1. First, use your ads for more than just space advertising. Ads are expensive to produce and expensive to run. But there are ways to get your advertising message in your prospect’s hands at a fraction of the cost of space advertising.

   The least expensive is to order an ample supply of reprints and distribute them to customers and prospects every chance you get. When you send literature in response to an inquiry, include a copy of the ad in the package. This reminds a prospect of the reason he responded in the first place and reinforces the original message.

   Distribute ads internally to other departments–engineering, production, sales, customer service and R&D–to keep them up to date on your latest marketing and promotional efforts. Make sure your salespeople receive an extra supply of reprints and are encouraged to include a reprint when they write to or visit their customers.

   Turn the ad into a product data sheet by adding technical specifications and additional product information to the back of the ad reprint. This eliminates the expense of creating a new layout from scratch. And it makes good advertising sense, because the reader gets double exposure to your advertising message.

   Ad reprints can be used as inexpensive direct mail pieces. You can mail the reprints along with a reply card and a sales letter. Unlike the ad, which is “cast in concrete,” the letter is easily and inexpensively tailored to specific markets and customer groups.

   If you’ve created a series of ads on the same product or product line, publish bound reprints of the ads as a product brochure. This tactic increases prospect exposure to the series and is less expensive than producing a brand new brochure.

   If your ads provide valuable information of a general nature, you can offer reprints as free educational material to companies in your industry. Or, if the ad presents a striking visual, you can offer reprints suitable for framing.

   Use your ads again and again. You will save money–and increase frequency–in the process.

2. If something works, stick with it. Too many marketers scrap their old promotions and create new ones because they’re bored with their current campaign. That’s a waste. You shouldn’t create new ads or promotions if your existing ones are still accurate and effective. You should run your ads for as long as your customers read and react to them.

   How long can ads continue to get results? The Ludlow Corp. ran an ad for its erosion-preventing Soil Saver mesh 41 times in the same journal. After 11 years it pulled more inquiries per issue than when it was first published in 1966.

   If a concept still has selling power but the promotion contains dated information, update the existing copy–don’t throw it out and start from scratch. This approach isn’t fun for the ad manager or the agency, but it does save money.

3. Don’t over present yourself. A strange thing happens to some entrepreneurs when they get a little extra money in the ad budget: they see fancy four-color brochures, gold embossed mailers and fat annual reports produced by Fortune 500 firms. Then they say, “This stuff sure looks great–why don’t we do some brochures like this?”

   That’s a mistake. The look, tone and image of your promotions should be dictated by your product and your market–not by what other companies in other businesses put out.

   Producing literature that’s too fancy for its purpose and its audience is a waste of money. And it can even hurt sales–your prospects will look at your overdone literature and wonder whether you really understand your market and its needs.

4. Use “modular” product literature. One common advertising problem is how to promote a single product to many small, diverse markets. Each market has different needs and will buy the product for different reasons. But on your budget, you can’t afford to create a separate brochure for each of these tiny market segments.

   The solution is modular literature. This means creating a basic brochure layout that has sections capable of being tailored to meet specific market needs. After all, most sections of the brochure–technical specifications, service, company background, product operation, product features–will be the same regardless of the audience. Only a few sections, such as benefits of the product to the user and typical applications, need to be tailored to specific readers.

   In a modular layout, standard sections remain the same, but new copy can be typeset and stripped in for each market-specific section of the brochure. This way, you can create different marketspecific pieces of literature on the same product using the same basic layout, mechanicals, artwork and plates. Significant savings in time and money will result.

5. Use article reprints as supplementary sales literature. Marketing managers are constantly bombarded by requests for “incidental” pieces of product literature. Engineers want data sheets explaining some minor technical feature in great detail.

   Reps selling to small, specialized markets want special literature geared to their particular audience. And each company salesperson wants support literature that fits his or her individual sales pitch. But the ad budget can only handle the major pieces of product literature. Not enough time or money exists to satisfy everybody’s requests for custom literature.

   The solution is to use article reprints as supplementary sales literature. Rather than spend a bundle producing highly technical or application-specific pieces, have your sales and technical staff write articles on these special topics. Then, place the articles with the appropriate journals.

   Article reprints can be used as inexpensive literature and carry more credibility than self-produced promotional pieces. You don’t pay for layout or printing of the article. Best of all, the article is free advertising for your firm.

6. Explore inexpensive alternatives for lead generation, such as banner advertising, organic search and PR. Many smaller firms judge marketing effectiveness solely by the number of leads generated. They are not concerned with building image or recognition; they simply count bingo-card inquiries.

