“You can only choose one. Which one do you want,” she asked.

The boy chose the one that directly in front of him. The one he could easily reach out to and take without any fear. He was eager to tear open the pages of whatever adventure awaited beneath the cover.

“That one?  Are you sure?”

He nodded and they were off. I don’t know if he ever enjoyed the comic, but I saw, for that moment, he was completely confident and excited about his choice.

Right then and there, I had my topic.

The rush hour of small business marketing.
With so many people reaching out for your prospective clients’ attention, it’s getting harder and harder to see yourself as the clear choice.  It is easy to get overwhelmed with choosing where to advertise, how to cast the widest net, and what your message will be to get their attention.  It can be frustrating with every niche item salesman suggesting what bit of swag will be sure to lure in that potential client, the local print shop touting the latest sale on brochures and postcards, networking events crowded with the same people over and over again, and yet have you noticed what you want…seems to be right where you need it?

I’m not advocating you ditch any of the tools above, but simply recognize them for what they are. They are tools and avenues to get you to the next prospective client.  But if these avenues are backed up with rush hour like traffic fighting for attention, why would you take them? Because they are safe bets? Because everyone is doing it? Because you are a bit afraid to feel like you wasted your all ready limited resources on an unproven tactic?

But what if you take these choices and you end up with a closet full of key chains, boxes of never seen brochures, and networking events where you end up collecting the same business cards from the same people just on different days?  Isn’t THAT a waste of your valuable all ready limited resource?

Be where you’ll get the most eyes.
Instead of trying to create tactics and plans that brings them to you, try getting out and going to them.  Seriously, go where your future long term customers will be. It could feel awkward at first, but if you’re the first person to tap the well of uninterrupted visibility then you’ve got nothing to loose.

The best example I’ve seen of this was just yesterday at an office where I am doing some contracting.  In their kitchen, right on the refrigerator door, was an advertisement for a Babysitter.  The design was clean, clear, and simple.  There was a pocket, made of folded paper, stapled to it with business cards sticking out. The business cards were even clearer than the flyer. They simply read, in a welcoming font,

“Nicole.
Babysitter.”

And below that were her phone number and email.

This wasn’t done in an off the shelf font, but it was neatly presented and easy to read. No fluff designs or overly wordy content. The business card laden flyer was close to eye level with anyone going to get their lunch.

Nicole tapped a market of an office made up of probably 60% of her chosen clients. She went right to where she would get the most eyes on her services.

Needless to say, I’ve seen Nicole’s simple business card holder refilled at least twice since the advertisement went up.

Be brave with your limited resources.
Don’t be afraid to take chances once in a while. Get out there and go after your prospective clients with the same excitement you started your business.  After all, they are your clients after all, right?  Instead of the next tried and true moderately successful “everyone’s seen it, done it, and got the t-shirt from it” tactic, get a little creative with your limited resources.

If you’re an auto detailing company, offer to wash cars in the parking lot of your local office building for free in exchange for letting people know about your services.  If you’re a business coach, give away coupons for a free session at a networking event for small business owners.  If you’re an author with a new book to peddle, go to where your reader will be and give out free sample chapters of your book with info on where to get the rest of the great, amazing best seller to be. What ever it is that you do, be bold, be creative and be fearless in whatever your marketing endeavor will be.  Failures will happen, but successes will as well.  Be more focused on the later and conscious of what caused the former.

If you’re wondering, yes, I’ve seen the aforementioned suggestions done, but those business owners wanted the clients and weren’t afraid to take a calculated risk to reap a little long term reward.

But the real question is…are you?

As all ways…stay wicked.

Overnight something wholly amazing happened.
They opened their email box one morning a month into the passively pushed campaign and found they had, honest to Bob, over 7,000 submissions requesting to be a part of the campaign. Emails poured in from all over the nation taking part in the submission. We all clamored to the marketers’ desk to see this with our own eyes. An email box so overloaded with requests it called to mind the commercial of the new business that puts its store online and the orders just keep going up, and up, and up. Just like the emails that continued to pour in.

From joy to panic.
Some thought it was spam. Some were excited at the potential of something they did being that “viral”. Some freaked out at how they were going to service all of the requests with a limited supply.

