company’s growth will quickly hit a wall if the market you’re targeting is too tiny. Think about all the high school basketball stars who dream of playing in the NBA. Because there are only 30 teams and each team employs only a handful of players, the chances that your son will become the next Michael Jordan are pretty slim. The solution: Pick a bigger market that gives you the chance to grab a slice of the pie even if your company remains a smaller player.
6. Overpaying for customers. Spending big on advertising may bring in lots of customers, but it’s a money-losing strategy if your company can’t turn those dollars into life-time customer value. A magazine or web site that spends $500 worth of advertising to acquire a customer who pays $20 a month and cancels his or her subscription at the end of the year is simply pouring money down the drain. The solution: Test, measure, then test again. Once you’ve done enough testing to figure out how to make more money selling products and services to your customers than you spend acquiring those customers in the first place, roll out a major marketing campaign. (See related article, “On a Tight Budget? How to Land a Client.”)
7. Raising too little capital. Many start-ups assume that all they need is enough money to rent space, buy equipment, stock inventory and drive customers through the door. What they often forget is that they also need capital to pay for salaries, utilities, insurance and other overhead expenses until their company starts turning a profit. Unless you’re running the kind of business where everybody’s working for sweat equity and deferring compensation, you’ll need to raise enough money to tide you over until your revenues can cover your expenses and generate positive cash flow. The solution: Calculate your start-up costs before you open your doors, not afterwards.
8. Raising too much capital. Believe it or not, raising too much money can be a problem, too. Over-funded companies tend to get big and bloated, hiring too many people too soon and wasting valuable resources on trade show booths, parties, image ads and other frills. When the money runs out and investors lose patience (which is what happened 10 years ago when the dot-com market melted down), start-ups that frittered away their cash will have to close their doors. No matter how much money you raise at the outset, remember to bank some for a rainy day.
9. Not having a business plan. While not every company needs a formal business plan, a start-up that requires significant capital to grow and more than a year to turn a profit should map out how much time and money it’s going to take to get to its destination. This means thinking through the key metrics that make your business tick and building a model to spin off three years of sales, profits and cash-flow projections. “I wasted 10 years [fooling around] thinking like an artist and not a business person,” says Louis Piscione, president of Avanti Media Group, a New Jersey company that produces videos for corporate and private events. “I learned that you have to put some of your creative genius toward a business plan that forecasts and sets goals for growth and success.” (See related article, “Are Business Plans a Waste of Time?”)
10. Over-thinking your business plan. While many entrepreneurs I’ve met engage in seat-of-the-pants decision-making and fail to do their homework, other entrepreneurs are afraid to pull the trigger until they’re 100% certain that their plan will succeed. One lawyer I worked with several years ago was so skittish about leaving his six-figure job to launch his business that he never met with a single bank or investor who might have funded his company. The truth is that a business plan is not a crystal ball that can predict the future. At a certain point, you have to close your eyes and take the leap of faith.
Despite the many books and articles that have been written about entrepreneurship, it’s just not possible to start a company without making a few mistakes along the way. Just try to avoid making any mistake so large that your company can’t get back on its feet to fight another day.
About the Author
Rosalind Resnick is the founder and CEO and Axxess Business Consulting Inc., a New York consulting firm that develops business plans and financial projections for start-ups and early-stage companies. She is also the author of “The Vest Pocket Consultant’s Secrets of Small Business Success.”
What Makes (and Ruins) Great Company Stories
Does your company convey a remarkable story about its products or services?
By Vistage speaker Jeff Ogden
Does your company convey a remarkable story about its products or services? To make your products competitive in a world filled with marketing chatter, you need a memorable story that people want to share with each other. When you use a great story to convey your brand, people start talking about your business.
Seth Godin, the best-selling author of marketing books, writes frequently about the need to develop remarkable content—content, he says, that “the reader finds so interesting, people remark to each other about it.”
Great story-telling engages people on an emotional level and makes them want more. Don Hewitt , the late creator of 60 Minutes, said the success of that show relied on telling great stories.
Story telling can come in many forms. Most companies tell their stories through a mix of media (video, print, web, and audio) across a mix of delivery mechanisms which might include online and print advertising, company Web site, social media, television, events, publicity, or other avenues.
So what are some rules of story-telling that marketers can follow? Let’s look at what makes (and ruins) a great company, brand and product story.
What ruins a great story?
The following elements tend to make a story unremarkable and totally forgettable:
- Making claims that your company, service or products are “great” or “the best ever”
- Using technical terms or industry jargon that customers don’t understand
- Discussing your company history and awards
Check over your marketing collateral, your web site and your advertising. Are you allowing your brand to be totally forgettable?
