In December we all start to looking ahead to the new year and thinking about resolutions and goals for the coming year. If you are like me you avoid personal resolutions because chances are they probably will not be kept as we all get busy and lose the motivation — then we just feel bad. However, when it comes to your business, having goals and a [...]
Small businesses have many challenges in sales and marketing and often times struggle to build adequate pipelines for new business. Many spend hours out “networking” only to be disappointed that the leads they get are not qualified, and let's face it, are just bad or not a fit. With all the things a small business owner or manager has to do, [...]
Living and working in Silicon Valley, we get quite a bit of exposure to “start-ups”. Of course there seems to be many definitions for start-ups since I have talked to some that have been in business for more than 7 years and still consider themselves a start-up. I think some of it has to do with the “sexiness” of saying I [...]
Well, nothing really, but the explosion of the use of email also means there was an explosion of unwanted marketing messages in our inboxes. So Congress enacted the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM) with the intent to regulate unsolicited commercial email. Two things are important to note here. 1) the regulation applies to both commercial and [...]
When we hear “I need to work on SEO”, most people are referring only to their page rankings and increasing their position in the search engine result pages (SERPs). Although this is important, there are 6 other areas that also need to be addressed to fully “optimize” your website. Depending on your site, target audience and content, some areas may need more attention because they are [...]
I came across a one-page handout that I created a few years ago for a workshop with these 10 tips for small businesses on branding. I started to read through it thinking that with the pace things move in marketing, it would not be relevant anymore and was ready to hit the delete key. I was surprised when I got all [...]
In a past issue of Target Marketing, Bob Bly wrote an article titled “Sometimes Old-School is Better”. The main point of the article was that as journalist and writer, he promoted the importance of checking facts – and that doesn’t mean just doing a Google search, compiling numerous resources and just reinventing the same content assuming someone did the fact checking previously. Content [...]