A Promotional Item That Spreads Your Message for 12 - 18 Months!

Look around your office. Among the normal work items in my office I see a lot of pens, a case with post-its and post-it flags, a letter opener and a few other items I’ve picked up from vendors over the years.

Most businesses at one time or another use some type of promotional item. Most of them have less than 2 inches of space to squeeze your logo into and you’re lucky if those who choose to keep them will even ever remember whose logo is on them.

Promotional items should have something to do with the business you are in or the event you are sponsoring – USB flash drive for software or IT businesses, water bottle for fundraiser walk/run and so on.

There is one promotional item that would work for any small business. A calendar. Custom design a calendar and include a special targeted message each month. Advertise an upcoming open house ahead of time, and with some strategic pre-planning, add your quarterly promotions and regular events to each month’s page. Include customer testimonials and photos specific to your business.

I know a lot of people use electronic calendars these days, but most people I know also have at least one printed calendar hanging in their home and/or office. Even my teenage daughters use them.

Think about your target audiences and how a 12- to 18-month calendar could benefit them and your business.

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Kerry Brooks is Co-owner of ProfessionalEdge Associates, offering a wide range of marketing, event planning and support services to businesses that want to increase their success, but aren't in a position to add to their staff. Learn more at www.gettheprofessionaledge.com.

Marketing in the 90s, 2000s, and Today

My how marketing has changed. Even in the years we’ve been in business, we have seen a tremendous change in the way we help our customers market their products and services. It's difficult to keep up with the changes and to keep ahead of what's to come.

Marketing in the 90s

In the 1990s, marketing was costly. If you had money, and you knew where to spend it wisely, it usually worked for you. The more you spent, the more it worked.

Most small local businesses used the yellow pages as their primary marketing source in the 90s. If you weren’t in the yellow pages, you didn’t exist. Each year you’d sit down with your yellow pages rep and determine how big of an ad you wanted to place (read: how much money you wanted to spend) in order to stand out more than your competition.

Local businesses also used billboards, signage, and newspaper advertising to gain as much exposure as possible. With a little extra money, you could purchase space in a local advertorial and hope to get on the front page.

A little more money bought you radio, television, and magazine marketing.

And, of course, everyone was using direct mail. We mailed post cards, brochures, letters, and more, and they actually got people’s attention.

In the 90s, most companies had a designated PR/press relations staffer who regularly communicated with local media to gain the most exposure. We spent tens of thousands of dollars in hopes of building our brand recognition.

Marketing in the 2000s

The 2000s saw a big swing in how we spent our marketing dollars. With the Internet in full bloom, we concentrated on building web sites and e-commerce sites that would draw people in and give them an opportunity to hang around awhile. We added web site banner ads and Google pay per click ads, and made sure our press releases were published on major web sites.

Email marketing was a weekly or more often occurrence and we added email newsletters to the mix. We dabbled with Internet radio and YouTube in the early 2000s, wrote as many case studies and white papers as possible, and made sure to incorporate customer testimonials into everything.

Marketing Today

Today newspapers are a dying breed, magazines are now ezines, and the PR job title and press releases are becoming extinct. Why do they even print yellow pages and drop them at our doorsteps each year? They go straight to the recycle bin!

For the most part, email replaced direct mail a few years ago, although hand-written notes are making a big comeback, and the post office is making an awkward attempt to re-invent direct mail. We are beginning to see video streaming replace traditional TV and mobile is everything, including advertising on apps for every device. Even trade show attendance is going virtual and Twitter and event apps are adding to sponsorship exposure opportunities at conferences.

Social networks have become THE source for news and information, as well as for meeting new clients and keeping in touch. Your smartest marketing investment now is finding the best way to build and continue to reach your audience. And the investment of time is the most critical investment you can make. The more you put in (strategically of course), the better your return on investment.

Marketing and media strategies for businesses will only continue to change and change at a more rapid rate over the coming years (weeks, days, minutes?). Can you even imagine what your organization’s marketing will look like by 2020?

