Are you a small business owner who’d like to win a year of help in your marketing and finding new customers efforts?  If so, click over to Project Rev 2012 and check out the details of the second annual ‘small business marketing advisors and more’ contest sponsored by Deluxe.  Be sure to do so soon, the project is open for applications until Sept. 30, 2011.

Business owners like Scot Waggoner, of w. b. builders, a recent Project Rev winner had this to say about his experience with brand building and more:

With little to no marketing, we have successfully established our business as a premier remodeler. But in the economic downturn, I realized that marketing was needed to be sure that our business was more visible to those seeking upscale building or remodeling. With Julie, my Deluxe advisor, we planned a to raise our company’s brand image. I worked with Deluxe to create professional marketing collateral, apparel and promotional items.

It was showcased when we were recently awarded ‘Contractor of the Year’ in two categories by the Minnesota Chapter of National Association of Remodeler’s Industry (NARI). I now understand where we are, who our constituents are, and the importance of getting the brand out there.

I learned about the project when a nice public relations person contacted me with the info.  Then, Diane Presser, another recent Project Rev winner was kind enough to give me an interview about what she learned about keeping her website updated and using offline networking to get her business better known.  Read my post about Diane, here.

If you’re intrigued about beefing up your small business marketing, and want to apply to win, check out the link here to apply.  Maybe you know a small business that could benefit from winning a year of professional marketing advisors and some great marketing services?

Or, just check out the interesting blog posts here with marketing lessons learned by the business owners that participated.

Successful businesses develop deep knowledge of all customer segments in their market.

Your business can gain golden insights about marketing and deep customer understanding from the US restaurant with the highest sales.  No matter what business you’re in, Tao Las Vegas Restaurant and Club offers many delicious marketing and customer segmentation ideas.

According to BusinessWeek the Tao Las Vegas restaurant earned $59,292,345 in 2009 sales.  That’s more than twice the $27 million earned by the then-closest runner up restaurant.

How did Tao do it?  Here are the two aha marketing and strategy insights I got from reading about Tao’s rocket-ship success.  Use these ideas to take a fresh look at your own customers and market!

1. Plan for success in your market by serving as many of the available customer segments as possible from day one.   Tao Las Vegas restaurant is located adjacent to the Venetian hotel, typically known for hosting convention-goers during the week.  Convention folks turn in pretty early and the restaurant could be empty by 10:00 p.m. every night.  Not great for sales in a 7×24 town.

What marketing strategy did Tao develop to overcome this barrier?  And more important–what can you do in your market to maximize customers and sales?

Appeal to the conventioneers, grandmas, celebrities and clubbers or (fill in the blank_____) group of customers in your market.

When they opened in 2005, Tao decided to go beyond the traditional Las Vegas customers (convention attendees) and market to and appeal to several customer segments.  They worked to win sales from the whole universe of customers in the Las Vegas market.  Not just the conventioneers.

• Tao developed long term relationships with top celebrities.  Tao works big time with the celebrities needed by all savvy “hot” restaurants.  (Like Kim Kardashian.)

• Then Tao attracts the traditional Las Vegas convention folks early in the evening.

• They use innovative marketing to reach out to—and retain—the young clubbing crowd for late nights/weekends and pricey bottles of vodka.

• Tao also appeals to “ladies that play nickel slots”.  They eat in restaurants, too!

BusinessWeek’s Joel Stein quotes one of the partners in his article,  “the A-list only comes for so long.  So you better be nice to the grandmas and the babies.”

You can read the complete, juicy BusinessWeek Tao Las Vegas article written by Joel Stein.  Just click here.

2. Continuously develop and execute innovative marketing strategies, techniques, and programs. In addition to using ‘celebrity-appearance marketing’ to build and retain customer interest, one of Tao’s other marketing strategies was a text messaging campaign.

According to the company that helped Tao with the text campaign, its database of 2,000 customers opted in to receive regular texts from the restaurant/club.  Those opt-in customers led to increased sales and visits to the club.  The online source for this text message campaign information is here.

To emphasize the importance of innovative marketing, veteran journalist Robin Leach interviewed Tao managing partner Jason Strauss in an interview posted Nov. 6, 2010.

