In It To End It

Most of our blog posts are educational; not this one. From time to time, you'll see our V-logs, where we highlight local businesses we are working with and the opportunities that we've been given to work within the community, helping making it stronger for local commerce.

This blog, I want to tell you about an opportunity we had recently to partner with another local business owner in his efforts to support charity! I'll admit, we were late to the game. Rachel Bennett, our Director of New Business, met Jerry & Judy Pilet, owners of Fernando's Mexican Restaurant, the first restaurant in Dacula to offer Mexican cuisine and margaritas, just last week. In our discussions, he let us know he had plans to hold an event, "Party In Pink," that very weekend and that all proceeds would go towards breast cancer research. We immediately asked how we could help.



Jerry, who also owns Del Rio Mexican Grill in Dacula, has supported charity numerous times before. Through a relationship with a few Avon sales agents, he decided to join the fight against Breast Cancer and support Avon's Walk For Breast Cancer campaign by hosting an event on Sunday, July 12. He decided to talk with local musicians about donating their talent; give out door prizes; have t-shirts made that they could then sell for the charity; and even donate all, gross proceeds from the restaurant during the 5-hour event to the cause! Talk about above and beyond!



Our support came in the form of Public Relations- promoting the event, developing some creative, photographing the event, and then bringing attention to the cause by celebrating what Jerry took on himself to pull together. As you can tell, we were very impressed and inspired by the heart shown by Fernando's and all that contributed to making this event a success.



When we arrived, Jerry and Judy were talking with Mayor Jimmy Wilbanks, who had come out to show support for what Fernando's was doing within the community.



Tommy Knight, a local musician, was just setting up to play his set to a patio full of supporters, all enjoying tremendous Mexican food....all for the cause.







Fernando's staff was extremely well attentive and celebratory. Each wearing the "Save The Ta-Ta's" shirt that Jerry had made for the event. These were for sale to the public as well, with all proceeds going towards Cancer Research.



Door prizes were donated in different sizes and from different community businesses. In between musicians' sets, one of the girls from Avon would call out ticket numbers to announce door prize winners. Supporters could also buy raffle tickets for items, as well as, donate money directly to the cause.





Before too long, Joe and Wade Hall, a duo that frequently plays Fernando's on the weekends, took their turn on the patio entertaining supports and we decided to sit down for our own delightful, Mexican meal.





I haven't been told how much money was raised yet, but the place was packed all day. It seems people from all over the city came out to support Breast Cancer Research and to thank Jerry for putting on the event at Fernando's.






One of the many things that we enjoy about specializing in small and regional businesses, as Reformation Productions, is getting to witness community business owners coming together to help each other and, in this case, coming together for a cause much bigger than our individual selves. It thrills our hearts, as a company, to be able to work with business owners like Jerry Pilet as they seek to serve others and provide in the ways that they can, with the opportunities, resources, and gifts that they've been given.

We encourage you to visit Fernando's at 465 Dacula Road in Dacula whenever you're hungry for some great Mexican food. You can let him know we sent ya! You can also friend them on facebook by at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fernandos-Mexican-Restaurant/121312547918354.

For more photos from this event, you can visit the Reformation Productions page on facebook.

Don't forget to subscribe to our blog on the right. You have a few choices to subscribe: NetworkedBlogs (which is common and via your facebook login) and also via Google subscribe, RSS, etc.)


REFORMATION PRODUCTIONS

Think In Straight Lines

Developing a Small Business Marketing Budget

Many small business owners feel like they're running their business on a shoestring budget, and of course, that wasn't the intention when they set out to follow their passion in their own business. Just like many young families have to pull back the reigns on spending and follow a budget, the smart business owner must develop a plan and then stick to the plan in order to become profitable. The Small Business Administration offers some help with budgeting in all areas of business expenses but determining the ideal marketing budget doesn't seem quite as straight forward as other expense areas such as rent or salaries.

You will find many different formulas for the ideal amount to spend on marketing including a percentage of sales, a flat dollar amount, or matching the competition — and of course the ideal amount will depend on your industry, the age of your business and how competitive your marketplace is. But one thing is for sure, everyone know that you have to market yourself in order to stay in business. To be proactive and not reactive, to maintain control of your business and not let your business control you, to be strategic, effective, and smart - you must set a budget for this instead of trying to wing it.

One approach is to determine the value of new clients and how much you're willing to spend in order to acquire those clients:



For example, a physician wants to add a new service to his practice for which he will charge $1,000 (it’s a cash procedure – no insurance.)

This is a one time procedure and we’re ignoring the upsell potential as well as the fact that the patient will likely return over the next few years for other types of procedures. This physician is really good and expects to get lots of referrals from his patients but we’ll assume only one referral for every two patients (0.5). His practice overhead is roughly 50% so his profit is 50%. He wants to perform this procedure three times per week over the next twelve months which means 150 new patients (he’ll take two weeks off for vacation). He only wants to pay for acquiring ONE new patient out of every three (0.33).

This physician can easily see that spending less than $3,500/month to advertise and market this new procedure will net a profit of, at the very least, over $75,000 per year, and he knows that it will be even more when those new patients remain his patients and come back for more procedures. In other words, for every $1 he spends on marketing, he’ll make at least $3.



Now with your number in hand, it is especially important to focus those limited dollars on the most cost effective methods of reaching your prospects — and even more important to track the ROI of those efforts. -D. Hibbs

Reformation Productions specializes in helping local business determine the most cost efficient and yet effective ways to market themselves. It's a process we call Straight Line Marketing. Contact us today to find out more by calling 404.862.8814 and asking for Rachel Bennett, our director of new business.

Marketing is a system, not an event

Small business marketers love the chase. Love the new fangled way to make the phone ring. They love to think of a marketing promotion as a single event. But it's precisely this view of marketing that holds most small businesses back. They fall prey to the "marketing idea of the week" and never fully explore what it takes to create and build a completely functioning, consistently performing, marketing system.


In this article, we am going to outline the basic steps that any business can follow on the way to creating their very own marketing system. But first let's explore this word system in the context of marketing. Small business owners have no problem thinking systems when it comes to say, accounting or hiring. When it comes to marketing though, all bets are off. It's as if they are waiting for magic fairy dust to fall upon them with the next great marketing innovation.


Look, effective marketing is little more than creating and operating an effective marketing system. Now, when I use the word system I mean several things. 1) The system is documented - You can't have a system or a step in a system unless you write it down. 2) The system is built on sound marketing principals and 3) You constantly measure, innovate, and refine the system.


Okay, so on to the system building steps.


1) Narrow and define a target market - Small business owners love to say yes. "Sure we can do that." The next thing you know the target market is roughly anyone they think will pay them. You must commit to a narrowly defined target market and you must focus all of your attention upon serving that market like no one ever dreamed of. A narrow marketing focus might be - Estate Attorneys - as opposed to Law Firms.


At Reformation Productions, this is part of the IDENTIFY and LISTEN stages of the Straight Line Marketing process.


2) Discover and communicate a core message for that market - Until you can show how your firm is different and offers something unique, you will always compete on price. You must find a way to tell your newly defined narrow target market why you have something to offer that they value. Your core message might be - We show estate attorneys how gain all of the business they can handle - as opposed to: We help law firms.


This is also part of the IDENTIFY and LISTEN stages of the Straight Line Marketing process that we use at Reformation Productions.


3) Develop multiple forms of permission based lead generation - No one like to be sold to and more and more advertising is falling on numb ears and eyes. Your lead generation system must be built on several fronts, such as public relations, referral marketing, strategic partnerships, and targeted advertising. Your lead generation message must offer the target market a reason to want to know more. Forget about the sale, look for ways to build trust.


This is brings in the THINK and CREATE stages of the Straight Line Marketing process.


4) Construct a lead conversion and customer reselling process - No amount of leads in the world will help your business if you don't efficiently turn those leads into clients. You must have a plan that maps out what you will do when phone rings, when you make the sales call and when it's time to do more business with the clients you already have. Most small businesses completely ignore this aspect, but this is where the real success of marketing lies.


Reformation Productions offers this as a part of business consulting.


5) Create entertainment or educational based marketing and presentation materials - It's not just for the traditional, glossy sales brochure, you should use your marketing materials to teach how your firm is different, how you solve real problems, how you work, why you work, what you believe and your marketing will be much more successful. Your web site must come from this point of view as well.



This also comes out of the THINK and CREATE stages of the Straight Line Marketing process.


6) Define the most important marketing success indicators - Setting marketing goals for such things as leads, appointments, sales, phone calls, referrals, impressions, mentions and anything else you can think to measure is how you turn marketing into a game and how you keep score of the game. Everyone loves and game and the only way to improve something is to measure how well you are doing in the first place.


This is the piece we see ignored the most. We call it "tracking" or measuring your results. If our process had five stages it would be this one... we'd probably call it MEASURE or EVALUATE & REPEAT.


