Your Faith and Business: Should You Wear It On Your Sleeve?

As a Christian business owner I have to ask myself how far out in front of my business card do I want to dangle my Christianity. There are a handful of questions that come to mind... Will wearing my faith on my sleeve turn a certain percentage of  potential clients off? Do we care? Do I expose myself to extra criticism when we make a mistake? Which we inevitably will.  Will we gain an advantage with Christian clients simply because we are like minded? Do we care? Morals and ethics aside, doesanything change during working hours as opposed to personal hours? Do we dumb it down between 9 am and 5 pm?

The questions really could go on and on but I'll stop there. The fact is that we could come up with a thousand questions and try to answer them individually but in reality we are only asking one: How "Christian" should I make my business? Here's the answer, drum roll please...... Uh, I don't know. I can't tell you that. That is between you and God. I'm not sure there's a formula.

I know a couple of business owners who have different takes on this. My good friend and mentor Mike who owns a very successful chemical application company and is as far out as he can be. From the name of the company to bible verses on their trucks, you know that this is a Christian company. He would say that over the years the his "way out in front" approach to his faith has certainly cost him customers but that God has blessed it so much it has more than made up for the loss. He would also say that his approach holds himself, his managers, and his employees accountable to a standard that is extremely high. If your going to be quoting Proverbs you better do world class work.

I also have a client that used to be a pastor and is now business consultant specializing in succession planning that doesn't nearly take that approach. He would never shy away from a conversation if one developed organically but he feels that he and his clients are best served by operating with honesty, integrity, and the highest level of client service. He feels these things will speak volumes into his client's companies as well as to them personally and if there is a time share his faith he will take it but he is mostly concerned about delivering world class service.

Here's the rub, both approaches are right and God honoring. Don't dismiss the fact that you have to get with God and figure this out for your company. There is no formula. This is a deeply personal thing God needs to speak into your heart.

Looks like there may be some face time in the near future.

Spokane Marketing, Spokane Marketing Companies, Spokane Graphic Design

How to Take a Social Venture to Scale

By Paul Bloom


For a social entrepreneur with an innovative solution, the holy grail is scaling it—that is, taking it to a level where the new approach operates efficiently and effectively to achieve significant mitigation of a social problem. Indeed, many are under real pressure to scale as their supporters, not unlike investors in commercial ventures, clamor for higher social returns on their investments. But for every Habitat for Humanity, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and Teach for America that has managed to scale, there are thousands that have stagnated or failed.
For the past several years, I have been studying the successful scalers to discover how they made the leap from local to large-scale impact. The answer isn't as simple as we might wish: their leaders have pursued a variety of strategies, and there is no single "best practice" formula for scaling a social venture. But the good news is that there are common elements—seven organizational capabilities that can be developed and combined in different ways to take a promising innovation to the next level. They are:
Staffing. It's hard to take a venture to the next level without knowing how to recruit, train, and retain talented people. Perhaps more than anything else, this has been the key to PlayWorks' successful scaling. It has figured out how to keep growing a staff of great "coaches" to supervise and manage recess in schools all over the USA.
Communicating. Susan G. Komen for the Cure has excelled here, getting the word out about breast cancer and persuading hundreds of thousands to support its work combatting it.
Alliance-Building. A great way to grow impact without a large organization is to partner with other entities such as community groups, governments, and corporations. KaBoom does this to build playgrounds in needy neighborhoods.
Lobbying. Here, a model is the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which has accomplished much by persuading legislatures, judges, and regulatory authorities to make tobacco products harder and more expensive for young people to acquire.
Earnings Generation. Increasing numbers of social programs grow with revenue generated by their own operations. Examples include the social enterprises in the "portfolio" of REDF (Roberts Enterprise Development Fund), which helps nonprofits create viable businesses (in food-service, property-maintenance, extermination, recycling, and other areas) to provide jobs to disadvantaged workers.
Replicating. Aflatoun has scaled its impact by making it easy for others to copy what it does, providing access to the curriculum materials it has developed for teaching children financial skills to franchise partners all over the world.
Stimulating Market Forces. The textbook example on this front is Fair Trade USA, which by creating a certification system for "fair trade" goods (that is, sustainably produced commodities like coffee, chocolate, bananas whose growers are not exploited by middlemen) gives consumers market information they previously lacked.
Does a venture need to have all seven of these SCALERS capabilities in place to have major impact? It seems safe to say that, in any scaling effort, improving at least most of them should be a goal. A given venture's "scaling strategy," however, can be thought of as the particular emphasis it puts on each of these capabilities relative to the others. And how does a given organization get that strategic balance right? It's a matter of careful thinking about the implications of the venture's theory of change and the ecosystem in which it operates.
Before even attempting to scale, the organization should be able to articulate and justify its theory of change—the logic model that shows how its innovation (whether it's a new product, new service, new way of harnessing human resources, new financing approach, new distribution method, or new legal or policy approach) contributes to mitigation of a social problem. If the innovation is a new pedagogical technique, it must be evident how it leads to lower drop-out rates, for example. If it is a new way to encourage childhood vaccinations, the innovator must show how it improves public health.
With the pathway to better outcomes clearly laid out, the next requirement is for the organization to study its ecosystem to understand how other resource providers, allies and rivals, forces and trends could affect its success. Depending on the "capital" (which can be financial, human, social, political, technological, or natural-resource capital) that others bring to the table, the organization can adjust the emphasis it places on building its own capabilities. Of course, ecosystems evolve, especially as economic climates and cultural norms shift, so this cannot be a one-time exercise.
A scaling strategy, in short, is a plan for creating a special blend of capabilities that fit well with an organization's theory of change and its surrounding ecosystem. Most social entrepreneurs want to maximize their ROI, even though the "social returns" they seek have more to do with jobs created, lives saved, or cleaner water. A well-thought-out scaling strategy is the best assurance —not only to them but to their many stakeholders —that they have the potential to make a real difference in the world.

Communication- Changing Forever

We normally don't consider 18-29 year old's a viable market unless your marketing energy drinks or a new way to download free music. It's not like there are too many 26 year old young men looking for marketing services or someone to build their new deck. This generation (the millennials) is living at home longer, going to school longer and not engaging in what even Gen Xers like myself would consider to be the adult norm, marriage, kids, house, car payment, blah blah blah. However while they may be slower to come around to adulthood, infuriating marketing firms across the nation, they are not that far off and the way they have chosen to communicate between each other and the rest of the world is altering the landscape of traditional marketing forever. Sound crazy, consider this, when is that last time you saw a young person pick up a phone book, or stop and write a number down off a billboard, or even watch a television commercial?

I don't want to say there isn't a genuine need for these things because there are quite a few generations ahead of these guys where this marketing is still relatively effective. Not nearly as effective as it used to be because even these preceding generation are adopting some of these communication mediums, albeit more slowly, but adopting none the less. The mediums include but aren't limited to: online video, text messaging, facebook, twitter, pintrest, blogging, and forums.

So the choice has to be made, do we choose to test the waters now on some of these non-traditional marketing ideas or do we let the wave crash on our heads in the next few years. There are so many opportunities to inexpensively make your marketing/advertising dollars work for you that doesn't include a $2000 monthly billboard.

Seek and you shall find.

spokane marketing companies, spokane website design, spokane branding companies,

Posted 11 June 2012 21:13pm by Patricio Robles 

Since going public in what may be remembered as one of biggest IPO disasters ever, Facebook has come under fire as industry observers question the efficacy of its ad offerings.
But is all of the criticism of Facebook deserved? No, at least according to comScore.
Despite the fact that a large percentage of Facebook users say they're ignoring Facebook ads, comScore says that it's "time to change the discussion on measuring Facebook effectiveness."
In a blog post last Thursday, it previewed some of its findings from its upcoming report, The Power of Like 2: How Social Marketing Works. comScore's key claim: "Facebook earned media is having a statistically significant positive lift on people’s purchasing of a brand."
It came to this conclusion through a "test vs. control methodology", which the analytics firm believes is far superior to the surveys which have indicated most Facebook users are not paying attention to ads and marketing content on Facebook.
"While surveys can be useful in assessing ad effectiveness lifts across attitudinal dimensions such as brand awareness, favorability and purchase intent, people tend not to provide very accurate assessments of their own behavior. And their accuracy in recalling their own behavior over an extended period of time can be especially unreliable," comScore's Andrew Lipsman explained.
So do comScore's findings, which will apparently cast a more positive light on Facebook, trump all of the evidence, some of it anecdotal, that Facebook just isn't as powerful a marketing platform as many had hoped it would be? Perhaps, but there are a few key points worth keeping in mind:

• comScore is not a disinterested observer. As AllThingsDigital's Peter Kafka notes, Facebook is a comScore client and the two companies collaborated on this new report, as well as an earlier report on Facebook marketing. While it would be inappropriate to suggest that comScore and Facebook are cooking the books so to speak, there's no doubt that with so much money being invested in social, companies in the online advertising ecosystem have little incentive to say "It just doesn't work!"
• There is no such thing as earned media on Facebook. comScore's report focuses on 'earned media' on Facebook, but is there really such a thing? Brands invest a lot of money in their Facebook Pages, but they don't really own them. Through its EdgeRank algorithm, Facebook can control the reach of brand messages, and when Facebook makes changes, those changes can have a huge impact -- and not always for the better.
• ROI may still be questionable. Even if there are ways marketers can use Facebook to positive effect, brands will still need to look at ROI. After all, 'earned media' on Facebook isn't free. Case in point: of GM's $30m in Facebook spend, $20m of it was apparently going to its 'free' Facebook Page. Clearly, content doesn't create itself, and Facebook initiatives don't run themselves.

At the end of the day, the differing views on the efficacy of marketing on Facebook serve as a strong reminder that there's no substitute for defining, tracking and analyzing.
Facebook is changing, and will continue to change. Mobile usage is up, audience growth is slowing, and the company will continue to try new things. The only way brands can really make smart, well-informed strategic decisions around their Facebook marketing investments is to make sure they've defined KPIs for Facebook initiatives, are collecting the data needed to measure them and have staff diligently analyzing the data regularly to see if their investments are bearing fruit.
Brands doing anything less than this (like trusting a survey or a report) might as well flip a coin to answer the question, "Does Facebook marketing work?"

spokane marketing companies, spokane branding companies, spokane website design

Go Big or Go Home.... or Stay Small?

There is this misnomer that a company has to choose to either focus on large multi-service projects or strictly stick to small "one up" type of transactions. This is unfortunate because opportunity on both sides are going to present themselves and if a company is unprepared for one or the other they are going to miss out on a potentially lucrative revenue stream.

At E35 Creative we run into this on a weekly basis. We're an outsourced digital marketing company. We offer everything from graphic design to website development to brand management and social media integration. We have many companies who choose to utilize us with just one of those services because we're not in a position to turn the work down and I'm not sure I ever want to be. In fact we're in the process of starting and E35 Creative arm that builds websites in three days called 72hoursites.com. That's a "one up", transaction type of business if I've ever seen one. The end goal is to gain trust so we can be their 360 degree marketing company but they have to enter into our services somewhere.