ProfessionalEdge offers a wide range of marketing and support services to those who want to increase their business success, but are not in a position to add to their staff. They write a regular blog to help businesses navigate the world of marketing and social media along with many other helpful business topics. Connect with ProfessionalEdge at http://www.gettheprofessionaledge.com, follow their blog at http://professionaledgeblog.blogspot.com/, follow them on Twitter @profedge, or connect with them on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Fix Your Grammar

Why are so many people on LinkedIn changing jobs?

Have you noticed that an inordinate number of your LinkedIn connections are changing jobs or getting new positions and posting them? You congratulate them and recognize them and think, “Wait, isn't that the position she’s held for the past 3 years?”!

It probably is! Anytime you update your profile in LinkedIn, LinkedIn defaults to ‘tell the world’.

For example, all of the workforce organizations in Florida’s workforce system recently underwent a statewide unified branding effort, renaming all regional workforce agencies CareerSource to match the statewide brand. Of course, those associated with this change – hundreds throughout the state – updated their LinkedIn profiles to reflect the name change. Voila, a large number of perceived new positions and associated congratulations flying around LinkedIn.

There is an easy way to avoid all of the confusion. If you want to make minor updates to your LinkedIn profile that you don’t necessarily want to broadcast to the world, follow these simple steps:

1. Login to your LinkedIn account
2. Click on your photo in the upper right hand corner to update your Account & Settings
3. Click on Review next to Privacy & Settings
4. Click on Turn On/Off Your Activity Broadcasts
5. Click off Let people know when you change your profile, make recommendations, or follow companies
6. Save changes

If you decide later to make a change that you do want to broadcast, follow the same steps to turn the feature back on.

Happy updating!

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Kerry Brooks is Co-owner of ProfessionalEdge Associates, offering a wide range of marketing, event planning and support services to businesses that want to increase their success, but aren't in a position to add to their staff. Learn more at www.gettheprofessionaledge.com.

What tasks could you outsource to help support your business?

Entrepreneur, solopreneur, mompreneur... These are all words that have become very popular because the number of people owning or starting a business is at an all-time high. 

That means there are more great minds than ever available to help you run a successful business. Let’s face it, you are great at what you do, but most small business owners don’t have all of the skills necessary to fully run a business. One way or another, you need support. But it’s likely that you don’t require full time staff to conduct every area of your business.

Outsourcing some or all of the core functions of your business can provide you with a higher level of support for far less than it can cost to have someone on staff. There are many small companies available to help with your accounting, marketing and social media, IT, event planning, administration, and more. These core business services are all vital to the success of every small business. But not every small business can afford to hire all of these positions.

Here’s an example. One of our clients is a small start-up. They have 11 staff members, and all of them work on the core function of their business. It is vital to their success that they have every one of those positions. But they also work on government contracts, and that requires very specific accounting, contracting, and administrative skills they don’t possess.  Instead of hiring accounting, contracting, and administrative staff that would have to replace those 11 key positions, they have outsourced accounting, administration, contracting and marketing to small businesses that specialize in providing those services. For significantly less than what they would pay for a full time bookkeeper, they have hired an accounting consulting firm and they receive the benefit of at least five different individuals with five different skill levels, from entry level bookkeeping to tax experts and a CPA. Hourly rates paid are based on the level of skill provided. The accounting firm understands the intricacies of the business and serves as the organization’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), a function this small company couldn't afford at this stage in their business.

A marketing/social media consulting firm can provide consistent, strategic outreach to your clients and prospective clients keeping your time free to bring in new business and focus on your core business areas.

If you don’t already have IT skills on staff, it makes sense to hire an IT consulting firm to cover those skills.

The impact to your budget will be minimal but the impact to your business can be substantial if you take your time and select consultant companies for the right tasks the same way you would hire someone internally.

What tasks do you think you may be able to outsource that would help support your business?

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Kerry Brooks is Co-owner of ProfessionalEdge Associates, offering a wide range of administrative, marketing, event planning and other support services to businesses that want to increase their success, but aren't in a position to add to their staff. Learn more at www.gettheprofessionaledge.com.