1SmartPuppy

Why I Changed My Business Model

I started 1SmartPuppy in 2001, at which time I'd spent a dozen years helping small businesses (and a few large ones) market to customers and prospects. Our flagship service was BrandZone, a small business strategic and tactical marketing communications system that showed my clients how to reach out to and connect with their prospects and customers before and after the sale. Clients loved their BrandZones. In fact, in the years that I developed BrandZones for companies of all types, not one of them ever took advantage of my offer to not pay for the completed BrandZone if they were dissatisfied with it.

A lot has changed since 2001. Hundreds of cable channels, satellite TV and radio, movies on demand, mp3 players, and broadband have made the advertising landscape far more problematic. Many people spend more time with facebook, myspace, twitter, youtube, and texting than they do with traditional media. People once feared that computers would keep us from talking to each other. Now, we talk to each other more than ever. And no subject is off limits; not even your business.

But, one thing hasn't changed. Whenever I speak with a small business owner about advertising, he or she always says, "Word of mouth is the best advertising." I agree, and with so many new tools available to assist in the affordable promotion of word of mouth marketing, I decided to change my business model and focus on helping small businesses use these tools to communicate more quickly, effectively, efficiently, and creatively with the customers and prospects they need to reach and influence.

The tools will continue to change, but the conversations will not stop. If you haven't started making the effort to engage with your audience, perhaps it's time.

From lab to market in five months thanks to WOM

Brand attack in 18 words

A friend's facebook status upate:

"headed to the Infiniti place to have the 25k service done. Looking forward to the powdered coffee creamer."

Now, many of her 272 friends know how she feels about going to that dealership.

Socialist marketing? You MUST be kidding.

Okay, I'm kidding. "Socialist" is about the only thing that word of mouth marketing hasn't been called. Thanks to the Internet, we've coined terms such as "Social Media" and "Social Influence Marketing," but when you get right down to it, it's basically good old word of mouth. We have new tools for starting, shaping, and responding to the conversations, but the principles are the same:

• Create positive experiences for your customers and prospects
• Encourage them to spread the word

The challenge is in how you do it, and the answer is different for every business.