The tough thing in this day and age is to build trust with a consumer who is bombarded with companies saying "trust me". If you can open several doors to your business so your customer has many entry point options, you have a better chance of turning a potential customer into an actual customer. Then you can execute their singular project well and get a chance to sell them on some of your other services.

spokane marketing companies, spokane website designers, spokane seo

Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Basket

 via Small Business Trends

Your website serves as your best tool for attracting attention from potential customers online. Since your web content is what really carries your message across and secures conversions, your content marketing needs to be optimized for your targeted customer profile.

But what if you have multiple targeted customer profiles, with different tastes and motivations, and they all require a different approach? Do you optimize for one group, at the risk of alienating or under-representing another? Do you target your content as little as possible, leaving your website with vague, muddled content that doesn’t attract any customers?

Divide and Prosper: Target Multiple Customer Profiles

The internet is a very versatile medium, and you shouldn’t worry about reaching one profile or another if your business caters to multiple customer bases. Your website cannot only be optimized for a single customer profile; you can optimize it for any number of customer profiles by putting extra work into creating separate user experiences for each customer base.
In simple terms: you can make your website reach who you want, and deliver it in a way that they can customize for themselves.
There are many different ways to implement multiple content sets for different customer profiles. Generally speaking, it is easiest to target individual customer profiles by creating a specific microsite or separate landing page for different customer types, and letting your visitors define who they are on arrival. Allowing your customers to identify themselves through selective content options can provide a wealth of valuable data that can drive your future online strategies.
To accomplish this, you need an entirely different set of webpages for each client profile. You can create individualized landing pages that speak to the pain points and specific needs of a hyper-focused target segment, or you can generalize a bit more and classify your targeted groups by profession, interests, or level of expertise.
Your website will need some sort of navigation options that make your differentiated webpages available to your visitors. This can be done with a simple dropdown menu, a site prompt upon arrival, a gateway page listing specific destinations for visitors, or any other number of creative, attention-grabbing methods.

Wikipedia Segments Their Content, and So Can You

The most common example would be any international website. Take Wikipedia for example. The landing page you arrive on is simple to understand, and vastly segmented. If you are a French or Italian visitor, Wikipedia would be fairly inaccessible to you if you landed on Wikipedia’s English-language front page.
By providing a globally-focused landing page to all users that arrive on their front-most landing page, Wikipedia has segmented their content based on language. The user then clicks their preferred language, and can access the content specifically tailored to them.
Amazon.com also segments their webpage based on languages. If you scroll to the bottom of the homepage, you will see under their bottom-most logo a list of other nations. Canadian shoppers can select Amazon Canada and access Canadian products at Canadian prices. Not only have they segmented their websites by language, but also by visitors’ professional levels immediately above this. If you are an investor or a member of the press, you can find content specially catered to you at Amazon’s Investor Relations pages or the Press Releases page.
Many international businesses have elegant, minimal landing pages that offer segmentation by geographic region, language, and level of interest. These are incredibly broad segments, and may not be immediately applicable to small businesses. You can, however, apply these general ideas to your small business website easily.

Make Segments Work for Your Business

Identifying your targeted segments is the first step in the process. You can use business research, site analytics, and any other resources on this site and others. Once you’ve researched your customers, you should be able to form a general profile of who your most valuable customers are. If you sell kitchen appliances, your segments may include profiles like “The Soccer Mom,” “The Newlywed Couple,” or “Dads Looking to Upgrade.”
From there, you can design content strategies around each profile. What motivates each profile? What do they not like? What are they looking for from your business? After the lengthy task of developing custom content for each of your specifically-targeted customer profiles, you can create special landing pages and other web content specifically tailored to them.
After your segmented content pages are done, you should include a navigation option or engaging interactive elements that prompts the user to identify themselves. However specifically or generally you provide definitions for what defines your visitors, make it clear that there are different categories they should fall under. Designations like “Just Browsing?” and “Looking to Sell” can direct visitors to entirely different sets of content.
After your navigation element is in place, watch your site usage statistics. The types of pages people visit will tell you the success or failures of your targeted segments. If you have one set of content that is hit far more often than another, you’ll know that the lower-performing target profile may need fixing, or might be unnecessary.
By watching your statistics and knowing where your traffic comes from, as well as where they go and who they are, you can craft content marketing strategies that drive results and greatly increase ROI with laser-focused, customer-targeting accuracy.

spokane marketing, spokane website design, spokane branding companies

New Facebook Pages Help Businesses Better Manage Their Social Media

BY Mikal E. Belicove| 18 hours ago|

inShare196

If you manage a business or brand page on Facebook, you'll be happy to know there's a slew of new features that can help make your job easier. Here's a rundown:
Administrative roles: You can now assign administrative roles to the people who help manage your page. There are five different roles: manager, content creator, moderator, advertiser and insights analyst. To assign roles to your Facebook page's admins, login to your Facebook account, visit the Page you manage, click Edit Page above the Admin Panel, and click Admin Roles in the left column.
Scheduled posts: You can schedule your updates to post at a future date and time using the Facebook sharing tool (that's the box you use to create and post a Status Update). Until now, the only way to schedule a post in the future was through a third-party app. But now, simply by clicking the symbol resembling a clock in the bottom row of the sharing tool and selecting a time and date that you'd like it to go live, you can post a Status Update, photo or video up to six months in advance.
Promoted posts: You can pay a fee to promote a post so it will be shown in the news feeds of more of the people who like your Page than you would reach normally. Friends of Facebook members who have interacted with a promoted post will be more likely to see the information in their news feeds. Promoted posts cost $5 or more.
Only pages with 400 or more likes are eligible to promote posts, and similar to scheduling a post to publish on a particular date, promoted posts are initiated from within the sharing tool. To promote a new post, click Promote on the bottom row of the sharing tool, where you'll be asked to set your budget and confirm a method of payment. To promote a post you've already published and is less than three days old, click the Promote dropdown menu in the lower right corner of the post from your Page's Timeline.

