The Worcester Business Journal ran an article about online advertising the other day quoting 3 local marketing agencies about online advertising.

The majority of the article quotes Laura Briere, owner of Vision Advertising, which is good. Laura actually knows her stuff quite well. Not as well as she thinks she does, but if I had to pair someone up with a local full service marketing agency who gets the web, Laura is a good bet.  She doesn't make the mistakes that marketing agencies outside of Central MA stopped making in 2001. (I haven't used Laura myself so I don't know what she does and doesn't know. But, on the surface, she's dangerous with this stuff.) 

The other two are pretty hopeless. They're still placing online ads on newspaper sites, designing banner ads and all flash websites (SEO no-no #1) for their clients instead of doing search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, blogging, landing page optimization, and leveraging social media successfully. (Not just expensively.) 

I am sure this problem is not unique to Central MA. But, if marketing agencies want to stay relevant they better learn how to shift their thinking of "how do I spend my client's advertising budget effectively?" to "How do I do things that generate a predictable and measurable ROI for my clients by generating leads that turn into business for them?" 

If the WBJ wants to provide informative articles about online marketing to their readers and help Central MA businesses really leverage the web effectively to grow their businesses, they should look for some more experts past 495. Maybe even hire an online marketing expert to do the writing.  This is such an important thing to get right for the future of the region's business health. 

It's been awhile since I've ranted or called anyone out. Sorry, in advance, for those that I've offended. You deserve it, even though it should be privately directed.

I'll be returning shortly to educational blog posts about online marketing and my networks' activities. 

Jame has an interesting post about what skills a salesperson must have in a world where a buyer can educate themselves via blogs, company websites, social networks and the search engines.

I have my own thoughts. I'll reserve them for later when I have some time to process. I thought maybe my sales buddies would weigh in first. 

Doug Sauerhaft wrote a post about postcard marketing vs email marketing. I  don't have any direct experiences with postcard marketing, but I concurr on the email marketing. There are so many different ways to market via email, but I do think that the only true way to do it successfully (w/out pissing off people) is to market to people who have opted in. There's all kinds of ways to build an opt-in email list. But, it's certainly not going to be as timely as buying a direct mail list and sending a postcard. 

Blitztime is a genius concept. It takes the benefits of traditional networking and the benefits of online networking and puts those benefits together in an online/phone speed networking environment.

I've been sending it around to people and encouraging others to check out their weekly open networking events. I've also been talking to the founders. I'd love nothing more than to take the time and promote the hell out of a Blitztime event, like I did with Art, Wine and Networking, but given the fact that I have more leads than I can possibly call, doing that is not a priority right now.

What I do plan to do, in the future, is leverage Blitztime to create interaction among my clients so that they can help each other out in their online business growth activities. Having 50 business owners and marketing professionals working together networking online will be a powerful force in the social media world. But, that's a few months off. And the plan isn't fully plotted. But, Blitztime will be a part of it.

In the meanwhile, you should check out Blitztime and attend a SpinCycle event.

Linda Sevier, PC4Media partner, web designer, and all around great person, wrote a great summary after she attended one. I offered to post her thoughts up on my blog:

Have you ever heard about something new and thought to yourself  "Wow!  What a great idea!  It is so simple and obvious, why didn't I think of that?".  I had that kind of experience today.  I was invited to a Blitz event (Spin Cycle: Business Networking Made Easy) at BlitzTime.com.  It is a new way to network over the phone, in the comfort of your office!  I followed the emailed instructions to call and logged my computer into the website.  After a quick explanation, I was networking!  I was spun into one on one conversations with other networkers.  A time clock on the web site kept track of each "spin cycle" and the profile of each person I networked with was displayed automatically on my computer.  No squinting trying to read a name tag or worse yet, remember their name and company after the introduction.  Will it replace face to face networking?  Not any time soon but it is something I will do again in addition to traditional networking events.  If you are up for a new experience, take BlitzTime.com for a spin!  

I sent out an invitation to some people to write guest posts on my blog. Ray Schavone, owner, founder and chief bottle washer (literally) of Deja Brew, a brew-it-yourself beer making business, wrote an excellent how to article on starting a brew your own beer store. There's also lessons for anyone starting a business:

So you want to start your own business? Why? It's a lot more work than you might suspect. You'll have a jerk for a boss, and get to deal with everything, EVERYTHING, related to your business. You won't be able to call in sick, or take time off because the day is nice. And nobody, nobody, will sweep the floor as well as you will. Everyone else in your company will be an employee, and you know how much you care as an employee.

I started my own business over 10 years ago. Here's a couple of things I learned about starting a business.

