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Why I love being a Houstonian.
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Blogs, PR and Misspent Marketing dollars

Taken from: Element Fusion's company blog. *Everything in italic is from their blog, the regular text are my comments on the post.

Let me start by saying that I don't necessarily agree with the way this particular company manages their blog. First of all, a blog shouldn't have continuous, shameless plugs (the links within the blog posting that connect the reader to different parts of the company website) throughout the blog. A blog, in my humble opinion, is about building a relationship and credibility with your clients, your industry, and your peers. It should be more about offering up commentary on industry practices, information that would help out your clients (or potential clients), or a way to entertain.

That being said, I do actually like a lot of the points the blog author covers.

Read the original post here.

• Spend less money on word of mouth marketing; spend more money creating something worth talking about.

It is very true that a lot of smaller businesses (and large corporations, for that matter) get caught up in the details of a campaign rather than creating a product that is worth the hype. A good product for a good deal will always generate loyal, repeat customers that help spread the word (which is much cheaper than paying for airtime on television or radio, and also offers more credibility).

• Don’t create printed product brochures; create online case studies.
  

I have to disagree with this point in the fact that not all industries need online case studies (or any case studies). On another note, not all companies need printed product brochures. This one could go either way.

• Get over the power trip that compels you to control your message and manipulate your client; build a great product that compels your clients to become your evangelists.

I think this is a statement goes a little too far with the power trip and manipulating your client aspects. I believe that most independently run businesses and more and more corporations are joining the "we are a morally sound, founded in principles" bandwagon that prevents them from participating in manipulative marketing in the first place. The second part of the statement is essentially a re-wording of the first statement (which I 100% agree with).

• Don’t buy media; buy minds.

This just sounds creepy and reminds me of the scene in The Matrix when Keanu Reeves awakes in a vat of mucus and rips the cords out of the back of his head.

• Don’t waste your money on focus groups; talk to your real customers—better yet, spend the money to go visit them and watch them using your product for real.

Great point! I couldn't agree more.

• Don’t place print ads; create training articles instead.

Once again, a great tip, but industry-specific. Also, print ads in very targeted publications will be cheaper and can be used to point potential clients/customers to your training articles (if you have an online archive).

• Don’t hire a PR firm; start blogging. Let your employees and client advocates blog for you. Don’t be afraid to deal with a little bit of negativity in blog comments—instead use it as an opportunity to show how you really listen to your clients and then make improvements based on their recommendations.

In my opinion, a blog will NEVER take the place of good PR. A blog is just another tool in the PR toolbox. For instance, an opportunity to speak about your product in a newspaper article or on a local news program will result in much more credibility and direct sales of your product than any blog post. When used in conjunction with a website, ad campaign, or guerilla marketing, a blog can be a great asset to any company, but shouldn't take the place of a PR consultant or employee.

• Don’t talk about how you are better than your competition; talk about what you’ve learned from your competition.

Also, very good. You should be able to take what you learn from competition, put it into everyday services, products, customer service and SHOW how you're better than the competition with actions instead of mere words.

Hidden Business Tools

It all started with a trip to my local library after I moved to Houston. I was looking for business reference books to do some market research (yes, I'm a dork). I walked into the tiny round building, appropriately named Ring Branch Library, a half mile down the street, and I must have looked utterly out of place. Immediately, the reference librarian asked me if I needed help. Did I look that baffled?

It had been at least 4-5 years since I'd stepped foot in a library of any sort, so I'd forgotten how to use the Dewey Decimal System, what reference books were appropriate for my research, how to check out a book, and generally all things dealing with properly navigating a library. After all, it's been at least 2 decades since I took the "using the library" class in elementary school.

With the help of The Great Librarian, as I affectionately refer to her now, I was shocked to find that most of the resources I needed were easily accessible from my home computer with nothing more than the number on the back of my shiny, new library card.

I discovered a whole new (free of charge) world at my fingertips with everything from reference articles on ANY subject, business databases with profiles, financial data, market research, etc., to foreign language tools like Rosetta Stone.

These databases were much easier to navigate than filtering through 1.5 million results from a google search, and all the information was much more refined and relevant to the research at hand (which, I guess, is the point of the whole thing).

