Successful Blog

Here’s How You Gain Customers As You Grow Your Product Line

by

Be Visible, Be Focused

cooltext443809602_strategy

Mike and Larry (not their real names) had an idea. It was simple. When they came to me they had already figured out to enlist other folks by inviting them to be partners, experts, and heroes and their idea became a fabulous reality — a great first success. After their event, we talked about how to leverage their success into something longer and more lasting.

They had so many ideas! Their ideas were all over the place.

Whoa!

We stopped to take a strategic look at what was already at their door and where natural managed growth might go. We started with this model to guide the plan.

oldnewcustomer

  • [top left box] What is your core product / service? Who is in your core customer base? What was the form of your first success? Who are the customer you reached with your first success?

    Mike and Larry had developed an online webinar that had gained a huge following of fans — a core group of online small business folks, particularly pr and marketing people. We named them “old product” and “old customers” to remind us that we were focused on expanding both the product line and the customer base. Doing the same thing for the same people only leads to slow death

  • [top right box] How can you offer that same product to new customers? To extend the circle of people that attended the original webinar, Mike and Larry are offering it as an mp3 and a transcript. They may also use some as newsletter content and possibly later put it in a paid content subscription site.
  • [bottom left box] How can you keep serving the customers you reached with your first success? Mike and Larry have already started a second webinar series on a new question. They’re looking at new forms of the webinar, text versions of the same idea, a book, and offline events.
  • [bottom right box] How can you keep to solid path? Once we discussed how much bandwidth and risk it takes to veer away from a core audience and product niche, Mike and Larry agreed that the lower right box isn’t for them.

Ideas are good, but it’s hard to choose which will take you to the place you want to be, if you don’t know where you want to go. On the other hand, knowing where you’re going is irresistibly attractive.

All you need to get started is two questions: Who’s in your core audience and what is the first thing you will offer them?

I can’t wait to hear.

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

I’m a proud affiliate of

third-tribe-marketing

Beach Notes: Up and Away

by

Up up and away

Last week at the beach we saw this vapor trail going almost totally vertical. It was quite impressive to see the plane climbing and climbing, ever upward.

We’ve seen plenty of fairly horizontal vapor trails. Neither of us had previously seen one like this.

Business thought. Maybe it doesn’t take much more effort to go vertical and high as to trundle along on the horizontal?

up-and-away

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

Thanks to Week 247 SOBs

by

muddy teal strip A

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.

muddy teal strip A

the-crafting-chicks
communications-conversations
fastgrowth-advisors
shamable
vamostodos

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.

deep purple strip

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

SOB Business Cafe 07-16-10

by

SB Cafe

Welcome to the SOB Cafe

We offer the best in thinking — articles, books, podcasts, and videos about business online written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection.

The Specials this Week are

AdBusters
Psychologists have long known that North Americans overestimate their own distinctiveness, especially in comparison with East Asians. When asked to describe themselves, Americans and Canadians tend to talk about their individual personality and personal outlook more than Japanese do. North Americans tend to settle arguments in terms of right and wrong, whereas East Asians tend to seek compromises. Dirty Harry is an extreme and violent example, but he is emblematic of Western culture and he sums up our single-minded, goal-oriented behavior with aplomb. “When I see an adult male chasing a female with the intent to commit rape, I shoot the bastard. That’s my policy.”

Pure Natural Diva
The session echoed many of the thoughts that have been running through my mind & dancing through my notes during the past few months. It challenged us to; OWN our irresistibility, really define our goals for our businesses, and it reminded us not to underestimate our worth.

Gwen Bell
In 2005, during yoga teacher training, a teacher explained the importance of off-the-mat time. She recommended we go on retreat four times a year – once a quarter. I recall internal resistance. As the discussion unfolded, it turned out I wasn’t alone. How could we take time away from yoga?

Digital Sabbatical

Purple Wren
It should be all set up now to post to my facebook, linkedin, typepad, twitter, flickr accounts at the same time. That’s cool. It’s been a hit or miss lately as I pick whatever is the most handy. I’ll see how this goes. Depends on the content. Let’s upload a photo just for fun.

Copyblogger
The good news is that writing makes you a better writer. Just like practicing the piano makes you a better pianist, or riding a trail bike makes you a better biker.

hugoguzman.com
Back in the Spring of 2009, I created a short video that summarized my thoughts on how some marketing executives were getting social media all wrong. I called it “Social Media Idiot”:

Related ala carte selections include

The Old Spice Guy Responds
via @IttyBiz Old Spice guy is responding to comments w/ indiv videos. I am DYING. Start here

Sit back. Enjoy your read. Nachos and drinks will be right over. Stay as long as you like. No tips required. Comments appreciated.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

I’m a proud affiliate of

third-tribe-marketing

I Still Don’t Do Weekends – How Are You Finding Time for the Time of Your Life?

by

I wrote this blog post much like this two years ago, but it seems so important to share it again today.