Google+ Adds New Local Listings Tab for Businesses

BY Jason Fell| May 30, 2012|

3

inShare267

Google's fast-growing, if only still nascent, social network Google+ has rolled out a new tab dedicated to providing information on local businesses. Located on the right-hand side of the Google+ page, Google+ Local allows users to search for businesses that are nearby, read reviews and find them using Google Maps.
For instance, if you search for "cheeseburgers" on Google+ Local, it will generate a list of restaurants near your location that serve cheeseburgers. If you click on one of the listings, you'll be taken to a local Google+ page that includes photos, reviews from people in your Google+ Circles and other information such as address and opening hours from the company's Google Places for Business listing.

For business owners, this means that a company's information on its Google Places for Business listing will now be available to users across Google search, maps, mobile and now Google+. It can be even more important now for business owners to verify their basic listing data, make updates, add photos and respond to customer reviews.

Related: What You Need to Know About the New Google+ Design 
Additionally, Google has integrated a business's Zagat score into its Google+ Local listings. Google purchased the popular business survey rating service last fall for more than $150 million.
"For example, a restaurant that has great food but not great decor might be 4 stars, but with Zagat you'd see a [score of] 26 in Food and an 8 in Decor, and know that it might not be the best place for date night," Google product management director Avni Shah wrote in a blog post announcing the Google+ Local launch.
The search giant also hinted that it will be further integrating Google+ business pages and Google+ Local listings.
"We know many of you have already created a Google+ Page for your business, and have been hosting hangouts and sharing photos, videos and posts," Jen Fitzpatrick, Google's vice president of engineering, wrote in a separate blog post. "We're excited that we'll soon extend these social experiences to more Google+ Local pages in the weeks and months ahead."

spokane marketing, spokane branding, spokane social media integration, www.e35creative.com

The Infamous Pipeline

There's no great way to say this.... keep stuffing! The risk for many start ups or established companies that may be seeing a dip in revenue is to get frustrated and stop doing the things that you know will reap rewards in the end. For many owners and CxOs in this situation the temptation is to stop making contacts, stop walking in on other business owners, and stop picking up the phone. They've had several "good" conversations but nothing is panning out. I know how you feel, because I have been their in the past and I'm there in a few ways now.

I wish there was some game changing advise. There's not. The only thing I can tell you this: Established companies, take a look back at your history, this is probably not the first time you have been in this place, it will get better with disciplined systems and lots of contacts. Continue doing what's made you successful up to this point. Start Ups: Even though you are a start up this is probably not your first job, you probably have some experience in the field you've chosen to start a company in. Remember why you did it, be encouraged, and make sales calls. Have the guts to call on customers, figure out ways to reach out when they aren't banging down your door.

The business pipeline is a fickle mistress. You need to have her full and satisfied at all times but even then the faucet doesn't always turn on and when it does sometimes it's just a trickle. Many times she leaks before she's sent leads all the way to the end. But know this, it will always be like this. You may get better at putting in business that she prefers and you may get more skilled at nudging her along but the system will never change. Embrace it, make your calls, do your follow up, and she will flow... eventually.


Spokane Marketing, Spokane Website Design, Spokane Branding, Spokane Graphic Design
www.e35creative.com

LinkedIn vs. Facebook

This is an interesting infographic from Unbounce and Bop Design that points to the strengths and weaknesses of LinkedIn and Facebook for Business to Business (B2B) marketing. My two cents on this is that the platform doesn’t matter nearly as much as your strategy and talent to engage. The message this infographic brings is that you shouldn’t rule out Facebook for your B2B efforts… but I would leave the real results to what you find out with your brand!

For B2B marketers, conventional wisdom says that LinkedIn is the best social media platform to reach business decision makers. It’s built for business networking so you would think LinkedIn would be better for marketing to B2B customers. Let’s look at some stats…

Social Marketing Enables More Meaningful Customer Relationships

By Michael Brito

Much of the social business conversation revolves around the internal dynamics that make up an organization – culture, change management, technology adoption, process creation, etc.  This should certainly be the focus because social business is not social media. I just wrote a post last week about employee engagement and how social business can extract innovation from employees behind the firewall.
But many of these internal initiatives (as boring as it may seem) enable an organization to better communicate with their constituencies externally. In other words, a social business enables a brand to be more social (i.e. a social brand.) A few weeks ago, Mitch Lieberman released his version of the Digital Interaction Process, which I like a lot:

Here is how I interpret this diagram.