Business plan
It starts with a business plan. I'd strongly encourage, urge, or cajole you to start with the Small Business Development Center. You can find them at your local business college or through your local Chamber of Commerce. Or, you can locate on of the centers through the SBDC website; http://www.asbdc-us.org/

This is a free service btw.  Well, you pay for it through your tax dollars, but why not use it? Their goal is to help entrepreneurs realize their dream of starting a small business. Did I mention it was free?   They ran me through the paces to get my business plan to the point where I could qualify for an SBA guaranteed loan.

Funding
If you've got all the funding you need, you can skip this step. I brought my plan to about 20 banks before I found one that was interested. It took Walt Disney 297 banks to find one to fund his Disney Land project. So don't get discouraged. I had to put roughly 50% of my own funds into the financing. They very much want you to have some skin in the game. Last thing about funding; you need to have enough operating capital set aside to get you to profitability. That's why most small businesses fail. Not because of bad ideas, or bad business people, but they were under funded, and couldn't make it to profitability.

Location
Our business needed a brick and mortar location, and we had to have a lease in place before we could get the funding. As they say; location, location, location. It made a huge difference for us. We get about 35,000 cars a day driving by our location.

Build out
You may be able to move right into a space and go from there. We needed to build out. We were lucky, it was empty warehouse space, and the landlord was willing to cover the cost of the build out, as they were building out a couple of other store fronts at the same time. If you've got to build out, stay on top of your contractors. If the ideas in your head can easily transfer to paper and diagrams, then great, if not, you need to be there. I had great contractors. I was still there every day to answer their questions whenever a change had to be made.

Town approvals
We needed to get town approvals for our business. We needed a Zoning board variance, and Board of Health approval. Don't be shy; get in front of these folks early on. I did and found them to be incredibly helpful. It may have been dumb luck on my end. But, if I can relate a comment made to me by the BOH when they were reviewing my plan; "I just wish that everyone who needed our approval to open a business in town would do what you did. Get into us early and discuss what they want to do, and let us suggest changes It would save them time and money"

Occupancy
Since this was new space, we needed permits from the plumbing, BOH, and fire department. The fire department wanted additional sprinklers. We had to get the plumber back to do the job, and then the fire department back for the approval. This caused us a two week delay. See my note on town approvals above. We did not engage with the fire department prior to completing our plumbing and build out.

Opening
We had a "soft" opening a couple weeks prior to our Grand Opening. This allowed us to test our system and processes to get them correct before we opened to the public.

Advertising
I'm not much of an advertising guru. But, as soon as the sign went up, it was like an invitation was sent out to every advertising sales person in the area. Ugh..  We have a unique business. It's a brew-on-premise. We were the first in Mass., the 2^nd in New England, and about the 50^th in the US of A. So, I felt we were newsworthy. As the barrage of advertising execs started through the door, my response was simple; run a news story about us and how unique we are. If it drives phone calls and generates interest, then we know you are a good advertising vehicle for us. Some took us up on the offer, others didn't. The best advertising is word of mouth.  

Customers
Love your customers. Yeah, they can be a pain in the neck sometimes. We have no problems telling them that when they are and that they need to chill out and have a beer. We've made some great friends through our business. I wouldn't have it any other way.

HubSpot just launched an 11 page free internet marketing eBook. If you're a small business owner, marketing or sales professional and are frustrated with not generating enough leads from your website, you should go read it online or download it.

Here's the sections: 

1. How the Internet Has Transformed Business
2. Outbound vs Inbound Marketing
3. B2B Marketing Research
4. Organic vs Paid Search
5. On Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
6. Off Page SEO or Link Building
7. Starting a Blog
8. Convert Website Visitors into Leads
9. Web Marketing Analytics
10. Other Internet Marketing Resources.  

I started reading Tim Ferriss's 4 Hour Work Week over the summer.

I've tabled the goal til 2009, as I'm really just starting to build my business so that growth and the workload is sustainable. I am no longer "doing the work" anymore, as I was in 2006. So, I just focus on bringing in new clients. I stay in touch to make sure they are making progress towards their goals, but getting them going and making progress is other people's responsibility.

It's nice. Very nice. Life is simpler and manage-able. 

My goal is to bring on 240 clients this year, which involves me working my butt off. By the end of the year, though, I want the majority of my business to come from referrals from clients. At that point, I'll be able to get a lot closer to working 4 hours a week.

Right now, I'm probably working about 80 hours/week.

And I'm thinking that I need to figure out a way to outsource some simple tasks. I was never good at "simple tasks" anyways. 

I started talking to the founders of AskSunday about a month ago. It seems like a very reasonably priced service which enables anyone to outsource all kinds of tasks. 

Here's a video about them: