CLICK ABOVE TO DOWNLOAD: 15 Steps to Writing a Winning Marketing Plan

Much focus when starting a business is about putting together a great business plan. We have covered that and you can click here to download the e-book on that type of plan. However, most don’t talk about a critical component of every business – marketing.

The marketing plan is critical and I would almost do this first so you can flesh out your product value, understand the competition and price the product/service for profitability. The business plan takes components of this plan and really demonstrate the execution and operations to make the business work. But it is marketing that is the engine and analytic proof to demonstrate why your company should even exist in the first place.

You are either someone that has been doing marketing as a part of your professional career or you look at as that “thing you do to promote your business and attract customers to buy”. Regardless of where you are along that spectrum, you have arrived here because you have been charged by the CEO of the startup you work for to write a marketing plan for your business or you need to create one for your own business.

You need to not just write just any marketing plan. You need to write a Killer Marketing Plan.

One that your boss will say “awesome, let’s get started” and which will tell all those people who have been looking for a product or service like yours for a long time. This book is written for you.

Marketing plans are sexy mistresses that tempt you to include all of the coolest of campaign ideas without the sanity of budgetary constraints. While marketing is one of the more important functions of a small business, it is one that is limited by the budgets of that business and campaigns must demonstrate a return in order to justify their existence. Since I have written more marketing plans than I care to tell you, I can share with you my knowledge and experience of what has worked almost all the time, some of the time and none of the time.

While this is not the single tome on marketing plans, I hope that this helps you balance the unlimited creative ideas with the budget you have to work with and find a mix that is both innovative and results in sales.

I invite you to explore as many resources out there, some of which are mentioned at the end of this book. I don’t need to wish you luck. Just get started, get out there and crush it.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD: 15 Steps Writing a Business Plan e-book

Many of you who follow this blog are small business owners and you have either wrote your first business plan or about to start on the journey. For some it might seem like an easy task but I will bet that it seems easier to summit Mt. Ranier that finish your business plan. It is the procrastinators ultimate project to put off and the perfectionists ultimate project to endlessly tweak.

I will guess that while sitting down with all these great ideas swimming around in your head about how you are going to create the next great product or service you couldn’t wait to tell someone about your business. But when it came time to actually ask for money from someone or actually lay out how you will execute, there was a hard realization that you needed a business plan.

But you can’t write just any business plan. A Killer Business Plan.

One that even your strongest detractors will read and say “this could work” and those whose wallets you are trying to pry free of investment capital ask “where do I sign?”. This book is written for you.

After writing many business plans, many for businesses that never launched and a few that did launch and were eventually sold, I felt compelled to share my experiences and advice to save you from the rocky process of getting started so you can just start writing.

I wrote a 15 part series through the last year that addressed many issues and gave you a basic plan of action. However, I kept getting asked to put it into an e-book format for easy reading and note taking.

While this is not a end‐all book on business plans, I hope that this helps you frame your plan so you can get started and put together something that is relevant for what you are trying to accomplish.

There are many other resources out there which I have mentioned at the end of this e-book so I invite you to use this book along with those resources to build your killer business plan and be the success I know you can be.

I don’t need to wish you luck. Just get started, get out there and crush it.

In case you missed the big button up top, you can click here to download the e-book.

Read it and please leave a comment. We want to know how your business plan journey is going.

Outright and Network Solutions started the 5 city tour of the Unintentional Entrepreneur events to educate new business owners on bookkeeping basics, small business tax tips, getting started online and building your web site and brand and Effective and efficient marketing methods. The next event in in NY on August 13th.

Venue:
For Your Imagination
22 West 27th Street
(Between Broadway and 6th Ave)
New York, NY 10001

Register at http://ueny.eventbrite.com/ and we look forward to meeting you.

You should also check out the blog, The Unintentional Entrepreneur to get great advice on growing your small business.

Pictures taken at Unintentional Entrepreneur Events in other cities

Along with traditional entrepreneurs, in this economic climate there have been a bumper crop of unintentional entrepreneurs — people who, through circumstance, have found themselves on their own, and are using this as an opportunity to unleash their talents and create their own businesses. (I, myself, kind of fit into this category, although I don’t really think of myself as an entrepreneur — maybe it’s a mental block.)

The DC event (well, actually in Rockville, Maryland, at the Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus, a site that’s hosted several social media-related events we’ve written up here) was the penultimate stop in the 5-city tour, so you can see a lot of material and coverage from the other cities at the Unintentional Entrepreneur site. Which is a good thing, because I got to the event kind of late (I blame traffic). Again, though, we can fall back on the crowdsourced note-taking via the Twitter hashtag #uedc.

I snuck into the room just as Shannon Nash was finishing up her talk on accounting, tax and legal advice for small businesses (including answering the ever-popular question, “What structure should I use: Sole proprietor, LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp, Hybrid, Partnership?”). The room was pretty full, and everyone was paying close attention:

(I took this photo, though you can see others at the Unintentional Entrepreneur Flickr set.)

Next, NetSol’s own Shashi talked about the benefits and how-to’s of establishing a presence for your business online. I have to admit I’ve heard Shashi give variations of this presentation a bunch of times, so I perhaps didn’t pay as close attention as I should have. Fortunately, the Twitter feed comes to the rescue: He covered the key points to picking a domain name for your business (keep it easy to remember and easy to spell), exhorted people to set up Facebook fan pages (if potato chips can have fan pages, you can too), and to explore other presences that could be useful (like Etsy.com for crafters and artisans.)

The last presenter was Bob London, on Marketing Your Small Business. He led off with a cloud of previously-submitted questions, and in rapid-fire fashion:

* Advocated using info from Dunn & Bradstreet to help vet potential clients.

* Said that social media was primarily a listening tool, not a revenue generator.

* Burst a few bubbles by saying that an 80:20 ratio of doing “actual work” vs. marketing and feeding the pipeline was way too high, and that the actual effort for marketing was 30-40%

* Advocated using GeniusRocket for creative

* Suggested that the pendulum may be swinging back on the effectiveness direct mail, since we get less of it now, and get more spam in e-mail.

For the rest of his presentation, he covered how for companies that aren’t Coca Cola, IBM, or GEICO (with huge marketing and advertising budgets), the best branding you can have is a solid product and customer service you can get behind. Also, instead of the elevator pitch, he advocated getting your prospective client’s “elevator rant” — their primary complaint and challenge (as they see it).

Also, he covered a few guerilla marketing techniques (like timing a newsletter to piggyback on bigger events); advocated “cloud marketing” (pushing your message out through multiple channels to create ubiquity); the value of opt-in newsletters to nurture and maintain relationships; and the best sales pitch is asking for reactions, ideas, and feedback, combined with doing your homework and getting the proper context.

In summary, the event (well, the parts I was able to catch) was well-received by an audience that ran the gamut from prospective startups to serial entrepreneurs, covering a variety of businesses. I know I’ll be delving into the hashtags and other resources to fill what I missed.

Were you at the workshop (or one of the previous ones)? Leave a comment and let us know what you thought.

Now it is time for the long tail to take over and for us to create a personal brand that is niche but powerful and helps us improve our careers/businesses along with increasing our recognition in an area we are passionate.

In Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, personal branding expert Dan Schwabel teaches readers how to use social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs, etc.) to stand out in the working world. About.com says “The book is aimed at new grads and young professionals who are looking for their first big job, but would also be useful to anyone who wants to climb the corporate ladder or start their own business venture.” I agree buy I disagree on that one. Let me elaborate.

When I picked up the book I knew a fair amount about the concept of personal branding so the first portion of the book was a bit of a review. The book is separated into three major sections:

* Part I: “The Rise of Personal Branding,” which gives you a little history. This is where you get your first clue that this book is targeted toward younger job seekers who are looking to build a career. This is why About.com reviewed the book like this and it is focused on Social Media as your gateway to Personal Branding success. If you’re still a little confused about all this social media stuff and want to figure out how it fits into your marketing strategy – you need to read this section.

* Part II: “Command Your Career in Four Steps,” This is the heart of the book and what I liked the most because it gives you a practical roadmap you can follow regardless of where you are in your career. This is where you will get all the how-to guides and resources to discover, create, communicate and manage your personal brand.

* Part III: “Now You Have Command.” This is a bit of “take some action, this is how other people” have and it has the obligatory success stories that must backup what Dan is trying to explain to those that might be skeptical. They are called “Brand Commanders” and it is pretty good and you will probably find someone to identify with your own journey.

Three Audiences for this Book (via Small Business Trends)

I was going to talk about the types of people that would benefit from this book more than just college students or young people as the review from About.com said. Ivana Taylor at Small Business Trends did an awesome job quantifying the usefulness of various people looking to build their own personal brand.