What makes a great story?
The following elements help make a story remarkable, and so compelling to the reader that they may start telling the others about it. A great story:
- Revolves around a single theme
- Contains interesting characters
- Builds on or is congruent with a back story
- Uses engrossing plots with surprises, suspense or twists and turns
- Employs vivid language or images that engage the mind
- Leverages the voice of your customers
- Uses “hooks” that transition from one “chapter” to another. (A hook is a tease of what’s to come, and it keeps the reader looking forward to what’s next.)
- Speaks to a specific audience, with specific interests.
Here are two example of remarkable content:
The software company Kinaxis launched a video series entitled Suitemates that makes fun of big software firms.
The blender manufacturer BlendTec created a video series titled Will it Blend? in which the company’s president demonstrates the power of his products by blending everything from golf balls to iPhones. With the enormously popular videos, BlendTec has seen a five-fold increase in sales since launching the series.
So how do you tell a remarkable story? Start with deeply knowing the buyers of your products and services, what I term your customer personas. Once you have a deep understanding of what they care about, you can begin to think about how to create content that gets their attention. Use your imagination and brainstorm. Think of how to entertain and engage.
Vistage speaker Jeff Ogden, is President of Find New Customers, which helps business develop and implement programs to improve the way they find and acquire new customers—it’s “lead generation made simple .” He’s also the author of two highly acclaimed white papers, “How to Find New Customers” and the “Definitive Guide to Making Quota,” as well the eBook, “Prospect Driven Marketing.”
http://www.vistage.com/about-us.aspx
Small Businesses Fear Hit From Rise in Tax Rates
By MARTIN VAUGHAN and COREY BOLES
Karen Port of St. Louis fears that President Barack Obama’s plan to let tax rates rise for top earners will be a double whammy for her hot-tub dealership.
Not only would the company—which takes in between $1 million and $3 million annually in gross sales—pay taxes at a higher rate, but the tax increases could leave less money for customers to spend on her high-end products, said Ms. Port, co-owner of Mirage Spa & Recreation, Inc.
“It has a deep impact on us,” said Ms. Port. “People are going to be stepping back and not wanting to purchase luxury items.”
Port is among a dozen small-business owners around the country interviewed by Dow Jones Newswires who said the increase in personal tax rates could hurt their ability to make new investments or hire workers.
Tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush are slated to expire at the end of this year. Obama has proposed extending the tax cuts for married couples with income of less than $250,000, or single taxpayers with income of less than $200,000. But rates on income higher than that would rise to 36% and 39.6%, respectively, from current levels of 33% and 35%.
The stage is set for a September Senate debate over whether to extend all the Bush-era tax cuts temporarily, or let rates rise for the wealthiest.
Because most small firms are structured so that they pay individual rather than corporate income taxes, some would be caught by an increase in personal tax rates.
But Democrats and Republicans are miles apart when it comes to estimating how large that impact would be.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in a Washington speech this month said the notion that Obama’s proposals would hurt small business was a “myth” spread by the GOP. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R., Ohio) says letting top rates rise would amount to a “job-killing tax hike” on small firms.
Both sides have data to back up their claims. Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation said in a July analysis that only 3% of taxpayers with business income in 2011 would see their tax rates increased under Obama’s plan.
But Republicans point to data from the same JCT study showing that half of the $1 trillion in income projected to be earned by pass-through entities such as partnerships and S corporations in 2011 would be taxed at the higher rates.
That suggests that even though the majority of small businesses wouldn’t see higher tax rates, the most successful of these businesses would. Democrats dismiss that statistic, saying it is mostly accounted for by hedge funds and law firms, not mom-and-pop storefronts.
Democrats say the tax cuts for the wealthiest must be allowed to expire in order to begin to reduce the federal budget deficit, expected to top $1 trillion next year.
But some business owners—and even some Democratic politicians like Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota—are questioning the wisdom of doing so when unemployment remains at a discouraging 9.5%.
“I am the guy who is supposed to be responsible for creating the jobs,” said Ryan Robinson, co-owner of Irving, Texas-based Signal Metal Industries Inc., a maker of heavy machinery for the steel and mining industries.
“When the economy is teetering, and you’re worried about having a double dip [recession], is it really smart to not renew those tax cuts?” said Mr. Robinson.
Mike Ferletic, owner of Irvine, Calif.-based Enterey Life Sciences Consulting, estimated his taxes could rise by as much as $15,000 as a result of the higher rates.
But like St. Louis hot-tub dealer Port, Mr. Ferletic said he worries as much about the impact of the tax increases on his customers.
