Conforming to the Crowd When you are launching a new product or service, it’s easy to look at what the competition is doing and mimic them. After all, if they have success, then you probably will to, right? Well, maybe not. First, how are you so sure that they are having great success? And second, [...]
A few weeks ago, I stumbled across a new blog about blogging by Tristan Higbee. At first I thought that another blog about blogging is hardly remarkable. But then I noticed that each of his posts routinely had over 90 comments each. And then I found out that his blog is just 4 months old. [...]
I mean, how can you take the service that you offer and solve something specific? If you are an IT company, perhaps you install and maintain advanced security systems in banks. If you are a graphics designer, you might help startups create a unified look on all of their online and offline marketing collateral. I [...]
My parents’ house and my house both have gas fireplaces. Recently, when my father came to visit, he asked how frequently I use my fireplace. I told him that I use it quite often – maybe two or three nights a week. He was quite surprised as he uses his maybe two or three times [...]
Building content, or creating leads for your sales team to follow? Really, it’s just a question of time. Even if you want to focus your efforts in building content, the end goal is still to create sales leads. Get Sales Now You can get sales leads today. In fact, it’s 12:40PM as I’m writing this [...]
When our parents and grandparents were doing business 80 years ago they set up intimate shops with distinct personalities. When you walked into an Italian grocery store, there was a vastly different feel from when you walked into a Jewish Delicatessen. Though the atmosphere and products were different in each of these stores, the process [...]
How much time is involved? Being on Twitter is in vogue, but it takes a lot of time to be effective. Make sure you plan for it. How much money is involved? Nothing, not even social media, is free. Make sure you are budgeting labor when developing your marketing plan. What expertise is involved? In [...]
A few months ago, we talked about launching our own product. I won’t get into the type of product in case we do decide to go through with it. But I want to paint a quick picture of the landscape. All of our competitors (dozens of them) offer monthly subscriptions in the $20 – $40 [...]
The other day, I told you how SugarCRM uses their blog in order to increase their attendance at live events. Before you start your blog – or even if you have a blog – make sure that you sit down and clearly define your goals and expectations. Some companies are able to use their blog [...]
When Martin Schneider from SugarCRM wanted to find a low cost way to engage their users, he turned to blogging. SugarCRM builds an open source customer relationship management platform that allows companies to communicate with prospects, share sales information, and close deals.In order to stay in line with their “open” philosophy, SugarCRM created their CRM [...]