Storm Dawg Marketing

In my last story I told you about how my parents successfully rebranded their business.  It worked for them…but would it work for you?

To continue my short series on small businesses and rebranding, I wanted to talk about some reasons for rebranding,  and about why rebranding might not always be a good idea. 

There are a few reasons that would have you deciding to change how you are seen by the public.  One reason is that some businesses want to be classified differently so they are seen in different sections of the Yellow Pages or Yellow Pages look-up and search services. 

For Example: Exterminators vs Pest Control vs Pest Management Services.  You would think these are pretty much the same thing, but each title/classification gets searched for differently and with more or less frequency than the other.  By changing your name to the title/classification that gets searched or looked up more often, you are increasing your chances of being noticed.

Another reason to change might be that your business is expanding its products or services.  Offering more is always a good way to get more customers and to keep existing ones.  But unless you are changing your name to reflect those additional products or services, what is the point?

Another reason for a name change might be that your company has been sold.  Here’s a little story about that… 

A friend of mine works at a company that had a well-known brand and a good service to offer.  At the beginning of the year another company took note of their “reputation” and “offerings” and decided to acquire her company and roll their service and products into their suite of offerings. 

Apparently, that created quite a good combination because within 4 months of the initial purchase, that company was sold and she again had to email us her new contact info.  

Her signature line on her email to me last week read: 

Friends Name
at Blank Company (previously Blank Company & Blank Company)

Ha!  Seriously??  Obviously, there is value in the previous company names if you are still using it in your corporate signature line…so why change the name?  Letting acquisitions operate under their own name is not a bad idea if they have a strong brand. 

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why you would change it…but don’t advertise your identity crisis in your email signature on outward communications.  I wonder if any of her customers have moved on because they feel there is a lack of stability in the company?  Would you? 

Have a fantastic New Year!
Check in next week for the next installment in my rebranding series! 

Christina Kudym

Have you been thinking about starting your own business or going out on your own? Very soon (in two days in fact) it will be a new year… is this the year for a new you or your new business?

The AMEX Open Forum featured a fantastic article about seven truths everyone should know before going out on their own. Check out the article here: “Don’t Quit Your Cozy Corporate Job and Go Out on Your Own Until You Master These Seven Truths.”

One in particular struck me as a really good piece of advice:

Focus is the solitary suggestor of success. Spraying is the enemy. Focus is mobilizing. Therefore: Take your index finger, cover up the tip of the hose, and shoot out a frozen rope of focused effort. Otherwise you’ll spread yourself too thin, the result of which will be a diffusion of energy investment. This is not good. Your challenge is to constantly ask yourself questions like: “Is what I’m doing RIGHT NOW consistent with my #1 goal?” and “What consuming my time but doesn’t make me any money?” Remember: William James was right when he said, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” How much time are you spending on things that diffuse your focus and hamper your goals?

What do YOU think makes great advice for anyone going out on their own?

Bryan D. Jennewein

Ever feel like there’s just too much to do? If you’re a small-business owner or entrepreneur, you’re answer is almost always “Yes.” In fact, you’re probably exclaiming, “Yes! Yes! All the time!”

Want a solution for calming the chaos? I came across a great article in the AMEX Open Forum website by the Behance Team titled, “5 Ways to Reduce Anxiety in 2010,” and I just knew these would be tips you’d love.

Check out the article here: http://bit.ly/5W1qFJ

The five tips were surprisingly simple:

1. Avoid reactionary workflow
2. Reduce your insecurity at work
3. Worry only about problems within your circle of influence
4. Practice saying “no”
5. Eat (I LOVE this tip!!)

Now… does anyone have any tips for DOING these things?

Bryan D. Jennewein

 As a business, you always try to make your mark…to be known for something.  Whether it be through great signage/logo, a signature product, a service or a catchy slogan, people always know you for something.

Here is a personal and humorous story about one small business that rebranded itself successfully.

To start, let me explain that my parents have been in the restaurant business for over 40 years.  Thus, my passion for all thing small business, especially ways to help the small business.  Small-business owners work hard…they deserve all the help they can get!  My parents’ first restaurant was a partnership with a few of  their friends.  It was a diner that served homestyle comfort food in large portions. (Just thinking of it brings back memories…and makes me a little hungry!) 

