Next week will be the July Free Enterprise Forum in Los Angeles. This place is a great environment for entrepreneurs and CEOs to network with each other and some pretty big names. Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield, of Chicken Soup for the Soul, actually formed their idea at this event. They continue to go back because they know this CEO Space format works wonders for business owners and entrepreneurs.

There are also a lot of investors that attend the Forum, so a lot of CEOs are able to find angel funding, and even institutional or VC funding. There are many well-known products and services that came from CEO Space, I’ll have to write another post on that soon.

As part of my preparation for the forum, I have been updating my Marketing Optimizer marketing services website with more information geared to entrepreneurs. For example, I am now offering a few packaged services:

1. FREE Website Review and Analysis
2. Maximum Website Review and Analysis
3. Maximum Marketing Review and Analysis

The services are really powerful for entrepreneurs and small businesses. I’ve honestly found that even though so many books are out there about branding and marketing, most business owners still have no clue about what marketing REALLY is or can do for their business. (I smell another book topic coming).

I’ve been going to the local CEO Space meetings and other networking groups and I am still shocked at how little most business people know about core marketing principles, and especially the latest marketing tactics that are supposedly well-known. Almost everything Internet Marketing is SOOOOOO underutilized or used incorrectly. Blogs, Squidoo, Twitter, youtube, etc., etc. Of course, Marketing Optimizer can help entrepreneurs and small businesses navigate and leverage these resources to expand their business.

When the economy is bad and budgets are tight, I hope you know there is a way to keep doing some marketing for very little cash, or even no cash.

Remember Content is still King. If you know how to write well, or have a staff person who can write well, have them write articles, blogs, tweets, and lenses all day long. Do you understand all that?

Article marketing is a great link builder, and every company would be well served to have articles written about every product or topic in their area. The articles must be well written, useful and not be spammy. But most techie internet marketing people can do this and also leverage it highly for SEO purposes.

Here are some resources to use and places to send your internet marketing person:

1. Ezinearticles.com
2. Squidoo.com
3. Scribd.com
4. Twitter.com
5. Digg.com
6. Reddit.com
7. stumbleupon.com
8. http://del.icio.us

And of course, the standbys Facebook and MySpace and their smaller brethren are good for slowly gathering crowds to your site if done right. Implementing those social bookmarking links in your website can be powerful.

For more info on low cost marketing tactics, contact me.

I was dreading going to this week long conference that my client, the CEO of Music Wizard, needed me to attend with him. I had never heard of this conference before, but all I could think was a week away from my projects that had deadlines - ugh! But they were paying for it, and really wanted me to go to represent the company, so off I went to Los Angeles.

Impressive. Beyond my expectations.

I’m not easy to impress, and I’ve been to a lot of conferences in the last 20 years. Normally I get a few good nuggets, make a few good contacts, and maybe learn a few new tricks of the trade. I usually give conferences around a 2-5 on my 10 scale.

CEO Space I give a 10, easily.

Since I was going as part of the Music Wizard team, I spoke for them and got a lot of interest in the product, a lot of interest from investors who are there, and a lot of interest for being sales affiliates. The week did wonders for their business.

After my contract with them is over, I am definitely going back for my own business! And I highly recommend it for any other CEO, small business owner or entrepreneur just getting started. Contact me if you want more details on this great conference experience.

Guitar Hero does not teach you how to play the actual guitar! I don’t know if you all realized that… Well maybe most of you do. But still, kids are spending hours and hours and HOURS playing video games like Guitar Hero, are at the end of the day, they will know how to…um…play Guitar Hero.

Yeah I guess it’s fun. But as parents, wouldn’t you want your kids spending at least some of that video game time on something useful, and productive, like learning an actual skill that they could use the rest of their lives?

And by the way, learning and playing real instruments helps kids with math, do better on tests, think better academically for the rest of their life. Huh, now which do I want my kids spending their summer doing?

I began a marketing consulting contract with Music Wizard Group, a start up company that is making awesome products that are bound to be huge!

• Piano Wizard
• Guitar Wizard
• Drum Wizard
• Band Wizard
• Composer Wizard

Piano Wizard is the current product out. It teaches anyone how to play a song on the keyboard in literally a few hours. Imagine the possibilities - all those American Idol wannabe’s who can learn their favorite song for the audition. Or the romantic husband who learns how to play his wedding song so he can surprise his wife and play it for her at their 20th anniversary. Cool.

Guitar Wizard is coming out this fall, and of the 10 million Hero players, I’m sure 10% will be motivated to play a real guitar, buy Guitar Wizard,… and really become a Guitar “Hero”.

Watch for the product launch!

Since I am also a real estate investor, I knew the economy was falling last August when the sub-prime market melted down and had a few flips that I was stuck with. I was able to turn them into rentals after all, but the point is even last December, experts were “unsure” how the economy was going. Duh.