   New-product press releases lead the list as the most economical method of generating leads. Once, for less than $100, I wrote, printed and distributed a new-product release to 100 trade journals. Within six months, the release had been picked up by 35 magazines and generated 2,500 bingo-card inquiries.

   Post all your press releases in a media or press section of your website. Optimize your press releases with key word phrases to draw more organic search traffic.

7. Do not overpay for outside creative talent. Hire freelancers and consultants whose credentials–and fees–fit the job and the budget.

   Top advertising photographers, for example, get $1,000 a day or more. This may be worth the fee for a corporate ad running in Forbes or Business Week. But it’s overkill for the employee newsletter or a publicity shot. Many competent photographers can shoot a good black-and-white publicity photo for $200 to $250.

   When you hire consultants, writers, artists, or photographers, you should look for someone whose level of expertise and cost fits the task at hand.

8. Do it yourself. Tasks such as distributing press releases or creating simple squeeze pages can usually be done cheaper in-house than outside. Save the expensive agency or consultant for tasks that really require their expertise.

   If you do not have a marketing manager or assistant, consider hiring a full-time or part-time administrative assistant to handle the detail work involved in managing your company’s marketing. This is a more economical solution than farming administrative work out to the agency or doing it yourself.

9. Get maximum mileage out of existing content (text and images). Photos, illustrations, layouts and even copy created for one promotion can often be lifted and reused in other pieces to significantly reduce creative costs. For example, copy created for a corporate image ad can be used as the introduction to the annual report.

   Also, you can save rough layouts, thumbnail sketches, headlines and concepts rejected for one project and use them in future ads, mailings and promotions.

10. Pay your vendors on time. Why? You’ll save money by taking advantage of discounts and avoiding late charges when you pay vendor invoices on time. And, you’ll gain goodwill that can result in better service and fairer prices on future projects.

Robert W. Bly has been an independent copywriter and marketing consultant for more than a quarter of a century. He has worked with more than 100 clients including Boardroom, Phillips, IBM, Nortel, Agora, Prentice Hall and Grumman. He is the author of more than 75 books. His most recent book, The Marketing Plan Handbook, from Entrepreneur Press, is available at all major bookstores.

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“We haven’t seen any of it,” Rose says. “The stimulus money went to the big infrastructure companies that build highways and bridges–the bigger, deeper, heavier part of our industry where you have to be a big company in order to compete.”Aurora Electric is not alone. A year after the government rolled out the biggest economic stimulus plan in history, small businesses like Rose’s are wondering where the money went and why so little of it came their way. While VC-backed startups like Tesla Motors, the Palo Alto, Calif., company that makes electric cars, got a $465 million taxpayer loan, most of the stimulus dollars have ended up in the pockets of big companies that employ thousands of workers, not the millions of small businesses like Rose’s that each employ only a handful. In fact, much of the stimulus money has gone to government agencies, bypassing the private sector completely.

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According to a recent analysis by The Wall Street Journal, $112 billion of the $179 billion in stimulus funds shelled out last year went to state governments to plug the gaps in education, Medicaid and unemployment benefits budgets or to boost funding for food stamps and other social services programs. An additional $700 million was spent on administration, and about $47 billion went toward transfer payments, such as $250 checks for Social Security recipients. Some $70 billion in social spending is in the pipeline already, the Journal reported, including grants for local organizations conducting job training programs.What’s more, ground has yet to be broken on many projects that were touted as “shovel-ready” as government agencies in charge of high-speed rail construction and electric vehicle initiatives struggle to get organized. Only about $20 billion was handed out for infrastructure projects in the first year of the stimulus plan, the Journal reported. Widely touted “signature” projects–such as $20 billion for doctors to create electronic medical records, $4.5 billion for an energy Smart Grid and $7.2 billion for broadband networks–are still in their early stages.But while small businesses saw only a trickle of stimulus money last year, better news is on the way in 2010 and 2011, stimulus experts say. Deniece Peterson, manager of industry analysis at INPUT Inc., a Reston, Va., market research firm that analyzes government spending, says that roughly $6 billion of the $21 billion earmarked for businesses that contract with the federal government either directly or through a partner has been set aside for small businesses, defined by the SBA as businesses that employ 500 workers or fewer. Most of that money will go toward businesses in infrastructure-related industries such as construction, engineering, environmental services, and research and development.
 