“I think we just have a great brand that has come out of New York. We have a lot of history, and we have a management team that is plugged in every day. We created a culture that is one of the best in its class. We spend a lot of money on innovative marketing and service techniques that keep us relevant throughout the year.”

Source: Vegas Deluxe, Luxe Life blog, to read the complete interview click here.

I hope your head is swimming with ideas for taking a deep look at your market and your customers.  Which new types of customers can you appeal to, market to and win over?

Photos purchased from istock.

Beth Negus Viveiros wrote a cool B2B marketing case study blog post about an old dog—er pig—that’s learned the tricks of new marketing extremely well. There are tons of lessons for small businesses to “hog” (borrow) from the way business-to-business company New Pig manages its marketing, its blog and its branding.

New Pig invents, manufactures and distributes thousands of products for a clean, safe workplace that are used in over 70 countries.  New Pig’s industrial products are used for cleaning up spills, containing spills, and making work facilities safe among many others.

New Pig, established in 1985, decided long ago to disregard the advice of an agency that told them not to name the company ‘Pig’.  The New Pig products win industry awards see the list here and marketing awards too click here.

3 Pig (Big) Takeaways from New Pig’s New Marketing

Okay, this is the last Pig reference….

1. Make your B2B home page drop dead simple for buyers, customers and prospects to understand. When you land at New Pig’s home page, there’s no question about how they can help you solve your industrial cleaning and safety issues.

Check out their top rotating product images on the home page—all are based on the “Your Problem” and “Our Solution” approach.

Your Problem:  Drum lids are hard to open.
Our Solution:  Put our lid on it.

Makes figuring out how New Pig helps you clear as mud, right?  (LOL).

2. No time for a company blog?  Launch a group blog where each of your team members can contribute as time permits.  The Pig Blog is a stellar example of a B2B group blog.

One post example:  Here is a thoughtful, helpful, problem-solving post for New Pig’s customers from Karen, the tech blogger.   Since New Pig helps its with safety and clean products, this post titled “EPA can’t help you pick a spill kit – but we can!” is a prime example of how-to posts.   Prospects and buyers love “how to” posts!

3. Make it as easy as pie for your buyers to contact you anyway that works for them.   New Pig does!  They offer an award winning print catalog, easy to order from website and the toll free number 1-800-HOT-HOGS(R)  is visible on every page.

You can read the complete blog post by Beth Negus Viveiros over at the Chief Business Marketer Blog here.

Check out the New Pig site, its Facebook page and “The Pig blog” and then come back here to Small Company Big Image blog and tell me what you think.

Other posts you might like:

How to Create Ideal Buyer Personas for Your Business

Bootstrapping Ideas from a Successful B2B CEO

It may seem to you that lately all small business marketing and Internet marketing how-to sites and blogs are focused on the newest social media trend.  Me too!   My friend Joel Williams, The Blog Tech Guy, reminds us–not so fast.   In his guest post below, Joel explains that as a small business owner, you can benefit from sending regular email updates to share new product and service information and keep your most loyal subscribers and buyers engaged.

by Joel Williams, The Blog Tech Guy

These days, more and more organizations are getting online, with the result that readers are at risk of being bombarded with information overkill. At every turn, people using the World Wide Web are encouraged to sign up to new communications, follow RSS feeds and subscribe to newsletters, e-magazines and e-mail updates.

All this information can lead people to feel a little jaded, resulting in potential customers becoming wary of giving out their contact details in order that businesses can keep them updated with news, promotions and events relating to their organization. This means that it is harder than ever before for companies to engage their audience through targeted marketing, and make sure that their customers are kept in the loop when it comes to offering new products and services.

Scheduling your ongoing communications

As a small business owner, the chances are that your marketing strategy for your firm does have some element of monthly communication to it. Having a set schedule for providing updates helps you to stay focused, keeps your customers engaged and gives you a regular vehicle for updating people about what you are up to. All of these bring benefits such as keeping your firm at the forefront of people’s minds when they make purchasing decisions, and support you to keep on top of your communications and provide timely, relevant updates to those of your customers whom you are the most keen to keep on board.

