When the economy gets tough, some businesses cut back on marketing along with their other costs, thinking they can lie low and wait out the next opportunity. There are two mistakes with this kind of thinking to discuss, even before we get to the point of this article.

First, it is a mistake to think about marketing as a cost. It isn’t a cost if you know your numbers and you know how much money in new business you should reap from your marketing. This number is your return on investment (ROI). The money you spend on marketing is, and should be, an investment — not a cost.

Second, not all recessions are the same, so you can’t bet that waiting on the sidelines is a strategy that will even keep you in the game. Right now, you need to be making “real time” changes in your business that will let you take advantage of the opportunities you see — and there will be opportunities. Maybe just the fact that your competition finds the market tough is the opportunity you need to take their spot in the marketplace.

Let’s look at six more major business mistakes that people are making right now in their business and how you can overcome them.

1. FAILING TO TEST YOUR IDEAS

Great ideas are frequently born around the kitchen table. Unfortunately, so are bad ones. The real question is: How do you know the difference?

My experience has been that everyone (including me), thinks their ideas are best. Frequently, however, we are surprised to discover that the idea didn’t work. If people like the Coca-Cola Company can make a major marketing blunder, dropping “old” Coke for “new” Coke — or the entire American auto industry can market the wrong product at the wrong time, then all of us can make mistakes. The problem with business marketing mistakes is that they are expensive, as the tax payers are going to find out in the auto bailout.

Is there anything we can do in our own business? Absolutely! Test your ideas first. Test, you say? Test your ideas first? Yes, that’s what I’m suggesting. It is a little more work. It’s a little more time consuming. But guess what? It saves money, and it absolutely works.

Let’s say you have ten outside salesman. Each salesman calls on 20 people per day, and closes four sales. If you could change the presentation they make, and increase your sales by one sale per salesman, your sales would increase by 25%! The problem you face, however, is that a change could also result in lowering everyone’s production. Potentially this decision could be so big that it could actually put you out of business. The result of this predicament is failure to act.

Instead, test the new presentation. Take two of your best salesmen, and let them try the new presentation. Monitor the results. Does it work? If so, immediately change and adopt the new presentation throughout your organization. Use your best salesmen because if they can’t do it, then it is likely that the others can’t either.

Sales presentations aren’t the only things to test. Test your ads. Do they pull better in your local newspaper, or in other mediums, like local magazines? Which works better? Compare the costs per reader. Does the response rate improve if you add one additional color to the ad? If it helps, use it. If it doesn’t, now you know, and you also know how to save yourself some money.

Test your prices. This is one of the craziest things in business. Sometimes raising your price will actually improve sales. Okay, so you don’t believe me. Try it and see. Some things that wouldn’t sell for $19.00 sell better at $24.95, and sometimes even better at $149. Don’t ask me why exactly, but it has to do with the perception of value. Increasing the price doesn’t work all the time, just like decreasing the price doesn’t. The point is that you must test, and constantly re-test, to see which price works the best. The other point which is important to make on this particular topic is that once you have decided which price is correct, don’t let yourself be lulled into the thought that it should always stay the same price. At least once a year, re-test your prices to determine whether or not increasing or decreasing will have a better success rate than your current price.

It is far cheaper to test many ideas to find one that works

than it is to throw money at “hunches” you think are right.

2. RUNNING INSTITUTIONAL ADVERTISING INSTEAD OF DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING.

Ninety-five percent of all advertising you see is institutional advertising. For those of you who aren’t sure, institutional advertising is the type that tells you how wonderful and terrific the company is that is putting on the advertisement, but fails to tell you much about products. More importantly, while institutional advertising may create a feel good response on the part of the person it is directed to, it does not create a direct response that offers the ability for the customer to act.

The result is wasted advertising dollars, except in loose terms of brand identity. Small advertisers can’t afford to lose money this way. Unfortunately, small advertisers frequently copy the large advertisers. They also frequently copy their bad mistakes, and try to use institutional advertising. Again, the result winds up the same. The small advertiser develops an ad which may bring some feel good response on the part of its viewer, but does not bring the type of response which results in a sale. If you are a small advertiser, you simply cannot afford to make this kind of mistake.

Direct response advertising is different. Its entire purpose is to elicit a direct response from the viewer. This means that the intention of the ad is to get the viewer to act at that particular moment and make a call, send in money, go to a website, order a free report, or use some method of responding directly to the ad. The difference between direct response advertising and institutional advertising is that direct response advertising produces direct results. Direct response advertising doesn’t waste its time with superficial information about the company, and its motivation for success. Instead, it talks about the product, what it will do for its consumer, and why they should specifically purchase the product with all of its benefits now. Direct response advertising answers the questions of who, what, where, when, why, and how. Then, it ends with a call to action on the part of the reader.

For those of you who may be reading this, and remaining skeptical, all I ask you do is utilize direct response with testing (point number one). Take a certain amount of your advertising budget, and leave it with the same type of advertisements you have been running. Take the other half, and utilize direct response advertising. After a three month period (which is a good test marketing run), you tell me which works the best. Clearly, you will discover that direct response advertising far out-pulls the institutional advertising in terms of return on investments (ROI), and you will be well on your way to increased sales.

