Successful Blog

How to Distinguish Yourself and Business Market

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Build Brand Equity Now

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Doing well in business is all about distinguishing yourself from your competitors. The virtual world provides multiple avenues for you to accomplish this. Meticulous planning, effective implementation and use of creativity can do the trick for you. As the virtual medium does not call for large investments from your end, even small organizations get an opportunity to build brand equity.

Perseverance and the attention to detail in your marketing campaign can get you the desired results. Work towards your goal with a plan. Here are the factors that you need to incorporate into your strategy.

1. Establish an emotional connect with the consumer

For a brand to stand out among a plethora of products available in the market, it is important for consumers to relate to a brand in a manner that it emerges as their preferred choice. Build a campaign people can relate to, something that instantly makes people identify with the story narrative. Connect with people to attract buyers initially and to ensure customer loyalty later on.

2. Win the trust of consumers

Trust plays an important role in the purchase decisions of consumers. People are willing to pay more for a brand they have had a good experience with and avoid brands that do not get good customer reviews despite a lower price of products. Attend to the issues faced by consumers to avoid putting off potential buyers. A disgruntled buyer can cost you in terms of loss of revenue. Make online reputation management a priority while attending to people’s grievances.

3. Give customer service a priority

A good customer service is a major differentiating factor in the world of business today. Consumers seek instant resolution to the problems they face. If not immediately, it is important that organizations attend to customers’ grievances within a specified time frame. Build urgency around your customer service initiatives and make it a priority.

4. Involve people in your marketing campaign

Use contests, discount coupons or an intriguing feedback taking methodology to involve people in every stage of product development and product launch. Give attention to feedback collection and assess the results to understand the areas for improvement in products and services.

5. Unleash your creativity in your marketing efforts

Creativity is the backbone of any marketing initiative. Use different social networking platforms to reach out to your target consumer segment. Work towards making your campaign go viral over the web. Use blogs and social networks to attract traffic to your website for more information on products. Work towards conversion through an e-commerce platform.

Businesses thrive and even command a premium on their products if consumers see value in the products. For consumers, quality reigns supreme. Aspirational value and a connection with the brand come in next. Use all the means possible to project your product as the one that does well on the parameters of quality. Work towards creating an emotional connection between the consumers and the brand to effectively separate your brand from the clutter of multiple brands and products available in the market.

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Author’s Bio:
Brianne Walter writes about eco friendly buildings and green technology at ecofriend.com . Recently, she wrote an article on Nokia 701 specifications. You can find her on Twitter as @.Brianne

Thank you, Brianne!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

What Makes an Irresistible Business?

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Do You Make Sure the Customers Who Want to Love You Can?

Irresistible is what attracts new customers and brings them back again and again. When you’re irresistible, you become unique. The competition becomes irrelevant, because they aren’t you. Irresistible combines solid business with great relationships to

  • Remove what customers don’t want.
  • Enhance what customers love.
  • Add something unexpected they would die for.
  • and offering options that fit easily into customers’ lives.

Making sure customers who want to love you CAN is the best way to grow a business.

What Makes an Irresistible Business?

Irresistible Business is the game changing strategy that defines great business growth in the context of a marketplace that is now customer controlled and both online and off. It reaches inside the business to check the models for irresistibility with questions such as these:

  • On Execution: Does your model / process match your business, your partners, your vendors, and your internal customers? Does it work for them and for you?
  • On Engagement: Does your model match your market? Does every interaction make customers’ lives easier, faster, and more meaningful? Does what you do fit easily into their lives?
  • On Extraordinary Value: Do you add a unique value proposition that only you can deliver. How can you make your business model itself a barrier to entry?

The statistics prove that customer investment and word of mouth marketing are most effective business development initiatives any company can have to build a brand, to build sales, to build lasting value.

In this new customer-driven, attention economy, every business – corporate to company of one – needs a serious focused strategy designed to raise them to class of their own. Huge investments in low ROI advertising and clever SEO won’t work if the company can’t be found above the noise or can’t adequately engage customers in an irresistible relationship. The game of business has become one of building lasting communities of fiercely loyal fans.

It’s no longer if you build it, they will come, now it’s if you let them help you build it, they will bring their friends. What company wouldn’t want a community of fiercely loyal fans?

How are you making your business irresistible to the people who want to love you?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Look at the Lack of Ladies Leading

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IDEAS AND INFOGRAPHICS

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In 2012, women continue to leave their mark in business in industries around the world. Rather than having the conversation of having women in the workplace, the conversation has evolved into having women lead teams, companies, and ultimately
drive results across the boards.

As shown in the infographic below, women are emerging around the world, but there is still much work to be done in ensuring that women are being granted the same opportunities to succeed as men. For example, women-founded startups are
receiving less venture capital funding despite the fact that those that are, are driving stronger results on average than their male counterparts.