“There’s kind of a domino effect,” said Mr. Ferletic. Enterey’s eight-person staff provides business consulting services to biotech and pharmaceutical firms.
Some firm owners just want Congress to make up its mind. “It’s August, and we still have so much uncertainty. How can I plan on what I want to invest next year?” said Ron Bullock, owner of St. Charles, Ill.-based Bison Gear & Engineering Corp.
The firm makes gears for machinery used by fast food restaurants and manufacturers of exercise and medical equipment.
Write to Martin Vaughan at martin.vaughan@dowjones.com and Corey Boles at corey.boles@dowjones.com
The Wall Street Journal“Own your own platform – don’t rely on Facebook being in business in a year.”
Tags: Business, Media, Relate, Social, Strategy
I recently watched a webinar hosted by Maddock Douglas on social media strategy, and the above quote in the presentation made me think about the place that social media has within overall business strategy. I’m relatively new to social media marketing myself, but the above quote reminds me of an article I read (Porter, Michael E., “Strategy and the Internet”, pp 62-78, March 2001, Harvard Business Review) about the role of the internet in business strategy in the mid to late 1990s. I’ll spare you the experience of reading it by providing a very brief and general summary. I hope you keep reading my short article; I’m interested in your thoughts.
The internet ushered in a new way of conducting business. Relationships between buyers and suppliers (B2B) were solidified due to the proprietary nature of e-commerce platforms and database management systems. They were solidified because of the high switching costs inherent in the technology. As such it was often predicted at the time that the internet would contribute to sources of competitive advantage, the key component of business strategy. This did not happen. As internet applications evolved along with internet technology, and implementation as well as hardware costs dropped significantly, it was quickly seen that internet technology would greatly facilitate business processes and transactions, but not result in competitive advantage for any particular firm or sector, simply because everyone now has access to it, and acquisition and switching costs are often not significant. In fact, the internet increased competition because it allowed buyers, whether business or consumer, to access information that was previously unavailable to them (competitors, 3rd party reviews, videos, and more), and quickly. In short, the internet made buyers more savvy.
From a company’s perspective, having access to the internet, as well as a website is seen as a necessity in today’s business environment, as opposed to a competitive advantage, as some predicted a decade and a half ago. This finally brings me back to social media’s place in business strategy.
Adoption of social media platforms is still not ubiquitous. This is simply because the concept is still relatively new, and popular in only some industries. In fact, social media use is also regionalized. By that I mean that some countries have adopted it much more than others, even though they have considerable access to the internet (something to keep in mind when considering your target market while designing your social media strategy). And for those reasons there are many companies specializing in social media-related services, and more are coming because it’s still a developing industry, just like the dot-coms were in the late 1990s. The difference is that the internet was thought to revolutionize the way business is done in general, and many dot-com companies abandoned the fundamentals of business strategy. Very simplistically, this is in part why the dot-com bubble burst early this decade. Not that the circumstances will be repeated, but nevertheless a lesson that today’s social media marketers and service providers should keep in mind when strategically planning ahead. But I’m going off topic.
As industries, companies, and countries adapt and embrace social media, it may also become a necessity, just like the internet did, and not a competitive advantage. This is already happening. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone say that if you don’t use social media in your business you’ll be left behind. So guess what I did. I started using social media. You’re looking at it right now. Adoption of social media is becoming a necessity rather than a differentiating factor in an already competitive business environment.
Internet based technologies develop and evolve quickly. Some become business critical, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems (eg. Salesforce.com), and communication tools (email). I believe that social media (marketing) is not far from becoming critical to business. All these technologies have something in common: The rate at which they evolve from tools of differentiation to those of necessity in order to compete on level ground. Business corporate strategy, on the other hand, does not change at this pace. Much like other internet applications, social media is a tool and should be part of a business strategy, but alone it is insufficient to be the business strategy. To be successful, a company’s social media strategy should reflect its foundation, which is the corporate or business strategy.
To me, the quote at the beginning mirrors the rapidly changing nature of technological tools, and the need to ground them in solid business strategy.
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Bart Zych is a Vancouver, BC (Canada) based business strategy consultant (www.thestrategydoctor.com) specializing in helping SMEs to survive,compete, and succeed by improving their position in their industry. Bart has been a successful manager of small business, helping to define core strengths, focus, and as a result increase revenue and profitability. For over 10 years he has worked with various organizations and fortune 500 companies such as Canon Canada and Pitney Bowes, helping them grow revenues in their corporate sales divisions.
He earned his MBA from the Schulich School of Business with a focus on Competitive Strategy and Management Information Systems. His passion is combining business and psychology to not only address corporate strategy, but also the various and complex human factors that play a significant role in developing and shaping it.
