Opportunity is everywhere but sometimes it takes a kick in the tail to recognize it. As the calendar rolls over into another year, now is the time to take a fresh look at whatever you’re doing with marketing and potentially make some changes. I can still remember my first time encountering an answering machine - I was so flabbergasted by the experience all I could do was laugh and barely let the device know who I was. That was a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Today we all have the ability to know who’s calling us and to have that caller leave us a message. It’s just something we take for granted. Unfortunately a lot of businesses don’t use this stealthy little device as a component in their marketing strategy and that’s a missed opportunity. Are Christmas or holiday cards still valid? This time of year the post office must be inundated with mail - almost like election season. It seems almost daily there is a swarm of cards from friends, business associates and family with pre-printed messages of joy and wellness for this year and next. Then, at the bottom, the cards are signed and someone is tasked with sending them out. I have been an advocate of networking including Chamber mixers for quite some time. But I just experienced the best follow-up ever from an encounter at the Chamber of Commerce. This is an example we can all follow. As someone who is almost always curious I happened to be sitting in the Chamber offices when I saw a gentleman come to the counter. I asked what he did as he was just signing up for membership. It turns out he does window cleaning. Here are 13 reasons to shop locally which was inspired by this past Saturday being Small Business Saturday. While I generally like to write my own articles, this time I borrowed this one from AMIBA - the American Independent Business Alliance. I’ve written in the past that I think the best university I have ever attended is the university of YouTube. But that may no longer be true. I’ve found a better educational place - podcasts. What are podcasts you ask? Podcasts are programs you enjoy for free from sources such as Apple’s iTunes or any number of other providers. They are created by people or organizations who have something to share and the barrier to create a podcast is really, really low. But that doesn’t mean podcasts have little value. There’s nothing cheesy about social media. As a component of business communication it is becoming ever more important. Mastering your “voice” in the social realm can differentiate one business from another even more today than ever before. Case in point. People love to go to social media the second there is even the least little thing wrong with their experience somewhere. If the pattern on a team member’s shirt is just a bit off, the customer is out there using all capital letter to exclaim how they’ve been permanently and irreversibly harmed and how nobody should every patronize that business again. Writing modern blogs using old analogies can be dangerous. There are a lot of people who will see the analogy and just know the answer, or think they do. This week it’s about one bad apple spoiling the bunch. Yep, another old analogy. But that bad apple is a team member and their caustic attitude is spoiling everybody’s work day. It’s like having one bad or painful tooth. Here you’ve got a whole mouth full of teeth that are perfectly good for biting into that wonderful apple sitting in front of you. But anybody who’s had a painful tooth knows that that one little tooth can ruin a lot of things. There is a lot of noise on social media and, in particular, Facebook. Part of the reason for that is that there are so many prospective customers on that platform that you absolutely need to be there but how do you do a good job of creating posts people will react to? You can look to one locality in my area who is absolutely doing the greatest job I have seen with a Facebook Page and I want to highlight their incredible work. We have a little town here called Kelseyville which is a local farming town. Like many small towns there’s a Main Street dotted with restaurants, a brewery, a bar, a couple of small grocery stores and various other businesses. |
Tony BarthelTony Barthel is passionate about great marketing for small businesses Get Free Weekly Marketing TipsCategories
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