“The industries that will benefit the most from the stimulus program are the ones that have the biggest job-creation impact and are aligned with President Obama’s priorities,” Peterson says.One of the reasons why the stimulus funds have been slow to reach small businesses, Peterson says, is because much of the money went to state governments that have yet to parcel it out. While companies that work directly with the federal government should start seeing money faster, many of the federal projects are still tied up in red tape and could take a year or longer to get started.”We’re seeing 2010 and 2011 as the years when the bulk of the money will start flowing,” Peterson says. “The government is actually doing a good job of spending the money quickly.”But for small businesses in retail or service industries not related to construction or infrastructure, the stimulus package won’t offer much relief this year or next.”The biggest losers of the stimulus program have been the traditional mom-and-pop businesses, and that’s been borne out by all the ‘For Lease’ signs along the main streets of America,” says Bob Coleman, editor of The Coleman Report and an SBA lending expert. Although the stimulus plan increased the SBA’s 7(a) loan guarantees to 90 percent of a qualifying loan and temporarily cut or eliminated fees, banks are still leery of lending to small businesses. According to a U.S. Treasury Department report released in January, the nation’s largest banks cut their small-business loan balances by another $1 billion in November 2009, marking the seventh straight month of declines. The banks’ total lending fell 4.6 percent in that seven-month period to $256.8 billion, the Treasury Department said.”The banks are picking the winners and the losers,” Coleman says. “When you have General Motors and Chrysler in trouble, who can the bankers really trust?”What about local car dealers who saw sales skyrocket last year when the government’s Cash for Clunkers program gave consumers up to $4,500 for their trade-ins? “All that did was accelerate future purchases,” Coleman says. “If you look at restaurants and hotels, there’s still too much supply compared to the weak consumer demand.”If the majority of small-business owners are to see any benefit from the government’s stimulus program, however, it’s likely to come in the form of an increase in SBA-backed loans, which now appear to be on the upswing. Despite the big banks’ reluctance to lend to small businesses, the SBA’s 7(a) lending program guaranteed 12,393 loans for a total of $3.8 billion in the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2009, a 37 percent increase from a year ago at the height of the financial crisis. On Feb. 22, the SBA reactivated the queues for Recovery Act loan applications, the applications that were conditionally approved by the SBA while awaiting the availability of additional Recovery Act funds.”We’ve seen some lending interest from banks this year, but the terms are more expensive and have made us cautious as we evaluate the best options,” says Sanjyot Dunung of Atma Global, Inc., a small New York City multimedia education publisher. “Even with personal guarantees and the SBA guarantee, it still seems that there are fewer options for firms in our industry.”

Dunung says that she would like to see the SBA start lending directly to businesses, similar to the way the government runs its student-loan program. “This would make the process more streamlined, faster, and likely provide for better terms for firms like ours,” she says.For small contractors like Veronica Rose of Aurora Electric, who had hoped for a shot at some stimulus money, it’s back to business as usual. Rose says her firm is currently working on a large government project she originally bid on in 2005 in addition to smaller projects for customers that her firm has been working with for years.”It’s like the bailout,” she says. “Most of the money will go to the big guys.”

Frankly, most inventions, and most new business ideas for that matter, should not “pass go”–not because the ideas are not creative, clever or innovative, but because there is no market to support them. I’ve met many inventors who have filed a patent and handed thousands of dollars to an invention promotion company only to wonder if the invention was worth the money and effort.

So inventors and new entrepreneurs should ask themselves if they are willing to change their minds if necessary. It’s important to be willing to change your mind for two reasons. First, in today’s economy, people who are seeking a new way to generate income cannot afford to waste time or money. Launching an invention can cost thousands of dollars and years of effort. If something is not going to work, it’s best discovered early in the process.

Second, when you enter the process with a willingness to change your mind, once you have concluded that the idea is indeed worth pursuing, you can do so with all the more conviction.Don’t be afraid to find out that you should not pursue your new idea. Inventors and entrepreneurs are innovative by nature. If you need to dismiss one idea, there is probably another waiting in the wings of your mind for a chance to take the stage.So how, you might ask, does one pursue an invention with conviction yet remain willing to abandon it at any time? The answer is research and planning.

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Here are some tips I recommend for any new invention or business:

1. Become a student of the industry you are going into. Visit the industry trade association website, identify the main trade publications and talk to people in the industry. Find out which products or companies are doing well and which are not. Ask about products that are similar to yours or companies that could be competitive, and identify prospective partners. It is amazing how quickly critical information can be learned and how with a casual conversation you can find out that there is little or no demand for your much-labored invention.
2. Gather as much information you can about your product. This includes what similar products exist, issues around the materials that may be used, safety issues relevant to your invention, likely costs to produce the product, and related patents that have been issued.
3. Identify your goals and limitations. Do you want to develop and sell your product yourself, or would you prefer to license it (i.e., selling your idea to a manufacturer)? If licensing is not an option, are you prepared to make and sell it yourself?
4. Write a one-page business plan. It is possible to write a plan after the invention is launched. However, people buy products, not inventions, and selling products is a business. It should not be surprising that the most successful inventors have written business plans. This is because they have clearly articulated their goals, customers, strategies and action steps.

