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Go Local to Grow Big: 5 Ways to Leverage Your Location to Build Your Business

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 03:32:00 GMT

It’s fair to suspect that if you’re reading this article then you’re looking to grow your business. If you have a business and you are NOT looking to grow, then that’s a topic for a different post, perhaps titled, “Misguided Missions” or “Sure We’re Out of Business, But It Wasn’t About the Money, Anyway.” Of course, growing your business is easier said than done. You need to periodically re-evaluate your business model, create corresponding goals, integrate disparate parts of your business into short term programs that support long-term objectives, and garner employee “buy in.” Meanwhile, you have to maintain the flexibility to innovate and exploit new opportunities.

In this rush to build their businesses, most companies equate business growth with geographic growth. Consequently, money is likely being left on the table. Why expend resources going after the top of the tree when there’s low-hanging fruit right in your backyard? By taking a fresh look at your local business strategy, you can build your business with minimal investment while strengthening your brand. Below are 5 Principles that can help guide your business to local growth while firming up the foundation of your business. In no particular order:

Events There’s nothing like organizing a live event for producing local leads. An event that creates value for attendees while demanding nothing in return can help drum up leads, establish your Thought Leadership credentials, and get your brand some positive exposure. You know networking is important, so why not become the hub for your industry? If you were a potential customer of your firm, would you go with the “local guys” who have established expertise, or would you trust your business to some online outfit from Whoknowswhere? Running an event is a great opportunity to leverage your locale- where else are people eager to shake your hand in appreciation of all your hard work? Keep in mind, as with everything we discuss, it’s important to take a Turnkey approach: an event with strong attendance and great buzz that is not carefully aligned with a follow up strategy may not be the best use of your resources.

Cause There’s nothing wrong with giving corporate funds to established, national charities. It’s great for the cause and demonstrates your firm’s commitment to something other than making money (i.e., it’s good PR). When you ship out your donations, though, you’re missing an opportunity to have a positive impact in your hometown. There are likely dozens of worthy causes in your area that have their own built-in networks. These organizations also probably have lower operating costs, meaning your dollars will go farther. That’s not to say that you should stop sending money to urgent causes outside of your town, but to consider a mix in your giving. Plus, keep in mind that giving to a cause doesn’t always mean money. In fact, it’s likely that you have some expertise that can benefit your community. So maybe still send money to Haiti or Amnesty International or wherever, but think creatively about how to engage and support the causes in your own town. You’ll feel great about it, and your business will thank you.

Sourcing Consumers are increasingly concerned about where their products are coming from, for all sorts of legitimate socio-economic-political reasons. Just because something costs less overseas doesn’t make it a better choice. For one, you can’t know much about working conditions, and it’s also harder to complain about supply-chain issues. More than that, though, you’re missing an opportunity to build your backyard network. If you can locally source your business’s needs, you’re tapping a potentially huge reservoir of goodwill. So what if something costs slightly more? Chances are you’re getting something of higher quality, anyway. More importantly, you’re supporting a local biz (good for the community = good for you), and they’re more inclined to evangelize for you to their local network. These sorts of local arrangements when integrated can lead to amplified results - particularly when you don’t forget to promote your successful efforts building community coalitions!

Differentiation When you start a business, you’re either doing something totally new, or, more likely, trying to improve on an existing product or service. Either way, your primary task is to communicate how you’re different and why that difference is valuable. This is commonly referred to as your Value Proposition, and it should be at the core of everything that you do. No one wants to potentially waste money on something new that they don’t understand, and why would anyone go the the trouble of switching away from a perfectly good existing option? So how do you break down these barriers by going local? For one, you can Source your materials locally, incentivizing nearby networks to check you out. You can also reflect the spirit of your community in what you offer. What are the local values? Causes? Materials? Topography? Tastes & preferences? This is particularly valuable if you are a big company doing business in multiple markets. Commonly referred to as “glocal,” short for glocalization, it’s a potentially large competitive advantage if your products and services embody and represent the places where they are sold. That doesn’t mean building something a million different ways (or anything else likely to give your engineer a heart attack). If the channels that you use to go to market (as MBAs, we like to avoid saying stereotypical things like “Go-To-Market Strategy”) include local talent, organizations, and other resources, then you’re more likely to succeed at getting your product or service adopted. Remember, your brand tells a story, and who we hear that story from makes all the difference.

