The Illusion of Communication

I recently was interviewed by a journalist for BusinessWeek (read article here) regarding how easy (or hard) it is for small business to access credit.

As I mentioned in the article, if you are business and you are looking to survive 2009, I STRONGLY recommend that you try to secure a line of credit, a credit card, a loan, or whatever you can now. As long as your business is in good standing and/or you have good personal credit, you can get it. But as things to on, especially into the second quarter of 2009, I believe the banks will be less likely to loan money. So do it now, while you can!

Posted by Matthew under Business Strategy | No Comments »

2008 was a roller coaster ride (at least the stock market was!) and 2009 appears to be more of the same. As business people, we are responsible for ensuring that our businesses and customers are well taken care. How do we do that when taking care of “ourselves” is hard enough? Good question.

What follows is hardly the answer to such a complicated situation, but I would like to share 4 tips that should help you through 2009 and beyond.

1. Get an Historical Perspective
While we are moving through some uncertain times, there is historical precedent for this. While we may (or may not) be heading into a depression or recession, we can glean some great understanding from what businesses did going into the Great Depression of the 1930s. I recommend that you try to find some information on it that’s relevant to your industry, but here’s a bit to get you started.

2. Don’t Let the Environment Dictate Your Future
I highly recommend reading the book “Good to Great,” by Jim Collins, if you haven’t already read it. In his book, Mr. Collins identifies several companies that were able to go from “good” to “great” (as defined by their stock price). This is relevant to our current economic environment because some of these companies were able to do this despite their situation (for example, Wells Fargo–one of the example great companies–went through their “good to great” transition during bank deregulation. I’m sure no one in the industry at the time was calling that a Golden Era.

3. Learn the Hedgehog Principal
Another great bit of information from Mr. Collins is the concept of the Hedgehog Principle. The principle itself is so named because the hedgehog is a single-minded, yet highly successful animal. All of the great companies outlined in his book were similarly single-minded. While this may seem like an obvious concept, the methods in which the Hedgehog Principle was discovered in the great companies (as well as how it was implemented) was very interesting. I highly recommend reading “Good to Great,” to learn more.

4. Define Your Profit Centers
What metrics do you use to measure your profit centers? Is there a specific system to economic engine? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, I recommend a second book (”Good to Great,” covers this, too, but from a different angle), and that book is “The Art of Profitability” by Adrian Slywotzky. This book lays out about 20+ different profit models, the pros and cons of each, and who uses them and why. If your economic engine is sputtering, it may be time to refine the way that it is running and this book could help you with the tune up.

Posted by Matthew under Business Strategy & Books | No Comments »

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 »