Mountain Views News          Saturday, June 16, 2012

12

BUSINESS NEWS & TRENDS

 Mountain Views News Saturday June 16, 2012 

BUSINESS TODAY

The latest on Business News, Trends and Techniques


By La Quetta M. Shamblee, MBA


WHAT IS MARKETING?

You have a business. You have a web site. You have a Facebook page. 
You tweet and send emails. You YouTube and you are LinkedIn. Are you 
marketing? 

As business owners, we all know we need to do “marketing.” But, do we 
really know and understand what that is. A while back I asked some business owners their 
definition of marketing. One of the best answers came from our good friend and printer, 
Jerry (printingcontrol.net). He said, “in order to understand what marketing is, you need 
to understand the difference between sales and marketing. ‘Sales’ is when you are calling on 
your prospects. ‘Marketing’ is when your prospects are calling on you because they heard 
about you.” Brilliant! 

Social media and email marketing is often called relationship and/or top-of-mind marketing. 
Staying connected with people who are important to your business keeps you present 
in their mind. If you make it easy for people to remember you, they will think of you the 
next time they need your product or service or when they are asked for a referral. This 
doesn’t mean constantly posting “buy my stuff” messages on Facebook. We’ve found that 
just liking, commenting, listening and participating in social media helps remind people 
we’re still here.

I read a study once that said we are all hit with over 3,000 marketing messages a day. Think 
of all the billboards, radio announcements, signs, bumper stickers, web pages, images 
and emails that go into our brains every day. Don’t you want your message to be in there 
somewhere? 

Staying in touch and messaging is only half of the marketing equation. If you don’t have 
anyone to share your message with, you just have words. Marketing is also about building 
quality lists of people who want to stay in touch with you because they like you and your 
product and services. Build your lists on their terms. Some will prefer some of the social 
media tools and some may prefer emails. Don’t let your own preference get in the way of 
where your followers prefer to be. When you adjust to their needs and preferences, you are 
connecting with them on their terms. Isn’t this what good customer service is all about.

There are many tools that build lists; they just take different forms. In Facebook you build 
"likes" and "friends." In Twitter, you build "followers." In LinkedIn, you build "connections." 
If you use email marketing, you build a list of email addresses. 

If business is a little slow for you right now, you might work on “getting list rich.” Attend 
live networking events, join the chamber, attend meetings and exchange business cards. As 
you do, ask people if they would like to join your email list, let them know how often you 
send and what you send. Ask them if they would like to stay connected on social media, 
ask which one they prefer. Build your lists at every touch point of your business day. List 
building is an on-going process. Go for quality, not quantity. 

If you are using Facebook and Constant Contact, cross promote. When you send out an 
email, encourage people to join your conversation on Facebook. On Facebook, add a “join 
my email list” tab to your page. In 2011, Constant Contact found that 1 million people 
joined their customer’s emails through Facebook. (To add the custom Constant Contact 
tab, go to facebook.com/ctctjmml._

My definition of marketing is….Building a quality list of people and staying top of mind 
with interesting messages so they think of you when they need your product or service. 

What’s your definition? If you want to share it, please post your ideas at www.facebook.
com/hutdogs. 

For more tips on list building go to www.hutdogs.com/actionsteps.

About MJ: MJ and her brother David own HUTdogs, a creative services business that also specializes in Social 
Media Education for business owners. Join their conversation on Facebook and get good tips and tricks about social 
media, www.facebook.com/hutdogs For a list of upcoming classes go to: www.hutdogs.com/workshops/schedule

CREATIVITY 
AND QUALITY 
- A WINNING 
COMBINATION 

Are you an entrepreneur who 
wants to stay at the front of the 
pack and steps ahead of the 
competition in your industry? 
If so, you can benefit by simply 
offering customers a unique 
experience with quality that is 
consistent.

 Identifying and honing in 
on at least one thing that 
distinguishes you from your 
competitors can add to your 
bottom line. More than twenty 
years ago, news articles and 
celebrity interviews touted 
a most unique duck sausage 
pizza that was being served at 
Wolfgang Puck’s Restaurant in 
Beverly Hills. Pizza was not 
new to the Southern California 
palette, but this celebrity chef 
was at the forefront of ushering 
in the age of designer pizza pies. 
Barbeque and chicken have been 
part of the human experience 
for thousands of years, but the 
merging of the two atop pizza 
dough was a anomaly until the 
mid-1980’s. 

 Being different can help create 
a fascination, a curiosity that 
may prompt a new wave of 
customers to make their way 
to your door with money in 
hand. Zelo’s Pizza in Arcadia 
puts a slightly different twist on 
an old concept with a creative 
adaptation of the dough. Their 
signature cornmeal pizza crust 
serves as the foundation for 
combinations of toppings that 
are unique, like sweet corn 
kernels and mozzarella. The 
individual ingredients are 
not unique, but along with 
some familiar ingredients like 
pepperoni and sausage, their 
tasty, eclectic topping combos 
places them solidly in the 
gourmet pizza category.