• The social customer is influential and they have no problem whatsoever telling the world about their experiences, whether positive or negative
• Brands are listening to the conversation using online monitoring tools
• They are collecting new social data about the customer AND/OR integrating that new data with the data that they already have from traditional CRM systems
• They are applying a set of business rules which will determine what to do with the conversation; and then building workflows that direct the conversation down the right channel
• Brands are attempting to become human as they attempt to engage with the social customer

Whatever we call this process – digital interaction, customer engagement or social CRM doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that we acknowledge that this process is happening today and has been for quite some time now.  And what’s more important to recognize is the collaboration and internal alignment that it takes in order to do this right. Marketing can’t do it alone. Support doesn’t have the resources, budget or “know how” and IT  probably wants to stay as far away from social as possible.  For this process to work, these teams need to work together and communicate.  Not an easy task, trust me.
One company that does this well is Comcast. 
Comcast Cable Company is a perfect example of a brand that has adopted this process.  In fact, they were one of the first to do this and often get all the glory for innovating the way they communicate with customers on the social web thanks to Frank Eliason. I am a huge Comcast fan and I have been a customer for over 10 years. I am happy with their products and the way they have handled my support issues over the years.
But not all Comcast customers feel this way.
Doing a search on Twitter will reveal a commonality of complaints about Comcast. One issue, which comes up daily, is that technicians are either late for their appointment window or just don’t show up at all. And for what it’s worth EVERY telecommunications and Cable Company has this problem, which is why many of them have established a guarantee of service.
Of course, if I am customer going through this, I can always pick up the phone, dial 1-800 Comcast and reach a support agent OR I can tweet at @ComcastCares and they will expedite my issue to the right office/support agent/technician. After all, this is what a good social brand should be doing, right?

• Comcast is monitoring
• Comcast comes across my Tweet
• They take my social data and couple it with my actual customer record so they know just about everything about me
• How long I have been a customer
• My support history (i.e. previous support interactions)
• Which products I subscribe to
• Demographic data
• They assign “my conversation” to the right region or office (I believe @ComcastCares is managed out of Philadelphia and there is a call center about 10 miles from my house in California)
• They handle my issue with empathy, solve my problem and maybe give me a $20 credit or 3 months of a premium channel for free

That is a common scenario for many brands today; and many of them are doing a really good job including Comcast.
But if social business enables better customer relationships what about solving the root cause of the problem?
The issue with technicians being late to appointments or not showing up at all is not a customer relationship management problem at all.  The problem exists somewhere in the internal process – from the time I call in to order to service – to when the support agent takes my info, assigns me my appointment time, inputs into a system – to when my service order gets picked up from that technician on the day of appointment. Something is broken in that process.  Or, maybe they just need to hire more staff.  Either way, it’s not scalable to handle the same (day in and day out) customer support issues over Twitter, especially since Twitter as a support channel is becoming widely adopted; and consumers in general are gaining influence, daily. Someday, small things like this just might come back to bite them in the butt.
A social business does more than they enable more meaningful customer relationships. It optimizes processes and changes the way it does business.

spokane marketing, spokane websites, spokane social media, spokane branding

Begin with a referral in mind

posted by: John Jantsch

A referral is the result a job well done, exceeded expectations and delivering an experience worth talking about. Most assume it happens after the fact, but I’m here to tell you it can happen consistently and predictably before the fact if you begin every decision you make with a referral in mind.

Sarah Korf via Flickr

My Grandmother was an old school, every stitch by hand, quilter. She made every one of her grandchildren and every one of her thirty plus great grandchildren a quilt. I remember asking her how she did it and she told me that she always just began with the end in mind. She would make hundreds and hundreds of decisions about where she was going because she had a single minded goal in her head.

Let me ask you this – What would need to change if you were to wake up tomorrow and proclaim that every single one of your clients would be so well cared for they would naturally refer their friends and colleagues? If a 100% referral rate was now your new standard of success, would that make you pause and reflect on just about every element of your business?

Would that make you think about how to over deliver as a design element of your products and services?

Would that make you think about ways to ensure your clients got the results promised?

Would that change the way you followed up 45 and 90 days after the sale?

Would it make you start introducing the idea of a referral during the sales process?

Could you confidently assure a prospect that they would be so happy with the result of the purchase that they would want to refer – before they ever became a customer?

Would it make you reassess ways you build trust? Would it make you freely give away information and training that is better than what your competitors charged for?

Would it change how you more fully integrated social media, content and SEO?

Yes, referrals happen because of what a referred prospect finds when they search.

Would it change your idea of what an ideal client looked like? Remember, one of the surest ways to generate referrals is to attract clients that fully appreciate your unique way of doing business.

So you see, referrals don’t just happen because of what you do after you have a satisfied client, they happen because of every thing you do before you even attempt to ask for the referral.

A referral happens most when you begin with the referral in mind.

spokane marketing, spokane websites, spokane branding, 

The Tyranny of Low Price

 By Seth Godin

If you build your business around being the lowest-cost provider, that's all you've got. Everything you do has to be a race in that direction, because if you veer toward anything else (service, workforce, impact, design, etc.) then a competitor with a more single-minded focus will sell your commodity cheaper than you.

Cheapest price is the refuge for the marketer with no ideas left or no guts to implement the ideas she has.

Everyone needs to sell at a fair price. But unless you've found a commodity that must remain a commodity, a fair price is not always the lowest price. Not when you understand that price is just one of the many tools available.

A short version of this riff: The low-price leader really doesn't need someone with your skills.


spokane marketing, spokane websites, branding, design, seo, outsource marketing

Facebook Marketing

  By Michael Fleischner

 

The recent announcement about Facebook going public mean a lot for marketers.  You might be asking yourself whether or not the $38 stock price is a good buy.  Personally, I think the stock price itself is meaningless.  What's significant is the fact that Facebook, much like Google, is here to stay.

It's quite conceivable that Facebook will morph and change significantly over the next few years.  But the reality is that they can.  Companies like FB and Google have something that most small companies do not - resources.  And when you combine social and marketing companies with resources, something amazing happens.  That something is innovation.