After a few years of running the business with his partners, my father wasn’t liking the direction things were headed and decided to buy his partners out.  Luckily for him, they had all realized that owning a restaurant was quite a bit of work (ya think?) and they didn’t want to do it anymore.  Needless to say he got a great deal in buying them out. 

One big hurdle he saw that first month was a name change, you see the largest partner, who started the business, had used his own name for the name of the restaurant.  With him out of the picture and with a lack of resources, my dad was faced with a dilemma: Keep the name and continue, or change the name and go into even more debt. 

The restaurant was known for good food, great service, and a clean and well-run establishment.  So he worried, ”If I change the name, will customers and prospective customers think ‘everything’ is changed and effectively wipe my slate clean?  Or will people not even pay attention and come in to see the ‘new’ place?”

Well, my dad made decisions about the staff and menu and added things here and there, but the name of the business kept looming over his head.  His ex- partner was pushing for a change and wanted to charge my father for using his name.  You see, when my father made his little tweaks business picked up.   Apparently, making the breakfast menu available “all day” and adding a salad bar were KILLER busines moves in the 80’s. :)   Well, the partners were none to happy about this and wanted additional $. 

To squash this effort and avoid any legal battles, my father decided to change the name of the business.  Being the funny guy that he is, he took one letter off of their sign – changing the name of his business from LAMPE’s to AMPE’s.  The business flourished.  And for as long as I can remember, everyone thought our last name was Ampe.  So not only did my father rebrand a business, he also rebranded our family. 

My parents recently purchased another established business named Sam’s…I wonder how long before everyone thinks his name is Sam.

Until next time,
Christina Kudym

Another one of our first free marketing winners was Trinity United Methodist Church.  The church was so happy with their results that they asked our marketing experts to come to their church and speak about how to market smart for your church.  We are working with them to put together a package specifically tailored to help places of worship build their congregations.  Thanks so much, Reverend Nan, for all of your insight!  Below are the things that we worked on for the church.

Marketing Plan:

We decided on a combination of email and direct mail.  Because Trinity has a limited budget, we wanted to make sure that whatever we created could be easily maintained once our marketing sponsorship was over.  We designed 3 emails and 3 postcards that we thought fit their personality.

We decided to market not only to help build their congregation but also to build awareness of their brand new community center.  (Our InfoGroup NonProfit division also put together a fundraiser for the new community, which we mentioned it an older post…they were even on TV!)

To help build the church’s congregation, we targeted new movers to the area within the last 6 months (omitting movers within the same ZIP Code “of Course”).  To boost awareness of the community center, we targeted consumers within a 1.5-mile radius as well as businesses within a 3-mile radius of the church, advertising the party and meeting rooms that are available as well as their amenities.

See below the Email & Corresponding Postcards we designed and deployed.

Special Note to Direct Mailers who use Email w/Direct Mail:

If you are looking to cut down on the cost of your direct mail campaigns, you can choose to mail to only those people who opened your email.  This gives you an indication they are somewhat interested in your offer or message.  You could also personalize the Direct Mail to say ” you saw our email..”

To give the Trinity campaign maximum penetration, we sent our direct mail and email campaigns to the same audiences and did not net down our mailing by email open rate.

Trinity Church – Congregation Builder to New Movers
Theme: Make New Friends in Your Community

Click Here for the Email Click Here for the Postcard

Trinity Community Center – Awareness for the Center Sent to Consumers in the Area
Theme: Imagine the Possibilities

Click Here for the Email Click Here for the Postcard

Trinity Community Center – Awareness for the Center Sent to Local Businesses
Theme: Need Some Space?

Click Here for the Email Click Here for the Postcard

The question is: Did they work?