If you have gone through these steps and feel that the path is not clear, then you may decide to move on to your next idea. On the other hand, if the decision is to proceed, you will be doing so with tremendous confidence and the advantage this critical thinking has afforded you.

Tamara Monosoff is the founder and CEO of mominvented.com, where entrepreneurs get information and inspiration to turn their ideas into successful businesses. Tamara is the author of The Mom Inventors Handbook, Secrets of Millionaire Moms and co-author of  The One Page Business Plan for Women in Business.

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Sampling overcomes fear of the unknown
The Pop Up Design Clinic booked more than 170 appointments. “Some clients needed spur-of-the-moment help following floods or fires,” Gavagan says. “Others saw the clinic and had an ‘aha’ moment, realizing they could get help improving a situation they otherwise may have left unaddressed. The clinic let them see that architectural and design service isn’t intimidating or wasteful.”With that statement, Gavagan sums up the value of product sampling.When people are uncertain about what something will cost, what the customer-business relationship will be like, or what they’ll get in return for their time and money, they do nothing, or they revert to a familiar solution even if it’s less than ideal.Samples lead people past their hesitation. It’s why department stores have dressing rooms, auto dealers offer test drives, software companies give limited-service free access, media outlets offer complementary subscriptions, and museums host free-admission days. Try it, they’re basically saying, you’ll like it.The Pop Up Design Clinic is proof you can shrink even the most intangible and customizable offerings down to sample size.Know when to sell and when to sample
A key to sampling success is to know when to give away your product in order to inspire new business and when to stick to the profitable activity of selling what you have to offer.”We hosted the clinic during an otherwise slow time in our industry,” Gavagan says. “Plus, people don’t usually start major design projects right before the holidays.” In other words, the clinic generated buzz without bumping paid business. That’s good timing advice to follow.Know the difference between a client and a contacta
“Many of the Pop Up Design Clinic clients weren’t prospects for our businesses because their projects don’t fit the scale of what we do,” Gavagan says. For that reason, not all contacts were future business prospects. “It was still productive, because we could provide a public service while gaining attention for our industry and businesses,” he adds.That doesn’t mean, though, that sampling doesn’t lead to new business. For one, hundreds of business cards and good impressions were carried away from the clinic, and in a world where word of mouth rules, that alone made the effort productive. Articles in The New York Times and Interior Design Magazine were another bonus.Further, the clinic offered a menu of follow-up design services available for fees ranging from a site visit for $250 to $10,000 for a preconstruction package that includes a schematic design, preliminary budget and schedule, and measured drawings and specs. The menu, Gavagan says, was a “huge hit.”More good advice to marketers: If you’re going to sample, build publicity around the effort and prompt follow-up business by promoting easy-to-understand introductory package offers.Make a great impression
Gavagan gives the following advice to those who decide to sample their offerings:

• Find a great space
• Time it so it matches market interest and your business cycle
• Make it affordable and accessible
• Make it useful and intriguing
• Attract a wide range of people, including some who match the scale of your established clientele so you’re developing prospective new business
• Promote follow-up offers

He adds a final piece of advice, which I second: Have fun. After all, you’re giving away your offering, so make it enjoyable for yourself and those you’re introducing to your business.
 
Barbara Findlay Schenck is a small-business strategist, the author of “Small Business Marketing for Dummies” and the co-author of “Branding for Dummies,” “Selling Your Business for Dummies” and “Business Plans Kit for Dummies.”

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When things are going well, you put on the brakes and go easy on yourself. You do that each week. You push when it’s slow; you ease up when you are doing well. That’s exactly the mentality that limits your business’s potential.And results never improve.That’s the problem. What’s the solution? Make a plan, track work, income and expenses daily or weekly, define the work, and track progress monthly.1. Make a plan.
Your money plan can be a simple Excel spreadsheet. The key is to link work activities to income. What does each employee do that makes money? What do you sell?

If you sell products, then you need to make individual sales projections. If you sell flat-rate services, then you need to track contracts closed and the dollar value of each contract.