 The majority of new products 
are rarely new, most are created 
by taking existing items or 
concepts and combining them 
in a different way. For example, 
fruit baskets have morphed into 
revenues of almost $200 million 
a year from a concept launched 
by brothers Tariq and Kamran 
Farid. In 1990 they opened the 
first Edible Arrangements Store 
in Hamden, Connecticut. They 
used fresh fruit in the place of 
flowers to create arrangements 
in baskets. Caterers and chefs 
have been carving fruit into 
interesting shapes for decades, 
but the Farid brothers took it 
to another level by combining 
several existing concepts, gift 
baskets, fruit, carving techniques 
and delivery services. Not only 
are the baskets eye-catching, 
but also they are tasty. They 
began franchising the concept 
in 2001 and by the end of 2011, 
the business had grown to more 
than 1,100 locations in the U.S. 
and five other countries.

 Despite the many angst about 
the fast food industry, the major 
players provide examples of solid 
quality assurance (QA) systems 
and processes. That.s why a Big 
Mac® prepared by a McDonalds 
in Duarte, California will taste 
the same as sold from one of 
their franchises at an airport in 
New York. A business might 
gain an advantage by offering 
something new and different, 
but customers must be able to 
trust that they will get the same 
experience each time they spend 
money with you. It is important 
to establish standards for what 
you want your customers to 
experience. Then, identify each 
of the major processes that lead 
to a customer purchase; quality 
of what you sell (inventory), 
shopping experience (website 
and online store or physical 
location and customer service) 
and pricing (discount, average 
or high-end). Survey your 
repeat customers to determine 
why they return and also, ask 
if they have any suggestions 
about how to improve their 
experience with you. Review 
the feedback to determine 
where the suggestions might be 
applied to your QA process.

 It’s often the simple things 
that can result in the greatest 
benefits. Deciding what to 
offering customer that is unique 
is a matter of brainstorming 
and thinking outside of the box 
about opportunities that are 
right in front of you.

OMG! OH MY GOSH DID YOU 
KNOW………………..

by Patricia Richardson, M.B.A., Intuit Certified ProAdvisor

I do not usually upgrade my QuickBooks to the newest version 
every year. That is not to say that I don’t have every version because 
I do, dating back to 1999. As a QuickBooks Certified ProAdvisor I 
am required to have every version so that I can help my clients with their QuickBooks 
problems. So as you can see I probably have each version on at least one of my computers. 
What I am saying is that I don’t upgrade my data file to the new version each year. 

However, I just have to let everyone know that I have just upgraded to QuickBooks 2012 
and I love it. Besides the new Lead Center that I discussed in last week’s article, there is also a 
new calendar - think “Outlook” – users can choose to view a calendar layout of a company’s 
important transactions (invoice, billing, to-dos), as well as overdue transactions, tasks 
to be completed and appointments. QuickBooks 2012 also allows you to drill down into 
transactions from this screen or create To Do’s (such as appointments, and the application 
now allows you to specify the exact time). Past due transactions are automatically flagged.

You can access the calendar from either the Home Page (Company section) or the Company 
drop down menu. Until now there has never been one central place to see important dates 
and schedules (including the time of day!) in a company. Filing dates and due dates can now 
be kept inside QuickBooks for authorized persons to view, as opposed to recording them 
on an external calendar. The Alerts feature that indicates the overdue status of transactions 
can help keep a company’s cash flow positive. 

On another note the IRS says beware of Phish Scams.

Nov. 10, 2011 — A suspected phishing email on the Employer Identification Number (EIN), 
claiming to come from the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility, is currently circulating. 
This email was not sent by the IRS. For more information, see “Latest News from Office of 
Professional Responsibility (OPR)” at www.IRS.gov.

The IRS does not send unsolicited emails to taxpayers about their tax accounts, tax 
situations or personal tax issues. If you receive such an email, most likely it’s a scam. IRS 
impersonation schemes flourish during filing season. These schemes may take place via 
phone, fax, Internet sites, social networking sites and particularly email. 

Many impersonations are identity theft scams that try to trick victims into revealing 
personal and financial information that can be used to access their financial accounts. Some 
email scams contain attachments or links that, when clicked, download malicious code (a 
virus) that infects your computer or direct you to a bogus form or site that is presented as a 
genuine IRS form or web site. 

Some impersonations may be commercial Internet sites that consumers unknowingly visit, 
thinking they’re accessing the genuine IRS website, www.IRS.gov. However, such sites have 
no connection to the IRS.

For more information, contact Patty Richardson at patti@qbworkshop.com