Trinity received more than 40 phone calls for the community center, but sadly only 1 new visitor to the church was counted.  The counts themselves were low so 40 calls is not bad for our first time out!  Statistics show that you need to communicate with someone at least 7 times before they read what you send.  We communicated with each audience 3 times during this campaign.  Guess we need to continue marketing here!  The community center, however, booked 2 events from the campaign!!  More importantly, we were able to get the word out about the community center and what it has to offer.  I foresee them getting some calls about this campaign in the future.  Since this is a new campaign we don’t have an idea of a sales cycle so there is no way to predict the % of calls they may see in the coming months.

As we said above, Nan was so pleased that she wants us to speak to other church leaders about our offerings as well as give marketing tips.  She has even offered to use the community center for the event.  Wow!  Thanks again Nan!

Our American Church Lists division will be offering 25% to churches who see this post and want to do some marketing to build their congregation or raise awareness of their community center or activities.

Please Call 877-733-1812 and mention ”StormDawg Offer Code 93SDB”

( Note this offer cannot be combined with any other offer and is good one per customer only.  Offer Expires Dec 31st 2009.)

Until next time,
Christina

People are spending money… but where they are spending that money has changed considerably. You might be thinking, “This is nothing new”, but I like to think I’ll give it a little something extra…plus I’ve got some fun stats for you.

Who would have thought that going to a movie or buying perfume would become a “luxury” purchase?  Those things always have fallen under “discretionary” purchases, but the majority of people probably wouldn’t have thought of them as a “luxury” – until now.

People are being frugal with their money, and more people are staying home to rent movies, drink and eat.  So how do you get them back? The first reaction is to run a deal or a special to draw in the business.  Not a bad idea, but what happens when you go back to regular price – will your customers be happy?  Watch your specials and don’t go overboard.

Since it seems people aren’t going out as much….do girls need to get all “done up” as often? Survey…Says…..NO.

One industry that usually doesn’t see a large decrease in sales is the beauty industry. As a girl, I can tell you yes, I will eat in more often if it means I don’t have to give up things that I deem essential – hair, cosmetics and perfume.  I mean…if my hair doesn’t look good, if I can’t smell fantastic and if my skin isn’t balanced, then I don’t feel good about myself. And the end result is my work and social life suffer.  Right!?

Deep down I think/know that I can make do without these so-called essentials.  But I’ll do my best to make sure I never have to find out.  Please send your friends to read this post…I need a haircut and color next month!

It appears, however, that some girls have had to find out if they can make do. So sorry!!  According to NDP Group, skin care sales between January and June 2009 were down 6%, makeup was down 7% and fragrances down a whopping 10%.  There has been a slight increase in these numbers, but it just goes to show that people are giving up certain things to buy the essentials…food, water, break and milk…who knew?  Oh and some are even paying down their debt – imagine that.  Please see the attached research from our friends at ORC Guideline. It’s a great piece and worth checking out.

Until next time,

Christina Kudym

One of our earlier winners of our Free Marketing Contest, Texas Mountain Cedar, is seeing such great success, we thought we’d share it with all of you, and finish with an incredible offer… a 20-40% discount! Keep reading or click here for discount information!

Background of winner: Texas Mountain Cedar Designs is a family owned and operated business. With more than 18 years of experience working with Texas mountain cedar, the company has developed a unique artistry building pergolas, trellises, arbors, and fences from cedar.

Marketing plan: For this business, we selected a combination of direct mail marketing, email marketing and web site advertising. We designed a custom tri-fold brochure (click here to see it!) promoting their arbors, pergolas, trellises and the like. For email, we targeted both business and consumers, and repeated the message twice (click here to see it!). Finally, we promoted their website with Google AdWords (Paid Search) and a targeted landing page PLUS got them listed on Google Local. (They didn’t have business cards, so we printed those, too.)

Campaign details:

Direct mail marketing – Tri-Fold Brochures (click here to see it!)

The brochures are in the mail right now. The unique 800# we included will help us track how many calls come in.

Email – “Add Beauty to Your Landscape” email blast to businesses and consumers (2x) (click here to see it!)

We emailed a total of 1,294 recipients 27,356 recipients, including businesses and consumers. (You never know who will respond to your message and in what setting.) We targeted the email list to Texas Mountain Cedar’s best prospects, so we didn’t waste a dime mailing to the wrong audience. We saw an unbelievable 30% 38% open rate with business and 16% open rate with consumers, and the calls are starting to come in!