If you sell hourly services, then you need to track contracts closed and billable hours. The basics are:

• Set up goals and consequences. Let each team member know what they contribute to the team, and make sure they get incentives. Whatever is good for the business has to be good for the employee. Incentives include recognition, thanks, appreciation and, of course, more money.
• Give each team member a choice. Set a range, with a low goal and a high goal, and provide tangible incentives for achieving the high goal. This gives the employee a sense of control. During a good month, they make the high goal. During a month when their kids get sick a lot, they still know what they need to do to satisfy you and be secure in their jobs. When people feel safe but also have an opportunity to contribute to get more, they are highly motivated.
• Avoid de-motivators. Keep distractions away from your team. If team members are worried they aren’t doing well enough, or that the company isn’t doing well enough, they won’t work well. If they feel threatened, they won’t do well. If there are unclear expectations about some part of their job, it will cut into their work time. So give everyone a clear job description and let them go for it!

2. Track work and income daily or weekly.
Check in weekly. Each week, track employees’ time and numbers with them. Ask how things are going and how they can do better. Don’t pile on pressure. Do be clear, encouraging and specific. Look at the work in relation to the plan. This is key. Don’t look at work in relation to interruptions or excuses, or anything else.

Begin with a clear commitment and, in a no-blame environment, take an honest look at the gap between the plan and actual achievement. If the team member isn’t meeting the goals, find out why.

When you find the cause, determine if it’s a one-time thing or if it will happen again. If a blizzard buried your town or the guy was off on his honeymoon, then let it go and get back to work. But what if the cause of the problem is ongoing?

This is when you need to decide whether the cause of the problem is in your control, under your influence or outside your influence entirely? Then begin working to fix things that are either in your control or under your influence. If it’s out of your control, accept what you cannot change and figure out what you can do to reach your goals.

Sometimes the solution will be obvious and practical. Other times, you’ll have to get creative. Do whatever it takes!
4. Define all the work.
Employees who aren’t in sales may not be adding to revenue, but they’re affecting the bottom line. Every team member contributes to delivering value to customers, reducing cost or reducing risk.

Find the critical success factor that each employee contributes to the company. For example:

• A marketing assistant may send out notices, announcements and ads that increase business.
• Your tax accountant reduces your taxes.
• A security guard prevents break-ins, thefts and attacks on employees.

When critical activities are defined, it makes the employee’s job worthwhile. This is not a job description to file with HR. This is a tool that the team member uses daily to stay focused and that you review with them to help them improve and add more value.5. Track expenses daily or weekly.
Too many businesses let their financial information pile up in a shoebox until the end of the year and then hand it to an accountant. Money is the lifeblood of a business, and you should be taking your financial blood pressure on at least a weekly basis. How much money are you spending? How does that compare to your plan? Are you spending the way you planned to spend? If you know the answer to those questions weekly, you can correct course and speed, and reach your destination.6. Track progress monthly.
The final step of this plan is checking progress–or income–monthly. Ask yourself what you can do to earn more and spend less, and how you can deliver results sooner and get paid faster. As you keep finding ways to improve in these areas, you’ll build momentum and reach greater net revenue sooner.Businesses succeed by linking each job to earning money, reducing cost, delivering better results sooner or reducing risk. Motivate your team members by letting them know that what they do matters. Then show them how to make more of a difference, week by week and month by month.Do this and you won’t just meet your goals–you’ll exceed them.

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Though the wine industry was the first to capitalize on the concept of the “experience economy” –the idea that consumers crave experiences rather than just products or services–entrepreneurs in a variety of fields are now finding success by opening their doors and inviting customers to see, smell, hear and touch their wares.Here’s how to incorporate the concept into your own business:

1. Understand that work is theater. Joe Pine, co-founder of Strategic Horizons and co-author of The Experience Economy, says entrepreneurs should view employees as actors capable of engaging a very specific audience: consumers. He says Robert Stephens understood this when he had employees at his computer repair company wear dweeby-looking white shirts and black ties when they made house calls. Best Buy acquired Stephens’ Geek Squad in 2002, and Pine says the squad’s success carries important lessons for entrepreneurs looking to sell their business one day.

   “Stephens said he wanted to make the computer repair experience so engaging that customers couldn’t wait until their computers broke,” Pine says. According to Pine, entrepreneurs who achieve that standard will likely enjoy a strong following through word-of-mouth advertising. “Stephens once said that ‘advertising is a tax you pay for being unremarkable,’” Pine says.