7) Build an annual marketing calendar and budget and stick to it - Once you have spent the time and energy to think through steps 1-6 you need to commit your plan to a marketing calendar and then allocate (or at least think about) the money it will take to implement your plan each year. Once you create a calendar it is much more likely that you will look at the tasks assigned to each month like a "to-do" list. So, instead of whining that you should do more marketing, you simply scratch each item off your list and plan for the next. It's an amazingly simple but effective device.


This is a major part of the THINK stage at Reformation Productions. After presenting our recommendations for marketing tools and strategies that we base on the information gathered during the IDENTIFY and LISTEN stages, we develop a strategic marketing plan that includes this calendar/chart.


Okay...now the last bit of advice.



Every system needs a champion. Either find someone in your organization who does little else but operate the system or hire marketing professionals like Reformation Productions and charge them with helping you develop, implement and run the system.


Properly fed and maintained, this little marketing system can become the engine that drives your firm's climb to the top.


John Jantsch and Reformation Productions

Contact us at Reformation Productions to discuss your business. 404-862-8814

What is the responsibility of Branding - - really?

Recently a colleague was approached by the professor of a top journalism and advertising program with a question about branding. He wanted his opinion on whether or not branding should be a major point of emphasis in the program. "Don’t get me wrong," he said "it’s been a staple in the curriculum for a while", but they were looking at the idea of making it a part of the degree emphasis for graduation.

Well, here‘s the short answer – heck yes.

Here’s a more thought out answer -
Now, we know that Advertising is without a doubt the one element in Marketing that receives the most attention and the most dollars. It has the responsibility of taking all the other elements in the marketing mix and crafting a persuasive message in a creative fashion that will sum it all up and communicate it to your consumer target. Branding is way more than a function of advertising. It should be a function of business. Because it permeates all elements of sales, operations, marketing, etc..

Let’s look at the traditional 4P’s of marketing and see how they can affect branding:

Product – We all know product is king. It dictates your brand offering. But the way you shape the touch, taste, sound, smell, name or experience of your product is all branding. Calling your Kentucky-based fried chicken company Kentucky Fried Chicken is branding. Changing it to KFC to lessen the negative affects of health conscious consumers is also branding. So is the really cool buckets they come in.

Price – More than just a unit of revenue, your price tells customers whether you are a premium brand, great reward or an inexpensive value brand. You can buy a .99 cup of coffee or a $4 cup. Again, that's part of branding. Depending on your consumer target, free may be a great word to use in promotions or it may be the kiss of death to your brand.

Place (distribution) – The way you deliver your sales experience is also about your brand. The fact that a fast-food restaurant can be found everywhere is branding. Your website’s appearance is branding (the role of websites today are no longer interactive brochures – they are a company’s 24 hour visitor center). If it were not, we’d all have plain type on white backgrounds for our websites. The decor of your store front and the atmosphere of your restaurant are all branding

Promotion – Okay, this is what people really think of when they think of marketing. It includes advertising, direct marketing, online media, events – heck anything that allows you to proactively tell other people about your product/service. The way you say it, the how you communicate, is again branding. A cardboard sign with a handwritten message that says “Fresh Corn” is branding. So is the same message typed out on a digital billboard or neon sign. Which one would you buy from?

Not only should the college advertising program be teaching branding as a major emphasis in marketing, but it should also make its way into other areas of study like public relations, fashion design, interior design, hospitality management and restaurant management. Yeah, it's that important.

Contact Reformation Productions to discuss your company's brand and how it permeates your business. Are all the parts working together for good or do some of the various elements in your business seem to fight against each other? Is your business a unified army of you? Does there seem to be one mission or several? Are you unsure about what you are saying as a company? Do you know how what you are saying is being perceived by others?

www.ReformationProductions.com

Case Study: Using Social Marketing Techniques in Ecommerce

Case Study: Using Social Marketing Techniques in Ecommerce
By Greg Holden

I just returned from attending a writers workshop at which budding authors were exhorted to develop a "platform." What, you ask, is a platform, and what does it have to do with selling online? It's quite relevant to anyone who wants to connect with others online, in fact, whether they are buyers or readers (or my own dream audience, buying readers).

A platform is a base of people who know you and who want to hear what you have to say. Once you have a platform, you can sell to it, whether your product is a book, an e-book, jewelry, electronics, or other products.

