Skip to main content

Marketing Matters & More Blog
Business insights, lifestyle tweaks, and the whimsical!


 

How Making a Pie is Like Starting a Business

Nope, you’re not seeing things and we’re not crazy. Making a pie is just like starting a business and we’re going to explain how:

Determine the need for pie.

When you decide to make a pie, it’s because you’ve determined that there’s a need for a pie. Maybe it’s Thanksgiving or another special occasion, or maybe your child or spouse just REALLY wants one. The same applies when you decide to start a business: you’ve determined that there’s a need for the product or service that you’ll be offering and you commit to doing something about it.

6 Things You Must Include In Your Q4 Plan

The calendar year may be slowly winding down, but that doesn’t mean your business is. Your year has probably seen its share of ups and downs, where certain aspects of the plans you laid out back in January have exceeded your wildest expectations, while other things… well, they didn’t quite go the way you imagined.

Now that Q4 is drawing near, you’ll want to finish the year strong. How will you do that? You need a plan. More specifically, you need a great one that includes certain key elements.

4 Resources for Quarterly Planning

A good plan starts around a very basic idea. It says: “I’m going to accomplish this goal in this amount of time.” For a business, this plan might mean you want to increase sales in the next quarter. However without a comprehensive plan that details what you’re going to do to get those sales, you run the risk of never reaching your goal. A good plan should also include a timetable and milestones so you know you’re heading in the right direction.

Plan Now for Q4

It’s no secret that Q4 is rapidly approaching. What that means to you and to your business will vary depending on what industry you’re in, but regardless of how important Q4 is to you, there’s no point in letting an entire quarter of the year go to waste. Even if it’s not normally a time for huge sales and a major marketing push, it doesn’t mean you have to go into your shell. Here are some things you should be doing before Q4 lands in your lap.

7 Words NOT to Say to Employees

Communication is something we do so instinctively that we often take it for granted. We shouldn’t. One of the keys to being successful in business is not only communicating, but communicating effectively. That’s doubly true when it comes to your employees. You’ll find all sorts of books and articles on what to say to them, but just as important is what you DON’T say.

Weekly Featured Resource - SMS Conversations

Featured Resource this week -

Change the RULES of Mobile Marketing.

Before now, mobile marketing was severely limited. You could only send a single text in response to a single incoming text message. This caused people using mobile marketing to settle for less than effective marketing strategies.


Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Weekly Featured Resource - SMS - Infusionsoft Integration

Featured Resource this week -

Change the RULES of Mobile Marketing.

Before now, mobile marketing was severely limited. You could only send a single text in response to a single incoming text message. This caused people using mobile marketing to settle for less than effective marketing strategies.

Try Automated SMS for Only $1!


Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

Weekly Featured Resource - Call Monitoring with Infusionsoft

Featured Resource this week - Call Monitoring with Infusionsoft

Call Monitoring Integrated With Infusionsoft!

Novice marketers focus on getting the lead, but experienced marketers know that the job is only done when dollars exchange hands. You can cut the cost of generating a sale by 50% or more when you monitor and track how well incoming calls are being handled.


Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

 

Weekly Featured Resource - Copy Doodles

Weekly Featured Resource - Copy Doodles

Featured Resource this week - Copy Doodles

Handwriting and hand-drawn enhancements have been used for years in advertising and marketing because they are a proven way to grab attention and increase response and readability. There is NOTHING out there that matches the quality, expertise and level of support you get when you become a CopyDoodles member.  Their extensive library of direct-response marketing graphics features thousands of hand-drawn CopyDoodles, which can be easily downloaded to your computer and placed on any of the online or offline marketing pieces you are working on in a snap.


Check out others who we recommend - solid vendors and products that could benefit your business today.

 

What Kind of Entrepreneur Are You?

Entrepreneurs are the backbone of every company ever created, and according to Chris Kuenne and John Danner, entrepreneurship professors at Princeton University, the personality those business starters have is the most important factor in determining their success.

Together, they studied the motivation and self-identity of 450 entrepreneurs whose companies made at least $3 million in annual revenue and had been around for at least 3 years. Through their work, they discovered that these entrepreneurs all had one of four personalities:

6-Part List-Building Series: Using Other People’s Lists

In the last installment of our 6-Part List Building Series, we’re going to explain how you can use other people’s lists to build your own. And no, this does not mean buying email lists… that’s always a bad idea! However, collaborating with other businesses to promote each other, a technique known as co-marketing, is a great way to gain subscribers.

PRO tip: Always, yes ALWAYS, have a call-to-action so ‘other people’s customers’ can opt-in on YOUR list for something free or paid. That’s the secret to using other people’s lists to grow your own.

So here are five ways to collaborate with another business and use their list to build your own:

7 Behaviors of Highly Effective Leaders

Effective leaders come in all shapes and sizes. There are loud, bold leaders who make headlines seemingly on a daily basis and there are quiet leaders who are content to let others bask in the limelight. Despite their differences in approach, one thing many of these effective leaders have in common is a set of behaviors that help them achieve success and then sustain it no matter what path they walk. Here are 7 of those behaviors: