“We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is
always ripe to do right.”

Nelson Mandela

So the creative juices have been flowing and you feel confident that you can develop your winning idea into a small fortune!

People have great ideas practically every day and dream about the possibilities that could earn them millions in royalties. So what separates those who earn money exploiting their ideas from those who’ll never get past ground zero?

One clear answer is research. One of the most accessible – and best – market research systems for aspiring entrepreneurs, small business marketers and even multinational corporations is the “How To Double Your Business Power Pack”.

It is a revealing, systematic approach to surveying a marketplace that has been distilled and refined from years of big budget, real world, applied research. The complete system is in a modular format and is the creation of renowned research psychologist, Dr. Glenn Livingston.

A second source of information that can help you transform a fledgling business idea into a viable product or service comes from an audio book by author Harvey Reese. “How to License Your Million Dollar Idea” provides both information and motivation that can help you turn your ideas into money.

This is a totally revised and updated version that is currently available from our friends at Acoustic Bookworm. It’s now a second edition that covers the recent changes in patent law and discusses how the Internet has impacted modern licensing.

Both of these recommendations bring to you the information and the ideas that have been employed by big budget, successful marketing endeavours across a wide variety of markets. The information can teach you how to make – or save – alot of money. Go ahead and unwrap that brilliant business idea! Happy marketing!

Chris Anderson’s best selling “The Long Tail” has become a highly influential and widely referenced business essay that theorises about the future of modern commerce. At its core, The Long Tail is a dissertation about the economics of abundance.

The book provides a description of a business paradigm that has begun to show the power of seemingly unlimited selection of products and services across a broad spectrum of consumer markets. It provides a perspective about what Anderson claims are “the new truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it.“

“In short, though we still obsess over hits, “Anderson writes, ” they are not quite the economic force they once were. Where are those fickle consumers going instead? No single place. They are scattered to the winds as markets fragment into a thousand niches.”

The book explores a variety of contemporary business examples that include movies, books, and music. Technology and the Internet have made possible an empowered, new world of business marketing in which the combined value of modest sellers and obscure titles equals the sales of the top hits. His examples reveal intriguing possibilities that can be applied to other business models.

In fact, the book may mean more to small business marketers who are nimble and faster to market than slower moving big business. Speed is after all, the currency of business and success loves speed.

Acoustic Bookworm has just released an inexpensive audio version of The Long Tail that you can download right now. Once you download your copy, you can listen to it as an mp3 or go ahead and burn a CD or DVD and listen to it in your car. Very cool!

We’re not sure what part of the world C. Brand lives in but they were nice enough to send us an email responding to one of our recent posts “Ask And Ye Shall Receive”. We responded to their email and then asked for permission to post it here. They agreed and here it is in full:

I just had a few thoughts about your March/ 13 news article that I was wondering about. First it’s a good article but do you consider it ethical for businesses and marketers to take advantage of a persons problems when you wrote; “Tapping into the level of frustration and difficulty that your customers and prospects are experiencing in a given market is their problem and your opportunity.”? To me, this sounds predatory and cold.

I was also wondering about Dr. Livingston’s market research example and why would he use such an obscure example such as guinea pigs (that has to be such a small niche market), compared to what people really search for on the internet such as business information, travel information, automobile news or even anything like fitness and health related news.

I would also like to read more information about Point Of Difference Benefits vs. Price of Entry Benefits. Can you email me some more information about theses concepts?
Thanks
C. Brand

Our response went something like this:

Good marketers – the best marketers – understand their markets intimately. They collect great data and they understand how to correctly interpret that data. Success comes from knowing that a penetrating insight into your market is prerequisite to an academic understanding about the tactics of marketing. But it’s more than a complex analysis of all available metrics.

Understanding the frustrations and the depth of frustration that your potential customers are experiencing in a given area is imperative. Listen to your customer, understand what their most pressing needs are, create a quality solution to those needs and bundle your solution in an irresistible offer. This is an ethical pursuit of a win/win relationship.

Without an adequate understanding of your customer, your approach is myopic – even blind - because you’re going to your market based on your business’s agenda and not your target customer’s. This approach relies on sales gimmicks, marketing hype, publicity stunts and various tactics that are geared at pushing product – and not necessarily solving problems.

Marketing a product without really knowing if it solves your customer’s problems can turn out to be a costly mistake for your business. Even if you know that you have a great product, your customer just may not want to buy – or worse, they buy and return for a refund. A great marketing strategy will always prevail over great marketing tactics and the best strategies begin with an intimate understanding of your target market.

So what about the guinea pig example?
Best to read our post: The Story of The Guinea Piggy Bank!

Concerning “Point Of Difference Benefits vs. Price of Entry Benefits,” the best thing to do is to learn about these concepts direct from the man who has provided approximately FOURTEEN MILLION DOLLARS in consulting services to a who’s who list of Fortune 500 companies that include:

A T & T, American Express, Astra Zeneca, Bausch & Lomb, Burger King, Chase, Citibank, Colgate-Palmolive, Grey Advtg, Hallmark, Hunt Wesson, J & J, JJill, Exxon, Flagship Banks, Ford Motor Company, General Mills, Gore, J Walter Thompson, Kodak, Kraft, Lipton, M & M/Mars, Master Card, Merck, Nextel, Novartis/Ciba, Ortho McNeil P & G, Pfizer, Pharmacia, Pillsbury, Roche, Sara Lee Unilever, Warner Lambert,

Just visit Real Marketing Muscle to get informed. It’s free to opt in and the information could be priceless to your business enterprise. Good Luck!

This is the true story by marketing psychologist, Dr. Glenn Livingston, about making money starting out with an information product on Guinea Pigs.

How I Fired All My Corporate Clients And Went From $ZERO To $28,462 per-month in PASSIVE INCOME - Starting With a $9.99 E-Book On Guinea Pigs!

Here’s the story!

The decision to move out of the corporate consulting sector was a radical career change for me. I fired all of my Fortune 500 clients with the intention of creating new businesses that would provide totally passive income … with no headaches, no client “emergencies”, no ridiculous work hours and no time away from my family.

But There Was One Major Problem!

I had a relatively crazy idea to re-engineer my market research methods (systems for which I’d already been paid millions by clients in the corporate sector) - to work in any area of business, including both established small businesses, and simple niche marketing on the internet. I had targeted the online media as a kind of latecomer to the e-book craze, … but I knew almost nothing about Internet marketing.

Now honestly, I was pretty scared, and I wasn’t sure if it was doable. After all, there’s a big difference in the advertising & distribution methods available to companies like American Express, Whirlpool, Nextel, Lipton and G.E., and those available to ‘the little guy’, - but I had to make this workable for EVERY business.

Well, what happened next was - quite frankly - stunning.

Here’s how it all went down. Much to my parent’s dismay (they had been SO happy to tell all their friends about “my son the doctor”), the first product that I selected for my new “online empire” was a $10 e-book about guinea pigs. No kidding! Don’t ask why – it’s a long story that goes back to my childhood. But it’s also the perfect example of just how powerful this system is.

You see, using just my research system and nothing else - no purchased opt-in lists, no backend products, no SEO, no affiliates and no JV deals - simply buying my own traffic, I was able to start banking $2,000 a month with my guinea pig book.

I quickly tested and duplicated this success in other markets, and within six months after launching my ‘piggy project’ – I had worked up to $6,300 a month in passive income.

It Gets Better

I went back and made some tweaks to this system, and was able to DOUBLE my business in approximately 6 months.

Six months later I DOUBLED IT AGAIN.

And what’s really interesting is that during this time, my web sites attracted a boatload of competitors – yet my numbers kept going up and up (I discovered that when you fully apply the system and make sure you’re really delivering what the market wants, you can make MORE money when you have more competition!)