If you remember a time before Google Adwords and pay-per-click advertising, marketing was drastically different.  We were more focused on print ads, print advertising, and direct response.  At the time we didn't know how limited we were with regard to user information, behavioral data, and community.  One of the reasons marketing has changed so significantly is because large companies were in a position to bring innovations to the marketing world.

Facebook is in the same boat.  Now they have even greater resources to invest in innovation and taking the marketing community to the next level.  I don't know what they have in store but once thing is certain - they wont stand still.  Begin a public company all eyes will be on Facebook, quarter after quarter and year after year.  This pressure combined with billions in assets gives them not only the incentive to innovate but the resources as well.

It seems like everyday, small companies like Instagram and others come out of the woodwork but the reality is that they are far and few between.  Those you read about are often started in a college dorm room (where I would argue there is little or no risk) or are backed by large investors.  I think innovation would happen without these scenarios but it would take much long and the results would likely be far less interesting. 

Just as Google has brought major changes to the online world, so will Facebook.  As is true with most advertising platforms, the systems start off by copying what's already out there.  In time, they develop innovations of their own.  And finally, because the platform has so much of the addressable market, the technology is distributed and soon everyone has adopted a new advertising model.

I believe this is the trend we will see with Facebook.  Look for the blue giant to innovate and raise the bar when it comes to reaching or influencing potential customers.  They have the platform, they have the audience, and now, they have the incentive to innovate.  This is a perfect storm for once again changing how marketing is done!

 

 

Spokane Marketing, Marketing Companies in Spokane, Spokane SEO, Spokane Websites, Spokane Outsource Marketing.

 

www.e35creative.com

Seeds

There will inevitably come a time, usually early on in a young companies history that the leader or leaders will begin to doubt they did the right thing by starting a company. The questions will come flooding into their collective psyches... "Did we do the right thing by venturing out on our own?", "Wouldn't be easier to work for someone else?" "It's so much less intrusive on my life when I can simply punch the clock, and be able to turn it off at night." I know that last one isn't a question but it bangs around in my head constantly. You have to come to the answers to these questions and observations on your own.

I can promise you a few things...

1: It is absolutely, with out a doubt easier to work for somebody else. They carry the burden. You cash the paycheck. Even as a top notch engaged employee you will never feel the burden the owner does. He is responsible for providing work, company growth, making sure there's money in the bank for payroll. It rests on his shoulders.

2: Whether or not this company is the "right thing" to do can never be decided on when you are battling doubts. The doubts are temporary. They will go away eventually but they cloud our judgment so significantly we should never make a decision while experiencing them. However we should use them to redirect ourselves, or possibly even motivate ourselves. Those seeds are only valuable if we use them to move forward.

3: You will sleep better not being an owner. You will sleep better not being a leader of any kind. We don't get the luxury of turning off and on whenever it is convenient. Some people are built for it and some aren't, and that's ok. We have to decide whether or not it's worth it. The reality is most of the time the "worth" far exceeds our expectations. The late nights, the deadlines, the lean times, and the juggling act are sooooo worth it.

My advice, get a coach or mentor who's been through it. Lean on them to walk you through those times of doubt. They've certainly experienced them. It will help immensely to know that these experiences are not new and somebody has come out on the other side.

The other side is so much more radiant when we walked through the darkness.


www.e35creative.com

Ranking for signal to noise ratio

By Seth Godin

A whisper in a quiet room is all you need. There's so little noise, so few distractions, that the energy of the whisper is enough to make a dent.

On the other hand, it's basically impossible to have a conversation (at any volume) in a nightclub.
Signal to noise ratio is a measurement of the relationship between the stuff you want to hear and the stuff you don't. And here's the thing: Twitter and email and Facebook all have a bad ratio, and it's getting worse.

The clickthrough rates on tweets is getting closer and closer to zero. Not because there aren't links worth clicking on, but because there's so much junk you don't have the attention or time to sort it all out.
Spam (and worse, spamlike messages from organizations and people that ought to treasure your attention and permission) are turning a medium (email) that used to be incredibly rich into one that's becoming very noisy as well.

And you really can't do much to fix these media and still use them the way you're used to using them.
The alternative, which is well worth it, is to find new channels you can trust. An RSS feed with only bloggers who respect your time. Relentless editing of who you follow and who you listen to and what gets on the top of the pile.

Until you remove the noise, you're going to miss a lot of signal.

Stay Focused Or Do Some Tweaking

Most young companies will come to a crossroads pretty early on. There will usually be a potential change that will present itself and the leaders will need to decide how to  tackle it. It can come in the form of a change in leadership, it can come as a new product or service offering, and it can come in the way of scrapping your start up's marketing campaign and going in a totally different direction. Whatever it is, they will have to decide whether to embrace it or reject it and stay the course.

There's a few questions that will help guide a company when the fork in the road show's itself:

1: Can you honestly say that what you are doing is working?
If you take all the pride, and all the hurt feelings, and set them aside, is it working. Is the service valuable, is it selling? Is the product producing honest to goodness revenue? Is the marketing bringing a measurable return on investment.

2: Can you change without a complete overhaul?
Is this change going to affect the entire fabric of an organization, or is it a small tweak that can be easily integrated into the current culture. Does it feel bigger than it actually is?

3: Will making this change be too much for the current leadership to handle?
Is the leadership adaptable with several skill sets or are they very specialized in each of their roles?

4: How far off is the company from turning actual profits?
This is the kicker. If a company can really say it is knocking on profit's door, then a change can be the worst thing they can do. But if real profit is months or years off, then a change might be exactly what it needs.