Women at Work Infographic Via MBA@UNC
Via MBA@UNC MBA Online & Women 2.0

On company boards around the world, and in the technology industry, there is a severe lack of leading ladies. The reasons for this current state vary, but the reasons on why women should be put in opportunities to lead and innovate are undeniable. This infographic is meant to celebrate the progress that has been made, but also sheds light on current trends that must be changed.

Change can come from a lot of different places, such as role models like Sara Blakely and Arianna Huffington or in the classroom where the importance of early education cannot be underestimated. Regardless of the source, there is a need for
empowerment. As Arianna Huffington pointed out …

“Women still have an uneasy relationship with power and the traits necessary to be a leader. There is this internalized fear that if we are really powerful, we are going to be considered ruthless or pushy or strident–all those epithets that strike right at our femininity. We are still working at trying to overcome the fear that power and womanliness are mutually exclusive.”

Where would you start to change that?

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Author’s Bio:
Harrison Kratz is the Community Manager for MBA@UNC, the online mba program at the University of North Carolina. He and his team have been working with Women 2.0 on displaying the progress of Women in the Workplace and the Technology Industry.

Thank you, Harrison!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

I Can Show You How to Do That in Less Than 20 Minutes

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All you have to do is ask.
People say that every day.
But you ask and it doesn’t work. Why is that?

I remember when I wanted to learn how to set up an ebook, I asked and asked and asked. You might think with the group of friends and connections that I have i might have been able to find one, two, or twenty, who already had dome something like that. In fact, I did.

And I asked.

But what happened next … became 6 of the most frustrating weeks of my life.

The 7 or 8 people I asked all told me the same things …. things like

  1. what a great idea
  2. it’s easy to do
  3. I can show you how to do that in less than 20 minutes.

Then they talked about random things for over an hour and still never showed me how.

I’d see them on Twitter and say hello. We’d chat. We’d update each other on progress. I’d mention that I’d still not figured out my way through the ebook maze. And again I’d hear something like

  1. what a great idea
  2. it’s easy to do
  3. I can show you how to do that in less than 20 minutes

But they never did.

All you have to do is ask.
It’s more complicated than that. What I’ve learned since then is that

  1. people like to help people who help themselves first.
  2. when you help yourself first your questions are specific and answering them doesn’t feel like work
  3. helping someone is even more meaningful when it moves our own cause forward too.

Now, before I ask, I learn all that I can learn on my own — read all my friends and connections have written about what I’m trying to figure out. Then when I still have question I can start with

I’ve read your blog and there’s one part of this process I don’t understand. Could you help me with it? You might get an idea for a new blog post out of it. I might even offer to write that blog post in return for the advice that I’m getting.

It’s always more attractive to help someone who has started by helping herself.

Be irresistible. Help yourself first and show how helping you will move them forward too.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Thanks to Week 341 SOBS

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

3 Avenues to Safe, Reputable Business Advice

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Safe Advice for Smart Business Decisions

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If you already have your own small business you probably know that finding sturdy, credible business advice can be a tricky task. If you’re just looking to start a business, beware, for there is an endless sea of websites and business “professionals,” willing to give you the “latest and greatest” advice on how to start and run your company. The following tips should help lead you to some safe advice, or at least get you started down the path of making smart business decisions.

Personal, Real-life Advice

Although this can be a bit more expensive than the do-it-yourself route, the quality, personal poignancy, and accuracy afforded by this option is often well worth it. Hiring or meeting with a personal life coach or business coach is an effective way to get good personal business advice without wasting your own precious time searching high and low for it. These professionals will take the time to sit down with you and go over virtually any business concerns or questions you may have. They’ll make sure that the advice they offer is specific to your personal needs and take much of the guesswork out of the equation.

Good Websites

Much like the site you find yourself on now, there are plenty of trust-worthy business sites out there offering quality information. Finding them in the midst of all the clutter now on the net is the tough part. Here is a link to a helpful website offering a top 20 list of the best business websites for Entrepreneurs and CEOs in 2010. The list is still quite relevant for us here in 2012.

Friends and Relatives

If you know any personal friends or family members who’ve started their own successful (or unsuccessful) business ventures in the past, absolutely solicit some advice from them. This is as good an option as any, and one that usually casts a safety net over any intellectual property and personal business ideas depending on your level of trust with said acquaintance. People are usually very willing and often eager to discuss their personal models for success and business experiences with a fellow entrepreneur, especially one they already know. Don’t overlook the enormous potential that your personal connections may hold.

In this dog-eat-dog world, which currently hangs loosely in the balance of a delicate economy, sound advice can be the difference between a successful idea coming to fruition, or fading back into the ethos for someone else to find and successfully develop. Make sure you take the necessary time to research before embarking on any financial endeavors. You never know when or where that last missing link may be hiding. Using the right tools, in any case, surely gives you a better chance of finding it.

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Author’s Bio:
Alex Brown: Alex is a prolific writer with specialization on various aspects of financial finance. His articles on debt, mortgage industry and personal finance are offer valuable guidelines to the readers.

Thank you, Alex!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!