2. Open your doors. When Celestial Seasonings built its new tea factory in Boulder, Colo., in 1990, guest relations ambassador Steve Spencer made sure he organized a tour that highlighted every aspect of the tea-making process, from the milling of the herbs to the cellophaning and heat-sealing of tea boxes. Two decades later, the all-natural tea manufacturer, known for cult-favorite herbal blends like Sleepytime and Red Zinger, now attracts more than 120,000 visitors per year with its free tours, making the tea factory the No. 2 stand-alone tourist attraction in Boulder. “People come here because they want to see that we are who they think we are,” Spencer says. “And when they’re able to do that, it enhances brand loyalty the way nothing else can.”
3. Tell a story. Most entrepreneurs have an interesting and highly personal story behind their decision to launch their business, but many forget to share that story with customers. On New Belgium Brewing Company’s tours, visitors learn the tale of founder Jeff Lebesch, an electrical engineer with a home-brewing hobby. Lebesch traveled through Belgium on his mountain bike in 1989 and returned home with a plan to open his own brewery. The name of New Belgium’s signature Fat Tire Amber Ale is a reference to his mountain bike. In the beginning, Lebesch’s wife, Kim Jordan (now New Belgium CEO), handled marketing and finances, and his neighbor, a painter, designed the iconic label art.

   “It’s a romantic story of a young man riding his bike in a foreign country and a young couple who made a sort of scary entrepreneurial leap to make a dream into a reality,” says New Belgium spokesman Bryan Simpson. “That story is key to who we are, so we think it’s important to share it.”

   Similarly, Celestial Seasonings, which was acquired by the Hain Food Group in 2000, starts its tours by telling the story of how Mo Siegel founded the company in 1969 by harvesting fresh herbs from the Rocky Mountains by hand, packaging them in hand-sewn muslin bags and selling them at local health food stores. It reminds visitors that “Celestial Seasonings is a classic entrepreneurial success, not a corporate concept,” Spencer says.

4. Let consumers taste. And smell. And touch. Visitors spend most of their Celestial Seasonings tour time on the factory floor, where they can feel their eyes water and nostrils burn in the pungently scented mint room, watch the robotic palletizer lift and package stacks of tea boxes, and smell lemongrass, hibiscus, cloves and other ingredients during the milling process.

   “It’s all about that multisensory experience,” Spencer says.

   Pine says ambitious entrepreneurs can step it up a notch by taking cues from Cabela’s, the outdoor superstore whose Nebraska headquarters offers a host of amenities above and beyond its retail offerings, like an indoor archery range and museum-quality animal displays. 

5. Make shopping fun. Small internet and packaging upgrades can make a big difference in creating a fun purchasing experience. “Is there a casual game you can add to your website to get people to spend more time there?” Pine asks. “Is there a way you can improve your box-opening experience? People wax poetic about Apple’s box-opening experience when they buy their MacBooks and iPhones.”

   Spencer says Celestial Seasonings pays close attention to its packaging, inscribing inspirational quotes and commissioning independent illustrators to design whimsical drawings for each box. “The final product is more than the sum of its parts,” Spencer says. “People are enamored with our brand because of the flavor, but also because of the whimsy and inspiration.”

6. Throw a party. New Belgium has strengthened brand loyalty by hosting events across the country, such as the Tour de Fat, a traveling bike festival and parade now held in eleven cities. “In the industry we’re in, people tend to choose two or three brands that they’re very loyal to, and then do some sampling of other brands,” Simpson says. “To be one of those two or three brands, you really have to stand out. And the experiential stuff is where our brand–our culture–really comes to life for people.”

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Groups, on the other hand, allow you to send out bulk invitations (for instance, you can ask all of your friends to join the group) and any of your group members can also invite their friends. If you have “friends” on your Facebook page who are acquaintances or just share common interests this is a good way to market.A group, however, has a limitation of 5,000 members if you wish to send a message. They are generally considered to be best for more personal interaction. I use a group, for example, to help people find online teaching jobs called “Make Money Teaching Online” where members share experiences, job tips and who’s hiring. Group pages allow you to set other administrators to see who is requesting to join the group. If you post something to the group page, it will also show up on your personal wall. Some people don’t like this because it ties them to their businesses, but this can be useful in creating a “person behind the online business” feeling with your customers. You have more control over participants and permissions with group memberships.Both groups and fan pages allow you to create discussions and others to reply. Both have a wall for people to write on. Both allow you to share videos and pictures. Both require you to manually remove posts as an administrator if something does not meet your standards or purpose for the page. Both also allow you to create events.Regardless of which one you choose (of course, you can have both), be sure to update regularly, keep your audience engaged and offer something of value. If you use your page or group purely for promotional reasons, you are far less likely to build loyalty, and there’s a good chance that your members and friends won’t be returning to your pages anytime soon.