With one of their web team helping, I started looking through some of the emails to see if we could detect signs of spamming. We couldn’t find any that were that obvious. The submission forms were filled out were each unique, accurate, and different, that the only thing that kept the curiosity of it being spam was the frequency of how these came in. It was roughly twenty emails a minute with each second a part from each other.

The Google Search is strong with this one.
So there we sat, debating on what to do, and I thought “Google will have the answer”. I threw the name of the campaign between some quotes in Google’s search box and hit send. My screen, and Google’s Search results, were maxed out with Freebie Sites, sites that do nothing but list where to find, and how to get, free stuff online, listing the “Free Gift” that came with campaign and how to get it.

I figured, “if it’s already this deep into Google…where else could it be”. I turned m search to the tools of Social Media. The links started popping up on Twitter with a link back to the directions on how to get the “Free Gift”. It was in different spots all throughout Social Media.

In a very short time, less then ten hours, the “Free Gift” had spread like wild fire. It was time for some damage control.

From excitement to frustration
From there, I created a timeline of when the first Freebie Site listed the campaign, which linked off of it, when other posts picked it up, and cross referenced it with when the emails came in and how often they spiked. Yeah, I know, I’m a geek. My wife reminds me constantly. Sure enough, the spike in email requests coincided with each time the campaign appeared on a Freebie Site.

This wasn’t spam after all, but an army of people who collectively thought the “Free Gift” was worth their time to blog about the “Free Gift” and share how sign up for it. They rallied their own troops, got the message out, and took action on it. This was truly an example of the kind of Viral Marketing companies’ dream of!

Yet notice nothing in that last paragraph talks about the connection with the campaign, the belief in the goal, sharing the message of the campaign over the free gift, or any positive remarks about the non-profit’s effort?

With learning that submissions were still flooding in, we closed down the submission request box. I sent emails to the Freebie Sites letting them know what the intention of the campaign was and how we hoped they update their info. Some did and thanked us. Some ignored us. I sent a few emails to those who submitted letting them know what happened. Some did and thanked us. Some got frustrated and said that they did what the website said and they wanted their “Free Gift” anyway. Some ignored us.

The moral of the story, kids.
This outcome was not what they expected, or intended, when they created their marketing campaign. They just wanted to add a little value for being a part of it. Those online saw the value not in supporting the campaign, but just filling out whatever they needed to get the free item they wanted.

Rather than give a long, lengthy explanation, here are the top five things the non-profit quickly learned:

1. Be proactive on learning the reason once you find a negative reaction to your campaign.a. You could have unintentionally created it. If you sit back and blame the people doing the very thing you asked them to, but for a different reason than you intended…you get nowhere.
2. Accept the mistake, learn from it, and work with it instead of running away from it.a. It’s safe to say, that on the next campaign this will be something that will be brought up and avoided.
3. Don’t give into our initial fear.a. Fear can cause you to assume your first reaction is the best one. Sometimes that’s not the case. Imagine what would happen if they thought they were spammed instead of doing the research?
4. Find out what worked, what didn’t, and, depending on your outcome, how you can either duplicate that later on or never let it happen again.Clearly the free gift had value to people. Is there something that they could leverage in this?
5. When people ask for your free gift that does not mean they are interested in you.a. Free gifts are great. They little items, that shouldn’t break the bank, that if well done should spark conversation or curiosity. They should not be a crutch to get people interested in you or your company.

I say, give “Free Gift” away, but don’t let the value of the gift be greater than the message. There are some really big marketing lessons in this that came to light. What, life lessons, have you learned from you marketing experiences?

Until next time, stay wicked.

If you liked it, please Tweet it.

…in a good way. His post “Backwards Work” stuck with me for a solid day, because he’s absolutely right. You’ve got to know the rules to break them, and you need to know what you want your end result to be before you start swinging for the fences. As Chris said, “know what it is you’re shooting at before you draw back.”

So without rehashing everything Chris wrote (its damned fine blog post on its own so go read it), I want to talk about the one thing that will help secure success…excitement in marketing your own company.

Excitement in your company period. Because, if you aren’t excited about your own business…no one else is going to be!

If you really want a good example of what passion and excitement for your product, brand, service or what it is that got you to start your own business, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better example than Gary Vaynerchuk. When I’m getting frustrated in what it is I do for a living, I go to YouTube and check out his talk from Web 2.0 Expo NY from September 2008 on “Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape,” and I get pumped all over again.