These are just some things to think about for any start up. At E:35 Creative we are experiencing this exact thing and if we ask ourselves these questions we can honestly say that our change is very achievable with out a complete overhaul and will fit in nicely with our current service offerings. If that ends up being the case with your young company, I say... change away. Otherwise stick to what you know, what your passionate about, and remember all the reasons you started your business and stay the course.

www.e35creative.com

It Takes All Kinds

Yesterday was a real eye opener. I helped build a website, or re-build a website, or... well, there was lots of key strokes and mouse button clicking going on. You see we are, at this point, a two man operation. Maybe 2.5 on a good day. I am the operations and sales side of the business and my partner is the programming and nuts and bolts side. Together we make a good team. But I figured I needed to learn how to do some of the stuff he does because, like any start up, we anticipate massive growth and I might be needed. I actually enjoyed it, to a certain extent. However his little red chair that fits his boney butt, does not fit my slightly larger rear end and I could barely walk by the end of the day. I came to realize I really enjoy the "creating" side of things but he is better at it. Not just because he has spent countless hours learning how to do it but because that is what he is built to do.

We are a good match. Revenue generation and company direction falls into my skill set and not in his. While he just gets the keystroking, mouse clicking side of things. It makes sense to him. I have to suffer through it like he would suffer through walking into a strangers place of business and asking them to buy something. I think we are naturally attracted to people that balance us out, and in business it is no exception.

However, often times when start ups launch, I see that there are two people with similar skill sets that partner up. Usually it's two idea guys getting each other all worked up over a beer and swearing that "this business model can't fail." The problem they have nobody to do the actual work. Or you have couple of skilled workers who are tired of their boss, venture out on their own, and have no idea how to run a business and are really surprised when there aren't customers beating down their door.

The most successful companies learn to work in their strengths and manage their weaknesses. Your strengths will never mean as much to your bottom line as your weaknesses. My suggestion, if there's a guy with a little red office chair on the side of the road looking for work, partner up with him.


www.e35creative.com

The Increasingly Illusive Referral

My family and I were sitting around the dinner table for Mother's Day a few days ago and as it usually goes, it's loud and everyone is talking over the top of everyone else. Dinner with the Brown family is fun. Just don't expect to get a word in edge wise. It came to my attention that my sister was rear ended earlier in the week, in a hit and run accident. She's got a couple of bruises, nothing serious, but her Nissan needs some body work. She asks if I know a good body shop. I began to say a name but suddenly realized I was drawing a blank. I thought back, attempting to delve deep into the recesses of my vault like noggin, and... I... drew... a... blank. Not because I haven't had body work done before but because I was not loyal to anyone in particular. I didn't have a relationship stored in my long term memory to allow me to give a good referral. This is when I realized, I can't remember the last time I gave or asked for a referral for anything.

This was a little disturbing, because I am a highly relational guy. I like people, I respect good service, and superior products, I am happy to share the knowledge if asked, but nobody asks anymore. Now there is the rare occasion that your buddy may have some back pain and you are in the middle of a round of Chiropractor visits and happen to be carrying the Doc's card but unless that encounter happens naturally you're not giving a referral to your friend. Because before he calls or texts you for the name of your Chiro he's pulling out his smart phone and looking at the top four or five Google rankings. I came to the conclusion that it takes less time and effort for us to find the information we need ourselves then it does to ask for it from a friend or family member.

Without trying to sound like a doomsdayer, I want to be clear, this new reality can be catastrophic for many companies if it's not embraced. Especially if your company's product or service is not needed on a regular basis. Such as attorneys, doctors, plumbers, car dealers, etc.. One of the the other problems that exists now is the consumer is exposed to so much advertising, marketing, and information between needing your product or service again that our loyalty is shifts. Not to somebody else necessarily but back to neutral, as if they don't have any kind of relationship with a particular company. This is the case with me and my sister's body shop question.

There's nothing like a blogger to point out a problem and not offer up a solution, right? Well I believe I do have the solution. It's not like the consumer won't be loyal under the right circumstances. We are human and we like to have relationships, and usually we resist change. The answer is really two fold. The first part is obvious. You have to have world class customer and client service. I mean world class, not as good as the next guy but world class, and it needs to be offered at a competitive price. Not cheap, because it's hard to offer world class customer service if you're only competing on price. The second part of the solution is, and this might be new so some of you, but you have to be we're your customer is looking for your product or service. They have already used you, they just need a reminder as to why to go back. If you're one of the first options when they hop on the Google, or you've stayed in front of them with your social media campaign then you have a real shot of getting their business again. If you're not, there's a great chance that they find what they are looking for in one of your competitors.

E:35 Creative specializes in marketing to this new consumer. Call or email us for a free consultation.

Why Outsource Your Marketing?

Not only is there a huge financial incentive but there's also some strategic advantages. One particular example is this.... it's often an advantage to hire a marketing firm outside of your company because they may have a broader perspective of new opportunities and new markets. Often a company will continue trying to harvest their existing demographic when there are other markets to reach out to. For instance for a long time service based companies have ignored Gen X and really focused on the Baby Boomers. The Baby Boomer generation was looked at as being a financially viable marketing risk. However over the last five years Gen X has come into solid employment and began to make real money but they continue to be ignored by many service based companies. The problem is marketing to Gen X and marketing to Baby Boomers is a seriously different thing, with different strategies, and different triggers. Companies often get so consumed by their own culture that an outside perspective is beneficial.



Marketing, Outsourced Marketing, SEO, Website Management, Print Design


www.e35creative.com

The World Has Gone Mobile. Have You?