Use institutional advertising only when you become an institution.

In the meantime, make money with direct response.

3. FAILURE TO CONVEY YOUR UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION (USP)

Every person, product and company has a “Unique Selling Proposition.” Maybe you are the fastest in your business. Maybe you provide the best service in your business. It could be that your product is the least expensive available in the market. Whatever the reason, you have a unique selling proposition, or you should create a specific one, to separate yourself from your competitors.

Once you discover what your USP is, you should feature it in every advertisement you place. If you are open 24-hours a day and no one else in the industry is, then make certain you promote that as unique to your store. While your USP may not be attractive to everyone, it will be attractive to a certain segment of people, and those people will be your buyers.

Developing your USP is a must. It is the integral part which separates you from your competition. Without hammering it to the marketplace on a daily basis, you become one of the numbers in the crowd.

Federal Express utilized the USP of getting a letter to an individual guaranteed by the next morning in an industry that had no reliability to it. It created a USP, and with it, went on to become a multi-billion dollar company. Apple computers took a unique method of utilizing icons and pictures to create a new method of using computers, which simplified what had previously been a complex array of letters and numbers. Carving out this niche, the “MAC” became the second leading computer system in the industry, and the iPod and iPhone are blockbuster sellers.

How is your business unique? What is the one feature that you offer that no one else offers to their customers? Why should a customer pick your company over any of the other companies offering a similar product or service? Discover this answer, and use it in all of your advertising and marketing materials. Hammer it home constantly, over and over in public.

Your unique selling proposition (USP) is the reason your

one (USP) they won’t set you apart.

4. FORGETTING THE BACK-END SALE

Most companies spend a great deal of money getting their customer in the front door. Once they do, and the customer purchases a product, the owner feels he has accomplished his goal and objective of making a sale. The sad truth is these companies and owners do not realize that they have only begun the sale, instead of ending the sale. Too often these companies stop selling at this point. Having captured the customer and sale, they neglect the most profitable part of the business: The Back-End Sale.

While making a sale in the front-end is unquestionably important, the key everyone should realize is that what has really taken place is that a long-term customer has just been generated. What happens with this customer now separates the truly successful businesses from those which remain moderately successful.

What should you expect from the follow-up business? A simple rule of thumb is that 20% of the people you get in the first sale will become high-end product customers. That means that these individuals are pleased with your company’s performance and will be willing to purchase more products, and more expensive ones. Let me give you an example: Let’s say that you are selling a $19.95 product. This is sold to 1,000 people through a direct response advertisement, such as the one we discussed in point number two. Of the 1,000 people who purchase the initial $19.95 product, at least 200 (20%) of those individuals will be immediate candidates for a product priced higher (anywhere from $499 to $1,000). You will note from the initial sale, that the total gross of 1,000 people at $19.95 produced $19,950.00 worth of income. If you are then able to take the 200 people representing 20%, and convert them to $1,000 purchasers, you would then produce a gross of $200,000 on the next immediate sale. Obviously, forgetting the Back-End Sale is extremely expensive.

Another point that needs to be made is that this is only from the initial and second sale. Now that you have captured these people as potential long-term customers, they should be placed in your database and constantly contacted to buy additional products. Again, from this experience, clients will continue to purchase additional products, some on the lower end and some on the higher end. The point is, they must be captured in a database and constantly communicated with and offered additional products. This is also true of the other 80% who will buy again but perhaps not as frequently.

The result of the example above is important for another point regarding advertising and sales in general. Frequently, advertising will be written-off if it produces only a volume of sales which break even. In other words, if the advertising campaign costs $2,000, and it produces $2,000 worth of income (even on a net income basis), the campaign will be written off as a failure because it only broke even. However, what you must remember is that some of those customers you just obtained will buy again and again. What most businesses miss is the opportunity to measure this advertising campaign based on anything other than the initial sale. This is another huge mistake. Remember, the post-sale success should be more profitable than the initial sale’s success.

The single most profitable product you have
is your back-end sale.

5. FAILURE TO CAPTURE THE NAMES AND ADDRESSES OF YOUR CUSTOMERS.

The single most important asset that any company has is the database of names and addresses of its customer base. Nevertheless, at least 80% of companies never maintain a database of their customers. Think about it. You spend thousands and thousands of dollars getting people in the door, and once you have separated these key customers from all of the other thousands of people who totally disregard your advertisement, they are neglected for future advertising. Instead, you continue along with your institutional advertising, trying to get more and more new customers. Try something new, concentrate on your customer base as you capture it instead, and gear at least a growing portion of your advertising dollars solely to these individuals. They are proven successful buyers, and as long as you provide the quality and quantity of the products that attracted them in the first place, they will continue to buy from you for years to come.

Once you have become one of those few companies that successfully capture the names and addresses of their customers, go a step further to find out specific information about that customer. What type of product do they like? What services are they most interested in? Once you classify these customers, you can now target advertising based on sales of products which will be most attractive to those customers.

