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Do You Need a Marketing Department?

by Paul Joseph April 18, 2011 Featured

As a young entrepreneur, you are probably focusing on everything but marketing. You are designing products, hiring help, looking for office space, and finding investors. Marketing is the least of your worries – the product will sell itself. The reality is that the product will not sell itself. You need to think about marketing right from the beginning. Marketing is not something you do in the future when you have extra money and time. Your business is a three-legged stool: product, people, and marketing. Take away one of the legs, and the whole business falls. Most people believe that marketing is only for big businesses and worldwide corporations, like McDonald’s and Starbucks, but this belief is wrong. Even the smallest business needs a marketing department – even if that department consists of only you. Unfortunately, in the office, marketers have a bad reputation. They always seem to be chatting on the phone, writing emails, or taking long lunches with clients. But they are not goofing off. Without them, everybody would be out of a job. Why Do You Need a Marketing Department? What Do They Do? Get New Clients Obviously one of the main functions of the marketing department is to acquire new clients. Depending on your service or product, this can be done many different ways, such as cold-calling, advertising on a bus bench, radio, a hot air balloon, or any other number creative marketing vehicles. It is up to your marketing department to figure out which is the best for your business. Their job is to figure out what is the most cost effective and highest impact method to introduce your product or service to people who have never heard of you. Without a marketing department, the only people who will buy your product are your mother, who loves you and your best friend, who is tired of listening to you talk about it. Remind Existing Clients That You Exist My business had many clients. A few of them used our services on a weekly basis. But most of them used us a few times a year or even just once. There was a lot of competition, so the clients were always being tempted by my rivals. The marketing department (me and an employee) loved Christmas. Not because we got to exchange presents and have a few days off; we loved Christmas because it gave us a great opportunity to remind our clients we exist. For our regular clients, we sent a basic Christmas card. But to the less frequent clients, we sent special custom Christmas cards. They were big, hand-written, and addressed specifically to the person who dealt with us. The point was to get their attention and remind them that we are still around and ready to help again. It was great! January was usually our best month of the year because of those Christmas cards. It is the marketing department’s job to keep reminding existing clients that you are still around. If you provide a good product then existing clients are easy to coax – you just need to keep reminding them. The next time they need something, your company will be the first thing on their mind. Promote the Image As a business owner, it is difficult to worry about what your logo looks like, what your invoice looks like, what the signature in all emails looks like, what your clients think of your company, etc. All these types of things seem petty and small – but they are just as important as the product itself. You have probably heard it before – image is everything. It is true. Lady Gaga sings well, but it is her marketing department and the image they created that does all the selling. Your marketing department should ensure that your business creates the proper image – right from the beginning. Things like having a nice logo, the logo appearing on all company paperwork and emails, guidelines for communication with clients, how complaints are handled… basically everything that your clients comes in contact with should be approved by the marketing department. It is the marketing department’s job to ensure that your clients see your business and product in a way that promotes a positive image. As a young entrepreneur starting a new business, you need to have a marketing department – even if that marketing department is just you. Roman Jelinek had his own business and then he sold it. Now he is hoping to start another successful business. Read more about Roman here .

Tagged as: image, product, young-entrepreneur

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4 Effective Ways to Increase Publicity around Your Brand