Most of these statistics have been drawn from a study done by a think tank called mobiThinking. The numbers themselves seem staggering but if we really look around and are able to look past the mind blowing hugeness of it all, it's really not that surprising. Here's a link to the study . If you have as much nerd in you as I do, you might care to read it.

Some specifics that will come as a surprise are:
-There are 5.9 billion mobile users, 87% of the world population
-There are 1.2 billion mobile web users world wide. That number will triple in the next 2 years.
-Over 8 trillion text messages were sent in 2011. Yes that's trillion, with a "t".
-In the U.S. $240 billion was spent by consumers using their phones and mobile devices
-By 2015 consumers are expected to spend over a trillion dollars using their phones and devices.
-Today 25% of smart phone users don't use a laptop or desktop, that number will double in 2 years


Those are just a few of the staggering statistics. If your business is not set up to make money in the mobile market E:35 Creative can help. The reality is, if you're website optimized for mobile applications then you are behind. I really wanted to say that we can set you up for the future, but it is on top of us already. You might be playing catch up.... and that's ok. Not only can we help your website look better on smart phones, we can help you with how to optimize the sight so it actually makes you money in the mobile world.

Leadership Journal Archive: Comment Policy

Leadership Journal Archive: Comment Policy
Thanks, this is great information.

Marketing In Today's Reality, Maybe.

While we have just opened the doors at E:35 Creative, this is not our first rodeo. In my previous job I met with the owners, managers, an decision makers of SMB's every day. We are talking about the people that make up the back bone of our national economy. These are the people that hold local dollars and local jobs in the palm of their hands. Especially in Spokane and many cities like it, where there is no big conglomerate feeding us with jobs. Local business owners mean more in these types of areas than anywhere else. For the first time in my career I'm finding that they are scared to part with their hard earned advertising dollars.

There seems to be a misguided idea that the consumer no longer exists. Whether the product or service is for individuals or to be sold to other companies, many local owners are stuffing their marketing dollars under their mattress. Hoping to ride out the storm and get back into the marketing game when the economic climate looks a little more "70 degrees and sunny" and less "48 degrees, with a 94% chance of rain, for the next 67 weeks." I constantly hear the people say things like "lets wait and see what the election is going to do" or "I've cut my marketing dollars, this year, I just can't afford it." They say these things after driving to our meeting in $45,000 Audi, or in the same breath they talk about the Cost Rican vacation they are planning for next month. Don't get me wrong, business owners work incredibly hard, they have every right to enjoy the fruits of they're labor. But what they need to realize that every study I've ever read has stated, in a nut shell, "those that have the guts to continue marketing in a down economy, wins." Check out this article . It's one of many.

If we use a little deductive reasoning we realize that this is in fact the case. Does your target audience disappear? No, there may be fewer of them, but they do not go away.  What happens when there is greater competition for a particular audience? Who wins? The answer is easy... the company that has the intestinal fortitude to stay in front of their audience. This is not to say that marketing strategies don't change in times like these. They do. Business owners need to make sure they are spending on something that works, they need to make sure every marketing decision they make has a measurable return on investment. There has to be less throwing money against the wall and hoping it sticks and more making your marketing company show you real numbers, not just fancy billboards.

The internet is the great equalizer when it comes to marketing. Virtually everything a business owner will do there, marketing wise, can be measured. You no longer have to take that wink and smile from your advertising rep who says "trust me it's working." When your bottom line isn't reflecting it the same way his pearly whites reflect your confused face as you ink your signature to another year of hoping for the best.

I agree with the notion that business owners need to have some level of nervousness when parting with hard earned marketing dollars, especially now. But to make themselves less visible to a consumer audience that has certainly decreased in numbers could be the last bad decision they get to make.

The Art of Starting

So, we are open for business. As luck would have it we are looking for exactly that... business. I wish I could tell you that we had an amazing plan. I wish I could tell you we know exactly what we are doing. I wish I could tell you we have an array of clients singing our praises. But the reality is we have none of those things, we are a start up and we are flying by the seat of our pants. I don't want to scare any of you business owners that might be considering using our services. Make no mistake we can do the work, we will not stop until your project exceeds your expectations. But I don't want any reader to think that we have pinpointed our perfect strategic plan. Because right now, as I write this, we are freaking out.

So we have a business license and a UBI number, what's next? You see, like most start ups we formed out of necessity. I was let go from a Fortune 500 company and my partner was working a job that he could no longer physically perform. So we said "Hey, I know what we should do, we should start a marketing company, you know one that builds websites, and does branding, stuff like that." And E:35 Creative www.e35creative.com was born. There was no great choir of angels and no red ribbon cut with cartoonishly large scissors. It was the just the two of us, with a nervous blessing from our wives, saying "Yeah, we can do this."

The actual "work" part of business isn't the problem. We can execute the work, get it done on time, and within budget. The problem is that nagging doubt that we can be successful in this economy given our lack of a plan. While ingenuity, passion, and nose-to-the-grindstone work is certainly needed, none of those traits replace strategy, right? Because right now our strategy is, "let's go sell some stuff." That's a little over the top, but not a complete exaggeration. My father, a brilliant consultant and strategist is shaking his proverbial head. Or maybe his literal head. Regardless, there's shaking going on.

While my stomach has been in knots since we made the decision, it is drowned out by the stories I've read about companies becoming incredibly successful by any measure simply because the owner had the guts to take a risk. The plan fell into place later, the strategy made itself known and the clients started calling. None of which would have happened if they didn't say "Hey, I have and idea..."