Let’s take a clothing store and use it as an example. If a clothing store kept a database on me, they would find that I frequent the casual area of the store, and prefer Tommy Bahama shirts. If the store uses this information in a database, they can now do pinpoint marketing. Every time they have a sale on Tommy Bahama shirts, who should they send a post card to? Which advertising do you think would be more successful — an institutional ad in the newspaper about the store, or a direct contact with 1,000 people who you know like to buy Tommy Bahama shirts? I think you get my point.

The lifetime value of a repeat customer is
a company’s biggest asset.

6. STICK WITH MARKETING CAMPAIGNS THAT WORK

Want to know one of the biggest marketing mistakes made by most every company? They stop doing what works. I know it sounds crazy, but it happens over and over again. The company may have had an ad which has run for years. It worked every time. A new employee comes in who wants to show some new pizzazz, and says, “What we need to do is change our image. We need to drop the old ad for this clearer, fresher look.” Do I have to tell you what happens? Friends, if something works, let it ride. Better still, let it roll. Your goal is to find the best ad by testing until you know it works. Once you know for sure, you do a “roll-out.” This means you take as much money as you can, and leverage this winner until it stops producing. As long as it keeps hitting your numbers, keep pounding it out.

If upon occasion you want to test a new ad, keep the old one running as a control, and test the new one. If the new one works better than the old one you can either use the new one and roll it out with all your marketing dollars, or use both as long as they keep working.

Never forget what works and always expand on success.

THE FINAL MISTAKE

NOT PUTTING INTO PRACTICE – THESE IDEAS

Now you have them. Use these Golden Nuggets and they will make you money. Remember, while I can tell you what I know, I can’t do it for you.

Once you learn a rule that works, don’t forget to apply it.

This year has flown by, but I’m happy to say that I accomplished many of my goals; and I hope you have too. I’ve met many of the greatest minds in business, and I’m very optimistic about what the future holds for all of us — based on the solutions for our personal and business lives that many of these great people are bringing to the market.

But, as always, when you see a lot of business ideas, and work with many types of people, the most obvious errors and mistakes that people can make also become glaringly obvious. The one I’m going to tell you about today is one that has been around forever, but you probably didn’t make the connection to how it applied to you.

Let me start with an example. We’ve all heard the sob story of a famous actor, musician, athlete, artist, etc., who has had blockbuster success, sold millions of something, and then ended up flat broke and can’t understand why. They often even go so far as to start suing those around them in hopes of uncovering some scandal and recouping some of their lost funds. Well, if it is scandal, then the victim is only partially to blame, but they still usually deserve some of the blame. If there is no scandal, then the victim is really only a victim of their own folly. They are most likely guilty of ThoughtSourcing.

What is ThoughtSourcing? It’s the function of outsourcing everything that crosses your path that requires some good old-fashioned thought; and possibly even some management of time and effort to execute on the decisions that you make based on that thought.

For example, what usually happens when the aforementioned artist/athlete/actor begins the ascent to stardom? As soon as they start making any money, they start changing everything they were doing. They stop practicing as hard, they stop handling their own business, and they start hiring people to handle every function that they don’t want to deal with. They start pushing off all business, financial and other important decisions, so that they can “just focus on the ______________” (insert the word music, game or art in the blank and you can complete the sentence for yourself).

Every rock star wants to just show up and play to thousands of screaming fans, get paid millions to do it, and then go back to crafting great songs.

Every artist wants to spend all of their time in the studio painting as inspiration hits them; and then for someone to run into the studio and offer them lots of money to take the artwork off their hands before someone else does.

Every athlete wants to focus on what it will feel like to win the big game.

The list goes on and on … and on. Then, at some point, the aforementioned “tortured soul” loses one or more sources of their income, along with those who were posing as their friends because they could latch on and party for free, and winds up in a catastrophic financial position, seemingly overnight. The problem? They were ThoughtSourcing.

What these people often fail to realize is that at some point things are going to change, and if the person who is most affected by the decisions made doesn’t stay actively involved in working to build a better, stronger, faster business on the back of their talent, then at some point the odds are that the well will run dry. It does take some thought and some strategy to stay at the top of your business, no matter if it’s an artistic or athletic endeavor, or a financial one.

I know, I know. But you’re not a ______________ (insert artist, athlete or rock star here). But most small business owners make the same mistakes. They build a successful business, “bootstrapping” their way to profitability and doing everything themselves. Then, when things start going great, they start hiring people or outsourcing most of their work. They start changing the formula that got them to profitability. Eventually, they start letting a little bit of customer service slide, they don’t keep their costs under control, and they realize how much “better” life would be if they had someone else running the operational portion of their business (because after all, operations are no fun anyway, right?), etc., etc., etc. And POOF! The tortured soul once again ends up stranded by themselves, and so broke that they can’t even afford their $10 mocha-choca-latte-grande-milkshake anymore.

I’m certainly not advocating that you do everything yourself and not to surround yourself with others who can help take some of the burden off of your back so you can be more productive at doing what you do best. No, I’m not saying that at all. All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t let it get to the point where you aren’t the one in control and making well thought out decisions anymore, because you’ve gotten a bit lazy. Don’t be a victim of outsourcing your thought. Don’t be the next victim of ThoughtSourcing.