This obviously leads to a dilemma. You don’t want to give up on monthly updates and e-newsletters, as you recognize that they still hold value in our world of online communications. At the same time, you need to find innovative ways of getting around the information overload which affects most people who sign up to things, online. The following tips are designed to help you overcome the negativity many people feel when they are asked to subscribe to a new site, and make sure your customers are happy to be kept informed on a regular basis.

Increasing newsletter sign-up without alienating your readership

The first thing to remember when you consider people signing up for your newsletter, is that no-one will bother unless you can bring them some demonstrable value. To this end, it makes a lot of sense to offer people an incentive to sign up. Providing a free download of a useful product helps people to appreciate the benefit which joining your subscription list can offer. When they download your product, you can ask them if they mind automatically being registered. Most people don’t mind joining you if you have given them something of use, so this is an ideal way of encouraging uptake of your communications.

In essence, this incentive can be viewed as a positive bribe. Whether you offer a free course, e-tips, or a PDF, or even discount vouchers for use against future purchases, people will respond well to knowing that they have a mutual agreement with you.

Take simple steps to encourage people to join you

Another thing which really helps may seem obvious, but many site owners forget ñ make your opt-in highly visible. If people can’t find out where to sign up in a matter of seconds, they simply won’t bother.

If you are not sure how to go about encouraging people to join you, check out some of the plug-ins that are available for your site. Products such as Pop-up Domination and Subscribers Magnet will help you to add forms to your site easily, making it a very simple process for people to identify how to join up to your offers and receive communications from you.

If you get the opportunity, another useful trick for encouraging subscribers is to test your options. If your provider allows you to, undertake split tests to see which method for encouraging uptake works the best, or use Google Website Optimizer to test different headlines, colors and layouts to establish which one performs best. This gives you your blueprint for future use, making it easier than ever before to encourage an outstanding uptake from your customers, and leaving you free to communicate all of your news, product updates and offers.

You can read Joel’s blog here.

Tony Hseih (pronounced Shay), an investor, CEO, serial entrepreneur, and author shared wow insights about growing businesses, building a killer company culture, hiring and working with (the best) employees and the greatest non-marketing   non-advertising) strategy ever.

Tony Hseih’s new book Delivering Happiness, A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose will be out on June 7, 2010.  In the book he’s sharing his insights, success and mistakes.  And Tony wants other businesses to avoid the mistakes he’s made.

Here are highlights from Tony’s speech at the HBS Business Growth Summit that I think can benefit small all business owners:

Early on in Zappos’ life as a start up company, the management team decided they were a “customer service company that happens to sell shoes and clothing.” All decisions were then  based on how do we create the best customer experience possible? No lip service here.  Zappos went from zero to over a billion dollars in sales in less than 10 years.

Where Do You Invest Capital?

How to invest your capital:  Zappos decided to invest its capital in other functional areas than marketing.  No big advertising campaigns.  Here are some investment examples if you’re interested in building a lifelong relationship with your customers like Tony is:

• Customer service call centers with staffed with employees that genuinely share Zappos values. Keys: several interviews.

• Operating warehouses around the clock to provide faster deliveries, improved service.

• Free shipping for both purchases and returns.

• Surprising customers occasionally with overnight delivery at no extra charge.

• Sending all employees—regardless of job function—to customer service training and having all employees spend 2 weeks in a call center.

• Being willing to fire employees who are not a culture fit, even if they do everything else about their job well.

• Asking themselves,” what are the stories our customers will tell their friends?’ and how do we make those stories happen?
• Offering new employees $2,000 to leave Zappos at the end of new-hire training.  This  ensures that all employees are the right fit with Zappos culture and values.

How Non-Marketing Investments Pay Off

The management team (correctly) determined that if Zappos delivered exceptional customer service, that their customers would do their marketing for them.  And boy have they.

Listening to Tony speak was a lot like my shopping experience with Zappos over the last several years.  Always pleasant,  delightful, and more than you expected.

I only wish companies like Sony—where the price tags are way higher for televisions, etc.—could be a fraction as responsive and fun to deal with as Zappos.  But that’s a post for another day…

Do order yourself a copy of Delivering Happiness.  We all got an advance copy as part of the Conference, so I am reading mine now.  Will share more insights soon.

Here are some juicy links to “Delivering Happiness” resources Tony’s book team has assembled, click here.