I've been thinking . . .
One Friday ritual that happens in offices is that people ask What are you doing this weekend? I’ve never been good at small talk in general, but I had to study to answer that question.

I kept a list of responses that sounded somewhat normal.

“I’m going for quiet and relaxation.”

“I think a good book is in order.”

“I have an appointment with my pillow.”

“I’m just so happy to be having a weekend.”

You might note that all of my answers basically say the same thing that my friend, KB, once said, “Liz doesn’t do weekends.”

7496_3341_speeding_train_from_sxchu

I used to say, “Hey, the speeding train of week is over, I made my quota of decisions at the office. The last thing I want to do is come home to make more of them — decide what to do, where to go, what to eat, where to eat it, when to go there, what to wear.”

So instead I’d stay home and let life happen.
Sometimes life happens in ways worth remembering. Most often it doesn’t. Time just passes.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. I don’t make plans — too many options. I can talk myself out of almost anything.

“Let’s something.”
“Do what?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

“How about this place?”
“Too crowded.”

“This?”
“Too expensive.”

“This?”
“Too far. . . . too early . . . too late . . . too extravagant . . . too boring . . . too edgy . . . too too.”

“but I’ll be there…”
“Then I’ll go.”

I care more about people I do things with than what I do. So when a friend would suggest something, I would go. Most cool things I’ve done have been because someone invited me.

That’s a passive way to live a life, waiting for life to come to me.

I’ve changed since those days.
I’ve realized my life is my own to make.
I decided to find time for the time of my life.

I still don’t do weekends …
Now, I do life every day of the week … including Friday, Saturday, and Sunday … finding time for people I care about, people I want know, and even myself.

Life isn’t made of weekends.
It’s made of memories.

I can’t think of a better way to spend the time of my life.

How are you finding time for the time of your life?

Liz's Signature

Cool Tool Review: Toggl

by

Todd Hoskins Reviews Tools for Business

cooltext451585442_tools

Todd Hoskins chooses and uses tools and products that could belong in an entrepreneurial business toolkit. He’ll be checking out how useful they are to folks who would be their customers in a form that’s consistent and relevant.

Cool Tool Review: Toggl
A Review by Todd Hoskins

I have a confession: I am an obsessive tracker and quantifier. As much as I love art and language, I find some comfort and satisfaction when numbers tell a story. Perhaps this explains my love of baseball and its box scores, or why I love web analytics. For over a year, I experimented with assigning prioritized value to daily tasks, tracking my success or lack thereof. I stopped when I realized my creativity was being hampered by my desire to improve my average weekly scores. I was looking down too much, not looking up enough.

Still, tracking, whether it be your blood pressure, web traffic, or time management can be valuable information. Toggl, a time tracking tool, makes it easy to capture this information. If you bill by the hour, you should definitely be using some type of time tracking tool. Even if you don’t, it’s a useful exercise to check in for a week or a month and see how you spend your time. (The book Lifelong Activist makes a strong point that time tracking is an important measurement in personal development, and offers great tips on interpreting the results and implementing change).

Toggl can be installed or run on about any platform. It’s simple – a running clock that allows you to assign projects and clients to time spent. Start the clock. End the clock. But you do have to remember to do this with every project transition. Of course, there are pretty charts and graphs, especially useful if you have the whole team collaborating on various projects.

toggl

Word of warning: If you impose time tracking on employees who are not billing by the hour, make sure you jointly establish some reasonable expectations. It’s not good for the soul to feel like every minute is being monitored. Nor is it good for the soul to play the workplace role of hall monitor. For example, in an eight hour workday, you may expect web developers to spend 6 hours on specified projects.

There is a free version. The paid version, starting at $5 per month, has more features. For a team, it may run up to $100 per month. A good value for the information you receive.

Summing Up – Is it worth it?

Enterprise Value: 3/5 – Good programming tool, but doesn’t replace the elegance of Pivotal Tracker

Entrepreneur Value: 3/5 – Freelancers gain credibility when they can show their client when hours were worked

Personal Value: 3/5 – Commit a week. See what you learn. With the iPhone and Android app, you don’t have to limit your tracking to work. How much TV do you watch? Time spent wiith kids?