Take a few minutes to think about what you can do to take control of the important areas in your business that affect your bottom line; make sure you’re the one taking the time to think about how you want them to be handled, and then execute accordingly. Take the time to do this, and I’m confident that 2009 will be a breakout year for you.

Let me tell you how my kitchen reminded me of one of the most important business lessons you can learn. You see, my wife and I recently threw a birthday party for our youngest son, Bowen, for his first birthday. Call me crazy, but we had 80 people over to our new house – one that we just moved into about two months ago. But the even crazier part was that the sink in the kitchen was somebody’s idea of a cruel joke.

It seemed like the sink was about two inches deep at its deepest point. No matter what we did, it was useless for everything you would want to use a sink for. And of course, as we looked at the sink problem, we decided that there was also a counter top problem. The counter top was the wrong color and was keeping us from having the “warm” kitchen that we really wanted. So we decided we were going to fix the sink problem and the counter top problem at the same time. And it just so happened, that the very moment when neither of us could take this problem anymore, was the Sunday before the party, and the small army of 80 people were set to arrive in T-6 days. Panic set in.

I can do a lot of things, but plumbing and granite installation would certainly not be within my skill set, so I had to find a solution — QUICKLY. I can tell you that the only thing that calmed my boiling blood pressure was a few simple words from my good friend Brian. He said, “Don’t worry. I’ve got a friend in the business.”

So I called his friend first thing Monday morning and explained my dilemma. He laughed at my “compact” timeline, but with a little cajoling, I had him out at my house within an hour. He left with his head in his hands, but he agreed that he would do his best to help us solve our dilemma by Friday of that same week.

I use the story to illustrate the fact that when consumers have a point of pain, they go looking for a solution. And there is no greater solution than having or being referred to “a friend in the business.” These five simple words break down barriers that are normally in play when selecting a vendor, and ultimately lead the vendor to a point of less price resistance and less time closing the sale.

The ultimate goal should be to get your clients and prospects to feel like you are their friend in the business. The only way to do this is by constantly delivering quality solutions, on time, at the right price (notice I didn’t say the cheapest price) and by building a relationship. Without the second step, building the relationship, you’re not a “friend” in the business, you’re just another vendor and that isn’t nearly as valuable or profitable.

So how do you develop a relationship and become a friend in the business? You have to consistently keep in touch with your clients and prospects. Now, I know what you’re thinking — “I can hardly keep up with my own friends and family, how do you expect me to keep up with hundreds or even thousands of clients and prospects?” The solution is through a systematic approach to keeping in touch. While there are many ways to do this, here are a few of my favorites that you can start using immediately:

1. Develop a “snail mail” newsletter: Most businesses think that this is too expensive, or takes too much time and effort. But I can tell you from first-hand experience that the direct business and the referral business we get from delivering our message to the mail boxes of our clients and prospects each and every month, far outweighs the time, the effort or the expense. Think about it this way: would you rather have to pick up the phone and call every client and prospect on your list and repeat yourself over and over again or would you rather write your message one time, as concisely as possible, and be able to illustrate it in pictures or diagrams, without interruptions? Exactly. The newsletter allows you to carry on a one-way conversation with your clients that will take far less time and yield greater results, as long as you deliver it on a consistent basis, and craft your message in a way that feels like you are letting your clients into your world; allowing them to get to know you as a “friend.” A newsletter doesn’t have to be complicated or overly long, it could even be as simple as a letter that you write, but the point is that it consistently allows you to build the relationship.

2. Send out an Ezine: While ezines (also known as e-mail newsletters) aren’t quite as effective as snail mail newsletters because they are often seen as an interruption and get deleted, or end up in the spam folder, they are still a great way to communicate with your audience. They are another point of contact with your clients that will allow you to tell your story and keep in touch. We send out an ezine that is very nice looking and it has pictures and graphics in it, and these are nice. But I will definitely say that my preference is for another type of ezine that we use. This second type is written like a personal email, with just text, that tells a short story about what’s happening in my life or business, and then allows me to relate it back to a business lesson that is valuable for my readers, along with an offer to contact me if I can be of any help. It’s modeled after a personal email and gets read as such, rather than lumped in the pile of emails that don’t need to be responded to, and therefore are first to get deleted. I find that the response from this type of ezine is much higher. There are many programs that will allow you to insert the name of your prospects into your emails so it looks personalized when it arrives in your prospects’ inboxes. My favorite, and the one we use is www.CelebrityBrandingCart.com

3. Develop Greeting Card Campaigns: We are always on the lookout for strategies that will allow us to stand out from the crowd, and not get us lumped in with every other business that is vying for our prospects’ attention. One of the ways we do this is by sending out greeting cards. As you might imagine, writing out thousands of greeting cards would be very time-consuming, if not impossible, to do in a timely fashion, so we use a very cool service that allows us to send greeting cards with any image we want on them, with a message that is personalized and written in our handwriting; but we only have to type the message once and it gets personalized and sent. They have digitized my handwriting and they insert the names we give them and then they print the cards one by one, stuff them in envelopes and then also use my handwriting font to print the address on the front of the envelope. They have thousands of designs and messages to choose from, or you can create your own. You can check out this service at www.CelebrityBrandingCards.com

There you have it: three simple ways that you can continue to establish rapport with your clients and prospects that will only take you a few hours each month. The key is to create a system that allows you to spend just a couple of hours creating one message that can be leveraged and personalized to keep in touch with your clients and prospects on a regular basis; so that you can spend your time delivering great quality products and services, on time, and continue to be a good “friend in the business.”

…Oh, yeah, and yes we did get our new sink and granite installed before the party. Everyone had a wonderful time, and as you can imagine, we now need a bigger house due to all of the presents Bowen got!

I talk about Business Vision often. Sometimes people think I am just seeing things that aren’t there, and shake their head. Unfortunately for them, I have learned that learning to look at your business objectively, and with a fresh eye, allows you to discover unique opportunities that you have been missing. Looking at other peoples’ businesses with the same open view allows you to ask the proverbial question, “What if?” Invariably, this question always leads to new possibilities, including working on someone else’s business for a fee or JV.

Business Vision came up today when I read a newspaper report about Michael Eisner buying Topps Co., the 60-year-old trading card company. Clearly, for years, this long-term successful company had continued to operate the way it had always operated and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. Now, Eisner walks in and looks at the company differently than the millions of other people who have seen it. Yes, he sees a trading card company, but what he also sees is a media company. In his view, the trading and sports card company had a different kind of business just waiting to be released from its confines. Using the new view, instead of just “Bazooka Joe” trading cards, how about a “Bazooka Joe” movie, followed by a “Bazooka Joe” web site, book, t-shirts and likely an entire amusement park or at least part of one (ala the Harry Potter Attraction going in at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida). [Note: These are my expansions of ideas based on his comments.] Note also that “Bazooka Joe” is only one of the hundreds of real and imaginary characters in the Topps Co. stable that give them a virtual library of talent and personalities from which to draw.

As always, let me now suggest that you bring this concept home and take a moment to step back and look at your own business, or even the business of someone else you like, and see what they aren’t doing that your vision of another profit center could add.

One more quick point from the Eisner announcement: his method of moving Topps into the position of a media company is web-based from the beginning. He envisions web movies, as well as many types of mobile entertainment. He sees new platforms to be generated, and is preparing to stake a beachhead now for the future in the long-term. To me this is more than Web 2.0, this is the next transformation from being tethered anywhere for sports, news or entertainment; and keeping this in mind in your own business will certainly have profitable overtones for your future.

Sometimes we all fall into the trap of building a better mousetrap: a “thing” or a single “service” we hope people will beat a path to our door to discover. All too often, however, the result is that we spend lots of time, money and energy only to find the consumer really didn’t want our hot idea. This process although entrepreneurial, is a path to frustration and a pattern from which to break free.

An alternative route to growing a business is to build your idea upon a preexisting set of behavior events that the consumer is already engaged in, and innovate the experience in a way that is more satisfying.

Let me give you some examples:

Starbucks: Consumers already drank coffee when Starbucks came along. In fact, drinking coffee was part of our culture. What Starbucks did was step into the behavior of the consumer and altered the experience to be more satisfying. Instead of selling another coffee brand, they created an industry around the coffee and the experience. They not only sold coffee, they sold pastries and other items but more importantly, they sold the franchise that catapulted the company into a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

The iPod: Nice gadget yes, but instead of selling another device, Apple sold a system: a new method of doing something consumers did already; finding, evaluating, selecting, listening, storing and of course playing music. Instead of just a single product, they created a sub-industry that encompassed all of the experiences of music interaction.

Kennedy’s All-American Barber Club™: Kennedy’s is our venture into building onto what the consumer is already doing — getting a haircut. A small group of us joined “the club” to change the experience of getting a haircut from a perfunctory one, to a positive experience we actually looked forward to. The consumer client is going through the process anyway, so why not change the process so that it is now something relaxing, enjoyable and, hopefully, habit forming? It is no longer just getting a haircut — it is a way of living.

What groups of existing behavior can you build upon to change the experience in such a way that it eliminates the issue of price and time?

Think about these everyday behaviors:
Exercise/workout
Eating
Grooming/brushing teeth
Paying bills
House chores
Dating
Commuting
Medical attention
Dental
Legal
Buying a house
Investing
Insurance
Medicine
Grocery shopping
Worship

…and many, many more. If you can discover alternatives to all patterns of behavior (including sub-patterns), that save time, or create a more enjoyable experience for the consumer,, the experience will lead to a new business system that offers immense opportunity.

Over the last few years, there is no denying that the online community has started harnessing the power of the Internet for more than just “surfing” the web to look for information. We have now started using it as a networking tool that allows us to connect with others to share ideas, opinions and videos of ourselves looking like fools. Okay, so hopefully we don’t have too many of those videos; but having some video online, and at the major video sharing sites, is a great search engine traffic strategy that we should all be employing.

One of the online tools that has been around for the longest, but is often neglected or overlooked, is that of message boards and email-based discussion groups. Yahoo and Google offer the two most popular email groups and they are free for anyone to set up. You can host your own group or you can join existing groups. There are groups for everything you can possibly think of; some are private and require the moderator of the group to approve you, and some you can get started with right away.

You can find these groups by going to the following URLs:
Yahoo – http://groups.yahoo.com/
Google – http://groups.google.com/

The way these groups are set up is that you are given an email address to which you can send a message if you want to send a message to an entire group. When you send a message to that address, everyone in the group gets it, and when they reply their response goes back to the whole group. On a side note, this has gotten more than one person I know into a bit of a trouble; because by habit you might think you are only responding to the person who sent the message, but since it was sent to the group, when you reply it automatically responds to the entire group! BE CAREFUL! It can be mighty embarrassing to send a private message to someone that ends up going to the whole group!

So, how can this help you build your celebrity status?

In most groups, there are many members who join to get information, but do not send messages. Let me give you an example: I am a member of a group for entertainment lawyers in the state of Florida. When I joined, I did what I would recommend that anyone should do when you are first joining an existing group — I watch how people post and respond for at least a few days to learn the tone of the group. After a month or two, I saw a message asking about a subject I know a lot about, so I responded to it. As time went on, I got involved in the discussion and I sent about 10 to 15 messages over the course of a few months.

As I was following the messages, it seemed like there were about 10 people who posted fairly regularly with about five others who would chime in every now and then. So by my estimation there were probably 20 to 30 people in the group.

Well, after about six months, I went to a convention where these entertainment lawyers gathered for an annual meeting. As usual, I met some new people and learned more about them, but something funny happened. When I introduced myself to people I had never met before, most of them said, “Oh, you’re Nick Nanton from the message board.” I would politely respond yes, but I had no idea how they knew that since I had never seen them send any messages. That’s when I asked the question.

I walked up to the person who moderated the group and asked him, “About how many people are in our online group? I keep meeting people who say they know me from the message board, but I have only sent a handful of messages and have never seen these people send anything.”

That’s when he responded “a little over 500 people.”

500 PEOPLE!

As you can see, I was drastically wrong in my calculation of 20 to 30 people in the group. There were actually hundreds, but only a few of us actually communicated through the group. And I have come to find out that this is fairly common in many groups. So, even though I had only sent a few messages, I had become a celebrity among the entire group. Everyone knew who I was, and before long I made a lot of new friends and was referred to a bunch of businesses because I was seen by the members of that group as an expert because of my prompt and accurate responses.

You really can find celebrity status in more places than you’d ever imagine; and sometimes, as in this instance, it smacked me in the face when I was completely oblivious! So go browse around online for groups of people that you would like to learn from, and that you think would be a good place for you to display your expertise and possibly even get some new business. Just remember the rules of the road! When you are in any new environment, watch how others behave first, before you start adding in your two cents!

Now, go out and join some groups!

The rise of “The 3rd Option” of Wealth Building

The Great Bull Market of the 1990s made us feel rich. The real estate boom boosted our hopes all over again and we all got caught up in the excitement. We borrowed against our assets like never before, and spent the equity we thought we had.

Today, the stock market has fallen back to where it was eight years ago, and the housing market is back to its more humble state of five years ago. Neither of these traditional wealth builders offer us fast hope to rebuild what we “thought’ we had, and the acid taste of frustration lingers.

None of this news is new, and the fall has happened before. And it will happen again. The solution to this financial pull back rests in … The 3rd Option.

The 3rd Option is the creation of value through enterprise. Building wealth by taking what you know and creating money from it. Ray Kroc did it when he bought the rights to expand the McDonalds concept. Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Steve Jobs all ignored their personal circumstances and used The 3rd Option. Most recently, Tom Anderson of MySpace and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook have created billions where there was nothing before.

We all know you do not need to make billions of dollars to change your life, but chances are you do need to break out of your own financial crunch. And the answer for you will be the same as it was for these entrepreneurs … it’s E-Time! Time for you to launch that idea you have had stewing away in the back of your head. Time for you to make something out of nothing, as entrepreneurs have done before you. Better yet, take an idea that is already working and it expand it the way Ray Kroc did with McDonalds.

How do you get started? There are many ways, but one of the easiest and best is to immerse yourself in what is going on. Go to business expos, conventions and Chamber of Commerce meetings to see what people are doing. Talk with the business owners at their exhibit tables and look for opportunities. Yes, some opportunities require money, but many businesses can be launched out of your own garage or spare bedroom. Open your eyes to new ideas and don’t shut out old ones. If you can sell, find the best product in the marketplace to sell and try to get options to buy into the company as well if you build value. If you are a computer geek and don’t know anything about selling , but you build web sites, offer that service to the salesman who won’t know a bit from a byte. Work with people. Stir the pot. The opportunities are endless and they await your discovery. This is not just ‘pie in the sky’ motivation; I believe it and see clients every day that show me their ideas and dreams that we help bring to life.

Yes, it’s E-Time and the opportunities are endless. Don’t wait another moment. Take advantage of The 3rd Option right now. The fortune at your feet is waiting for you to pick it up!

You’ve probably heard the buzz-terms “social media” and “social networking” more times than you care to count; although if you’re like most people, you still haven’t figured out what it means or how you can use it to increase your celebrity status, and, most importantly, your profits. You’ve also probably seen kids wandering around aimlessly with their cell phones, tapping away at their keys as they wander through the world — clueless about what is going on around them because they are so entrenched in their own little world of text messages.

Well, the good news is, it’s not that hard. The entire concept of Celebrity Branding® revolves around creating a relationship with your fan base, and continuing the conversation you want to have with them via multiple forms of media that allow you to control your message. The old standard method of doing this is with a hard copy newsletter sent to your prospects and clients; which is still one of my favorite methods. I would challenge you to find a better form of media, but we’ll debate that another day.

Social media allows you to take that same concept you can capitalize on with a newsletter, the concept of building a relationship and continuing your conversation with your fan base, but it takes out the constraints of physically publishing your thoughts (which is a double-edged sword, as it sometimes allows you to be a bit more sloppy about crafting your message. There is a mental barrier we have when writing something that is going to be put in print; we often spend more time crafting this type of message than we do when we draft an email or other communication that we perceive as having less value than printed material).

Wikipedia.com defines Social Media as:
…the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.

It’s really not that scary, I promise. You’ve probably even seen a MySpace, Facebook or YouTube page in the past. These are great, but I want to take you a little further down the path to one of my favorite tools that hasn’t been around quite as long, and that makes use of some newer technology.

Twitter.com – Twitter is a “micro blog,” which means that it is intended for publishing short messages, not longer messages like you might see in a traditional blog, and was created to answer the question “What are you doing?” (Note: If you aren’t familiar with what a blog is, that’s okay too, but we don’t have space to cover it in this article. Go to Google, and type in “what is a blog” and you’ll find all you need to know. )

Twitter allows its users to send and read other users’ messages that are up to 140 characters in length (otherwise known as “tweets”). Users “follow” each other and can opt to receive updates from other users on their cell phones, or can just check in online to see what those in their network are doing. Users can also “Tweet” by texting messages to a phone number, or they can update their messages online at Twitter.com. While it sounds very narcissistic and shallow, and it certainly is for some users, savvy marketers have started using Twitter to expand and further entrench their fan bases in their way of thinking.

Tweets can contain something as simple as what you had for lunch or that you’re heading to the gym; or you can opt to tweet a link to a great article you read, to announce some great news or even to announce a contest you are holding. It sounds like it would be pretty silly, but give it a try and you’ll find out pretty quickly how addictive and productive it can be.

Twitter allows you to connect with your audience in short bursts. Some of the people who are worth following to learn a bit more are (I’m going to give you their usernames so you can find them on Twitter):

craigballantyne – Craig is a health and fitness expert based out of Toronto, Canada and is the founder of the Turbulence Training™ fitness system. Craig shows individuals how to get and stay in shape without having to go to the gym. He tweets about every meal he eats to give you some insight into how you can eat to stay healthy and also posts links to some of his workouts to you can follow along at home.

barefoot_exec – Carrie Wilkerson, The Barefoot Executive, offers tips and resources for working at home. Carrie shows you why working at home can be much more fulfilling than holding a regular job, and also shows you how to be as productive and profitable as possible.

skydiver – Peter Shankman is a PR Guru and founder of HelpAReporterOut.com, which is a resource to help you get cited as a source in major media outlets. He is one of the few people I know who can be funny in text, and he has some pretty amusing things happening in his life. He’s fun to watch and he sends out urgent queries from journalists via Twitter as well.

zappos – Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, an internet-based shoe retailer who has built an online shoe store into a billion dollar franchise, based on his savvy marketing and his ability to give online shoppers what they want. Tony is always on the move and posts some pretty unique stuff. Recently Venus Williams was coming in for a tour of the Zappos headquarters and he let everyone tweet in messages to her that he read to her aloud.

nicknanton – I couldn’t help including just a touch of self promotion! I keep you up to date with the latest and greatest articles I’ve read, tips and tricks on Celebrity Branding®, and I also give you glimpses into my hectic everyday life. Sometimes I’m hanging out with rock stars, other times I’m trying to bathe my two kids and keep my iPhone out of the bathtub … you just never know, but that’s what makes it interesting!

There you have it — a few great resources to get you started using Twitter. As I said before, it sounds a bit strange, but once you start using it you’ll see how others are using it to continue the conversation with their fan base, breed loyalty, increase profits and meet new prospects.

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up right now at www.Twitter.com and send me a message so I can start following you too!

I must admit that I don’t watch the news often enough. It frustrates me and depresses me, all at the same time. But, I do walk by a television that is showing a news program often enough to see the constant predictions by the Chicken Littles of the world. They are all too ready to offer up the “news” that “the sky is falling.”

Now, before you run off and start actually believing that — especially in the context of your business — just stop, take a deep breath and relax. Money is moving just as fast as it ever has, you just need to be conscious of the fact that it may be moving differently than it was in the real estate boom of yesterday.

Below, you’ll find three easy steps that will help you recession-proof your business:
1. Become the ‘Celebrity Expert’ in your Business Niche
In any economy, especially in an economy where the buyers in your market have been trained to spend carefully, you have to compete for every last dollar that is being spent. Your buyers are likely distracted by their own issues that they are dealing with, so the last thing that you want is to lose a prospect or, worse yet, an existing customer due to factor you can control.

If you have taken the time to show that YOU, not the product or service that you offer, are the Celebrity Expert, the Guru, the Go-To provider in the marketplace, you will have a much better chance of staying busy — while your competitors are floundering. The reason for this is that many business strategies change during market shifts, and if your buyers remember your previous strategies and offerings better than they remember your ability to make great decisions and guide them in the right direction, then you can expect to sit around waiting for the telephone to ring until the market changes.

If, on the other hand, you have taken the time to display your expertise, and have promoted yourself rather than your “latest and greatest” product and service offering, your audience will always come to you, their trusted source, when they must get results. They would rather rely on a trusted advisor than on a product or service. People buy people; NEVER forget this — especially in a shifting market.

2. Ramp Up Your Marketing Efforts
In a changing market where assumptions and projections are no longer identical to what they were in previous periods, the first thing many businesses do is assume an overly-conservative marketing strategy. The first thing many a CFO says is “let’s slow down our marketing efforts.” BIG MISTAKE.

This could appear to be a lesson in contrarian-marketing, and while that does often work, this goes deeper than that. We’re not just trying to say “Yes” when those around us are saying “No,” but the same outcome ensues.

In a changing marketplace you actually have to market more consistently and creatively to get consumers to spend their dollars on your products and services. They are adopting a more fiscally conservative policy all around based on what they are seeing and hearing; so they have to be smacked in the face with your marketing message even more than usual in order to finally make the decision that what you are offering makes sense for them. If you slow down your marketing efforts, the final “sign” your buyer is looking for before they cross the line and buy may never come. As they say, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” If you don’t appear when the student is ready, you’ll miss out on the chance to make the sale and bring in the revenues you deserve.

3. Be Agile
We often get caught up in offering the products and services that we want to offer, rather than looking for the missing ingredients in our buyers’ lives. It’s an easy trap to fall into, particularly if you’ve been doing what you’ve been doing for a prolonged period of time.

If you get stuck offering your products and services exactly as you have in the past, you may miss a great opportunity to fill a void. If there is a shift in market conditions and your profitability level drops, and you continue to offer your products and services the same way you were pre-shift, then you are turning a blind eye to the fact that your marketplace is no longer seeking (or willing to pay for) the solution of yesterday.

Oftentimes it only takes a slight tweak of your message to ease the pain your prospects are feeling, but you do have to take a moment to stop and realize that your “ointment” may no longer be packaged in a way that attracts customers, and that re-packaging could be the key to renewed profitability.

I know that the overwhelming message in the news is that “the sky is falling,” but if you’ll take the time to follow these three simple steps, I assure you that even while your prospects and clients are trying to avoid the impending doom, they’ll come to your bunker to avoid getting knocked down.

Telling stories is not only one of the oldest forms of communication; it is also one of the most effective. Accepting this statement as true should help you see why creating a business story is a reliable way to connect, and to create a bond with your customer that helps you rise above your competition in their eyes.

Your business story should be real and personal. The more you can connect your story to your customer, the more it will help your business. This is why we often talk about the importance of finding a niche market with which you can identify. Telling your story to your niche market helps them identify with you. Sometimes the stories and the identification become so strong, that customers will not even consider going somewhere else for their business. Doing business with you at that point becomes more than buying a product, it is a relationship.

Using the power of storytelling is easy to see in the political arena, and we are being bombarded by it the closer we get to the Presidential election. Both Senator Obama and Senator McCain are masters at the art of telling their story. Obama’s is the classic story of the struggling hero who overcomes obstacles and finds himself on the hero’s quest. John McCain’s story rests more on his past successes, and the experiences of a hero who is now able to step in and solve the crises the country faces.

You and your company should learn from the lessons we are seeing in the political arena to create your story and sell it to your customers. By create I do not mean make it up, but show people who you are, what you have learned and how this relates to your business and your customers. I still remember Lee Iacocca’s personal appeal on television to get people to do business with his company. His challenge to the American car buyer was bold and simple, “If you find a better car . . . buy it!” Surely no one would make that kind of statement unless they were supremely confident in their product. Consumers bought the dare and it saved the company.

Other stories have been used to put a face and an image on a company. Disney did it twice; once with Walt himself, and later with Michael Eisner — both of whom came into your living room via television to tell you a story and create an image. They don’t call Walt Disney ‘Uncle Walt’ for nothing. It was done to create a particular image and it succeeded.

Although stories are unique to the company and individuals running them, they do follow themes. Examples are the “Mother” (Oprah), “General” (Iacocca, Jack Welch), “Statesman” (all former Presidents), “Wizard” (Steve Jobs), “Explorer” (Richard Branson), “Faithful Servant” (Al Gore), and “Wise Man” (Warren Buffet). Naturally, these themes rise and fall with the times — as heroes sometimes turn into villains then goats and back again to hero — ala Martha Stewart.

What is your story? What is the story of your company and your brand itself? How did it all come about and what is the connector to your market and customer base? The more you are able to answer these questions, and more importantly, the more you understand the importance of the story and constantly reinforce it, the stronger the bond you will build with your customer.