Now calm down, Sparky. I’m not telling you to go out and be Gary, but you can take a few things away from that talk that will help you. Gary’s passion for the things he loves (like wine, personal brand, and the New York Jets) is empowering. He loves what he does, and it pays off in spades? Take a lesson from that, and apply it to your own business. Whether it’s plumbing, coffee, design, legal work, the medical field, or, hell, even turning? paperclips into life size replicas of the entire 1969 winning Super Bowl team. In his talk Gary says, “if you love it you will win,” and that’s something I’ve always believed in.

Whatever it is…you started a business for a reason right? I mean, you didn’t start a business because one day you woke up and said, “I’m really good at (insert your whatever it is you want to do here), but I really don’t care about it…maybe I should go into business for myself doing that.” No. Something inspired you to shuffle off the 9-5 coil and strike out on your own. Now I’m saying this, and I am making the assumption you didn’t have a large bank roll behind you. I’m assuming you stepped out into the cold dark unknown of self employment, looked at the horizon, and smiled like a Cheshire cat. I’m assuming you looked out at whatever it is you wanted to tackle as the boss of a new business and said to yourself, “I can do this… and I want to for the rest of my life.”

You’re going to fail sometimes, but it’s that excitement for whatever it is you’ve decided to get yourself into that pulls you through to the next achievement. If you don’t have that, go back to the 9-5’er, lick your wounds, figure out what went wrong, and let someone else worry about where the monies coming from for a while.

If you’re on the fence about whether you’re excited about what you do or wherther the shine has worn off… pick a side and go there. It’s going to suck at times. It’s going to be exhausting at others. There are going to be days where you look at your loved one, friend, employee, or business partner and think, “What the hell did I get myself into?” The answer to that question is the very same thing: “I love what I do for a living!”

Chris Brogan wrote in his post: “Someone had to hunt the first mammoth. Oh, and that poor bastard died a bloody death.”

Bring me that mammoth and my rock. I’m ready to go down swinging. I’m willing to put in the hours, the time, and the effort to move forward regardless of the obstacle. I’m ready to get called crazy, loud, determined, passionate, and…a success. I am going to fail, and I look forward to it so I can get back up, dust myself off, and attack whatever knocked me down in a different direction.

I am a Small Business owner, and I’m excited to wake up every day and say that.

In Gary Vaynerchuks’s talk. he says, “if you love it you will win.” That’s something I’ve always believed in and something that, even before hearing Gary say it, has been the key to all of my successes.

Until next time…stay wicked.

* Photo courtesy of istockphoto.com

Well fear not Terry, and all of you trying to have your business take flight. This post is for you.

I talked about being frugal, but smart, with your marketing pieces. Most people I’ve come across that have started a business don’t have a huge cash resource to pull from and need to be a little creative, and yes…cheap, about what they spend their marketing dollars, and time, on. Their focus tends not to be what their marketing pieces will bring them, but how much it will cost them now. It’s a reasonable thought process, because the world is a very scary place when you’re wondering? where the next customer will come from.

I also asked you “to not think with the wallet you have now, but the wallet you want once your business is established”. What I mean by that is ask yourself, with each marketing venture you go into, ‘will this bring me closer to the next client/customer’. What you’re looking for is a financial reward for investing into your own company. In business, that’s called ROI (Return on Investment). It’s really simple; you want the amount of money you gain from this endeavor to be equal to or greater than the amount you spent on it. Common sense, right?

But what if you’re not putting ANY money into your own company, should you expect a return? Something for nothing?

When I started out, just like a lot of small business start-ups, I spent a lot of time thinking “People will pay the premium price I am asking for my service even though I haven’t invested in promoting my company, because they will understand that I’m just starting out.” Or my favorite, “They’ll take me seriously with the business card/brochure/flyer I just printed it out on my home computer and printer, because they understand starting a business is expensive.” I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Now back to how you can market your business on a shoestring budget, because that’s what this post is all about. The reality is simple. The tools you need to accomplish this goal are all ready a few keystrokes away.

Starting out, you don’t need a huge brand icon like the golden arches or a yellow sea shell. See, I don’t have to say the names of the companies and you know what I’m talking about. Keep in mind, as we go on, that what I’m suggesting is only a temporary solution until you’ve gotten a few sales down the road and can hire a designer.

