I’m here to tell you that unless you plan on selling tennis shoes to teenagers or cereal to children, your logo is the least of your concerns.  Just make sure it fits the following criteria:

• It looks equally good in black & white as it does in color
• It is easy to ready (no fancy script fonts)
• It looks professionally designed (no clip art)
• You like it

That it.  Really.  Nobody will choose to buy your services or technology because of your logo.  They will buy from you because they have a need and you have the answer.

Thanks to the internet there are dozens of online logo design services, Logoworks.com and 99designs.com are just two that I’ve recommended in the past.  The quality of the work is excellent.  Sure, you get a few really lousy logo concepts but overall I’ve been very impressed with what I’ve seen.   One colleague used Logoworks to design his logo for an online social networking site for hair stylists.  It cost him $300 and this is what he got – he’s delighted.

As part of a case study I’m conducting I decided to get a logo designed for an online business I’m launching called Peace Happens.  The goal of this project is to get a business up and running on the Internet (including e-commerce) for less than $1,200.  It has to be generating revenue before I can spend more than $1,200.  I’m doing this because I see too many start ups and small businesses spending all their marketing budget on the wrong things — like logos and expensive websites — instead of whats important, like GENERATING LEADS.  There are too many inexpensive or free tools on the market (like WordPress) to use when building a website.  And services like Logoworks and 99Designs are an incredible resource for certain types of design work.

I decided to try using 99Designs because I liked the idea of having an open contest.  Designers from around the world read your design request (called a brief) and then choose to enter the contest with a concept of their own.  I am on a tight budget so I bid $195 for the design.  This is the Design Brief I wrote.

In six days I had 78 submissions.  Yes, some of them were lousy and obviously designed by students.  Others were extremely professional, creative and well thought out.  Here is a compilation of some of the designs that were submitted

I now have to select a winner and award the $195 prize.  I’m not sure yet which logo I’ll select.  I am taking surveys — you’re free to email me with the # of a logo that you like.  Just visit the contest page here.

The next step is to build the website.  I’ve purchased peacehappens.net from GoDaddy for $9.95.  I’ll be posting my progress on this blog.

There was a time when it was unusual to receive anything but plain text into your email box. Then we moved to designing branded newsletters and “postcard-like” invitations that would capture the attention of our readers. Now, thanks to ever-improving SPAM filters a lot of those fancy invitations, announcements and emails aren’t even making it to our desktop. And for those that do get through the fire-wall, we’ve become jaded and tired of looking at all those designs. We just want the information – short, sweet and simple.

Playing on this hunch we recently experimented with a client that has been holding a series of seminars. As is typical, invitations had been sent out using HTML and branded design. But registrations were down and we were looking for a way to drive attendance. So we sent out another announcement about the event, except this was a simple text email. In the “from” section we had real person’s name. In the “subject” line we inserted the name of the seminar. In the body of the email was a sentence inviting the recipient to attend the seminar. We had about 3 key “what you’ll get” bullets and the basic description of the 2 hour session.

Within 24 hours of sending out the text email we received an additional 10 registrants for the event. Since the event was capped at 25 attendees, this was almost 50% of our audience!  We thought we might be on to something, so we did again for another client event.  And again, the results were similar.  The plain text email out performed the HTML invitation by over 50%.  Why?  I think our brains are just a little tired.  You can compare this to walking down the Las Vegas strip at night.  At first the lights are beautiful and everything captures your attention.  But walk the strip every night for months and months and after a while those pretty flashing lights aren’t going to capture your attention any longer.  You are going to simply focus on arriving at your destination.

Because of this, I believe that we’re coming full circle back to a more old-fashioned way of communicating.  I don’t have time to read my online newsletters as often as I would like.  But I notice that on Sunday afternoon I sit down and read several print journals I get in the mail each month.  The “cold-call” email blasts never capture my attention but last week I got a very clever direct mail piece that gave me pause and actually got me to call the service provider.  And I recently signed up for a webinar on advanced search engine marketing techniques that I learned about from a plain text email that was delivered to me from the owner of the interactive consultancy.

Am I advocating that we do away with HTML newsletters and announcements completely?  Of course not.  Those have a place in our marketing mix as does everything else.  I am suggesting that you consider alternating HTML with plain text and that you experiment with both.  If you’re holding an event, why not alternate each notice — the first in HTML, the second in plain text, etc.  And the day before the event — send out a plain text reminder.  And let me know if your response rates start increasing with this “old-fashioned” approach to email marketing.