Social Know what’s cooler than tons of friends on Facebook? Tons of local friends. Sure, your products or services might be available everywhere, but local friends--if you’ve done your job--can’t be beat. Local friends have had an opportunity to meet you, learn more about what you do and how they might get involved, and see all the ways you’re positively impacting the community. These local friends are thus likely more willing to “like” you, spread your message, and support your preferred causes. Intuitively, local friends are also more likely to break out out into real-life calls to action. After all, it’s hard to throw a differentiated, buzz-building, live event that benefits charity if all your “friends” are hundreds or thousands of miles away, right?

See how Events, Causes, Sourcing, Differentiation, and Social all work together? When managed effectively, the interplay between these local concepts can amplify your business and help you resonate beyond your borders. Go local to grow big!

Coming soon: How Cohesive Design and Strategy Can Amplify Your Business Objectves

Is Your Business Ready for the Conceptual Age? 6 Reasons It’s Not, and What to Do About It

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:27:00 GMT

I recently asked a good friend if she thought her business was ready for the Conceptual Age. “Absolutely not.” Her rapid, frank assessment surprised me, and got me thinking. There are doubtless legions of businesses that acutely feel the dramatic changes in the marketplace but aren’t sure how to respond. That feeling of powerlessness can cripple morale and spell disaster for businesses. To avoid such a fate, how do we position our companies to aggressively and proactively take advantage of our moving beyond the Information Age and into the Conceptual Age?

What is the Conceptual Age? In his book, A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink argues that the realities of over-supply, outsourcing, and business automation compel a business to focus on creative or cognitive assets. This means that to compete, an organization must embody more than technical know-how and traditional business functions. Increasingly, a company must perform along a new set of metrics that together enable a higher-level of business performance. Alan Greenspan forecast this reality all the way back in 1997, when he announced, "The growth of the conceptual component of output has brought with it accelerating demands for workers who are equipped not simply with technical know-how, but with the ability to create, analyze, and transform information and to interact effectively with others."

How Can My Company Compete? Information is ubiquitous and endless. It’s not about if your business has it (it had better), but how to rapidly analyze and deploy it to keep your decision making one step ahead of your competition. Here, again, Pink’s constructs are helpful. He argues that 6 areas must be addressed at all levels of a business’s operations to effectively compete in the Conceptual Age: design, storytelling, teamwork, empathy, play, and meaning. Chances are your company isn’t firing on all these 6 cylinders. Below are some of our thoughts on how your business can up its game.

Design Though aesthetics are of course important, great design is about more than making your existing products or brand attractive. An integration of form and function from the beginning of any decision making process is critical to out-innovating your competitors. Think Apple told their engineers to build a phone then afterwards asked their design team to make it look nice?

Teamwork The importance of teamwork goes without saying, but building and managing effective teams is easier said than done. It is vital that you understand what motivates your individual team members, and under what conditions they can achieve maximum creative output. Keep in mind, not everyone does their best work in off-the-cuff brainstorming sessions or white board meetings. Whatever strategy works best for you, just remember the imperative that everyone on your team owns the mission.

Storytelling What story does your brand tell? Do the words, images, or even the sounds you use create the appropriate narrative across all channels? Storytelling is so powerful because it helps people digest a great deal of information about your value proposition in a context that they can relate to.

Empathy Telling a story helps create empathy, or a recognition of shared feelings. A business that projects a degree of empathy demonstrates that it is listening to the needs of customers and can respond accordingly. Finding this kind of common ground is critical to building trust between you and your customers. Ultimately, your brand is a promise to maintain that trust - every single time.

Play The amount of “play” in your brand obviously depends on your type of business, though all businesses can benefit from engaging customers on this level. The US Patent & Trademark Office site, of all places, distributes playful mock news shows that effectively add humor to a decidedly dry topic. Recall that humor in communications, though not without risk, contributes to your brand’s voice and personality. Of course, not all play is “fun.” Recall that puzzles suggest solutions, which is no doubt something you believe you provide.

Meaning What is the point?! Why do you exist? Are you creating value, or just pollution? It’s obviously a good idea for your brand to “mean” good quality, service, etc., to your clients, but what else does your business stand for? For example, by staying closed on Sundays, Chick-fil-A cedes a full day of revenue potential every week because of their corporate principles. Even small companies go to great efforts to support worthy causes. With endless options, why should a customer choose you and not a competitor perceived as contributing more to society? Meaning is an opportunity to build your business by doing good.

It clearly takes a lot of effort to compete in the Conceptual Age. On the bright side, every challenge is an opportunity to best your competitor. By proactively managing your business with these 6 featured elements in mind, your company can play on a chessboard while everyone else is stuck with checkers.

An Introduction to Social Media

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:28:00 GMT

So you want to dominate social media? Engagement is your livelihood, but there’s no silver bullet. Unfortunately, nor can you leave it all up to an intern just because they seem “with it.”

Go Small to be Big

To ramp up the reach and efficacy of our social media marketing, one idea might be to run a campaign for each contest, applying to each the principles that apply to the whole. As we all know, social media is not an end in itself, but the means to our end. Remember that the power of social media is in just that - social networks built on relationships.

First Things First: "Like" Your Partners

The best place to start promoting something is within an existing receptive market. If you're selling hamburgers you don't go to a vegetarian conference, right? So first thing first is to "like" and engage our partners so you can tap their network. With that in mind, for a recent client running promotions for retailers, I "liked" StreetJeans and poked around a bit (names changed for privacy). A great way to make partners “like” you back and pay attention is by sharing their content. So make sure you’re liking and engaging the audience of whatever you’re doing. This has a number of powerful implications:

Have @ it! - Our Network is Their Network

Once you "like" or "friend" something or someone, respectively, you can use the @ sign to tap into that entity's network (ex: @StreetDenim) You supplement that post by also tapping into a personal network, namely, a "friend." For example, take this post I put up on my client’s Facebook fanpage:

Looks like our friend Karen Smarts is heading to NY today- I bet she wishes she had Manhattan-ready Street Denim jeans to wear- for FREE! Join our contest! (maybe next time, Kate!) Street Denim : always in Fashion!

Note the personal connection to this DCN "friend" Karen. In about 8 seconds of looking through the client’s “friends,” I saw that she was a) going to NY that night and b) had engaged the client in the past (and thus would be more likely to play along). So not only did it alert her to our promotion, notify her friends through her wall, and encourage her to spread the word, it also shows everyone else that we're at a human level listening to our audience. People love when you listen, right?

I also "liked" the other words in blue. Everyone that puts "fashion" on their profile as an interest, they become part of that group. If you "like" that group, when you post a reference to it your message shows up in their feed. If I had left all those @'s out, our post would have pushed out to an audience of 156 people. Tapping into all those networks, however, pushed the message out to a first-level audience of NEARLY A QUARTER MILLION PEOPLE:

742,706 @fashion
3,056 @denim
382 @Gridlock
1,137 @kateshiers
156 Client
-------------------
747,437 first level post audience <--neat, eh? This doesn’t even include sharing of content, which rapidly increases your messaging power.

Don't Abandon the Profile Page

A Facebook fanpage is great because it lets clients contact members in bulk, provides invaluable data, more easily engage customers, and "suggest" your page to friends. The profile page, though, still has its merit as the face of the account. To that end, it's a great lead generator for the fanpage. The profile page lets clients share other people's stuff that's relevant to their stuff. For example, I shared (posted to client’s profile) Street Jean's own photo album (noting our contest, of course), which someone at Michigan State promptly posted to her wall. Audience from that? 2,037 of her friends plus our 91 friends = 2,128 people, accessed by repurposing other people's cool content. You don’t always have to create content to benefit from it. Meanwhile, I asked the creator of the album to become our friend. Isn't this fun!?

Know Thy Friends

The better you know your friends and fans, the better you can reach them with information that resonates. It's best practice when you get a new friend request to note the interest of that person. It’s not stalking, they’ve publicly posted information to share a bit about who they are and what makes them unique. Music? Media? Sports? This information should be noted and segmented so you know how to position your offerings to increase conversion activity. Doing this proactively means you’re providing information to the right people who will on the whole value your customization. Remember, it's not spam if a person values your content and senses your credibility. People express themselves through brands all the time. Own a Polo Shirt? North Face jacket. You get the picture.

Those are some Facebook basics (i.e. low-hanging fruit), so I won't at this time go into more specific strategy concepts. There is still, however, Twitter.

Relationships are King

Though many organizations successfully treat Twitter as a convenient press release service (@nytimes, @WSJ, @BarackObama, etc.), it's really about relationships, and building those relationships into a receptive audience.

Golden Rule - promote others before thyself

My golden rule of Twitter is to share other people's content, by re-tweeting their blog post, clever comment, or cool link -anything- at least 5 times before you share your own stuff. 5:1. Intuitively, people are much more likely to pass along information to their followers if you have supported them in the past.

Find Influencers and Engage

There are tons of sites that let you find people based on their expertise. Listorious.com, for example, categorizes top tweeters. Search.Twitter.com lets you search for keywords in real time (more on that in a second). Monitter.com goes further and lets you track multiple keywords, sort of like The Matrix.

Not everyone is on Twitter, compared to the near ubiquitious Facebook, but the people that are essentially control your brand. Plus, you never know where your efforts will lead. I used search.twitter.com to query "jeans contest." I quickly found out that something called Urban Denim was also running a promotion. Tons of people have tweets just like this:

@sarahowdy: I want to win the @UrbanDenim #contest !

That search provides two valuable pieces of information:

Retweet (RT) campaigns work (typically a person who RT'd the message is randomly selected as a winner, or performed some act), since loads of folks retweeted what Urban Denim told them to.
There's people on twitter, some of who probably would like the client’s jeans, and wouldn’t say no to a free pair. Hence my response:

Client: @sarahowdy Or U could win @StreetDemin jeans instead! We're giving away pairs, & chance 2 star in our commercial! http://bit.ly/offer Pls RT!

A funny thing happened- she did retweet to her followers!

@sarahowdy: RT @Client: @sarahowdy Or U could win @StreetDemin jeans instead! We're giving away pairs, & chance 2 star in our commercial! http://bit.ly/offer Pls RT!

Audience reach? Our 457 followers plus her 1,532 followers- this from a lady whose Twitter bio literally says she "Lives for jeans"! You can’t buy that kind of access.

Finally,

Niche Marketing is Powerful - Building a Receptive Audience

Obviously, you don’t want your Twitter account to be clogged with advertisements. Don’t be afraid to start different accounts that link to the primary account. This will allow you to focus on niches, or segments of your customer base, that are exciting to them but boring to others. Engagement has a lot to do with encoding and delivering your messages to specific people, while not bothering the rest.

The moral of the story is use freely available social technology to tap into existing networks, build relationships, and spot opportunities.

Start a Blog in 3 Easy Steps!

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 02:05:00 GMT

Congratulations! You’ve just learned your first lesson about blogging: make titles catchy, accessible, and numbered. Chances are this post title had you thinking, “Ah, see, I knew it wasn’t that hard to start a blog!” Fortunately, if it were that easy to run a successful blog, we’d have no competitive advantage to offer you.

Though like with anything there are exceptions, overall there are a number of “rules of thumb” that together form an important component of what is known as your blog strategy. It’s absolutely true that blogs drive business, but magic bullets to get you there? We can direct you to a number of snake-oil salesmen, if you’d like, but we’d prefer you read on.

Step 1: Understand the point - What is a blog?

A blog is a routinely-updated portion of your website that serves as the voice of your business. A voice is inherently part of a personality, an important element to engaging and interacting with your audience. A blog is not a megaphone nor a press release racket; it is your brand, alive. Successful blogs are the foundation of bringing human relationships--and faces--to the forefront of your business development.

Step 2: Admit to yourself that you need it - Why blog?