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Support sales with marketing. There’s a big difference between sales and marketing. Selling encompasses all the one-on-one interpersonal contact, including meetings, phone calls, individual e-mails and networking. Marketing tactics, on the other hand, touch large groups of prospects, such as via direct mail or radio advertising.Marketing exists to support sales and can reduce your customer acquisition costs over pure selling alone. Consider this: What would it cost in time and cash if you were to visit 500 prospects, trying to sell each one individually? Now contrast that with the budget required to send a postcard to the same 500 people. The marketing tactic would cost dramatically less, take considerably less time, produce leads and convey a selling message with the potential to move the prospects closer to a buying decision. Sales and marketing work together, and you need a combination of tools and tactics for a well-rounded campaign.Think like a customer. Each time they touch a prospect, your materials should reinforce your brand message and identity. What kind of image do you want to create for your new business? Who will be your best prospects? What benefits do they expect your business to deliver? Answering these important questions will help you choose everything from the right colors, paper stocks and fonts for your visual identity, to the text of your company’s positioning statement or slogan.Too many entrepreneurs make the mistake of creating the look, feel and creative messaging for their company or brand based on what they like. But for materials to work, they have to reflect the recipients’ tastes and preferences. To get on track, put together informal roundtables with members of your target audience and show them a couple of different branding identity ideas for your new company. Test colors, designs, positioning statements and even product names if they’re in question. Then use the feedback to guide unbiased development of your family of tools.Touch prospects at key points. Make a list of all the points in your selling process at which you expect to touch prospects and the tools you’ll need to facilitate those touches. For example, your list might include all of the following and more:

• A business card for networking
• A fold-over note card for handwritten follow up with prospects
• A brochure and letter to mail following phone calls
• E-mails for lead follow up
• A PowerPoint sales presentation
• Printed sell sheets
• A comprehensive sales leave-behind

Plan marketing tactics that help boost prospects from one step in the sales cycle to another, and carry your company’s visual identity and positioning content into each of its campaigns. For example, you might support your sales effort with direct mail to prospects in targeted ZIP codes, a terrific website, search engine advertising and customer retention e-mails to your in-house database.This cohesive family of sales and marketing tools and tactics will successfully move prospects through your sales cycle. And they’ll tell a compelling story that motivates prospects to buy.

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Even though Mike’s misguided reasoning led him down the wrong road, it raises a good question, and understanding the answer could help your business. The question is: Despite its chance nature, is networking something you can count on as a consistent means of getting more business? Of course it is.Mike’s situation boiled down to two things–repeatability and understanding. His training told him that the way to get more business was to target a niche customer by calling people from a demographics-based list. If he didn’t have enough business, he needed to make more calls. Exactly how many more? He could figure that out, too, because the amount of business he got was directly proportional to the number of people he talked to. It was a repeatable process that he fully understood.On the other hand, clients he got from referrals always had a story that he couldn’t see being easily repeated. Sally knew Jim, who ran into Sue, who happened to be in his group and referred Mike the business. This understanding led Mike to conclude that the results were coincidental and couldn’t possibly be repeated.Mike’s reasoning wasn’t entirely off-track, just flawed. If you focus on the specific people who gave you the referral, rather than the process and relationships that allowed it to happen, then it’s unlikely you will consistently get more business from networking.But if you step back and ask, “Is it possible that somebody will know someone else who’s looking for my services and will give me that referral?” Well, there’s that repeatability–especially if you focus on building relationships–because there’s always a “somebody.”Networking Is a Long and Winding Road
When it comes to networking and passing referrals, it’s not about who’s giving what to whom, and it’s hardly a straight line. If you’re thinking, “For every referral I give, I can expect one in return,” it’s time to put that idea to rest. Reciprocity is nice, but networking just doesn’t work that way.Think of referral-giving in the context of the Abundance Mindset, which is the awareness that there’s more than enough business to go around. If you hear of a business opportunity that would be well-suited for a referral partner–in other words, not your kind of business–think of it as “excess business.” When you pass this kind of excess business to others in the form of a referral, you’ll wind up attracting more prospects who want to work with you.Call it a gift from the referral gods, but when you do good things for others, those good things have a way of making their way back to you–often from a different person or group of people. Even if it seems that you’re not directly benefiting from the referrals you’re giving others, take note of all the other business that just happens to come your way.

• The guy who stumbles across your website and gives you a call.
• The old prospect you haven’t heard from in months who suddenly wants to get together for lunch.
• The inactive client who wants to renew his contract with you.

