70% of small and medium sized businesses are using Facebook for marketing. 58% use LinkedIn and 40% use Twitter to market their products and services. Do you?

Social media has proven to be an effective marketing tool for B2B and B2C businesses alike. Social media marketing, primarily using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, is an effective way to to develop prospects, retain current clients and increase market awareness of your company and its products. Social media marketing is also very inex...

Building a marketing campaign that is sure to be effective and accomplish your goals is not that hard if you follow some very easy steps along the way. A killer campaign is one that has a defined goal, minimizes risk and has a high ROI. It is usually part of a planned flow of related campaigns and not a distinct event. Being part of a progression of activity and being a segue into the next campaign, containing multiple promotional tools and designed with achieving a return commensurate with its ...

Promotion is where the vast majority of change has taken place. The change in promotion is at least equal to the change brought on by the advent of printing, mail, radio and television. While some very entertaining videos would have us believe it is bigger than all of those combined, when adjusted for changes in GNP, population and whatever else, we believe it is as revolutionary as any of these events on the world of marketing.

Forrester Research and Shopping.org

With the change in place, ...

Place has most certainly changed and extraordinarily so. Marketing strategy decisions regarding Type/Location of Stores must now include a company website with e-commerce capability. There was once the dominance of the brick and mortar store and perhaps a call center for catalog sales. Service providers, both B2C and B2B, were call-in businesses. Find the number on your Rolodex or phone book and call in your request or order. Now a growing number of businesses have a web presence as shown in the...

Other than the obvious change in cost structure in some web-based distribution models, pricing fundamentals too, have not changed. Price is set to maximize profitability in concert with corporate strategy regarding:

• Cost leadership
• Differentiation
• Niche focus

Corporate strategy regarding its selection of differentiation, cost leadership or focus plays a key role in pricing of course, but what has changed is the influence of changes in distribution on pricing flexibility. Compared to bric...

Product

Corporate strategy would typically define in some reasonably broad parameter product and place. Unless you’re in a web based business or a web substitute (more on that later) there has not been an appreciable change in product since Al Gore invented the internet. Yes, many products have become web enabled, but that’s a matter of product differentiation, not typically corporate strategy. There are also a plethora of products that would not exist if not for the web.

Pity poor Blockbu...

Fundamentals of Company Strategy The foundation of any marketing strategy has got to be a company strategy that defines the parameters of the business that you’re in. Among other things, it defines the scope of the product or service offering, target market, sales and distribution strategy. This is all based on a strategic analysis and strategic plan as depicted below in Michael Porter’s Wheel of Competitive Strategy.

Strategy has always shared a lot more sex appeal in corporate manageme...

The internet has not changed the fundamentals of marketing. The internet has not created a new “silver bullet” of marketing, but introduced many new considerations and an enormous number of new tools to be employed. All too often people are confusing internet savvy, website design and SEO skills with marketing and it’s not. These skills are important parts of online promotion techniques and campaigns and important elements of most marketers’ tool kits. Marketing, however, needs to be app...

Small businesses rank their Marketing and Innovation lowest in a recent survey of the components of their competitive health. This is not surprising given the confusion generated by the proliferation of new online marketing tools. So called and self-proclaimed “marketing gurus” confuse knowledge of a couple of internet tricks with marketing.

Small businesses are disappointed with their marketing effectiveness as a result of having lost sight of the bigger picture while chasing inappropriate...

Audrey Slade gave a great presentation on networking/connecting and social media today at Meadow Creek's Tenant Talks brown bag lunch session.  There was a great discussion on connecting with people, the importance of connecting to growing your business and using social media to extend and communicate with your connections.

Nine people attended.  Check our events calendar for the next Tenant Talks.

Mobile computing is the new growth engine for computing devices and is the hottest thing in online promotion.  If you aren't prepared to leverage this phenomonon, it's time to get started.  Smart phones and tablets are taking over the world.  Smart phone unit sales have exceeded those of cell phones, gaming devices and notebooks in there first 5 years from introduction.  Tablets are on track to exceed smart phones.

Mobile computing is all about content consumption. ...

Home based business owners, entrepreneurs and small businesses lacking meeting space often do without because of the perceived high price of quality meeting rooms.  Their experience is probably based on contacting the local hotel and asking for a quote.  Room rental charges, audio/visual equipment and support charges, food service and other charges can really add up.  A two-hour staff meeting, training session or customer presentation can easilly be a $500 investment.

For busines...

Yesterday afternoon my mail was dropped off at my desk. I just got around to opening it. The first thing that fell out of the large padded envelope was a box of matches. Next a tubed Romeo Y Julieta Verona's Court cigar. Thank you God, I'll enjoy myself tonight. Next, I fished out a gold colored hard envelope holding an invitation printed on lexan. Wow! Someone is really trying to buy me, in style of course. There was the invitiation, I was being invited to a grand opening of (names are...

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Faced with disastrous near term prospects, you could join the rest of the herd and cut costs wherever you can, hunker down and wait for good times to return. An alternative I would suggest is to take advantage of your competition while they are hibernating. More than likely, they've cut advertising losing the mind share of existing and potential customers, cut back in other areas costing them in quality and customer service and possibly in sales al...

It was on Good Friday.  My wife informed me that we were not going to be eating meat, but she wanted to stop in and get some fast food while we were out.  I saw a sign for Skipper's in South Everett, Washington and pulled in.  I regretted doing so almost as soon as I had done it.  The place looked run down and there weren't many cars in the lot, although we were a little early for the lunch time crowd.  As I got out of my car, an older, disheveled looking man was pu...