And … something even more interesting … I’ve used this virtually fool-proof formula to launch site after site after site. Now to be honest, some of these sites are more successful than others. But to date, I’ve not lost ANY money when I followed the formula in full.

Not bad for a crazy idea, huh?

Well, that’s the story of how I first applied my system outside the ‘big brand’ world, and how I started refining it to get it to do what it does today. (I’ve become kind of obsessed with making it better every month!)

Sick of your marketing / advertising job? Take an interesting tip from this guy with the boom box announcing he’s quitting his job in the vdeo below.

Selling a message to a whole body of people isn’t nearly as effective as reaching just the part of the group that wants to hear your pitch.

The concept is niche marketing, and is widely considered to be the hottest, smartest approach to advertising today.

If you have a computer and an e-mail address, then you are an ideal candidate for niche marketing. Companies you have done business with (think Amazon or Travelocity) can request your e-mail address, and then, based on your purchasing patterns, send specific e-mails about products and promotions that should attract you.

“What worked well 20 or 30 years ago won’t do it today,” said Roger Hurni, partner and creative director at Off Madison Ave. in Tempe. “Now, there are dozens of ways to communicate.”

Niche marketing is fundamentally based on a deeper understanding about who the customer is, then building a message based on that understanding.

On Aug. 12, a group of 12 fans of the Web browser Mozilla Firefox, which competes with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer, used two-by-fours and rope to hollow out a 30,000-square-foot impression of the brand’s logo in an oat field outside of Salem, Ore. The handmade crop circle wasn’t the first time Mozilla diehards had displayed their support for the brand publicly. In December, 2004, a group raised enough cash to buy a two-page ad in The New York Times to thank those who had contributed to the launch of the beloved browser.

But neither of these stunts was orchestrated by a PR firm or in-house marketing guru. What’s more, the more than 10,000 programmers who are constantly tweaking the open-source coding and performing quality controls on the Firefox browser are volunteers, not employees. And the 60,000 Web sites that have linked to Mozilla’s site to encourage people to download the browser receive no compensation.

It’s this growing community that has allowed Mozilla, a small company with about 60 full-time employees, to compete with juggernauts like Microsoft. “One of our distinguishing characteristics is that we’re a small organization competing on a large playing field,” says Asa Dotzler, community coordinator for Mozilla. He says the company owes its success to its users and their “passion for Firefox.”

The branding success of companies like Mozilla, Pom Wonderful, Craigslist, and others show that you don’t have to be big for your brand to be big. By building a dedicated group of users or customers, small companies can create formidable brand power.

“Good news travels fast and bad news travels farther and faster.” Remember that old adage? In sales, positive word of mouth and referrals will bring you new customers, but one big mistake left untreated could undo years of your hard work in an instant. One cautionary rule of thumb is that dissatisfied customers will tell 10 times as many folks about a bad experience than satisfied customers will about a good experience. No, it’s not fair, but the best strategy to avoid having unhappy customers is prevention.

My seven keys to preventing bad buzz follow:

1. Understand expectations. To prevent unhappy customers, first accurately understand what they expect and set up systems to ensure you meet—or exceed—those expectations consistently. You may want to develop checklists to be sure you understand your customer’s exact wishes. Expect to refine the lists over time as you gain more experience with them.

2. Deliver what you promise. If the name of your company is Speedy Repair Services and your slogan is “We’re the fastest in town,” then you need standardized business processes to ensure you provide fast service to every customer. For example, you will need dependable employees and additional experienced help you can call on during emergencies. You’ll also need a large inventory of spare parts. Because you have a system in place, your customers should never be delayed by a shortage of labor or parts.

An added benefit of this preparation is that you can show any unsatisfied customer all the effort you took to ensure their pleasure. If it looks like you really tried, customers may be more Read the rest of this entry »

David Pearson, vice-president of channel operations at Miller-Heiman, the world’s largest sales-performance consulting and training firm, shares strategies on how to use cross-selling and up-selling to increase revenue with BW Savvy Selling columnist Michelle Nichols.