Think about the reputation of your business- wouldn’t you agree it is based in large part on your credibility as a business person? People trust your brand because they trust your expert ability to deliver your product or service reliably, professionally, and efficiently. Your brand is a promise, and you deliver every time. Why check your reputation at the door when literally millions of people are begging Google to tell them who’s most qualified to take their money? Competitors are everywhere, but you’ve got the reputation necessary to help them choose you if you can articulate your credibility. A blog helps people find and connect with you. When they do find you, a blog plays an out-sized in potential customers deciding if you are credible and worthy of Easier said than done; successful blogs require a sophisticated blog strategy.

Step 3: Plan - What will my blog strategy be?

Like so many New Year’s Resolutions, most blogs fail because they are hard work and likely don’t provide an immediate return on investment. Indeed, starting and abandoning a blog could be worse for your business than having never started to begin with. Who wants to do business with a company that projects an inability to finish what they started? On the other hand, a disciplined blog with a tight focus intended to project thought leadership, engage the audience, and get you found on the web is an asset very much worth having. Before you launch a blog, it’s important to decide on your voice (who is writing, in what style?), your topic area (what are you writing about?), your production schedule (what schedule will you keep so you don’t run out of content?), your search strategy (How do you search optimize your hard work so people find it?), and your distribution strategy (How will you promote your blog?).

While clearly not intended as a comprehensive battle plan for launching your blog, following these three steps can help make sure you’re at least looking before you leap into the world of blogging.

3 Reasons Blogging Gets You Found and Why That Matters

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 02:07:00 GMT

Getting found is the “secret” (remember, no magic bullets here) to your site driving new business. Pew Internet & American Life Project found in 2007 that 58% of individuals consult the Internet when they need to address problems. Even if you specialize in commodities, people still rightfully want the best service that they can get for their hard-earned money, so they’ll hit the search bar. In other words, whatever your firm does, many other firms with great websites do it, too. So what good is your super-premium site if it’s never found by new potential customers? Fortunately, there’s a way for you to both get found and establish your credibility with a single activity: blogging.

There are many ways to optimize the core of your site so that people can find it easier. Keyword optimization, meta tags, link-building, clean architecture, solid page titles, unique content, etc., are all effective and necessary methods. Now what? Your competitors are likely already search engine-optimizing their sites, so why stop there? A blog strategy creates an opportunity to beat your competitors at their own game. Unlike the limitations of your primary website’s SEO “juice,” blogging has some special qualities that help you get found (in addition to looking credible once found). The three primary, ongoing benefits of blogging include:

1.) Frequency - Routine blogging keeps your brand in the marketplace, connecting you to your audience. It also provides Google’s “bots” with fresh content to index, which improves the perceived quality of your site and can positively affect your page rankings. This fresh content can also be uploaded to online content directories, submitted to popular bookmarking sites, shared through social media platforms, and distributed to your audience through RSS feeds. Frequency is good!

2.) Linking - Blog posts provide an opportunity for you to link to relevant sites that could then link back to your site. Inbound link-building is one of the pillars of effective SEO, and blogging is a great way to facilitate that process. Your blog posts don’t just drive traffic, they also provide a rich source of content to promote link-backs. Content is king!

3.) Keywords - Though the science continuously evolves and techniques are tweaked, you can only optimize your relatively static core website so far. Blogging creates fertile ground for additional keyword optimization, helping people find your site. The higher up you are in search results, the more likely people will be to visit your site. How often do you click “next” on a page of Google results? That’s what we thought.

These three major advantages of blogging contribute to what is known as your site’s “findability.” As mentioned above, what’s the point of having a terrific website that shows off your great business if no one can find you?

Of course, once found, an active blog will help establish your credibility so that people are more likely to trust your brand (no small thing in the Internet Age). This concept of credibility and trust is wrapped into the notion of “Thought Leadership.” Thought leaders are the ones people seek out for information, expertise, and thoughts on “what’s next.” So what IS next?

3 Steps to Becoming a Thought Leader, and Why That’s Critical to your Business

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:28:00 GMT

Ever notice how certain industry leaders have a distinct center of gravity that attracts acclaim, recognition, and opportunity like so many moths to light? You know the types - they’re endlessly quoted, their presence is frequently requested, and business seems to simply fall into their laps. Though these folks are in every conceivable industry and profession, they’ve got one thing in common: Thought Leadership.

