What is a Premium? A premium is anything of value that you offer a prospect or client in exchange for taking an action that you direct them to. This could include an incentive or a gift. The right premium could encourage someone who might otherwise set aside the mail to act now instead of later […]

What’s a unique selling proposition (USP)? First the Wikipedia explanation: “The unique selling proposition (a.k.a. unique selling point, or USP) is a marketing concept that was first proposed as a theory to understand a pattern among successful advertising campaigns of the early 1940s. It states that such campaigns made unique propositions to the customer and

Typically, many hours are spent deciding on the logo, layout, and tagline to include on a company’s business cards. But not much time goes into thinking about strategies to make those business cards actually work to bring in customers. That is a mistake. Business cards are like mini ambassadors for your business. They represent you,

Most advertising today is of the “me too” variety. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. The louder they yell: “LOOK AT ME!” the faster you want to toss the ad in the trash, change the channel, or click delete. Open the yellow pages (if you can still find one!), look inside a magazine

Let’s get right to the lessons: Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Studies of sales practices continue to show that most salespeople don’t follow up more than one or two times after making a presentation or giving a quote. Marketing is no different.

Networking events such as Business After Hours and organizations like BNI and Meetup.com provide great opportunities to meet and mingle with other, like-minded businesspeople outside their place of business in a more relaxed and non-threatening environment. Unfortunately, some entrepreneurs do not get the most of this great opportunity because they feel awkward or simply don’t

The bulk of marketing budgets is often reserved for acquiring new customers. Much energy, time, and money is spent pursuing prospects that have a marginally small chance of ever becoming a customer. There’s a flaw with this strategy. The simplest and most effective way to boost your bottom line profits is to remember who brought

There are two broad categories of marketing you can use for your company, and it’s important you understand the difference. These two types of marketing are called brand/image marketing and direct response marketing. Although both can have a place in marketing your business, for small businesses one (direct response) is much more effective and efficient

Most business owners have a love/hate relationship with their email. Mostly hate. But like it or not, business owners and executives often “live” in their email inbox, so it makes sense to learn to control the beast before it controls us. The first step in getting past email overwhelm is to clearly define who the

You know the game. You start with a deck of playing cards and slowly begin to stack them together, carefully leaning one card against another at just the right angle, until you’ve created a solid wall of cards. You build the house higher and higher, one card and one row at a time, all the