The Illusion of Communication

Many small business owners prefer to accelerate processes by working through planning as the “plan” is put into action. Of course, there are some downsides to this particular method.

I just saw an episode of “Renovation Realities” on the DIY network, which typifies the results a small business owner might see when action is based on pure desire and little forethought.

In this episode, Bruce, the owner of a small restaurant, wants to improve the layout of his dining room. The biggest improvement he wants to make is to the bar area, where he can only sit 7 people. This is a problem because most people arrive in even numbers, so he can’t fully utilize the bar. However, he has no plan, and is not sure exactly how to execute a better-designed bar, even after he tears down the old one.

In the end, a new bar that seats 10 — a gain of 3 extra seats — is put up, but he loses 4 seats in the dining room (they weren’t expanding the total square footage, so that space had to come from somewhere), resulting in a net loss of 1 seat. As illustrated as the show concludes, that one missing seat averages about $200 in revenue a day, or about $1400 per week, or about $72,000 a year.

Posted by Matthew under Communication & Marketing Strategy & Business Strategy | No Comments »

So I just finished installing QuickBooks Pro 2009, which took a lot longer than I planned. And the new Intuit activation/registration is, well, a little too much. Still, it was a good upgrade for me, because I got it essentially for FREE!

I was able to get it for free because I’ve been using Twitter. That’s right. I can directly attribute my receiving a $200 piece of software for free because of my use of Twitter.

But that made me think about what others may have experienced. What has Twitter done for you? Can you quantify your TwitteROI? I’d love to know … so please post your comments below, so we can have a rolling account of the actual value of Twitter.

Posted by Matthew under Internet Marketing & Communication & Marketing Strategy | 1 Comment »

With the economy going in the direction that it has been going in recently (i.e., down), and everyone looking for ways to save money, email marketing has become more and more intriguing for more and more organizations. However, like many things “marketing,” I’ve seen many instances of email marketing being used in a tactical manner. By this, I mean that I’ve seen emails sent out in an attempt to ignite sales (10% off coupons, for example), or used as individual “islands” of communication that has no real foundation or basis of adding anything to the sales or marketing process. This is all well, but if you really want to get the most out of your email marketing, you’ll have to use some strategy!

To that end, I’ve created a flow chart that illustrates how I believe email marketing can (and should) be used. The thumbnail image to the right (which is a link to a larger version of the flow chart) takes you through the questions that I ask myself during the creation of an email marketing campaign or lead nurturing process.

Note that the process begins with “contact.” This contact can happen in any number of different ways, and is a subject of it’s own flow chart and is outside the scope of this particular process. However, the contact arrives, you can pick it up from there. Of course, there are better and worse ways of getting a contact, but this should be addressed by your overall marketing plan. And, ideally, you would have that information or knowledge available as you set up your email marketing campaign. If not, create your overall marketing plan, then plug this in at the appropriate place.

This flowchart is, admittedly, a first draft, my first crack at actually drawing my thinking process. I’m not sure that I’ve 100% accurately portrayed everything, and I did intentionally make things vague and high-level to make it generic enough to plug into any situation. If you have any questions or ideas to add to this, please add a comment. I’d love to see how everyone is interpreting this information. And if you have a success (or horror) story about an email marketing campaign that you’ve run, please tell us about that too!

Posted by Matthew under Communication & Marketing Strategy | No Comments »