by Paul Joseph April 11, 2011 Featured

When you first launch a personal brand it can often take longer than you would expect to gain traction. We have unrealistic expectations for how long it should take us to reach a certain number of Twitter followers or fans on our Facebook page. While there is no surefire way to creating an insanely successful brand, there are definite actions you can take to ensure that you have a better shot at succeeding. Delivering great content on a consistent basis will earn you a solid reputation, but if you can’t back up those things with the marketing, there’s a chance your brand may never take off or develop into the stature that you had hoped. 1. Publicize your existing audience and online following. Lines such as, “Already five thousand readers and growing!” or “I’ve spoken to thousands of students across the country”, even if you’ve only spoken to two thousand students and in a total of two states, will bolster a potential clients’ perception of your brand. If you have a ton of fans on Facebook, maybe look into adding a widget to your site where you can publicize that. If you aren’t getting any comments on your blogs, and you know the traffic just isn’t there yet, consider either switching comments off, or creating a mailing list of your friends that will read your material weekly and promise to comment. Nothing’s worse than seeing a deserted blog. Furthermore, a blog is harder to cover for media than nearly anything else, it can’t sit on its own in the context of any medium other than the internet. So what is it that you’re selling? Is it your consultancy, a book, coaching, or public speaking? Even if you haven’t invested in one of these areas, start marketing yourself as one somewhere prominently on your site. This is vital for radio or TV reporters because if they see this they know that you can hold your own in an interview or that you’ve probably had experience in live recording. 2. Make your brand easy for media to cover. Do you have a press kit? A demo reel? Professional photos? The best way to understand what should go in a press kit is to look at other people in your niche and to see what they have. Often, press kits are multi-page PDFs with testimonials, great photos of you and of you working, and reviews or testimonials from media, customers, and other people in your field saying how great you are. Your press kit should not look like a resume, and must be laid out in a beautifully graphic way. If you look bigger than you are, that can only help you. Spend the money and invest in a graphic designer, both for your press kit and for your website/any mailers. Find a friend, or a college arts major student who’s willing to do it for you on a budget. Demo reels are vitally important if what you do entails speaking or any type of public performance. They are also extremely helpful if you want to get booked by TV and radio media too. Again, searching for a demo reel on the internet will yield a high number of returns. You will see people who are regularly interviewed on talk shows or news stations or even radio stations that have pulled together all their clips, inserted testimonials, behind the scenes shots etc., to make solid demo reels. If you don’t have any of that stuff yet, shoot a quick 1-2 minute video talking about your brand that you can edit nicely and throw in a few clips of media to. Upload this to YouTube and embed it somewhere on your site. Lastly, enough of the iSight pictures or bad quality digital camera shots. Have a friend take you somewhere with good lighting, maybe even outdoors and on site (depending on what it is that you do you could get very creative here) and capture some awesome shots that make you look like you do your job professionally. All of these things together can only help make you look more reputable and sharpen your image. 3. Trade articles or other content with three new sites a week. If you’re not already doing this, this is definitely something you’ll want to try. Find other people in your niche and see if they will agree to letting you work out a guest blogging schedule, start with just one article, and build the relationship from there. You should offer to publish their content on your site as well. Remember, if you’re good, and I hope you think you are, you shouldn’t worry about losing out to competition. Make the content for both of you things that compliment or supplement your brands. You might think about doing video interviews (easy over Skype) to show that you’re both real and besides, everyone loves to watch things more than they like to read them. Studies have shown video is the best way to sell products and services. 4. Reach out to 15 local media outlets – TV/Newspaper/Magazine Start a spreadsheet document of local media outlets. Then determine contacts within them that you might be able to send your materials to, presented nicely and with everything they are expecting. Do research on this first – you do not want to blow your chances with a media outlet by making a poor first impression. Not everyone is ready for media as soon as they think they are. But the media does want to know directly from you what you’re about. Sure if you’re famous and have an agent they would handle this, but often the media will prefer dealing directly with you. Talking with you and getting to know you will give them a feel for how articulate, consistent, and adept at presenting yourself you could be if they were to put you on something live. Remember, the media probably is interested in what you have if it’s packaged properly, but it’s your job to make sure that they don’t lose their job if they book you. They need to feel confident in you first. Michael Costigan speaks to teens and adults about effective communication so that they may make better informed decisions together. Read more about Michael here .

Tagged as: branding, content, country, facebook, image, media, money, people

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Are You Letting Social Media Repel Business?