Local – Submission of main website to Google Local Search

We submitted the Texas Mountain Cedar to Google Local Search, so people could find them easily when searching for their products in the area. This tiny improvement has resulted in only one phone call lead for them.

SEM – Google Paid Search Marketing

We leveraged some of our strategic partnerships to sponsor some Google AdWords (Paid Search) for Texas Mountain. We tested eight variations of ads with a conservative budget to find the best one. Our tests alone yielded 2 calls and 5 web form leads, while these in combination with the website resulted in an additional 22 calls and 1 more web form lead.

Has it worked?

Overwhelmingly yes! 25 calls, 6 web form leads, and more than 926 unique visitors to their website. And this doesn’t even include their tri-fold mailer! (We’ll report on that soon.)

Here’s what Nancy, one of the owners, had to say recently about one of her successes:

“We are going to a home in Southlake on Sunday to look at a yard for a pergola to cover an area 15′x17′x30′. It’s the perfect neighborhood – high-dollar homes. Most everyone has a pool. […] I’m hoping for more inquiries after the brochures go out. Then I’ll start to follow up with the businesses, starting with the ones closest to us and work my way out. Lots of work ahead, but I’m loving every minute of it!”

It worked for Nancy and Texas Mountain Cedar, but will it work for you?

We believe it will! And we’re offering any reader a 20% discount on successful services just like these! Get your campaign started right now by calling 1-866-549-6811.  Call now, this offer won’t last!

Or, lock in your discount and get an additional 10-20% off! Just fan us on Facebook and tag us on your wall! Just follow these three easy steps.  Or call 1-866-549-6811.

Good morning. For today’s post, we’ve decided to feature a local business owner with  strong opinions about serving customers.  We hope you enjoy his post, and please share your thoughts!

- Bryan D. Jennewein

Good morning,

To understand my approach to customer service, it is helpful to explore customer preferences. To do that I have created a small theater complex I call “Customer Service Cinema.”

Customer Service Cinema is composed of a ticket office and two theaters. The two theaters are physically identical and always run the same movie. Even the show times are the same.

There is one difference between the theaters. One theater operates under the axiom “The Customer Is Always Right” (CIAR) and the other under the axiom “The Customer Is NOT Always Right” (CINAR).

If you choose the CIAR screen, you will encounter customers who think as you do. One or two have brought laser pointers and use them during the movie. There will also be a few patrons texting and talking on their cell phones while the movie is playing. You can expect to have at least one cell phone ring and to be answered. The person answering may even use their “outside voice” so you can share in every detail of their call.

While there are a few empty seats in the middle of the theater, your seat isn’t as good as you hoped. When you asked about sitting in the empty middle seats you were told those seats were “taken.” Only after the movie started did you realize they were “taken” by the coats of the people in the seats next to them. You can also expect that there will be someone about three rows behind you that has seen the movie enough times that they are able to deliver key lines just a few seconds ahead of the actors.

On the other hand, if you visit the CINAR screen, you will find something quite different. In that theater, laser pointers, text messaging, cell phone conversations, and talking during the movie are not tolerated. If your cell phone rings, you will be asked to leave. Patrons are not allowed to reserve seats. If you deliver lines, others will shush you and the theater staff will ask you to leave. If you do manage to get tossed, you will not be given a refund.

Which theater would you prefer?

I have yet to have a single customer tell me that they would prefer to attend the CIAR theater. Most are actually adamant that they would want to attend the CINAR theater and there is usually an “ah ha” moment when they realize the insanity behind the axiom, “The Customer Is Always Right.”

As a business owner, I have tried to follow “The Customer Is Always Right” approach for too many years. It has been a no-win proposition for thousands of good customers, hundreds of well-intentioned and hard-working employees, and for me. We have all suffered because I tried to serve what more and more has become the lowest common denominator.

No more.

With every fiber of my being, I do not believe that the customer is always right. I believe that the customer is always served. For some requests, the answer will be a resounding and unapologetic “No!” Most customers applaud this approach. You can probably guess which ones do not.

As a business operator who represents the interests of my good customers, my good employees, and my own sanity, I respectfully ask anyone that believes that the customer is always right to take their business elsewhere.

Joel Potter
Chief Enlightenment Officer
Fit Happens – Gold’s Gym – Omaha, Lincoln & Battle Creek

I had an interesting online interaction this morning that I feel compelled to share. So I am. I believe it touches on an issue that is at the heart of most successful small businesses: how we serve our customers.

First, let me catch you up to speed. A few weeks ago, we blogged about some new changes you were going to see on here. Part of that is a new design (shhh…don’t tell anyone). We’re also examining things such as software platforms, hosting providers, et cetera. We decided to stick with the WordPress platform since it’s widely used, easily supported, and growing with new plug-ins every day. For design, we’re looking at some agencies and freelance designers (anyone out there good with WordPress theme design and interested in a potential trade? We’ll happily promote you here and help you market in exchange for an awesome new design).

For hosting providers, we have the option to host through ourselves or use a provider. (This is what brings me to today’s post.) By chance I came across a company called FatCow. They were mentioned as the #1 hosting solution through a website called Hosting Review (www.hosting-review.com). My goal was to explore all of our options. And FatCow was rated number one, seemed the most inexpensive, and has support for WordPress. Even better…they pitch themselves as “green” and entirely wind-powered (with redundant backups… don’t worry… I bet your website will still work even if the wind stops blowing).

I poked around FatCow.com to find specific server configurations, supports, etc., mostly because in addition to being infoGROUP’s social media marketing guy, I’m also their social media technology nerd. When we set up some of our newest blogs, I install the software, design and/or theme it, and administrate it moving forward.

It was during my initial chat with a FatCow representative that I felt a familiar sense of entitlement wash over me. Their representative kept demanding that I send, via chat, the URL of the website where I clicked to initiate our chat from. This seemed to me…odd. In fact, the representative flat out refused to serve me or answer any of my questions until I answered his.  Again…odd. (See the full chat transcript below.)

It was then that I realized that “FatCow” was very likely one of the larger hosting companies simply pitching itself under this new name to grab a niche market.  Smart. In fact, we here at infoGROUP do that, too.  And it works.

So I dug a bit deeper. Turns out that FatCow hosts their own domain with themselves (duh)… but the company Hosting Review points its domains to ThePlanet.com, one of the bigger hosting providers. This makes me think that FatCow is likely owned by ThePlanet, and that the website Hosting-Review.com could potentially not be “non-partial” like they claim. I’ll keep digging to clarify this one and report back.

In this scenario, I felt like I was their customer, and I was entitled to an answer to my questions before I had to answer theirs… if they wanted my business.

I am their (potential) customer, and I am right. They should have answered my questions. Their biggest problem: They haven’t connected their diversification strategy with their online customer support. The chat representative probably didn’t have permission or authority to disclose what I asked him.  (Maybe they’ll rethink that transparency…or heck, maybe they’ll even come across this post?)

What do YOU think?  Is the customer always right?  Should I have gotten my answer before giving them mine?

Bryan D. Jennewein

Full Chat Transcript

Chat transcript with FatCow

As you know, most small-businesses owners have barely enough time to complete their day-to-day tasks, so planning for the future…past next month…is probably not something that most of them can achieve.  But seriously, you really REALLY need to.

Think about it, as a business owner what would happen to your business tomorrow if you were hit by a bus today?  Would your staff be able to run the business without you?  Ego might have you saying “no”…but if that is true, will you have a business when you get out of the hospital?  That is where one type of succession plan comes into play.  Make sure at least one person knows how to do what you do.

Another scenario involves the “family” business.  Who in your family is going to take over the business so you can retire someday?  Are you waiting for one of your children to take the initiative?  Don’t wait too long.  Hiring outside the family to have someone manage your business is always an option!  Keeping the business going doesn’t mean keeping it “all” in the family.

Attached is some great resarch from our friends at ORC Guideline on succession planning.  There is some great information here I think that you really need to check out.   Let me know if you have anything to add to this, especially your own experiences!

Christina Kudym