Photo: My partner’s video cameras, Flip Minnow and 3-year old, Sony HD

Conversion Rates Matter

If you’re working to improve your website conversion rate, an online video maybe a useful marketing tactic.

‘Conversion rate’ refers to the percentage of the people that visit your small business web site that take the action you’re hoping they’ll take.  The action might be to:

• Join your email newsletter list
• Download your how-to articles
• Bookmark your site for future visits
• Subscribe to your RSS feed to follow your content updates in a news reader
• Or (best) call your company for more information, or to make a purchase

Video Is Ideal for Telling a Story

Social media marketing is all about creating an online conversation and telling stories that connect with buyers.  People that need your products to get things done.  A great way to turn web visitors into buyers is to tell a compelling story about your company and your products and services that draws them in.  A story that makes them want to contact you!

Bedhog, an ecommerce company, does just that with their video.  The entrepreneur briefly tells the story about how, as newlyweds, she and her husband debated over who took up more room in bed and a charming new bedding product was born.  Check out the Bedhog video by TurnHere here.  Sleepsquad is a time-saving concept for mattress buyers.

Not Ready to be a Video Producer?

It’s been my experience when working with business owners, that the biggest challenge is the time involved.  It can be relatively easy with today’s easy to use digital video cameras to make a video.  But it does take time and a bit of experience using the camera.  And some level of editing is usually needed to prepare a somewhat professional video.  That’s why the Internet gods have created outsourcing.

If, after checking out the results many businesses are experiencing, you’d like to dip your toe into the online video pool, you could try outsourcing to a company like TurnHere.

TurnHere creates and distributes online videos for small business owners among others.  They manage creating the online video for you from beginning to end—making it easy for small business owners that are not ready to buy a digital video camera and do it themselves.

TurnHere has many happy customers and some interesting data about the value of online video to increase interest and sales.   Here are some results shared with me by TurnHere.  Their partners and some third party research organizations compiled the results:

• 52% of viewers take action after watching online videos
• 30% of viewers visit a store
• Clicks for more information increase by 30-40%
• Phone calls to your business increase 16-20%

TurnHere does a nice job of helping professional services companies to tell their stories in an interesting, non-slick-advertising way.

Is an online video that educates your web visitors about the value your company offers an answer for improving your sales?  It will depend on how effective the video is at demonstrating exactly how your products and services fill a need for the web visitor, potential buyer.  The video must be short and compelling without being too salesy.

TurnHere Benefits

I think—if you haven’t already got a friend, child, niece, or local provider that can do a video within your budget—the TurnHere solution is worth a look.  Here’s why:

Video producers that are recruited by TurnHere are experienced film folks.   That means they know how to help you, the business owner, tell your product or service story in a compelling and professional manner.

1. Brevity is key.  They help you create a video that is 60 to 90 seconds in length.
2. You review the finished video online. Best of all, you don’t have to learn how to “edit” video.
3. You only spend part of a day shooting it and the producer comes to your location.
4. TurnHere will distribute your video to online video sharing sites for you, if you wish.
5. The  videos are professional and polished.

A small company I know here in San Diego is trying out the TurnHere service. I will let you know about their experience.

Meanwhile, if you’re not up to producing a DIY Internet video for your business, check out TurnHere.  They often have promotions and specials running.

Full disclosure: The nice public relations person for TurnHere, Alison McNeill, sent me a note about this service and I really liked the quality, and the short, to-the-point length of the videos. So I am posting about it.

DemandGen Report surveyed 218 BtoB sales and marketing professionals and found that social media is (actually) driving leads and helping to connect with prospects.  The study took place in June.  (DemandGen Report is an online publication that focuses on sales and marketing automation tools to help companies drive growth.)

Source: DemandGen Report

LinkedIn (58 percent) and company blogs (36 percent) are the top two social media tools producing these results.  Interestingly, Twitter came in third at 31 percent.

In no surprise to me, only 17 percent of these folks report Facebook as a source of leads.  It seems unless you are a large, well known brand Facebook is probably not a good use of lead generation time/resources for a small to midsize business-to-business company.  Although the article does not state the size of the companies surveyed, DemandGen Report offers a webinar series for small to midsize companies so I think SMBs are their readers.

Here are some highlights of the survey results:

• Some early adopters are generating from 10 to 15 percent of leads via social media connections
• While marketers and PR folks are driving the most activity, other teams are participating: Sales –  41 percent; Product management – 21 percent; Engineering – 13 percent

• The top 3 most successful social networking tactics reported by this group are:   Joining/participating in industry groups (25%;  Starting conversations on industry topics (25%); Answering questions on industry topics (23%)

Is LinkedIn helping your company blog to drive leads and connections with prospects?  How about your company blog?

Read the entire DemandGenReport article here.

Brian Carroll offers a great how-to for using LinkedIn for lead generation here.

Mike Sachoff cites another study showing company blogs as the most valued Social Media tool here.

But one untapped resource all B2B companies have is real customers with authentic, from-the-trenches stories to tell about how your products and services helped them to be successful.  

So, how about putting a video camera in front of them and letting them tell their story about how your company helped them?

Source

That’s how Speakeasy—a provider of voice over Internet (VoIP) telecom and broadband services for consumers, home offices and small to midsize businesses—created four killer video case studies.

According to BtoBonline.com, Speakeasy traveled to four of their small business customers’ locations, interviewed them and let them tell the story.   No script was used and Speakeasy picked their most complex service as the subject for the case studies.

In these case study videos, Speakeasy’s VoIP services come across as cost-effective, easy to upgrade, seamless, professional, well you get the picture.  You can view the video case studies here.

The BtoB article talks about the extensive ‘earned media’ (public relations) coverage Speakeasy received in publications like BusinessWeek, InfoWorld, USA Today and Wall Street Journal and Web sites MSN Money and Yahoo Finance.

I like the way each of the four small business customers tells a story.  None of the videos were scripted.  It doesn’t feel like a typical case study—problem, solution, result—I was actually entertained.  And, I’d sure call Speakeasy if I needed VoIP services for my business.

BTW:  if I were buying real estate in Boston, I’d call the hard-working Ballast Realty Group.  Note to Ballast—get video on your site soon. You rock on screen!

Granted, these are well produced, professionally shot videos—hence the $200,000 budget (including travel).

Some next steps for you to consider:

• Who are your best customers that have been successful in part by using your products and services?
• Which ones could tell the story the best?
• What’s in it for me? (WIIFM) Your customer gets to showcase his or her own business in an online video.  Are they on YouTube yet?

Could you create short online videos with your customers that tell stories about how your products help them to be successful?   Sure you could!

Here is the Speakeasy.net YouTube Channel BtoBonline’s complete story is here.

7-13-09 Update:  Here is link to Guy’s blog where he published all of the links he discussed at this event.

This morning 600 people gathered in La Jolla (San Diego) to hear Guy Kawasaki talk about “Social Media to Market Your Business”.

Photo source: Adjix TwitPic

Guy treated us to a powerful tutorial on how he uses social media (and by social media I mean mostly Twitter) to build his new venture, Alltop.  The lesson was so valuable because he visited each social media site and demonstrated in real-time how he uses the services to search and to market.

A good time was had by all.  Thanks Guy and San Diego Venture Group.

Alltop is an online “magazine rack”.   Alltop compiles the top content sites in 600+ subject areas (food, wine, news, venture capital, football, art…)

Guy generously shared tips, tricks and strategies.  If you’re a small business or a startup working to grow your customer base by improving visibility, attracting attention and visitors to your web site, here are some cool ideas from the busy Tweeter who just published Reality Check: The Irreverent guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competiton.

He started with some of the networking social media sites:

Finding or Checking Out People On Social Media Sites

LinkedIn’s highest and best use is to see who is connected to your personal network of contacts.  A good tool for finding partners and doing background checks on folks you’re thinking about working for, or partnering with.  (Most of the 600 here today use LinkedIn.  Not so much on the Twitter users…)

Jigsaw is useful when you want to directly contact a person but do not have their company email or other contact info.

Spokeo provides human resource folks with background information (the good and the bad) by searching people on 43 different social networks.

Tip from Guy: When approaching someone for first time, anything you learn about heir interests can give you a helpful icebreaker.  Like maybe the person’s Amazon wish list contains books about soccer, wine or vintage cars.  According to Guy, you might tweak the person’s interest for the few minutes you need to begin your pitch.