by Paul Joseph April 8, 2011 Featured

It’s an all-too-common scenario found in online marketing nowadays. An entrepreneur turns to social media to grow business revenues and decides to setup a Twitter or Facebook account.  Without any real strategy or knowledge of how to effectively use either medium, the entrepreneur wastes countless hours every day doing tasks that have no real impact on the business. Month after month goes by with little growth in followers, zero activity, and no sales. The entrepreneur gets frustrated and ultimately gives up all real effort in social media. The problem with this scenario, aside from the tragedy that the real profit potential of social media was never really tapped into, is the damage this kind of haphazard marketing can have on the brand of a business and the image it projects to potential clients who visit the company’s social media pages. The hidden code of social media Take a moment to think about buyer behavior. When evaluating potential companies to do business with, most consumers will turn to the Internet and search Google for reviews. They will also visit the company’s website, and then take a close look at the company’s social media pages.  During each of these tasks, the consumer looks for clues to guide his or her decision on whether or not that company is worth hiring. There are many clues that consumers look for when evaluating a social media profile: How many followers does the company have? A large number of followers would indicate that the company is successful and likely has many satisfied clients. A low number of followers could indicate that the company is new, amateur, and not popular among consumers. How often does this company post content and what kind of content are they posting? This is an important indicator consumers look for to determine a company’s level of expertise and ability to connect with their audience. Are people commenting, sharing, or re-tweeting content from the company’s social media pages? If the pages appear to be very active and showcase many happy clients, the company will be more appealing to the prospect. The adverse is true if the comments are few and far between. All of these elements, and many others, play a critical role in whether or not a consumer will decide to do business with a particular company. Entrepreneurs who approach social media carelessly end up doing more harm than good. An inactive Twitter page with few followers, a handful of tweets, and a design that doesn’t match the company’s brand will actually repel business. That’s why it is absolutely critical that entrepreneurs answer the following questions before getting started with social media marketing: 1. What goal do you wish to achieve from social media? (e.g. – secure more clients, build an email opt-in list, make partnerships, conduct market research, provide Internet-based customer support, provide clients with a platform to connect with one another, etc.) 2. Who exactly is the demographic you will target to achieve this goal? (e.g. – “power women” in the NY-metro area with expendable income, elderly people who use the Internet, cat-lovers, etc.) 3. How will you go about finding, connecting, and engaging this demographic? (e.g. – Search Facebook for groups the demographic will likely be a member of and start actively participating in the discussion, look for other Twitter accounts that share the same demographic and follow their followers, launch a contest on Facebook to drive people to “like” the page, etc.) Once the above questions have been answered, an entrepreneur can begin to have the type of focus and direction needed to successfully build a brand on social media. Just as one would not start a business without creating a business plan, one should also not start a social media venture without creating a “social media plan.” Ryan Kristopher is CEO of Windows Renew, the largest network of computer consultants in the world, and an Internet Marketing consultant and social media trainer for businesses of all sizes. Read more about Ryan here .

Tagged as: consumer, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, facebook, image, internet, internet marketing, marketing-strategies, search, social-media

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FoundersCard – Giving Entrepreneurs the VIP Treatment they Deserve

by Paul Joseph March 7, 2011 Featured

Have you heard of FoundersCard ? It’s a new members-only community, specifically for entrepreneurs. It’s been dubbed “the AmEx Black Card for startups,” and it really delivers. FoundersCard is the brainchild of Eric Kuhn, who drew upon his past entrepreneurial experience, starting the first online college textbook store in the late 90s, Varsity Books, to develop this new venture. Kuhn’s mission with FoundersCard is to provide entrepreneurs with access to the same benefits, upgrades, and perks that have traditionally only been available to c-level executives of the largest corporations. As a FoundersCard member, I’ve been extremely impressed with the program they’ve built – and continue to build, as it seems like new partnerships are announced on a daily basis. Members get great discounts, upgrades, and perks from a wide range of travel, lifestyle, and business brands, including American Airlines, Equinox Fitness, W Hotels, Virgin Atlantic Airways, and Rackspace. I’ve only been a member for a few weeks and have already more than made back the cost of my membership fee. Another thing I’m loving about FoundersCard is that members are creating offerings just for other members – some very cool services. I’ve discovered a ton of new services through my membership that I’m now addicted to (for better or worse) including Fancy Hands, Put.io, and Grooveshark. The other big benefit to being a member is the wealth of networking opportunities. FoundersCard hosts networking events for their members on a monthly basis, and although I haven’t been able to attend any yet, I can see from the RSVP lists that they draw a really great crowd of entrepreneurs. I’m hoping to make it to their Web 2.0 Expo event in San Francisco. Lastly, I should mention that the membership card is by far the nicest card in my wallet. Super sleek! Check it out: For more information, or to view a guest preview of their members-only site, email them at memberservices@founderscard.com and be sure to identify yourself as a YoungEntrepreneur.com member.

Tagged as: breaking-news, entrepreneur, image, news

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