Looking for an edge in today's wacky economy, and simultaneously help you and your employees and team Do the Right Thing? Perhaps a public forum on your web site or a blog may just help nudge you or your company along to "Do the Right Thing" and improve performance.
It has been said; it isn't what you know, but who you know.
Personally, I don't think it is as much about who you know, as it is,
who knows YOU. This is especially true when you own a small business.
How can you maximize your personal outreach with out maxing out your
calendar or your budget? Educational events.
As a tag to Beth Harte's twitter post, I wanted to share a story that is from First Hand Information. Not to digress, but my old boss, turned mentor, had one of many sayings, but one that has stuck with me is "Do you have first hand information" and to him, if it wasn't first hand information, it wasn't credible. Well, my story here is First hand Information, so I hope you find it credible.
So, you have started a Small Business, and after a
couple years you find yourself growing rapidly. You were able to manage just
about everything yourself, but you knew that if your plan was going to work, it
could not possibly stay that way forever
In our last post we suggested that you Change the Game and Change the Rules, but where to start? Perhaps by addressing the four listed below questions. To be really effective, ask different folks at different levels of your organization. Assuming you are not running a fear based organization (note to self, if you are running a fear based organization, stop now, your employees are pissing on you at every opportunity) you will get feedback that could well change how you do business in 2009. You can Change the Game with these questions. • Which factors in your industry are routinely taken for granted that should be eliminated? • Which factors in your industry should be reduced well below the industry standard? • Which factors in your industry should be raised well above the industry standard? • Which factors in your industry should be created that the industry has never offered?
The difference between number one and number two is typically rather
significant. The leaders, those who Break from the Pack of Commodity do
so by challenging the typical norm, with courage, absent fear.
The
metaphor of red and blue oceans describes the market universe. Red
oceans are all the industries in existence today--the known market
space. In the red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted,
and the competitive rules of the game are known. Here companies try to
outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service
demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and
growth are reduced. Products become commodities or niche, and cutthroat
competition turns the red ocean bloody.
Personalization is a trend that big companies have taken to, but small businesses have lessons to learn, also. Personalized Web sites don't need to be a technological tour-de-force and they can provide simple benefits with simple effort. Find out what you can learn from a large company to apply to your small company Web site.
If you're wondering what's different about Internet marketing, check out Crucial.com, a site that sells computer memory chips. Boring? Perhaps to some, but it's the way they sell the chips that you might be interested in. Crucial decided that instead of hawking deals like evry other memory catalog, that they'd actual help the customers solve the problems that they have. Read on to see if you can apply helpful marketing to your business.
It is a pretty scary time to be navigating the waters in a small business, or a large business for that matter. Even the "veterans" you talk to have not seen such times. Irrespective of the economic conditions, we are functioning in a time where everyone knows your name, knows what you are doing, or not doing and they, your customer, have the power to broadcast that to many, thousands, hundreds of thousands with a few keystrokes. Yep, times have changed, and small or large businesses may want to begin conducting themselves "As If" someone is watching because they are, and YOU do not get to choose when and or where they show up and decide to broadcast, or do you?
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