Aggressive Small Business Marketing & Advertising

Showing archives from 08/2005.

Fast Business Growth with Leveraged Marketing

Posted by Michael Cage on Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Landon, a computer reseller in Toronto, Canada, wrote it to ask:

"Michael, so much of what you talk about will cost money, but I'm stretched so thin right now that even a small expenditure is too much. If you had a turn around a small reseller quickly and without spending any money on marketing, how would you do it?"

Dear Landon,

There is a concept I teach called "leveraged marketing," and it is the solution to your problem.

Two key insights make it work:

First, the most valuable asset your business can possess is its client list. You can do nearly everything else wrong in a business and still be financially successful if you understand how to build, nurture and leverage a client list. The fact that you are having cash-flow problems tells me you do not have this skill... yet. That's ok, because the second insight will help you "piggy-back" on the success of someone who does.

The second insight says that if you don't have your own well-nurtured client list to work with, another business who will give you access to their well-nurtured client list is the next best thing.

Let's look at why...

It costs at least seven times as much to generate a new client than it does to sell something new to an existing client. A business that understands this puts enormous time and resources into building and nurturing those existing clients so they can generate cash flow, almost at will, by communicating with the people on it.

Without money and without a well-nurtured client list of your own, you should set out to find businesses in your community who do have a well-nurtured client list. Having those businesses make an offer to their clients on your behalf is the ultimate shortcut to gaining new clients quickly.

You leverage their list and relationship by making a special offer to their clients. This allows your partner business to present the special offer as "another benefit of doing business with us." It could be a special discount, a buy one get one free promotion, a free audit or analysis, a discounted computer repair, or something else altogether. When a new client comes in to take advantage of the special offer, you have obtained a new client at little to no cost by leveraging the relationship they have with your partner business.

Now, you are probably wondering a few things. Why would a partner business want to do this? and How does the partner business make the special offer to their clients?

To get a partner business to send your offer to their list, you need to make it "worth their while." Sure, they receive good will by sending a great offer to their clients, but most business owners will want something more to make the effort. Here are three options:

Offer a percentage of every sale one of their clients generates.
Offer to sell the partner business computer equipment at a discount when a certain number of their clients buy from you.
Offer to promote their business to your clients in return.

When a partner business agrees, how do they go about getting the offer to their clients?

If the partner business is good at what they do, they already communicate, by mail, at least once per month with their clients. If they are collecting E-mail addresses, it could be weekly or even daily. Write out the offer and present it to your partner business for editing and approval. The less work you make them do, the faster and easier the process will go. If the partner business will agree, offer to print, mail and send out the letters with their approval. This way, all they have to do is give you their client list, sit back, and let it happen. Another option, less labor intense but with slower results, is to create a flyer or coupon that the partner business can give to their clients when they see them.

What all this means for you, Landon, is that you should seek out businesses with clients just like the clients you want for your own business. Approach them with a win-win idea: "I'll make a special offer to your clients, they'll appreciate the extra 'perk' they receive because they patronize your business, and I'll also give you [whatever you want to give them in return.]" Once you get one business to agree, go find another. Do this and your cash-flow problems will be a thing of the past in no time.

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COTC @ Casey Software

Posted by Michael Cage on Monday, August 29, 2005

This week's Carnival is up at CaseySoftware.com.

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Why I love local small businesses

Posted by Michael Cage on Friday, August 26, 2005

A few days back, a friend asked me why I spend so much time working with local small businesses. His argument was that there is much more money to be made working with larger companies that have more money to spend.

Maybe, maybe not.

But to really answer the question, I need to tell you a little about myself.

Several years ago my wife and I were contemplating a move. We'd been living in the same area for a few years, and were ready for a change. We did the things people looking to move usually do ... looked on the Internet, visited different areas, asked the people we ran into where they lived and what they loved about it.

For me, at the end of the day, something came through loud and clear...

The places I love the most are packed with unique, compelling, local small businesses. Amazing businesses and entrepreneurs that add flavor to their communities, provide meeting places for their customers, and that seperate their city or town from the endless drone of places every bit as charming as a drab, gray cubicle.

One of my mentors has spent years teaching small businesses how to make more money. He was very good at it, and, in turn, I became very good at it, too. In fact, there are few business growth situations I run into nowadays that I can't fix in a jiffy. The solutions are just ... obvious.