I think he did a great job on the article, and I still think the business was a great idea.  The problem is I fell in love with the idea instead of the viability of the company.  And I didn’t think through the aspects of fulfillment.   In retrospect, I did all the things I tell my clients to avoid every day!  It is common for tech companies to fall in love with the idea of the new technology and its capabilities without spending enough time evaluating whether there is a customer need and enough budget for the delivery, sales and marketing of the technology.

I have a lot more ideas perculating and I suspect there are several more startups in my future.  At least I hope so!  Every experience builds on the next.  The lessons learned can be applied not just to how I run Zephyr, but also to my clients (present and future) who sometimes become enamoured of the idea instead of the business viability.  At least now I can say “Been there, done that.”

• Do you have a strong sales leader?
• Do you have an established sales process?
• Do you track your pipeline?
• How many people sell in your company?
• Do you have a mix of hunters and farmers?

It’s not that we’re trying to be difficult.  We just don’t want to waste your money and our time.  If you don’t have a good sales team, a clear sales process, and a system to process leads through your pipeline, then spending money on marketing is going to be a waste.  No deal was ever lost because a sales person didn’t have the right brochure.  And (to my knowledge), no deal was ever won because the buyer saw a data sheet and yelled, “Holy smokes, lets go buy this product based on how great this data sheet looks!”  (Although this would be really cool if it did happen.)

The role of marketing in a company is to generate leads for the sales team, make sure sales has the tools to do their job, and that people have already heard about your company before the sales person calls.  This makes marketing an integral part of the success of any organization.  However, sales is more important.  Ideally, you’ve got someone experienced in your sales process.  She’s been cold calling, making sales presentations, following up on referrals, generating proposals and closing deals. If you don’t have someone like this, then a better use of your marketing dollars is to go find and train a decent sales person.  Or two. 

Then make sure you have a pipeline tracking system.  It can be a simple excel spreadsheet or a full blown CRM system like ACT! or Salesforce.com. The bottom line is that your marketing team, whether it is inside your company or outsourced to someone like Zephyr, isn’t going to close your deals for you.  They can nurture the lead to a certain point and make sure your website looks great and your sales team has all the necessary tools.  They can communicate to the market and position your company as the subject matter experts you are.  They can wring every dollar of marketing spend and make sure the ROI makes sense.  But they can’t close the deal. Only your sales team can do that, and that’s where the money is.  Make sure your sales infrastructure is sound before you start expanding your marketing efforts.

Marketing dashboards are a great way of measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing programs. Simply put, a marketing dashboard pulls all the key performance indicators (KPIs) that you are tracking for each marketing initiative and displays this information in a graphical format. It allows you to easily identify those KPIs that are not meeting expectations so that you can move quickly to adjust a poorly performing campaign. Conversely, you can also quickly identify the campaigns that are kicking butt – and put more time, money and effort into expanding the successful programs. In addition to providing both recognition and accountability for the marketing function, it creates a stronger argument for budget dollars and larger campaigns when programs are working successfully.

Done well, a marketing dashboard is a simple to use, easy to understand system. But the simplicity of a good dashboard belies the complexity of the process required to create it. A considerable amount of strategic planning needs to take place before launching anything. The marketing department touches many different parts of an organization – finance, sales, operations, customer service, and IT all play an important part in a successful marketing program. Therefore, consensus needs to be built between all the organization’s stakeholders on what information will be tracked and reported upon. Collectively, this team can define marketing expectations and success.

To begin selecting the appropriate metrics, your organization’s stakeholders must identify what information they need to know, or what questions they need to answer, in order to measure marketing effectiveness. They then prioritize the questions based upon their importance and the ease with which they could be answered. In selecting questions, it is critically important to align marketing activities with business objectives. Your metrics should include leading AND lagging indicators. Some of the questions that your marketing dashboard should be answering include:

• • What % of our revenues come from existing customers versus new customers?
• • What % of our targeted market have we penetrated? How does that compare to last year?
• • Do we have the right marketing mix?
• • For each campaign, how much have we spent, how many leads did it generate, and how does that compare to other campaigns?
• How are each of our product lines and/or business units performing?
• What is our performance by territory/geography?
• How many leads do we have in the pipeline?
• How many proposals are being generated?
• What is the average sale and how long is it taking to close? How does that compare to last year?
• What is our customer satisfaction rating?
• What is the life time value of our customer base? How does that compare to last year?
• What are our conversion rates (click through to close)?
• What sales tools are being used?
• How does the marketing budget compare to actuals?

Finally, when you decide to build your marketing dashboard don’t fall in love with the technology. Focus on your business needs first. Identify the questions you need to have answered. Then start looking at what tools are available to help you develop the simplest solution possible to meet those needs. There are many off-the-shelf solutions available today. One great place to start learning more about dashboards is www.dashboardspy.com. This site provides many different snapshots of both good and bad dashboards.

Just remember – marketing measurement always requires a significant number of assumptions, especially in the beginning of a campaign. Anyone in marketing will tell you that sometimes you simply have to SWAG it (Simple Wild Ass Guess) until hard data is made available to prove (or disprove) your assumptions. Make sure your dashboard is designed for flexibility. As your company becomes more familiar with tracking data, your needs will change. You’ll want to have a dashboard solution that grows with you as you become a more sophisticated user.

With that said, here are some things we hope you’ve taken into consideration when finishing up your marketing plan for 2009:

1. Collaborate with the sales team.  Have you met with the VP of Sales and discussed the objectives for 2009?  Have you attended the sales meetings on a regular basis?  Do you know how the pipeline works and do you have a written agreement with the VP of Sales that describes exactly what qualifies as a lead from the marketing department? This way, you can avoid the conversation in July when you say you generated 2,000 leads and they say you generated 20.
2. Have a customer retention and growth plan.  Don’t even think about how you’re going to attract new business until you’ve figured out how you’re going to keep what you already have.  You’ve already made the major investment it takes to capture the customer.  Now you’ll want to develop a customer communication and retention plan that cross-sells and upsells your services to the existing customer base.  What is the lifetime value of your customer today?  How can you increase that number?
3. If you haven’t already, start developing your social media strategy. It can be overwhelming when you’re presented with all the different options for social media.   Blogging, podcasting, twittering, the list doesn’t end.  So don’t worry yet about what tools you’ll be using.  First start thinking about who you want to talk to, what is important to that audience, and what information you can share that will bring VALUE to your target audience and help them connect with you on a one-to-one basis.  Figure out the strategy first and then research the best tools you need to do the job.
4. Figure out how you’ll measure everything.  Do you have a CRM system yet?  Are you tracking your online analytics?  Do you have an inhouse mailing list?  Do you know how much revenue next year will come from existing customers versus net new business?  Do you know how many raw prospects it takes to develop a decent lead that ultimately ends up in a sale?  If you can’t measure your performance and justify your budget then you really are just a walking piece of overhead.
5. Develop three to five key marketing objectives for the year and put them on your whiteboard. Then make sure every activity somehow relates back to those key objectives.  Keep it simple and straightforward.  The key is consistency.

Finally, take the time to network with your colleagues.  There is so much to learn, the shared wisdom and collaboration that comes from meeting with your peers is invaluable.  It is easy to get so wrapped up in actually DOING the marketing for your company that you forget to look outside for fresh ideas, validation of your own and inspiration on how you can become better at your craft.

How does this translate into actionable tactics for you?  Here are some of the strategies we’re recommending to our clients and tactics we’re helping to execute:

1.  Focus on your existing customer base first! These are the diamonds in your back yard so figure out how you can grow the lifetime value (LTV) of your client base.

The first step is to create a visual representation of what you are selling and what they are buying so you can see the holes.  By creating a simple grid, you can quickly see what services you can cross sell or upsell to your existing customers.

Then put together a sales and marketing plan to promote these additional products and services to your clients. This does not have to be an expensive project.  Give your sales people a list of the customers and a directive to go sell the missing pieces.  Create an e-marketing campaign that supports the sales effort.  E-mail marketing works best when the audience already has a relationship with you — like your customers!  Be sure and use a tool like Constant Contact or My Emma to deliver your emails.  That way you can track performance.