Download Smart Sales Strategies Podcast

On his blog, Tim Wolters suggests what entrepreneurs need to know to succeed. Wolters suggests keeping a book of ideas and begining with a hypothesis which is “a statement that captures the gist of the solution.” For those ideas that still seem interesting some time later, he recommends beginning a separate journal and considering the idea in terms of problem and solution. Thus, for the mouse idea, the problem could be “Mice are a problem and traps only provide a temporary and messy solution.” The solution: “Create a device that discourages mice from coming on the property.”

Next could come ideas for creating a prototype of an invention. “This invention chronology can be used later for the patent process.” Conclude by answering basic marketing questions, such as who will benefit and how many prospective customers are out there.

Seth Godin has an interesting post on the ‘chicken and the egg problem‘ many business owners face. I want to reflect and expand a little on the theory Seth was talking about.

The problem with most businesses is the ‘chicken and egg problem’. That is, most business owners are afraid to be movers and shakers within their industry or creating something completely innovative. There will only come one MySpace and one eBay mega-site every 5 years.

Success doesn’t happen overnight and you will often fail time and time again if you ONLY adapt to what everyone else in the industry is doing. I couldn’t tell you how many ‘idiots’ come up to me as a web designer and ask if I could create them a website like MySpace. These people seriously believe they will be able to sell their MySpace-Imitation or variation thereof for $500 million to NewsCorp.

Not going to happen this decade buddy. The world truely would be a better place and our market would be in better shape if people were shaking and rattling some cages.

The sad truth is that every has their toes on the edge of a cliff of success and are afraid to take a leap. Instead, they latch onto a successful business model and modify it to their tastes. Success rarely follows.

So, if you have the next breakthrough idea do not watch the big guys. Rather than looking to your neighbor for ideas, build and blend a team of highly skilled individuals and put your next big thing into action.

Have you ever wanted to schedule an important meeting with your project group but could never come to a conclusion to what day and time would work best for everyone in the group? Scheduling effective meetings will never be easier with Doodle. Doodle offers an interesting alternative to scheduling meetings with a large number of people. The first step involves creating a poll with meeting details and times.

You then send the link to your poll to the participants in the meeting. They will then compare the times you suggested with their schedules and select what times work best for them. Doodle will inform you of progress and calculate the most promising date for the meeting. The service is available in four languages.

Have something important that you need to keep track of without having to logging into the computer everyday? When you’re on the go you might want to try a new free service called MyMemorizer. MyMemorizer is a free calendar service that will send you email and text message reminders. Creating an account is easy and does not require credit card information. In addition, they won’t even require email authentication.

The web based calendar service is one of the most impressive web applications I’ve seen in quite awhile. MyMemorizer will remind you of Web 2.0 without the gigantic fonts. MyMemorizer uses tiny fonts and easy to read font types. The forms are easy to navigate and manipulate. You can easily manage multiple pages all on a single page and there is usually no need to scroll down.

When I was up in Toronto, I was interviewed by Samantha Grice from the National Post about 43 Folders, productivity stuff, and the sad sorry state of my own day-to-day productivity.

As a sidebar to the little profile she wrote, Samantha also asked me to draft a few words on my favorite fast tips for getting it together. Herewith: Merlin’s top 5 super-obvious, “no-duh” ways to immediately improve your life:

1. Reduce noise - We all have innumerable inboxes, interruptions, and distractions that are part of work and life — you can’t change that. What you can do is get more hard-nosed about the elective diversions that you invite into your world.

2. Write things down - Ever find a piece of paper in your office with seven digits on it? You know it’s a phone number, but whose? Get ruthless about jotting down ephemeral information if you’ll need to recall it later.

3. Focus on action - My favorite productivity book, “Getting Things Done” highlights how anything you want to do in life eventually comes down to intentional physical activity — even if it’s something as mundane as “take out trash” and “call Mom.” Read the rest of this entry »