Even though it seems happenstance, some or all of these occurrences are likely to be new business you attracted by giving away excess business (in the form of referrals) to people you know.Network With a Net
Referral networking is a lot like catching fish by casting a net. Each fish comes to the net by a different path–each has a unique “story” that is not repeated. You don’t focus on a particular fish and then try to get it to come to the net–in fact, you probably don’t even see the fish until you pull in the net. Instead, you focus on the action of setting the net. You know that if you set your net correctly and consistently, fish will eventually come, no matter what path they take to get there.The same is true for getting referrals. You don’t have to worry about how a specific referral got to you because you understand the process of setting your net.And the best part is your net can be working for you all the time. You don’t have to be there whenever someone you know runs into someone else who could use your services–this means you can be “fishing” in many different ponds simultaneously and reaping tons of new business. This is especially true when you’ve become a referral gatekeeper and begin to get referrals not only from your own network of contacts but from the networks of others as well.When it comes to networking, there is no coincidence about referrals. They are the inevitable cumulative result of the day-to-day activities of relationship-building. And even though those efforts can’t be measured as easily as cold calls, the results are far more powerful.

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Choose a Sideline You’re Passionate About
“My sideline business was created out of passion. I have two children with life-threatening food allergies. I have always dreamed of having my own business, so this has provided a great opportunity. Plus, the timing is right for food allergy awareness, as it continues to grow and be a national health concern,” says Dina Clifford of Centennial, Colo., founder of Mind Flight LLC, which offers products that teach children and those who care for them the principles necessary to stay safe with food allergies.Plus, passion can carry you through the tough times, says Amanda Fries, who started her sideline business, SizeWize.com, in 2009, from her home in Ellicott City, Md. SizeWise helps women who shop online calculate their correct size for more than 150 brands of clothing, based on their actual measurements. “Many days you will be tired from your full-time job, and if you want your sideline to work, you will have to put in the time and energy to it,” Fries says. “So you will spend time at night or other off hours, and if you aren’t passionate about your business, you will have a tough time ‘getting off the couch’ to go work on it.”Create Clear Boundaries
Sue Sweet’s sideline business, BedHog, is a his-and-hers line of bed sheets that she founded in 2008 in San Carlos, Calif. But Sweet makes sure she gives priority to her full-time job.”Make sure you give 110 percent to your day job,” she says. “You probably need the money, and it’s the right thing to do. You do not want to be perceived as the person who is slacking off because you have something else on the side.”Fries notes that many women in the work force have sideline businesses, such as Avon, Pampered Chef, Partylite, etc. “SizeWize.com is handled outside of my work hours or during my lunch time, so it doesn’t interfere at all with my full-time job.”Show Your Employer How Having a Sideline is Useful
“Not only does my employer know about my sideline business, but I was hired because of it,” Sweet says. “I was previously with a very large software company, and the position I was applying for was at a startup. The startup team was concerned that having worked so long at a big firm with considerable resources, I might not be able to ‘roll up my sleeves’ to do the necessary tasks at a startup. But when they heard about my sideline business, it made them more confident that I could do all aspects of the job.”While other employers may not be so open-minded, you learn many useful skills as an entrepreneur that can be applied to your full-time job. Case in point: At night, Clifford was researching ways to promote her sideline business, and she learned how large companies were using Twitter effectively to promote their businesses.Says Clifford, “If I hadn’t been looking for new ways to promote my sideline business, I wouldn’t have learned about this. Since social media is still new to my employer’s industry (oil and gas), I was able to suggest some ways that we could use Twitter and other social media to achieve some marketing goals.”Set Up a Strong Support System
With a full-time job, a sideline business, family obligations and the need for a life, a strong support system is critical.”I really rely on my support system to help me make everything work,” Fries says. “When I had my first child, my husband and I moved back to my hometown to be nearer to a strong support system, including my parents and sister. My parents watch our two boys often and are my backup if the kids are sick and can’t go to day care. And even better, when everyone is healthy, they will usually take the boys once a week to sleep at their house, which the boys love, and [which] is critical to the ‘adult time’ that my husband and I need.”A supportive spouse is another must-have. “My husband and I are a great team,” Fries says. “We are very good at managing our time and energy to focus on both our jobs and the children. When I decided to launch SizeWize.com, he was more than supportive. He encourages me and gives guidance if I ask for it, but knows that this is my project and lets me fly with it on my own. We celebrate the victories, and he supports me when I am overwhelmed.”And don’t forget the kids. All of the business owners in this article have children, and they all help out.Clifford’s son, 7, and daughter, 8, are always looking for ways to help.”We were at a restaurant and we asked questions about the food and whether it would be safe to eat there, due to the kids’ peanut allergies,” Clifford says. “My daughter asked if we could tell them about beyondapeanut.com.”Her children also tell their friends about the products and help put the orders together. “They are my best word-of-mouth advertising,” Clifford says, laughing.Yes, it’s possible to have a sideline business, full-time job and a great life. So stop standing on the sidelines–jump in and start that sideline business!