Anyway, my mentor and I had a very different perspective on why we do things:

He liked making the business more money, so the owner could go off and do what (s)he really wanted. Conversations like "I hate the X business, but as long as it keeps me on the golf course 5 times a week I can live with it" were common.

I've got a different take.

I love working with local entrepreneurs who love what they do and who they do it for, and who, completely freed from marketing and money worries, are free to transform their businesses into a no-limit dream. In the process ... they add flavor ... inject passions ... and transform their customers and communities.

It gives me chills. Seriously.

So many small business owners get into business with big dreams and aspirations. To quote Steve Jobs, they want to "make a dent in the world" ... even if their world is a little, local community they've come to know and love. But all too often, a year or two in, the economic realities of growing a business have "deadened the dream." Instead of waking up passionate and enthusiastic about what is possible ... they begin to wake with fears about what might be around the corner.

Being a part of making those fears disappear ... a part of bringing the passion back ... and, in my own way, contributing to the number of cool people doing cool stuff keeps me going day and night.

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Problem @ Microsoft? “It’s the Windows of…”

Posted by Michael Cage on Monday, August 22, 2005

So, I'm sitting in Starbucks and overhear a snippet of conversation at the table behind me: "It's the Windows of automobiles." My ears perk up, I do a double-take. The guy was talking to his friend about a brand of car he found to be "bloated, ugly, slow, always breaking down and packed with crap he didn't want." The funny thing --- our hero was working on a Windows laptop as he said it.

One important thing before I continue...

I am NOT a Microsoft-hater. To be sure, I think most of their products stink and I won't work on a Windows-anything unless I absolutely have to. But the company itself is run brilliantly in many, many ways. I'm not a consumer, just a student and a fan. (I'll relate my favorite Bill Gates story --- an important one for entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes --- in a few paragraphs.)

Onward.

What I do find fascinating is that I've heard the same phrase --- "It's the Windows of..." --- from a half-dozen people over the last month, always used to convey negative attributes of another product/service. And not just from Mac or Linux zealots, either. I'm hearing it from everyday folks who use Windows regularly and resent "not having an option." (Sort of how I felt before I switched to Macs a year and a half ago.)

Personally, I'm using the phrase more and more. Most recently to describe the difference between Wal-Mart (It's the Windows of discounters...) and Target. It's usually gets a knowing smile or a laugh. Heck, I've got it built into a slide of a small business marketing seminar I'm giving next month!

I have no idea where I picked it up or who started it. My "what's happening" radar tells me it's picking up steam.

This presents an interesting challenge for Microsoft:

What happens if/when their products become synonymous with attributes people dislike and don't want? It's already the case with the Mac and Linux crowd, but they are true believers ... already "drinking the kool-aid" of the competition so to speak ... and aren't where my primary concern would rest. After all, "we" can (foolishly) be dismissed as "freaks."

The question I'm grooving on is what happens when it tips from the zealots from the "other camp" into the current, mainstream users of MS/Windows/Office and so on?

Once a label like that sticks, it can be hard to shake.

Will MS shape and shift their offerings to avert disaster?
Will they do it before or after it becomes "necessary"?
Will frustrated MS users "hijack" the brand for evil instead of good?
Are my experiences isolated?

What do you think? (Leave a comment...)

(Oh --- the Gates story. It comes from Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. He's talking to Bill one day about a topic I can't remember, he tells Bill he's wrong about a particular issue, shortly thereafter they get off the phone. Hours later Bill calls back, tells Larry he's been thinking about it all day and decided Larry was right after all. Larry says that's what makes Bill so dangerous --- he cares about getting it right more than ego. About the right idea more than the source of the idea. There is a lesson there for all entrepreneurs.)

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Peter Drucker: “Plans are only good intentions unless…”

Posted by Michael Cage on Saturday, August 20, 2005

A commenter on this blog once remarked than an entrepreneur is anyone with an idea. I could not disagree more strongly. Everyone has ideas. Most of them are never acted on and end up as regrets ... the things that coulda ... shoulda ... woulda ... been done.

Entrepreneurs have ideas, to be sure, but what makes them unique is not the ideas themselves ... but the character to act on them in the face of success and failure ... family and societal pressures ... an educational system designed to "kill" the entrepreneurial instinct ... and more.

Drucker sums it up nicely:

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work."

Peter Drucker

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