As I was leaving the library equipped with my new (did I mention it was FREE) arsenal of small business research heaven, The Great Librarian waved goodbye and sent me off with a, "Good luck on your research paper," but I won't hold that against her...the same way I don't mind showing my ID every time I attempt to purchase an adult beverage. Just stay out of the sun and drink lots of water and you too can look forever 17.

So, in essence--if you don't have access to your local library or a library card, run--don't walk to get one as soon as possible. When you take care of that, don't hesitate to ask what tools are available to you as a business owner (or employee of a business). You'll no doubt be shocked to find out that you have databases and tools that would normally cost lots of money without your new, members only access.

Other helpful free tools:
Google documents-when working on a project with a client, this was brought to my attention. It is a great tool for businesses working with consultants that either aren't onsite, or when data needs to be entered by 2 or more individuals working on the same projects at the same time. If you have employees that work from home or a separate location, it is great to be able to share these documents without having to email them back and forth to edit.

Google alerts-You type in a phrase or even your company name (to check for copyright or trademark infringements perhaps) and google will send any and all instances of that word or phrase to your email. You can keep track of clients and what is being put on the web, keep track of potential clients, track trends in your industry, or even keep up to date with your competitors.

I'm sure there's plenty more free tools, but I have work to do and this blog post is getting pretty lengthy, so please leave comments on some business tools you've found useful.

So, we've been out of town, busy cooking chili, and catching up with clients (hence the delay in blog posts). That being said, we've learned several things about client/consultant relationships and what works best between the two.

If you have a consultant of any kind, here are a few tips to keep their services valuable, saving you and them time and money.

1. When ANYTHING changes within the scope of services agreed upon by both parties, always contact your consultant immediately. This will prevent you from being billed for hours that go toward irrelevant tasks. Keeping communication open is key. However, it is important to realize that if you are billed for irrelevant tasks when it was your communication lapse that caused this, the consultant did the work as originally agreed upon and you should not punish them by withholding payment on these hours.

2. Have your information (whether it be technical information, history of your company, or other specific info that your consultant may not be privy to prior to working with your company) readily available and easily accessible. If it's not organized before the consultant is on board, perhaps it would be an excuse to put this information into a nice package for future use as well.

3. Be available. As #1 states, communication is the most important part of working with a consultant. You can't expect a consultant to read your mind just because you're too busy to bother with the project you handed off. It's better to either tell your consultant to hold off until you have time to discuss it (to reduce billable hours to your company) or to continue on the path that was discussed in the first place. No matter what, return all phone calls and emails within a reasonable amount of time.

4. Be open-minded. You hired a consultant because you either don't have the need or the budget to have a full-time employee to do the job. Trust that the consultant has the experience and the knowledge to come up with some great ideas/projects. Also know that the consultant will and should be 100% accountable for the hours billed. In a way, it's almost better to have a good consultant some of the time, where 100% of the billable time is going toward your project rather than a full time employee (no matter how well-intentioned) with about 65% of their time being utilized on pure work issues.

Think of your consultants as extensions of your company, very qualified, highly efficient extensions.

By following these 4 essential principles, you'll be able to get the largest return on your consultant investments.

Chili Cook Off!

LEAP Engineering, LLC took home 4th place in 10th Annual Boy Scouts Chili Cook Off! The following are pictures from the event. Community involvement marketing not only helps your business recognition, but also helps your employees bond as a team! This LEAP decided to use a new recipe and the risk paid off. The sweet and yet VERY spicy chili was a favorite among many participants including the LEAP team themselves. Without the hard of the individuals who set up, cooked, chopped, steamed, and served this event would not have been possible.




Here we have Nick browning the meat at 8AM!


The chili was so hot it kind of started melting away the cups. Oh well people just learned to eat their chili FAST! Since LEAP's booth was lost a bit among the corner booths, Dawn (pictured left) and I took upon ourselves to take the chili to the masses. Yup, I went out into the crowds and offered up more chili!





And of course, the kids enjoyed themselves as well. The event was very well planned with train and monster truck rides to amuse both children and adults.