Achieving Greater Focus – It’s All About You
Jeanna Pool, founder of of CATALYST Creative, writes a great e-zine about marketing each month. A few years ago, she shared a list of five great marketing tips. The first tip was “Stop Focusing on You.” She declared it the year of the client and urged business owners to focus totally on the needs of their clients. I think she’s absolutely right, and I also think she is completely wrong. So how can she be both right and wrong you ask? If you’ve been in business for awhile, have great products and services to offer, yet aren’t getting...
read morePlay to Your Strengths when Identifying your Target Market
If you are looking to start a small business of your own, the most important thing to remember is to play to your own strengths. Many creative people have great business ideas, but poor planning can cause even the best idea to flop. The first step in starting a small business is market research. First and foremost, you want to find a market that’s the right size. What does that mean exactly? You want to find a niche market that is big enough to make a profit but small enough not to exceed the resources of a small business. You also want to...
read moreHow to create an Identity Package for your Small Business
If you’re like many small business owners, you might be wondering just what an identity package is, and if you already know what it is, you might be wondering why your small business needs one. After all, you’re just a small business, not one of those big corporations. What’s in it for you? Just as the name implies, a corporate identity package identifies your company to potential clients, suppliers, and the general public. It includes your business name, logo, your tagline or company slogan, and associated printed material (business...
read moreWhy every small business needs a website
The one thing your small business must have is a website. Five, years ago having a website was an option that many small businesses could be successful without. But in 2013, this is no longer the case. In this digital age, consumers are far more likely to use search engines than the Yellow Pages. Most consumers start their search for a product or service with Google. Websites are an efficient and effective way to market your business in a very public forum. You no longer have to pay thousands for a big newspaper ad; in fact it would be a HUGE...
read moreIf You Keep Doing What You’ve Always Done, You’ll Keep Getting What You’ve Always Gotten
The above can be applied to nearly all scenarios, in life as well as in business. Put simply, if you keep doing things the way you’ve always done them, you cannot expect different results, now or in the future. According to Albert Einstein, that’s the very definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. It should seem self-evident that you’re not going to see any new solutions if you don’t change the way you’re looking at the problem. But many business owners get stuck in a rut, finding a...
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