Here it is February already, and nobody will officially call it a recession, but I know it will be, and if not technically, it will look and feel like one.

Anyway, my point is that some clients are pulling way back on marketing to save costs, and keeping their sales teams in place hoping to sell more. Other clients are calling and wanting to know what they can do to continue marketing with lower costs, or for free. These are the smarter clients because they know that eliminating marketing is like saying your going to not put gas in your car for a few months because it’s too expensive. Hmmm, so how do you get to work?

Similarly, how do you get exposure, leads and therefore sales/revenue without marketing?

The really smart companies invested in their marketing systems and created an optimized marketing engine so they can squeeze every ounce of value from their marketing dollars, and have confidence what their ROI is when they spend it. By the way CEOs, investors L-O-V-E when you have an optimized marketing system with metrics and plans.

By the way, there is quite a bit you can do for low cost or FREE when it comes to Internet Marketing, if you have an in house resource. I can help with that, and I can help you build an optimized marketing system, contact me if you’re interested in finding out more.

Isn’t this the bottom line?

I’ve been in marketing and sales for 20 years, and when I think about, the bottom line from management and clients has always been revenue. But not just the same amount of revenue; no company can accomplish growth without “increasing revenue”. Almost every client asks me about how to accomplish increasing revenue as if it is some secret that nobody has figured out. Why is it so difficult for some companies to get consistent marketing and revenue results?

I think this “secret” is actually pretty obvious to me from having spoken with so many clients, and having seen their “marketing operations”.

Common Mistake

Many small businesses were founded by an engineer who built a product, a sales guy who could sell the product and idea to others, or both. So fundamentally, there is a missing marketing influence from the beginning. Nothing against engineering and sales guys, but you know the saying, “if you only have a hammer, every problem is a nail”. In other words, sales people have a fundamentally different approach to driving revenue, and many times it is simply making more individual direct calls/emails, attending more trade shows, and maybe doing some print ads in a general publication.

If you are a marketer, you are cringing because you already know what’s wrong with that picture: Shotgun in the dark approach. Because the sales guy doesn’t have a marketing methodology to guide him, he doesn’t know that everything having to do with revenue needs to start with the Target Audience. Those general marketing activities that many people think should produce results, won’t because it may not be the sweet spot for their target. And those are expenisive activities, using people time to make calls, trade shows, and newspaper all have high costs, and if your target isn’t there, a very low return, resulting in low leads, low ROI, and low revenue.

Average Marketing Person

Want Average Results? Hire average people. I have run into many, many average marketing people who are running marketing organizations. Scary. I don’t know if the executives of these companies realize how much of their revenue is dependent upon these C+ students, turned Marketing Directors. Many times the problems in these cases is they never learned what it takes to create extraordinary marketing results. Everything is ad hoc, they try something one week, then something completely different the next week. They don’t measure the right things, they don’t track results, they don’t research target customers, they simply go day to day hoping they are not losing ground with whatever changes they make. Does this sound familiar to you? That inconsistency is the bulk of the problems I have seen.

Have a System
Ready for the Secret? Here it is: having a marketing methodology that can guide you to creating the most effective system specific to each company. My methodology is is how I have been able to help companies build extraordinary results and increasing revenue growth. My system will introduce the proper steps needed to do the research so that you understand exactly who your target market is, what they like, where they hang out, how to approach them, what to say to them, etc. It also introduces a system for testing campaigns, measuring them, and refining them to get increasing results. This is the core of my Optimization Methodology, and nobody else knows how to accomplish this as well as I do.

For many average marketers, marketing is about having the prettiest flash website, or having the most click throughs on Google AdWords. If you don’t do the research and the testing and the optimization, you might never know that most of your target audience hate flash, or just click through but never buy anything.

Summary

If you don’t have the expertise to build your marketing system based on solid proven methodology over the past 20 years like I have, then please feel free to contact me so I can help you evaluate where you stand and what it will take to get you on an increasing curve.

You can’t afford to ignore your marketing anymore.

Thanks,
Anthony
Marketing Optimizor
303-862-8447

Wow what an intense experience the last few weeks have been. I learned a lot more about social networking, and related technologies during this assignment. Working on a deadline for a launch of their new website, I worked long days and evenings with this dedicated and enthusiastic team.

This start-up company, like many, don’t realize all that they are missing by not having a full time experienced marketing professional on board. There are many lost opportunities for connecting with customers, building a community and generating buzz without maximizing customer reach and contact. I believe many of them understand some of this in theory, but the true impact of this is many times lost on them.

In the first two days I created a Branding Platform which then made creating the collateral, website content, and press releases much easier to produce. I created a detailed pre-launch and post-launch timeline, created detailed audience reach estimates using various campaigns and events, and also gave them detailed feedback on the content of the customer interface. This, and more was done in about 120 hours over a two week period. Whew!