What is Thought Leadership?

Thought Leadership is the power, however informal, that comes from having innovative ideas that push forward the limits of understanding. Mind you, Thought Leaders are not necessarily geniuses that have all the answers. In fact, the most interesting thought leaders come up with the best questions. It is the insatiable and uniquely human quest for answers that drives innovation, enhances productivity, and spreads prosperity. Why do apples fall from trees? Why is the sky blue? What’s the speed of light? What’s beyond our solar system? Why not have a giant cell phone-like thing and call it a tablet? Wouldn’t it be cool if we could Digg? I digress, but you get the picture.

So, you’re not a genius, or at least the creator of a popular social bookmarking website? Us either, but don’t fret! Not all Thought Leaders are heralded through the ages like Isaac Newton, Lord Rayleigh, or Kevin Rose. Many a Thought Leader has a more humble but still significant role. Thought Leaders are simply informed people or organizations that vocally or otherwise influentially ask the questions that we would never think of, and in doing so drives innovation and helps us make better decisions.

We trust trust Thought Leaders because we recognize them for not only having a deep understanding of their business and customers, but also for their ability to stitch together larger macro factors into an articulated appraisal of the world as they see it. Enjoying that perspective can be as complicated as keeping up with Stephen Hawking at a dinner party, or as beautifully simple as putting on John Lennon’s rose-tinted glasses.

What’s the point of becoming a Thought Leader?

As noted above, Thought Leaders tend to exist in a sort of positive feedback loop. By nature of people perceiving them as having value, they gain it. Subsequently, an aura of opportunity and success seems to hang around them. Newspapers and blog quote them, leads land in their lap, people ask them to show up at events, and coal turns to gold with mere glances. That’s not to say that these people don’t actually have some intrinsic value, only that their worth is buoyed and reinforced by their enjoying the venerable title of Thought Leader. Sounds hard to break into such a choice role, doesn’t it? You’re right!

How do I become a Thought Leader?

The above quip is no joke- it is not easy to become a Thought Leader. After all, what good would it do you if becoming a Thought Leader was simple? You want to stand out and project your confidence and abilities, not get lumped in with every other Average Joe. The point is that’s it’s absolutely possible for you to join their esteemed ranks. The good news is that becoming a Thought Leader probably won’t take you much more time than you’re already spending keeping up with and promoting your speciality. The trick is following a coordinated strategy, which can be broken down into 3 steps.

1) Own Your Niche - Your niche is your metaphorical kitchen, and there’s no chef there but you. What is it that you do better than anyone else? How does that skill or talent add value to customers? Hone in on this value proposition in everything you do. Blog posts, tweets, branding, Facebook posts, email marketing, you name it - you need to tell the story about how you’re a rockstar at what you do, and how no one does it better than you. If the President had a red phone with you at the other end, what would he ask?

2) Question Boundaries - Imagine yourself as the editor of the definitive journal or newspaper for your profession. You own the opinion page - what would you write about? What broad trends are emerging, what’s just over the horizon, and how do you make sense of it all? It doesn’t matter if you’re right - Ben Franklin thought he’d be remembered for poured concrete houses - it just matters that you’re the force behind the conversation, relentlessly pushing forward the conversation, and thus playing a starring role in the innovation process.

3) Listen, Engage, & Share - The best Thought Leaders don’t condescend to cast wisdom upon the world from some distant isolation. Rather, the best are in the trenches, with eyes and ears everywhere. Some of the most well-known Thought Leaders never miss a relevant convention or networking event, because they understand that you never know where the next big idea will come from. Use all tools at your disposal, technological or otherwise, to evaluate industry trends and listen to your customers. Share freely your findings and take care to magnanimously elevate those around you.

If you can persistently and consistently lead a conversation that articulates your professional expertise, industry knowledge, and connection to customer needs, then you’ve got everything you need to elevate yourself into a Thought Leader. All of this, of course, gets back to the holy duopoly that we preach at Turnkey: Findability and Credibility.