If you’re currently looking for a full time job — This is a terrific book for you. If you’re a Gen Y looking for your first job, you will find practical tips and tricks for overcoming the “lack of experience” challenge in Chapter Five’s “Discover Your Brand.” If you’re a more experienced job-seeker who needs to look into a different industry, this chapter will help you re-position yourself for an industry that might be faring better in today’s economy.

Independent business owners, consultants and freelancers – You will find wonderfully practical tips on creating and communicating their brand using social media tools. Dan includes a wonderful “Blog Success Checklist” to make sure that your brand-building using a blog is painless and successful:

Small businesses looking for broader networking reach — Does this describe you and your business? If so, you will find “The Popular Social Networking Sites” chart a great summary of the biggest and best social networking sites and how to use them to increase your sphere in influence and build your network.

Don’t just take my word for it

I came across this great video review of the book from. It is from Maria Reyes-McDavis AKA @WebSuccessDiva on Twitter. Enjoy.

Tell us your story! From August 11 through September 22, Network Solutions will select one small business success story from the entries each week to publish on the GrowSmartBusiness Blog, a site dedicated to furthering small business growth. Additionally, each of the eight winners will receive FREE admission to the GrowSmartBiz Conference – a premier educational and networking event designed to help small business owners successfully grow their enterprises – hosted on September 29, 2009 at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Please submit all entries to growsmartbiz@networksolutions.com by Monday, September 21, 2009. All entries have a 500-word maximum and should include the challenges you have faced, especially given the recent economic downturn, and innovative ways you have overcome them.

Selections begin on August 11. The earlier you submit an entry, the more opportunities you have to be chosen! All entrants not selected will receive a discounted admission to the GrowSmartBiz Conference.

In addition to the Success Story of the Week contest, the GrowSmartBiz Conference wants your topic ideas for the fourth panel! If there is a topic you are particularly interested in hearing about, please suggest your topic or vote on others’ ideas athttp://growsmartbiz.ideascale.com/.

For more information on the GrowSmartBiz Conference, please visit: http://growsmartbusiness.com/small-business-conference/.

Disclaimer: All winners will be informed by a Network Solutions representative prior to their story being published on the GrowSmartBiz Blog. Network Solutions is not responsible for the winners’ travel accommodations.  If contest winners are unable to attend the GrowSmartBiz Conference for any reason, tickets are not redeemable for cash, merchandise, or any other item of value. In the event the winner cannot attend, ticket can be transferred to another party.

Entries not selected will be given a special code to register for the GrowSmartBiz Conference at a discounted rate.

“Chris Anderson is a well-renowned, engaging speaker and we are excited to have him join us at the GrowSmartBiz conference,” said Roy Dunbar, Chairman and CEO of Network Solutions. “He has a tremendous background in technology and innovation, and truly understands the importance of small business, as well as the unique challenges small business owners face. This keynote – along with a well-established group of panelists – will ensure that attendees leave with executable strategies and tactics to grow their businesses.”

The GrowSmartBiz Small Business Conference will be held on September 29 at the Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C. The event is designed to help small businesses, from startups to well-established companies, successfully grow their enterprises and will include industry experts providing insight into key areas critical to small business growth and development.

Through keynote addresses, panel discussions and networking opportunities, attendees will leave the conference with:

• Insights into best practices of successful small businesses,
• Proven strategies for business growth despite the current economy,
• Executable, cost-effective ways to market and promote their businesses,
• Knowledge of what banks believe is the key to securing small business financing, and
• Actionable ideas for integrating and leveraging social media into existing marketing and communications efforts

Registration is open and all attendees who register before August 7 will receive $100 off their registration fee. For more information visit the GrowSmartBiz Conference site. All attendees will receive Chris’ new book, Free, for free!

And, don’t forget to suggest and select a topic for one of the conference sessions! Visit http://growsmartbiz.ideascale.com/ for more details

Unintentional Entrepreneur: Atlanta
The 3^rd stop of a 5 city tour of the Unintentional Entrepreneur will make its way to Atlanta on 7-28.   The sponsor of the event, Network Solutions, is introducing small business owners and prospective entrepreneurs to the available resources and tools that they can take advantage of right now to be successful in today’s economic environment.

Network Solutions helps small business owners achieve their goals by providing tools and resources to start, grow, and manage their businesses online. Network Solutions has been involved with the Internet since its inception and leverages this experience and expertise to help businesses succeed in an increasingly digital world. Randy Windsor, director of Online Marketing at Network Solutions, will speak about noticeable trends that small businesses are using online today to get the most out of the web.

Also speaking on July 28, Brent Leary, Co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials LLC, a Customer Relationship Management consulting/advisory firm, will focus on small and mid-size enterprises.  He hosts the Technology for Business Sake program, which airs on Business Talk 1160AM and www.BusinessTechnologyRadio.com. His popular blog can be found at www.brentleary.com.

Technology For Business Sake is a radio program aimed specifically at those small business folks who are trying to understand the technology maze and figure out what tools, services and applications can help make them more productive and profitable.

Network Solutions has enlisted the help of the Gwinnett County Chamber of Commerce to host this event.  Their state of the art educational room will comfortably fit 150 attendees.  The event will take place between 4:00 and 7:00 at 6500 Sugarloaf Parkway, Duluth GA.  Pizza, beer and soft drinks will be served during the event to registered participants.   Limited space is available for this event.  Please register by 7-27 at http://ueatl.eventbrite.com.

For more information contact Tony Casteel, local marketing manager, Network Solutions at 770-309-4154, or by e-mail at  tony.casteel@networksolutions.com

What is LazyFeed? This new startup out of the Bay Area is designed to offer people a more convenient way to get information from “relevant” feeds. According to Gahng and the website, it’s a means of offering individuals the opportunity to “accidentally” stumble upon something new.

How does it work? Basically from what I saw – and they’re still in the final push (as of this writing) for making changes that they haven’t revealed yet – the interface is pretty simplistic. Once you’ve logged into the site, you’re greeted with your “homepage” that gives you what are trending topics that LazyFeed has parsed from the blogosphere, but not from Twitter and offers you the option of learning more about the top 10 trends. If that’s not your cup of tea and you don’t see your topic there, you can enter in tags in a search bar. That’s actually the cusp of what I’ve gathered LazyFeed to be – they look through the web to find content that is tagged similarly. So for example, if you’re on the application, you’re able to see a lot of blog posts, photos, videos, etc tagged with the same keyword(s). I did notice though that some of the more “credible” websites were not accounted for though, such as the New York Times, TechCrunch, Mashable, Washington Post, Huffington Post, etc., although they are still apparently crawling through the rest of the web to index the content to make it more relevant. Once you have looked up a topic, you’re able to save it similar to a bookmark along with individual content you like to reference later.

Real-time? This whole phenomenon of real-time updating is something that I think LazyFeed is trying to incorporate into their platform. Part of their website is programmed to display when new additions are made to the tags that you find interesting and have bookmarked.

Why is LazyFeed even interesting? To the individual it’s a really remarkable tool for you to use. If you’re always wondering what’s going on in the world, compared to Twitter’s trending topics, you’re not subjected to just conversations. LazyFeed will offer you the chance to look at the actual content surrounding those respective trends. Take Sarah Palin’s recent surprise resignation. Rather than scouring through Google, Bing or even Yahoo for information about what blogs are saying – often some rather irrelevant, you can log into your LazyFeed account and look up a specific tag – in this instance perhaps “SarahPalin” which will produce a list of content that has been tagged accordingly. You’re able to get a whole array of content with a simple click and even get continuous updates. However, it does seem that they don’t want to address archiving information at this stage as the content is displayed in chronological order with the most recent automatically placed at the top of the page. As a result, it’s my impression that LazyFeed is just about current events and pushing out information related to those topics. Anything longer than a couple of days would require exorbitant amount of scrolling (time consuming) or as I’ve been told by Ethan Gahng: “Go to Google.” Amazing…

The quirks. Initially the whole startup looks sound and for individuals to use it makes total sense. From a business perspective, you might need know that it’s little more than buzz monitoring at its most basic level. The folks at LazyFeed understand that and they don’t seem to mind it at this stage. So why should you, as a business care still about this product? It’s because it’s cheap buzz monitoring. If you happen to be in the automotive industry, you can use LazyFeed as a method of understanding the sentiment people are having about industry issues like, hybrid vehicles, General Motors, Japanese cars, etc. and then frame your conversation elsewhere accordingly and possibly get ahead of the curve.

Some advice that I would have given to someone about how to monitor your brand online would be through searching on Google or Yahoo about what people are saying about your brand on blogs, websites, social networks, etc., but it seems that LazyFeed has consolidated the whole idea to one site and even incorporates the tag concept to help shape how you find information. Saves you multiple steps, I’d imagine.

LazyFeed offers you the option of looking at either their trending topics that they’ve accumulated through their journey across the interweb or allowing you to connect to sites. You can “connect to sites” using one of four ways: RSS feeds from your blog or any other enabled site you may come across, Del.icio.us, Flickr, and Twitter. Once imported, you’re able to look at content that fits those keywords you have for whatever feed/site you’ve connected with. Sort of like a personalized feed reader, I suppose.

What can be improved? When I saw a demonstration of the application, I found it pretty simple – literally. It’s not that complicated to find things to do, for the most part. One thing that I did come across was the ability to link out to external sites. When I came across a post I wanted to read more on and possibly link to and/or bookmark, I clicked on a icon that read “page” only to discover it only refreshed the site! The real external link is at the end of the blog post title! Other issues that I found was related to usability and adherence to best practice to follow the “two-click rule”: users must be able to get from where they are to where they need to be within two clicks. And as of right now, it’s a free model since I’ve been told that since they’re just launching, there’s no immediate plans for monetization.

From what I gathered the content provided would also be real-time. Unfortunately based on what I saw at the demo, only a portion of LazyFeed is indeed “real-time”. The rest requires some action on your part to refresh the site. Maybe I’m defining the term incorrectly, but I imagine the constant auto refreshing of information similar to FriendFeed is real-time – LazyFeed does not seem to offer that in the truest sense, although I don’t think that’s a major reason to avoid the site. After talking with them about that, I was assured by the CEO that it would be something they would consider modifying in later phases.

Lastly, did you know that you’re not able to share your information with others? It’s not a social media website. It allows you to import content from social media sites, but when you want to share it with others on Twitter, Facebook or others, you’re out of luck. Right now they’re methodology is to have the system be truly focused on the individual – the only way I’m able to share my feeds I’m monitoring with others is by giving them my access login or showing them what’s on my computer right now.

Would I use it? I imagine that if I, as a business, am interested in learning more about what people are saying about topics I’m interested in, such as social media, website, marketing, photography, etc., then I would consider using it – after all, it’s easier than constantly scouring the web looking for information. Overall, LazyFeed lives up to its name and provides content as simply as it intends.

And no, it’s not a competitor to Google Reader. It’s not the same thing. With Google Reader, you’re already looking at feeds you’re interested in. With LazyFeed, you’re given totally new feeds you may or may not have been aware of and might find something new to read. The goal of LazyFeed, according to Ethan Gahng, is to make finding content “serendipitious”. It’s the accidental discovery of information when using the site that will be the biggest reward. Being the constant surveyor of information online, that’s lazy enough for me.

LazyFeed will be open to a private beta group beginning on Friday, July 10. To put your name on the waiting list to test out the site, visit their website. They will also be presenting at this year’s TechCrunch CrunchUp event in the San Francisco Bay Area.

They launched a blog called the Unintentional Entrepreneur and it is focused on providing tips and advice on accounting and finance for small business owners. They also are starting events around the country called, you guessed it – The Unintentional Entrepreneur. Here are the details for the San Francisco event coming up on Wednesday July 15, 2009:

Unintentional Entrepreneur: San Francisco

A free workshop for entrepreneurs (with beer + pizza)

Wednesday, July 15th

6:00 – 8:30pm

Langton Labs

Schedule:

6:00 – 6:15pm Informal Networking, Food and Drinks

6:15 – 6:40pm “Accounting and Bookkeeping Fundamentals”

6:45 – 7:10pm “Creating and Maintaining your Online Presence”

7:15 – 7:40pm “Marketing your Small Business”

7:40 – 8:30pm Q&A, Networking, Food and Drinks

Unintentional Entrepreneur is an initiative brought to you by Outright.com and Network Solutions to support the challenges facing a unique segment of new business owners; Unintentional Entrepreneurs. With little help from the credit market, government, or economy, we’re a country with explosive growth amongst self-employed professionals, side business owners, recently laid-off employees or freelancers who have marketable skills, experience and knowledge that they are using to start or run their own businesses during the economic downturn.

The San Francisco workshop is part of a five-city tour (Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C.) for Unintentional Entrepreneurs; providing an opportunity to learn from veteran entrepreneurs, network with local small business owners, and gain insight in the following areas:

* Managing financial transactions

* Bookkeeping basics and small business tax tips

* Getting started online; building your web site and brand

* Effective and efficient marketing methods

REGISTER HERE. TICKETS ARE GOING FAST.