If you have an upcoming product launch - let’s discuss how I can help you avoid mistakes and provide best of breed procedures and brand thinking.

Thanks,
Anthony
Marketing Optimizor
303-862-8447

It’s funny how so many small businesses are still re-creating the wheel!

I just spent a few days with a client working on their online strategy. But the interesting thing was as I went around to his various managers and executives, I made at least one super helpful suggestion to each of them. These suggestions are various things I have picked up or thought of over the years to help me and my teams to be more efficient, to optimize our time at work.

Here is a sample list of a few of these things that I’m still surprised every company doesn’t do:

1. Working lunches: Some of the best ideas I had during one of my past employments was because I had lunch with the Sales VP at least once per week. We became more than just co-workers, we built a great rapport, and “got on the same page” and were able to knock down barriers and get to true efficiency by simply talking and understanding each other’s viewpoints.
2. White Board Walls: I spent a few hundred dollars and bought four (4′ x 8′ ) white boards and attached them vertically to the conference room walls, to stimulate people to brainstorm and have plenty of room to draw out their ideas.
3. Typing Lessons: It’s surprising that so many people in this information age, especially CEOs, can only type 15-20 words per minute! What inefficiency, and at the hourly rate some of them make, the lessons pay for themselves after a day of typing more like 40 wpm. Plus it enhances the image of the company if visitors/clients hears all the fast keyboarding going on.
4. Keyboard Shortcuts: Similarly, it amazes me that CEO’s still spend time moving their mouse up to the Edit menu to select Copy, when it is much faster to CTRL-C. I put together 25 of my favorite keyboard shortcuts and hints in MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint and held a training session for 60 sales reps at a company one time. They loved it.
5. CEO Idea Inbox: I’m not a big fan of structured programs for submitting ideas where they select one winner for a prize. I think the submission should be somewhat of a prize itself. A good way to do this is for the CEO to set up a secondary email box for innovations/ideas from anyone concerning anything in the company. Just submitting an idea gets you noticed by the top dog, and if many ideas are generated, it gives a good impression about that person even if all his ideas are not implemented. Employees will like this.

If you’d like me to come into your organization to see what can be optimized in the areas of marketing, sales, or customer service, please let me know.

Thanks,
Anthony
Marketing Optimizor
303-862-8447

I’ve been responsible for transforming a sales driven organization into a marketing driven company several times before. In fact, it is one of the strengths I brought to former employers who had not understood why they needed that change. In fact, I would argue that many current CEOs still do not realize that a sales driven organization is not the most ideal structure and can stagnate growth and innovation.

In the early stages of a company, it is usually necessary to hire engineers, then sales people. It is from this stage that many companies do not progress out of, and the consequences can be damaging. Engineers rarely have a complete understanding of the target market or how to describe products in a benefit-focused manner. Products are typically named “SSO-300″ in an engineering driven culture. In a sales driven organization, the products might have a bit more customer focus, but they lack long term vision, since sales people are motivated by short term sales cycles. The sales driven company might name a product “Small Business Solution” because they want it to appeal to a mass audience and be thought of as the answer to all problems.

The marketing driven company will understand the market, the competition, the customer on a personal level and at a macro level and will guide the product strategy to become what the target market needs now and will develop specific products for future customer needs, while ensuring market differentiation in a niche that will support it. Also, a marketing culture will be in constant contact with prospects, customers, analysts, and media to ensure a thorough understanding while effectively generating interest and leads for sales to close.

The benefits of a marketing focused culture are many, beyond what I just described, and so if you find yourself in a sales or engineering driven culture, contact me and I may be able to guide you through it.

Thanks
Anthony
Marketing Optimizor
303-862-8447

Today I was reminded of a very successful campaign I managed a few years back, which is still a very effective way to accomplish several goals.

The E-Book has been around a long time, but for many IT companies especially, it is a great way to acquire people who are interested in the topic of the e-book, which should be directly related to your products. The e-book campaign I find is most effective when it is released in chapters, maybe 1 a month or once every two weeks. This is a great way to stay in front of your prospects on a regular basis, and it keeps you top of mind.

Another great effect is that your prospects begin to see your company as a company of authority and expertise in this area. A third major effect is that these prospects over time become to see themselves as part of your community as you offer them other related documents, webinars, or goodies.

When the time comes that the prospect is in a buying cycle, being top of mind, and a market leader, and a trusted source, means that you will likely be included in any purchasing considerations, a major accomplishment that simply takes a little time and management.

I have many other campaign ideas and experiences that I’d love to share with you. Please contact me if you are interested to see how your company can improve lead generation results too.

Thanks,
Anthony
Marketing Optimizor
303-862-8447