Bobbie Dunn of B. Dunn Interiors has made a career of designing relaxing spaces for home and work. She needed a website that felt as professional and creative as her business.
We also created the logo.
If you are responsible for marketing, then you need to write. Website copy, blog entries, newsletters, email campaigns, brochures, articles for publication…the list goes on. But writing is hard work. It requires focus. It demands full attention. Frankly, it’s not a great fit for a multi-tasking, interruption prone, hyper-connected, go-go world like ours.
And if you are in a small business, you wear so many hats that the number of potential interruptions is huge. Every person, every event, every email, every phone call another interruption that breaks your flow. And breaking flow kills writing (just ask John Cleese at 4:05).
And if you manage to conquer all of that, you are still left with the mental chatter that goes in when you sit down to write. You go into explore mode, brainstorming and mind-mapping, only to discover that someone accidentally invited Editor and he shows up to “just check in” and ends up criticizing everything before you even have it half-baked.
That’s why we started Writer’s Corner, a simple way to protect the space for writers. It’s simple and cheap.
Then if you want some feedback, fresh perspective, or coaching, you can get that too. Bonus.
Even if you don’t write for your company, but writing is something you need more time to do, this could give you some accountability (and overcome some of that guilt).
If the idea resonates with you, and you’re in the Baltimore area, contact me and we’ll talk details.
I talk to business owners every day. “How do you market your business?” I ask. “Word-of-mouth is the most cost effective form of marketing,” they say. And I agree.
So I ask them what their strategy is for developing referrals. That’s when they start to squirm. Usually they talk about a networking event they attended, or the value of good customer service, or maybe a rewards program for customer referrals. Some are even pretty disciplined about attending a weekly networking group. But rarely do they seem confident about their strategy.
Strategy can be hard because of the many possibilities—so many ways to connect with people. You can get friends on Facebook. You can acquire Twitter followers. You can link with colleagues on LinkedIn. Feels like so much progress. But then what?
Making thousands of acquaintances doesn’t always pay the bills, especially if a referral to your kind of business requires a high degree of trust. Trust takes time. You have to earn it. And you need lots of touches, lots of little risks that pay off, lots of relational dimensions.
How many close relationships can a person’s network have? After about 100 or so, it gets difficult to maintain a relationship of any strength. (I have trouble even remembering that many names.) So let’s see if we can turn this truth into an effective marketing strategy.
Take a look at your database of networking contacts. Include clients, friends, consultants, coaches, and family. Pick your Top 50 and put them in a list. (Use your intuition here.) This is the core of your network. This is where you will focus your energy.
[You may want to experiment with this number. Some business thrive on a few strong relationships. Others make a living from many connections where the strength of each one is not so important. Knowing your business really helps make this decision. A pizza shop may benefit from a large loose network, but an attorney, accountant or psychologist may benefit more from a small concentrated core.]
Now that you have your Focus 50, your job is to:
The key is that you are helping them. When they experience you as a good resource, they do your marketing for you.
The strategy works because you concentrate your time and energy on the relationships that matter most. At the end of 2012 you could have 50 people who see you as a valuable person to help them grow in 2013.
Have a Creative Christmas and a Productive New Year, from the creative team at Accent Interactive!
Holiday tips for boosting your creativity in the new year:
Most business consultants will tell you how important it is to listen to customers (as a recent example, note how much “listening” is mentioned into this article on what makes a great entrepreneur).
We’ve all heard that before. This week Peter Francis, principal of Clinical Laboratory Sales Training is setting an example for us by doing it.
One of Peter’s customers loves reading his articles on laboratory sales techniques, but he spends a lot of time in the car and wishes he could listen to them instead of just read them. “Maybe you could send me an audio version?” he asked. Peter took the suggestion to heart and sat down in the recording studio. Now he’s starting to offer free audio versions on his website. How generous is that?
In our next quarterly web marketing review, we’ll be tracking the analytics to see how popular they are. From there we can determine what kind of next steps to take with digital audio.
We completed a new website for The Maryland Center for Problem Gambling, a new partnership between the University of Maryland Medical School and the Maryland Council on Problem Gambling. They offer gambling prevention education, treatment, training, and evaluation.
The website features the latest research on gambling prevention, news on what’s happening in the area, and details on getting help with gambling problems.
If you know someone who struggles with gambling addiction, contact the Center for Problem Gambling. If you need someone to help market your business so it can make money the old fashioned way, contact us.
A major acquisition and re-branding effort included a new website for this Annapolis touring company. The challenge here was to bring together a diverse group of services into one coherent site. Designed in collaboration with Mind Over Machines, this new website is the key component of the marketing effort. Users can get a good sense for the services and even book a cruise, while not getting confused about where to click next.
Watching him in action is a good way to get to know your potential coach. This video bridges the gap between the unknown coach and the trusted advisor.
We also designed Wayne’s website.
If you have lots of traffic coming to your website, you need good design to make the most of it. This one uses a large body of technical articles to establish Netrino as the obvious experts in the field of embedded systems engineering.
Oh…and they love it. Here’s what the president said:
“We’re thrilled with our new website. Accent Interactive exceeded all expectations and delivered real value.” —Michael Barr, President, Netrino
It’s not enough these days to have a good person helping you buy or sell a house. In the information age, you need information fast. And since it changes all the time, a good website really helps set Re/Max American Dream apart form the competition.