Marketing Your Company Using Social Media

Unless you’re a well-known brand with a base of fans already on Facebook, Guy doesn’t recommend using the site to market your business.  “You’ll end up talking to yourself and your competitors” he says.

This is where his love of Twitter comes in.  Guy thinks “Twitter is the best thing to happen to marketing since, well, maybe ever…”

Guy’s Strategies + Tools for using Twitter

Build a following

• Follow everyone who follows you.  Out of respect he believes.  (and my note hey, who knows where your next customer, gig or opportunity will come from?)

• Search for people with your interests. Here is Twitter’s advanced search page.

Find interesting links.  Tweet or Share them.

Search Alltop (just as an example) for juicy content related to your business and the interests of your market.

Try Adjix, a free-link sharing service for use on Twitter.  It also shortens URLs, a must for 140-character limit-Twitter but unlike other link-shortening sites, Adjix allows you to schedule re-tweets.  Bonus for Firefox web-browser users is an Adjix button.   http://web.adjix.com/AdjixWhatIsIt.html (Personally I find Firefox’s web browser to be like a rocket compared to Internet Explorer’s more 1960′s VW Beetle.)

Big Companies  Using Twitter Successfully to Market

JetBlue They actually answer customers’ questions.  Check out their twitter page, this is 5-star customer service

Los Angeles street food vendor Kogi BBQ is known for Tweeting where their food truck will stop and at what time.  This small restaurant is said to have hundreds lined up to buy their tasty food at each stop  http://twitter.com/kogibbq

Comcastcares is poster boy for customer service for Comcast with 23,000 Twitter followers.

Next post I’ll cover Guy’s killer Twitter marketing tools.

Since I am a marketer/ social media enthusiast—I’ve translated the speakers’ recommendations into marketing ideas.    (Apologies in advance to the experts.)

This is part 1 of my posts from ideas shared at the DMC’s “Orange County Business Growth Forum.”

Steve Mednick, Plenum Revenue Group: Steve Mednick is a professor at the Grief Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC and a serial entrepreneur.  He shared his own bootstrapping stories and those of students of the Greif Center program.

One of the graduates of this USC program is Mark Benioff, founder of Salesforce.

•    The start point. When launching a new startup  (or for that matter,  a new product, service or marketing project) just get to the start point.  What is the idea that will get you started?  What is the idea that will get you your first customers?  We’re in business to get customers.

•    On market research.  Don’t worry about needing a budget to do research. The only opinion that counts is the customer’s.  Ask your (potential) customers when in doubt.  Then, give them what they want (as long as you make a profit.)

• Cynthia’s note:  I uncovered one of my small business clients best ideas for generating revenue during a 15-minute call with one of his best raving fan customers.

•    Ask someone for help.  If you’re uncertain about a project, product or service—ask someone!  Use your network. Talk to 250 people. Get help. Find someone who knows about what you’re attempting to achieve.

•    Your ability to execute in the marketplace = $$$.  Execution–finding a way to get something done—is the key.

•    Take the hair-on-fire approach. [To starting a company or a marketing project.)  Just do the next thing, take the next action to get to your (next) goal.  Steve had a great slide for this one.  Actually all of his PowerPoint slides were excellent. Very Zen.  Not crowded, not busy, got his message across, told the story.

•    “Think from your customer backwards.” Saras D. Sarasvathy published research about “thinking from the customer backwards”.  In 2007, Saras was one of the top 18 entrepreneurship professors by Fortune Small Business Magazine.  Steve Mednick says:  “Just start talking to customers.”

•    Get past the ‘great idea’ stage. Get to customers to execute your ideas.

•    Network. Network. Network.  Become known in your space.

•    Give to get. Make connections.  Brand your company as the go-to-person for your products, services.

Thanks to Steve Mednick for a great presentation.  Here is the link to his complete article, Bootstrapping Your Business – Get Real – Get Started

Next post I’ll cover more pearls of wisdom from the Digital Media Center’s  “Orange County Business Growth Forum.”

Any hair-on-fire ideas that worked for you that you’d like to share?  Add them below in comments.