Depending on who’s talking, the hottest item that should be a top marketing priority for businesses in 2012 is … [drumroll, please] Social media Mobile marketing QR codes Video marketing Location-based services (LBS) marketing Did I miss anything? When I quit my web business in 2005, none of these existed. What will the next five or…
I love dark chocolate, and I can justify my indulgence because it’s the healthiest of all chocolates. Vegetables, on the other hand, are not nearly as sexy; and at the risk of offending any vegans out there, I’d go so far as to say that vegetables are downright boring. Yet, there’s no doubt that eating…
There are two different types of prospecting, and which you choose depends on how hungry you are. Hunting When hunting, you eat what you kill. Hunter prospecting methods involve doing things that get you business immediately. The downside is, you’ll soon be hungry again and need to spend time hunting down new clients. As any…
Previously, I wrote about how to make print ads interactive using QR Codes. Depending on who you listen to, QR Codes are the next wave in advertising, or they are Internet’s equivalent of the pet rock.
I’ve been writing about how to use targeted marketing to attract better clients and clone your best ones. One way to do this is by focusing on a vertical market. To recap, a vertical is simply a specific industry, like photographers. Yet there are different specialties in photography, from wedding photography, to food photography, and…
In my last article, I talked about how setting your sights on “small to medium-sized businesses” was casting your net too wide. That was the problem I faced when I took over our telemarketing department in 2007. I had tons of leads to call, so at the start of a canvass, my team would simply…
I belong to a couple of web-related groups on LinkedIn. While these are a great source for news and information, they are also notorious spam magnets. In the Web Development group, I commonly see postings from web companies offering their services. If you’re advertising (or spamming) your web services in a forum full of other…
In a recent article I wrote for SitePoint, I pointed out the tendency for consultative sales types, particularly web designers, to hide behind a proposal instead of directly asking for the sale … something of which I was equally guilty: But the fact of the matter is, I would do anything to avoid directly asking…
In my previous article, I wrote about the pros and cons of partnerships. When we formed ours, there were many things we didn’t plan for in advance, but I was fortunate that we had an amicable split due to changing priories and goals, not ill-will. Looking back, I can see how under different circumstances, things…
New businesses characteristically fail at an alarming rate. Between 2007 and 2010, the failure rate for U.S. small business rose by 40 percent. Yet, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, companies with multiple owners are more likely to survive longer than sole proprietorships. What’s more, a 2008 study showed that the average revenues for…