The Quality of Your Product Doesn’t Matter (That Much)
Now I don’t like this fact.
By Darren Hardy
I would philosophically argue against this fact. But it is a fact… and the evidence is all around us.
Who makes the best-tasting hamburger in the world? Doubtful you’d anoint McDonald’s with that title, but they outsell everyone else by many billions of dollars.
What is the best wine in the world? Certainly Franzia (which comes in a box!) wouldn’t be your first or 100th guess, but it is the best selling.
What is the highest-quality bottled water? If you tested it, it certainly wouldn’t be Aquafina (owned by www.PepsiCo.com), Dasani (owned by www.CocaCola.com) or Poland Spring (owned by www.NestleWaters.com), but those are the number 1, 2 and 3 best selling.
Nine times out of 10 it is not the best or highest-quality clothing line, automobile, restaurant, CPA firm, real estate agent, lawyer, furniture manufacturer, refrigerator, etc. that sells the most or becomes the biggest—it is the ones who market themselves the best.
This is the business axiom that I witness all around me every day:
The ultimate success of a product or service is 10% the quality of the product and 90% the quality of the marketing.
Now while I don’t necessarily LIKE that fact, as I believe the success of a product or service should be what’s most important and it should stand ENTIRELY on the value it delivers, that is just not how it works in reality.
Even if you are simply an individual in a sales organization this is true. It is not necessarily the best, the highest quality, highest class, most refined people that make it to the top… it is the ones who market themselves, network themselves, position themselves with credibility amongst their peers and demonstrate their growing and developing selves to the circle around them that end up at the top of the sales organization.
Now, let me also add this: If your product or service is bad… or even if you are bad, unethical or without integrity, no amount of marketing will make you or your product or service successful—especially in this day and age of Yelp, Twitter, Facebook and Google. You and your product or service reputation will die a certain and expedient viral death.
Here is a not so funny (literally) great example of this: When the greatly anticipated and greatly marketed movie, coming off the hit Borat by Sacha Baron Cohen, called Bruno was released; it had one of the biggest first day attendance statistics ever. But then people walked out of the theatre and Facebooked, Twittered, blogged to their friends how bad the movie was… the movie died that very day.
So the lesson is, yes you must create a high-value, quality product or service, but even more important to the ultimate success of it will be determined by how well it is marketed. Don’t forget to see the last 90% of the way through to success.
Even though I lack personal experience, I equate it to giving birth to a child. It takes nine months to gestate a child, which is like product development. But when the child is actually born you don’t just set it on the shelf and hope for the best. No, 90% of developing a successful child happens after birth. This is also the ratio of marketing to product development to create a successful product or service (loose analogy I admit, but gives you the picture nonetheless!).
For our August issue of our SUCCESS Audio Series (private SUCCESS partner product—not available for public sale) I interviewed two of today’s marketing wizards—Jay Abraham and Frank Kern. Let me pass on a couple of key tips they shared with me for your (free!) benefit:
1. The heart is closer to the wallet than the head is.
Right now write out a one- or two-sentence description of what you sell (pause your reading now). Is your description a solution… is it an emotional outcome? Or is what you wrote more of a description of your product or a functional benefit?
Peter Drucker said, “People buy with their hearts, not their minds”.
So, is your description trying to appeal to a prospect’s head or heart? Gotta redirect your efforts to the heart.
Homework: Write out the three most important solutions or emotional outcomes your product or service produces and start clarifying and focusing your messaging around that language.
2. Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
Now turn your emotional description into an irresistible headline. This alone could improve your results—not by 10%, 25% or 50%, but by 3, 5 or 10 times. Not just the headline as in a print ad, banner ad, Google Adword or even email. This headline is the attention-getter in every form of communication—prospecting call, sales presentation or stage presentation you do. The response to your headline needs to be: That’s me or… that’s what I need or… I’ve gotta to know what that is… NOT… So what?
Homework: Fashion three sensational headlines that fit your product, service, company, opportunity or presentation.
3. Results in Advance.
How can you help prospects in advance of them actually purchasing or paying for your product or service or getting into your business? What can you give them or help them with? Maybe it is as simple as education, research, a valuable report, connection to resources or other people, a tip from someone else in their industry, etc.
Homework: Think of three ways you can help your prospective clients get results in advance of them even purchasing your product—in a way that will make them want to come to you begging to buy because you have been so valuable in helping them get results—in advance.
Okay, your turn. Contribute one or two great marketing ideas that you have proven to work in the comments below. Can’t wait to read!