Small Business

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• Make Your Campaigns More Presidential
  As voters went to the polls on election day, Seth Godin decided to outline what we can learn from a presidential campaign that took marketing sophistication to entirely new levels. ...
  Marketing Inspiration, Marketing Strategy, Obama, Small Business
• When Word-of-Mouth Goes South
  Let's say you've gotten into a culinary rut—always going to the same few restaurants—and want to try something new. You visit a site like Yelp.com to see what customers think ...
  Public Relations, Small Business, Word-of-Mouth
• Time for an ROI Makeover
  In a post at MarketingProfs' Daily Fix blog, Lewis Green ponders an age-old quandary facing marketers: How to prove value to a company's top leadership. "Let's begin by ending the ...
  ROI, Small Business
• Are You Lazy in the Email Department?
  The informality and low cost of email has changed the way we communicate—but not always for the better. In a post at her Marketing Interactions blog, Ardath Albee reminds us ...
  Customer Relationships, Email Marketing, Small Business
• If You Wanna Play, You Gotta Pay
  In a Pro article at MarketingProfs, Jeanette Kocsis argues that paid search should be a mandatory component of your marketing mix. "Search is one of the most targeted forms of ...
  Search Engine Marketing, Small Business
• Brand or Get Branded
  "You've heard the branding gurus' mantra," says Jane Schulte, author of Work Smart, Not Hard! "Brand or be branded. Well, it's true. If you don't go about the process of ...
  Branding, Small Business
• Testify!
  "Testimonials are critical to any website that's marketing or selling products or services," says Rick Sloboda of Webcopyplus. To make his point, he cites the Robert Cialdini book Influence: Science ...
  Customer Satisfaction, Small Business
• Surprise: You've Been Upgraded!
  Let's say you've been working around the clock on an improvement for your product, service or online interface. Because you know all about your upgrade, why it's needed and how ...
  Customer Service, Small Business
• Time to Audit Your Ambition
  "During your annual planning ritual do you study and analyze the current situation in your market and then move on straight to setting your goals?" asks Dan Herman in an ...
  Benchmarking, Small Business
• Shut Up and Listen. Please.
  "Most people are not very good listeners," write Don and Sheryl Grimme in The New Manager's Toolkit. The reason, the say, is that we spend our days juggling personal and ...
  Management, Small Business
• Don't Be Stupid: Keep It Simple
  If your product or service caters to well-heeled customers, you might soon discover a new segment: the Middle Aged Simplifier. According to John Quelch of Harvard Business Online, they spent ...
  Customer Behavior, Small Business
• The Sport of Unhappiness
  In a post at his blog, Seth Godin notes some of the seemingly unfounded whining in which our consumer culture likes to indulge. We bitch and moan about a Facebook ...
  Customer Behavior, Customer Satisfaction, Small Business
• Some Impure Blogging Thoughts
  In her keynote address at our Digital Marketing Mixer in Scottsdale, Arizona, Arianna Huffington gave her play-by-play for turning the eponymous Huffington Post into a social media juggernaut. Rohit Bhargava—himself ...
  Blogging, Small Business, Social Media
• How to Get Referrals Galore
  Everybody loves referrals. They're easier to close than non-referrals, make quicker buying decisions and tend to be more loyal—in short, they can often become your most profitable customers. Trouble is, ...
  Customer Relationships, Referrals, Small Business
• A Bad Trip
  In a post at Emergence Marketing, Francois Gossieaux tells the story of making reservations with Air France for a trip to Belgium, where his father—who had been diagnosed with a ...
  Customer Satisfaction, Customer Service, Public Relations, Small Business
• Warren Buffett's Three I's
  As fallout from the current economic crisis continues to mount, thoughtful people are beginning to ask what we can learn from this experience. In a post at Harvard Business Online, ...
  Creativity, Marketing Inspiration, Small Business
• Mission Control
  "We are bombarded with messages that tell us the how, why, should and must of business," says Karen Swim in a post at Words For Hire. "Much of the information ...
  Marketing Strategy, Small Business
• Quirky, Weird and Hard to Predict
  In a post at Copyblogger, Sonia Simone offers some unconventional blogging advice, her nine "little known" rules for a successful blog. It's an interesting read, with plenty of key takeaways ...
  Blogging, Small Business
• A Tale of Two Innovations
  The next time your management team meets to determine the fate of a recently introduced product or service, consider a post by Scott Anthony at Harvard Business Online. He argues ...
  Metrics, Small Business
• A Skeptical Look at Word-of-Mouth
  Marketers don't always agree on the best way to achieve results, and Michael Antman takes the contrarian view of a strategy popular with many of his colleagues. "[S]ome businesses, especially ...
  Small Business, Word-of-Mouth