Get in front of your customers.  This is a great time for senior management to reconnect with clients.  The senior management team in your company should be visiting and talking with your most profitable customers.  Listen to what they have to say, what are they looking for?  What are there concerns?  How can you translate this into a solution you can sell?  Just make sure that before you send the team out to visit with customers that you’ve given clear direction on the objectives of the meeting.  The goal is not to communicate value, but to create value for your customer.  And you can’t do this without listening first.

2.  Make sure you are targeting the right prospects.  Be brutal about whom you and your sales team are spending time with.  Narrow your focus to the most profitable verticals for your business.  There is no room for fluff right now, or meetings for the sake of meetings.

Create a clear rating system for prospects.  What are the minimum requirements in order for someone to qualify as a prospect for your company?  Don’t waste time on prospects that do not meet these qualifications.

Make sure you have a tracking system for sales prospects.  It can be an online system like Salesforce.com, a software solution like ACT! or Goldmine, or a simple spreadsheet.  But find a way to track the progress of each opportunity.  And make sure everyone is using the same system to describe where a prospect is in the sales cycle.

Strategize as a team and use your collective wisdom to figure out how to move sales forward.  Include your sales engineers, help desk managers, installers, etc.  not just your sales team.  That guy in the middle cubicle hunkered down answering client calls may have some great insight into the “pain” your prospects want addressed.

Involve your marketing department in the lead qualification process.  Give feedback on the leads they’ve been generating for you.  Have your sales and marketing department leaders sit down and come to a written agreement on what a sales lead looks like, and when it should be turned over to sales.  Then track the pipeline according to these measurements.  Make sure someone from marketing attends your sales meetings on a regular basis.  Even better, invite different people in the marketing department to go on sales calls and observe the sales process first hand.

3.  Increase your marketing efforts.  This one is pretty obvious, but we’re looking at more guerrilla marketing tactics as opposed to your traditional avenues.

Position your company as the industry expert.  Find ways to get thought leadership articles published.  Where can you get a speaking engagement?  What trade publications can you offer to write articles for?  What white papers can you create and offer online or at trade shows?  Of course, the hardest part is getting someone to actually WRITE the articles or papers.  Nobody ever seems to have the time.   We’ve come up with an effective and inexpensive way to address this.

• Set up an “interview” between the subject matter expert and someone who can ask the leading questions for the article.  Even if they are in the same office, have the two people use www.freeconference.com or a similar service to record the interview.
• Have the interview transcribed into a WORD document.
• Have someone edit the document into the article, thought piece, or part of the white paper.  (White papers usually take several interviews and should follow and outline.)
• Have your subject matter expert review the edited document, and provide any changes/feedback.
• Now go publish, pitch, or promote your document!

Start an online advertising campaign.  This is still one of the most effective ways to generate raw leads and build your website ranking.  Just make sure you are working with someone that knows how to set up, monitor and continually improve your SEM program.  We’ve created some online campaigns for clients that cost $10 – $15 a day and they have generated numerous raw leads.  We use this at Zephyr — primarily for our proposal support services.  We’ve probably invested about $2,000 in SEM this year and generated about 10 inquiries, resulting in sales totalling $45,000.  Not a bad ROI!  It doesn’t replace the sales and marketing effort but it does enhance it.

Make sure your website is a workhorse for you.  Do you have Google Analytics or a similar tracking system installed on your website?  Are you monitoring the behavior of your site visitors?  Is your website operating as an essential business tool for your company?  If not, then you need to upgrade your website.  Fortunately, this doesn’t have to be an expensive project.  Today’s new blogging tools like WordPress and TypePad can be used to create very robust websites.  The website you are visiting right now as developed in WordPress.  Plus you’ve got a lot an almost unlimited number of cool tools and widgets you can plug into your site without the expense of paying for development from scratch.

4.  Start measuring everything. Track your pipeline, new projects, existing customer sales, website traffic, customer satisfaction, and all marketing/sales expenditures.  Figure out what the key performance indicators (KPI) are for your business.   It could be hours billed per week, units sold, email inquiries, downloads from your website or new phone inquiries each week.  It could also be how many networking events your sales people attend, how many new prospects are put into the funnel or how many proposals are generated each month.  What ever you need to measure, make sure you monitor it at a minimum once a week.  Some KPIs may need to be reviewed daily.

Finally, we recommend that you start meeting on a regular basis with your key company staff.  Whether it is a quick daily huddle or a weekly all hands review — you want to make sure that everyone is focused on the business objectives and corporate goals.

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