For now, a clean, clear font is good for you. Go with something that’s not on everyone’s home computer. I beg you, for the love of your future marketing dollars, do not use Comic Sans as a font. You are not a comic strip artist (and even if you were I’d stay away from it) and you want your business to be taken seriously…unless you’re a professional clown or children’s entertainer, then have at it.

Websites like overnightprints.com or vistaprints.com can get your business cards printed efficiently and look like you paid a lot more then the often “Free 250” offers they run, but you need someone that has a bit of design sense to put something together for you if you want something that’s more than just text. And please, I beg you, see…I really care I’m begging you twice, stay away from the overdone backgrounds they offer for free. If I see one more purple lotus flower on an attorney’s card or badly gradient beach scene on a roofer’s card…I’m going to go nuts. It’s going to happen. Be close by me when it does; it will be hysterical for everyone else. Choose a simple, tasteful (just because it has the name of a fruit doesn’t mean it’s tasteful…lime green just hurts the eyes) solid color background and an opposite colored font. You can’t go wrong with black text on a white card.

Add a little gloss on the front for some style, but leave the back blank and clean so you, or a client, can put notes on the back. Put all of your pertinent information on your business card. You never know what medium people feel comfortable reaching out to you on.

While you’re at it, these sites are great for brochures, post cards, and a world of other things that would cost you an arm and a leg by going to a big printer. But before you start going after those things, remember a simple rule, because everyone has one…doesn’t mean you need one.

If you want fun and funky right out of the gate with a great brand, and you want to be cheap, go to your local colleges. Most of them have design classes where students in those classes are looking for opportunities to cut their teeth on your project for the experience. If you have the time, since you’re being smart and planning ahead, you can make your business the next class project where you’ll have tons of choices as the students put together design pieces that would not only get your business a great look, but a good grade for the student at the same time. What you will need to do, and this is just polite, is give that student, or students if they work in a group, credit for the work. This does two things: gives the student a source of credible experience and provides you with a potential designer who will do more work for you down the road on something they all ready care about.

Now for the item that might seem self serving, but isn’t. Your website.

Domain names (that’s your www.yourbusinesshere.com) can run you anywhere from $9.99 on up. The cost isn’t important, because you can often get one free with your hosting package, but the name you choose is. Your first domain should be some clear version of your company’s name. The first domain you use shouldn’t be too cute or clever. Again, save that for when you have a few sales under your belt. For now, focus on one of the things that will stay with your brand.

Sites like freewebsitetemplates.com can give you ready to go websites, but, like using one of the pre-done backgrounds for your business card, you run the risk of several people having the same look as you. Since this is just a temporary fix, please pick one that is, like your business card, clean and easy to view. People will understand expanding and evolving from a small clean design to a larger more eye appealing design, but since we’re starting with what you’ll need at first…I beg you, for now the third time (I must really care that you do well), to choose a design that accurately represents the image of how you want your company to be perceived. Just because you like sports or race cars doesn’t mean your future clients will. Explaining, and yes I came across this once or twice before, “I went this route because these are the colors of my favorite racecar driver and the black and white is for the checkered flag.” [This is an incomplete sentence. Explaining blahblahblah does what?] Needless to say this business had absolutely nothing to do with cars, races, flags, or…you get my drift.

As for hosting your website, choose a plan that truly will work for you. If you aren’t going to be selling things online for a while, the basic package is good. If you’re expecting a lot of visitors to your site right away…go with something that will give you a little more room. To save yourself some upfront coin, start out on the month-to-month plan, but remember to pay your bill.

Doing the math on this, using the suggestions above, you can accomplish everything for under $300. It will cost you just a little time. That, coupled with the freeness of social media networks like LinkedIn and a laundry list of other online networks, means you can start getting out there quickly and inexpensively.

There are tons of other options for accomplishing the things I listed above. Local copy or office supply shops are starting to offer inexpensive business card printing. There are some hosting options that offer design services as part of the package. All in all, if you do the homework, you can find that the cost of your start up items can be returned back to you in your first few sales.

Before I leave you, I want you to keep a few things in mind as you’re creating these pieces:

• It may look cool and amazing because you worked on it, but if someone handed you this business card or website…would you buy from them or take them seriously?
   
• This is a temporary fix. I strongly suggest once you start saving for a marketing pieces to be designed by an experienced designer or design company.
   
• Be a fan of your own marketing materials. If you take the time and care about the end result…it will show and yield results.

Remember, this is your company you’re getting these pieces for. You wouldn’t send your kid to school in your neighbor’s oversized clothes. Don’t send your company out looking uncared for.

Till next time…stay wicked.

Does spending a lot of money guarantee you are going to be successful?  No, but spending it smartly does help.  I’ll get into that in a few.

Does spending very little money guarantee you are going to be successful?   It’s more than likely to ensure…you’ll get the type of client that’s looking to make the same decision about your product/service/widget as you did on your marketing pieces.  “I want the biggest bang for the least amount of money”.

I was recently talking with Steve Fisher about the upcoming “Rock Star Entrepreneurs and Your Business: a Webinar Event” and my frustration with some past clients I had.  Keep in mind; these are clients who thought that by investing very little in their own business…their success was guaranteed because people would just “want” their product/service/widget.

As if the magic Small Business Fairy was going to bless their frugalness with a line of clients stretching a mile long, a phone that magically rings every five minutes with people saying “yes” before the elevator pitch is done, and a website that has to have its bandwidth updated daily to handle the flood of internet savvy customers that magically found their website without the use of a search engine, business card, advertisement, or word of mouth marketing efforts.

Sorry to disappoint you, but that little pixie of small business goodness doesn’t exist.  Trust me I’ve been looking and I assure you when I find that winged temptress with the strategically placed golden horse shoe I will quickly pin that fictional character of business down and sell tickets to let it discontentedly bless new entrepreneurs who want to take the cheap way out.

There are things you will need, right out of the gate, which will help you.  In later posts I’ll go into each in greater detail, but to start a good brand name and identity that will resonate with your clients, a business card with your brand and company information on it, and a website with key information that will visually engage your prospects/clients.  Think of a networking event or coffee shop corkboard where you’ve seen a business card or flyer of a company that blatantly did not invest much into their business.  You have two companies side by side that offer the exact same services.  Without knowing a thing about their actual performance you have thirty seconds to make a decision on which company you will go with. Company A has a business card with a strong visual presence, their messaging and information is clear, and the quality of the card alone shows the business invested in itself.  Company B printed their business card on their home computer in black and white, the edges are perforated, and their information doesn’t clearly identify what the company is about.  Which would you choose to take with you?

Be smart with the time and money you invest in establishing your marketing pieces.  You can find some very talented designer/marketer starting their own consulting business and accomplish visually, and at a reasonable cost, what major companies pay thousands of dollars to marketing/design firms to accomplish.  You should look at the money you spend on marketing your company as, you guessed it, an investment in the way you, and your company, will be perceived.  Done right, your marketing materials should speak about your company without you even having to be in the room.  Your marketing materials should resonate the type of attitude, style, experience, and care that your customers will come to expect of your company and services.

I’m not asking you to break the bank, but what I am asking you to do is to not think with the wallet you have now, but the wallet you want once your business is established.

I’m also going to ask you to invest some time in your business, and yourself, and attend the “Rock Star Entrepreneurs and Your Business: a Webinar Event”.  This FREE, live webcast has an all-star line-up of entrepreneurs who will talk about some of the pains that small businesses will face in the areas of finance and marketing.

In the end, the money you invest into your company will come back to you through your clients.

As all ways, stay wicked.

“Go BIG or go home”

For the longest time I took that to mean that the actions I took in marketing, design, and in life, had to be larger than life.  Ultimately, I learned the hard way that ‘big actions don’t all ways result in big rewards’.  I also learned the time it took me to plan, prep, and execute my Big Whatever resulted in me being well behind the time that it could have been effective or, more often than not, out a greater amount of time, money, and effort than what came back to me.

Frustrated and determined to not “go home”, I gave up on trying to create catchy messaging, flashy visual displays, and the big song and dance and focused on my results.  I toiled and planned and stressed over how to get the biggest bang of my buck, or my best Return On Investment (ROI) for those savvy.

I pinched every penny…twice.  I argued with my vendors to get the cheapest things I needed.  I used the cheapest materials from my local office supply stores.  I was confident that I could, alone, produce the same quality with lesser effort and get greater results.

Man, was I wrong.

Too wrong, this ultimately ended up with a very polite guy coming up to me at a networking event and saying, “Is everything…ok?” He explained that my materials looked like I didn’t care about my business.  That I was asking more from the people who’d invest in me that I was, appearing to, invest in myself.  I explained to him what I was trying to do.  He politely smiled and said, “Try the middle ground.”

I went home, dejected, and thought about it.  It took some time, but I realized he was right.

Initially, I spent too much time focusing on the “Look at me” factor.  What I thought was amazing, attractive, eye catching, and compelling…was only that way to me.  I didn’t stop to look at it from my future, and current, customers’ perspectives.  The mindset of “I like it so everyone else will too” ultimately cost me more, as far as lost time and money, than it did me good.

When I changed my focus, I still didn’t think of my customer, I thought of myself.  I thought of the gobs and gobs of money I would get by saving money and time. I still wasn’t focused on my customers -  I saved some coin in the long run, but I didn’t gain much either.

Essentially, I went back to the chalk board and started smaller, but more detailed.  I started looking where my best customers were coming from, where they needed the most help that I could provide, and what I could do to catch their attention, or be in a position to come to mind quickly, when they needed my services.  I started focusing on having my big result be only double the effort I put out and grew it from there.

I recently replaced the “Go Big or Go Home” quote with one I found while reading Juliette Powell’s “33 Million People in the Room: How to Create, Influence, and Run a Successful Business with Social Networking”. That quote is:

“Do business as if you were playing a game, have fun, know the rules, and when it’s time, make up your own.” ~ Guy Laliberte, Founder and CEO, Cirque Du Soleil

Don’t get me wrong, I still love to “go big” and do things that are, sometimes, a little over the top, but I realized to improved my results that I would have to change my focus for Big to mean the impact that my marketing had on my customers.  From their experience to the outcome, the interactions my customers had with me, and my company, had to reflect that the “show” was worth the “price of admission”.

Until next time…stay wicked.

To get it out of the way, as if you couldn’t tell, the tone of this blog series will not be stuffy, terminology laden, or over your head with jargon.  Steven Fisher came to me and asked if I’d like to tackle a blog.  I expressed my concern, because my approach isn’t necessarily…for the faint of heart.  I tend to be blunt, direct, and to the point, but with a sense of humor.  I believe if you’re going to be spending the money on it…marketing your business should not only pay for itself, taken seriously, but you should have a bit of fun as well.  Steven reassured me that the blog will be geared not to designers, but people either in their first years of business or who just want to think about expanding the visual branding of their company.

I understand that things like bleed, taglines, font weight, scope creep, appropriate resolution for a web banner or large printing run, and a wide variety of industry related terms may turn you off or confuse you.

So relax.

If those type of terms do pop up from time to time I’m going to find an easily understandable comparisons to put them in plain speak for you.  Please don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying this is going to be the “See Spot Run” of blogs in this genre, but if you’re reading this, you’re someone who is interested in learning more about how to get your business out there to the masses, may have had some frustrations dealing with marketing your business, and have some fun while you do it.  This series should feel like a conversation with someone over a cup of coffee and not something you need to jump up and grab a dictionary for at every paragraph.

I’m bringing over ten years of experience in fields of marketing and design to help be the translator between the business owner and the designer as well as the marketing and the customer.  Being of the rare breed of designers who balance well between print and web (there’s a world of difference between the two and in future posts you’ll learn why), I tend to focus on designs with a focus on sales and marketing for my clients.  As a large portion of my work experience has been with startup companies, I spend a lot of time finding creative solutions to help business owners, marketing managers and startup companies effectively understand why a visual brand is an extremely effective tool for their business that not only needs to be created, but maintained and nurtured.

So grab a cup of your favorite beverage, of course mine being coffee, and join me each week for a rare glimpse into the mindset, expectations and opinions of a professional graphic/web designer.  Some of my posts will run parallel with some of the blogs here on Network Solutions, but my goal is to support them to help you get the most out of your business. I look forward to give you some topics that may spark some thoughts or conversations. I also look forward to hearing your horror stories, successes and thoughts on each topic.

Until next time…stay wicked.