How do you develop a platform? You network, in person or online. Social networking through blogs, Facebook, and Twitter is all the rage. But lectures, visits to flea markets or other venues, and media appearances are still essential to develop the all-important word-of-mouth market.

If you're looking for a good example of someone who continually works at building a platform and who enthusiastically sells to that platform through multiple online venues, look no farther than Nathalie Girard. The 45-year-old artist, jewelry designer, and metalsmith is the owner of Canadian Rockies Art/NGOriginals, based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Girard has all the basics: a blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and a website (NGOriginals.com). She also sends out 3-4 email newsletters per year. Not only that, but she operates five separate Pro-level storefronts on the arts and crafts marketplace Artfire and two stores on Etsy.

As someone who has a hard time posting on a blog or on Facebook, I had to ask Nathalie how she finds time to write, email, post photos, write sales descriptions, or otherwise contribute to all of these venues.

Her first response: "I don't sleep...LOL."

Then she added that she is not always consistent with her blog, Twitter, and Facebook. "I have not been efficient enough about handling social media up until now, but I realize that this is an important part of doing business online." She did admit that she checks emails and answers customer inquiries seven days a week.

And she's a fast typist.

"I usually handle correspondence when I first get up in the morning (usually as of 9 to 9:30AM in the morning on weekends, and as of 8:30AM during the week) for emails that have been received during the night. Then I check them again every couple of hours until I go to bed basically. If something comes in that requires an answer, I reply immediately. If I have to go out for errands, etc., I get my messages on my Blackberry, so I can see if something needs a quick reply on the spot or if it can wait until I get back at home."

A blog might have some obvious benefits for a writer, but how can it help an ecommerce store owner? First of all, it helps gives your website better placement on Google search results, explains Girard. "Google loves blogs, which makes it an important tool to use when selling online. The more quality link-backs to our online selling venues and listings, the better."

One of the perennial obstacles to having a blog is the question of what to talk about every day. It turns out that ecommerce store owners have a solution: you can always talk about your products. Girard describes where they came from, what makes them special, what they're made of, and more. "We talk about our latest creations, talk about techniques and materials, and share tutorials. The more we develop brand recognition, the more we increase sales over time."

Talking up your business, your expertise, and your products is just one way of using a blog to support sales. Another is straightforward inclusion of sales descriptions and prices for selected merchandise. Girard says it's not at all uncommon for readers to make a purchase of merchandise advertised on her blog.

"I've had people purchase something after seeing it on my blog," she acknowledges. "Others have contacted me to inquire about custom work because seeing one of my designs inspired them to get something adapted to fit their special needs or their own taste more closely. Blogging helps to open the dialogue. It also offers a glimpse of the magic in the creative process and a peek at the artist's life. It's an important part of connecting with potential buyers."

Girard uses WordPress to create her blog, which appears on her website. Hosted for less than $5 per month by a service called HostGator, her website serves as the focal point for linking her five ArtFire and two Etsy storefronts. (My next column will examine how this busy seller juggles all these business presences and how she chose this host as well.)

Perhaps the most important way Girard connects with buyers is by answering questions promptly. Like virtually everyone who sells regularly online, she is a frequent "multitasker" and will return calls and inquiries as soon as possible, no matter what she's doing or when the question comes in. "Good customer service is important to me. I don't leave buyers or potential buyers hanging without answers," she says.

Email newsletters are an especially important part of a platform, and one of the most difficult to maintain. On hers, Girard promotes special holiday sales and products. She offers sneak previews of new items to come, special sales and special discounts or giveaways for her subscribers.

All of this promotion and customer service might seem like a lot of extra work for a seller. But Girard says it all fits in with her philosophy, which is one I've heard from other sellers over the years, though perhaps not expressed in the same words. As she puts it: "The more we share, the more we have."

Do you have an interesting story about your business or a set of tips to share with other ecommerce entrepreneurs? Contact me at greg@gregholden.com and you may be profiled in a future AuctionBytes column.

About the author:
Greg Holden is AuctionBytes Contributing Editor. He is a journalist and the author of many books, including "Starting an Online Business For Dummies," "Go Google: 20 Ways to Reach More Customers and Build Revenue with Google Business Tools," and several books about eBay, including "How to Do Everything with Your eBay Business," second edition, and "Secrets of the eBay Millionaires," both published by Osborne-McGraw Hill. Find out more on Greg's Web site (http://www.gregholden.com), which includes his blog, a list of his books, and his fiction and biographical writing.

Talk with us Reformation Productions about establishing a web presence, use of social media, and how to save time managing it all.
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