Marketing and Advertising

How to Determine Who Will Be the Social Media Voice

by Nick Stamoulis September 10, 2011
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A big part of online promotion is creating content that can be shared.  This includes email newsletters, article submissions, press release distribution, and blog post writing.  Social media is a great place to share this high quality content once it has been created.  Social media is important for numerous reasons.  It helps to build a [...]

15 Creative Ways to Use Custom Cartoons to Engage Customers

by Ivana Taylor August 15, 2011
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With everything going digital, there’s nothing like the human touch to liven up your marketing materials.  Cartoons are a fantastic way to add a human touch to your marketing materials, especially if your business is technical, industrial or B2B. Why Use Cartoons Cartoons, by definition are drawn by hand.  That alone makes them interesting and [...]

5 Questions to Ask Before Branding Your Small Business

by Ivana Taylor July 18, 2011
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Sure, we know effective branding is crucial for a company’s viable success, but that doesn’t get us any closer to knowing how to implement a realistic branding strategy. Branding can be even more challenging for small business owners who might not have the funds needed for extensive marketing platforms. Fortunately, small businesses owners still have [...]

Define What “Works” or Risk Financial Disappointment

by Steve Wilkinghoff May 5, 2011
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Steve Wilkinghoff is the author of “Found Money” (One of my MOST FAVORITE books).  Steve’s gift is the rare combination of managerial accounting smarts with a marketing focus.  In other words – he can tell you which products are making money and which aren’t — and what to do about it.  In this debut article, [...]

Sales Management Process: How to Improve Your Sales Team’s Effectiveness in a “Reset” Economy

by Ivana Taylor March 6, 2011
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Nothing happens until a sale is made. Danita Bye, our guest expert, gives us a checklist of attributes to consider when creating and building your sales team.

5 DIY Fanbase Marketing Ideas You Can Implement in 5 Minutes

by Paul Rosenfeld September 16, 2010
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At Fanminder, we’re on the front lines of a re-invention of marketing. The days of expensive local newspaper or Yellow Pages ads are fast waning. Direct mail lost its punch years ago. And even email is on the ropes, knocked about by a bevy of real-time communications services such as texting, Twitter, and FourSquare. With [...]

Affordable Branding for DIY Marketers

by Ivana Taylor August 30, 2010

Branding can be an expensive proposition. Either you do it yourself and pull all your hair out.  Or you hire someone and they pull all your money out.  At the end of either process, you level of happiness for the time, money and effort may or may not be what you’d expected. Just this morning, [...]

Competitive Analysis: How to Keep That New Customer Yours Forever

by Ivana Taylor August 27, 2010

While it’s always great to grow the size of the pie with new customers buying new products — competitive selling something we all have to do.  If you’ve decided to dominate a specific market niche and the top customers within that niche are buying from someone else — you’re in a competitive selling situation. I received this [...]

How Should A CEO Post on a Blog? A Great Example From Fanminder

by Ivana Taylor August 1, 2010

One of the most common pieces of advice that I share is for small business CEOs to get out there and blog.  Yes — get out there and actually write your blog posts.  Take what’s inside your head and share it with your customers and potential customers. I’m often met with this “deer in the [...]