Today, particularly, companies must focus on Marketing invention to stay in the game and Marketing innovation to get ahead of the game.  The long term key to success is to know the difference and to balance both invention and innovation simultaneously.

Inventions are based upon solving contradictions.  In Marketing, inventions include social media, contact management systems, content management systems and a litany of analytic models.  These inventions are usually targeted at answering questions about what are the optimum processes and to what degree to invest in processes to get your message out and your target market messages in.

Once a year, a group of super talented business leaders gather to provide a day of advice, guidance and support to Atlanta’s most promising new companies – for free.

On Tuesday, May 15, the Start-Up Council will hold its next roundtable, and we are now accepting applications.

The Council is a group of industry experts committed to supporting the next generation of emerging companies. In this distinctive roundtable setting, multi-disciplined experts answer questions and discuss various issues that may impact a start-up’s business strategy and launch.

The Council’s newest members include executives from Atlanta Technology Angels (ATA), a local investment organization.

An increase in activity among emerging businesses strongly indicates that 2012 will be a year of growth for start-ups in Atlanta. In just 18 months, ATA has grown their investor & sponsor base from 25 to 90, a promising statistic for those looking to get their start-ups off the ground in Atlanta. In addition, new crowdfunding legislation is currently making its way through the House and the Senate. Crowdfunding would mean any start-up can publicly announce that it’s raising capital (on Facebook or even in a local paper) and raise up to $1M each year.

Start-Up Council, founded in 2006, is comprised of industry experts across a variety of verticals, who provide guidance to entrepreneurs in the areas of public relations, social marketing, funding, legal, business development, outsourced manufacturing, marketing and branding.

Over the past five years Start-Up Council has successfully advised more than 40 companies. Entries for the upcoming event on May 15 will be accepted until Monday, May 7.

Applications can be found at here and submitted via email to ccrabill@trevelinokeller.com.

ABOUT THE START-UP COUNCIL

The Start-Up Council, a group of industry experts partnering to serve the start-up community, offers a consulting day “off the clock” to provide funding, accounting, legal, marketing and business development, branding and public relations expertise. Additionally, each entity in the Start-Up Council offers service packages geared to and priced for emerging companies. Start-Up Council members include Trevelino/Keller, Atlanta Technology Angels, Ask Remco, BChord, Gray Consulting, Flourishing Business, Frazier & Deeter, LaunchFN, Madison Marketing, Marsden & Associates, Moreland Group, Morris, Manning and Martin, New Clarity, Nvestor Relations, Object 9, Paymetric, Realistic Solutions, and Vitale CFO. Affiliate supporters include Kinetic Ventures, Intersouth Partners, Kennesaw State University, and Noro-Moseley Partners.

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

 Thomas Alva Edison

In today’s always on, constantly connected world, there is a need to establish your brand value and call for action quickly or lose your opportunity.  And the reality is you likely lost many opportunities without ever knowing they were out there.

According to research from SiriusDecisions, Inc. “70% of the buying process is now complete by the time a prospect is ready to engage with sales.”  An increasing percentage of all sales are researched and decided online before the sales opportunity is even visible to the vendor.  So what do you do?  Join ‘em.

Here are 4 essential components to any effective marketing program:

1. Tools. Get a clear understanding of the tools available to you, your tangible requirements to use the tools, the cost of the tools and the payoff.  In short, select, optimize and monetize your processes to make sure you are getting the biggest bang for your buck.  This is a continuous process as the rate of innovation for inbound marketing and social media is rapidly increasing.    The challenge is to stay on the pulse of innovation, but stay focused on the expected ROI and the overall impact to your brand.
2. Analytics. Keep your eyes on the ball.  Ensure that you have a set of benchmarks and analytics to not only indicate performance, but give you an early indication that something has changed….providing every opportunity to correct your strategy or seize a new opportunity.
3. Judgment. After all of the process, benchmarks and analytics are in place, Marketing takes extraordinary judgment to ensure all of the “other” Marketing variables are considered.  This is what Thomas Alva Edison would consider your work.  It is difficult…. but not insurmountable.  Rely on conventional wisdom of those that have been in the similar position before you.  There are usually rules of thumb for how much should be invested and what one could expect the ROI to be based upon a company’s product/service, brand and life cycle.
4. Test New Approaches.  In order to stay ahead, a certain amount of your time and budget should be spent looking at and testing new approaches.  A systematic “what if” analysis plus a bit of trial and error is necessary for continuous improvement. That’s what “A/B Testing” is all about.  Simply put… get on board, get ahead and be committed to staying ahead.

Yes, Real Marketing Results require hard work and judgment molded from knowledge and experience.  Marketing that yields results is not for the fickle or the faint of heart.

If you know you need to do it but aren’t exactly sure what the right “it” is, then it’s time to get help.  We are in that category of been there before…over and over … with Real Marketing Results.

March Madness is in full swing… my favorite time of the year.  It kicked off last month with rivalry week and, boy, were there some exciting finishes.  That’s the great thing about sports…there is always a winner and a loser.

I know a thing or two about rivals from my college days.  Our rivalry with the university eight miles down the road is still considered the premiere rivalry in all of college sports.  The main reason is year after year both teams are just plain good, some years they are great.  You can’t have a rivalry if one team always wins.

Rivalries motivate you to be your best and sometimes to be better than your best.  NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan, a man who had no challengers, often invented rivals.  He would imagine all the negative things they had said about him and be inspired to win.

From a business standpoint, MCI was David to rival ATT’s Goliath.  Everyone in the company knew who the enemy was.  Everyone was fixated on beating them.  We were number two with nothing to lose, no revenue to protect.  That allowed us to be on the offensive, to be innovative, to chart our own path and not play the “me too” game.

So that leads to the 5 things that rivalries demand:

#1:  You must work as a team focused on a common goal.  There is clarity of task, a common focus: Defeat the enemy

#2:  Do your best.  Give 125%!  No one underperforms against their rival

#3: Focus on flawless execution.  You need to plan, brief, execute, win.

#4:  Measure and compare:  There are winners and losers.  Recognize where you stand.

#5:  Know your enemy, both their strengths and their weaknesses.  Exploit the weakness.  Play to your strengths.

And, most of all, remember to keep the pressure on.

With rivalries, you can be down by 10 points and still win at the buzzer!

So, who is your biggest rival?

Small footprint, big impact: that is the hallmark of a thriving virtual company.  Despite our small size when measuring number of employees, we are in fact a mighty machine that launches brands, creates and manages highly complex integrated marketing campaigns, generates leads, drives social media presence, and increases revenues for a number of clients.

How? How is it possible to design sophisticated solutions and achieve successful outcomes with such a small in-house staff?  The answer is that our micro company is actually a hub, the epicenter of alliances with over 20 individuals and companies that work together to design, develop, manage, and measure our clients’ marketing programs.  From graphics designers to program managers, videographers to programmers, writers to social media mavens, our Association includes just about every discipline required to meet the needs – and the budgets – of our diverse clientele.  We’re able to draw on the best resources for each project no matter where they are located to deliver best in class solutions.  And we can do so at costs well below traditional agencies with similar breadth of capabilities.

Running lean allows us to handpick personnel for each assignment so that we may bring exactly the right mix to each assignment.  But you may wonder, how does such a virtual company work from a coordination and management standpoint? And how can it be financially viable for clients and Associates like?

Here are the 3 keys to selecting a winning virtual organization:

1. Relationships.

It all begins with the relationships you build and manage over time. Consider it a benefit of age…. Marsden’s associates have, on average, over 4 years experience working with us, and many are much longer alliances.  This tenure means that we already know the skill sets and sweet spots of each associate (whether a person or an organization).   We’ve developed s a level of trust and understanding that makes it easy and efficient to work together and is invaluable when the unexpected bump in the road comes along.

Relationships aren’t static.  Associates come and go just like employees in a traditional company.  New capabilities and offerings are added as we identify and leverage emerging marketing trends and technologies.  It’s our job to continuously evaluate, update and integrate associates over time.

The result is ultimate flexibility and a keen ability to respond to the needs, timeframes and budgets of our clients.

2. Structure and Tools.

Virtual organizations can only operate effectively when they have the structures and tools to enable communications, collaboration and financial management.  Web-based applications have dramatically empowered grographically dispersed groups to work together.  From program management in BaseCamp, to file sharing in DropBox, to on-line collaboration with Join Me and GoToMeeting, the options have exploded.

The challenge is no longer can you work together virtually, but how to weave together the people and tools for optimum productivity.   That doesn’t happen overnight, but is key to operational success, internally and with clients.

3.Financial Models.

While it may be obvious that there needs to be a win-win-win cost model – for clients, the virtual organization and its associates, reaching a consensus on what that model should be is not always so obvious.

Some companies worry they might pay an un-necessary mark-up to the virtual organization, on top of the cost for the underlying services.  What these companies may not see at first blush are the savings realized by the lower overheads of a virtual organization, and the additional discounts that have been secured in the relationship between the virtual company and its suppliers.  Also overlooked is the cost savings companies get for not having to source, set up and support additional vendors.   Finding, vetting, and negotiating with multiple vendors is time consuming and have real costs. And in many cases, larger companies’ liability insurance requirements and extended payment terms present hardships for small firm and individuals.  A virtual organization – like ours, assumes those costs and risks, providing a single contractual relationship.

There is no one size fits all financial model.  A successful virtual organization needs a range of pricing and support structures for its associates that enable the team to profitably deliver the service – at a price that also delivers value to the client.

Conclusion: Virtual organizations are emerging across a range of industries, including Marketing Services, but it’s a relatively new business structure.  Companies are smart to consider virtual companies that may be better positioned to deliver best in breed solutions at highly cost effective rates.   At the same time, companies are cautioned to do their due diligence and ensure the virtual team has the right relationships, structures and financial models in place to deliver seamlessly. For a successful relationship, these three components need to be in place BEFORE the client engagement.

 by Suzanne Moore

“Sometimes, you just get your butt kicked.”

Quote recently from the winningest (yes, I know it’s not a word) coach in college basketball, Mike Krzyzewski after a pretty bad loss.  While the beat down was not easy to watch and not the desired result, it will provide some necessary teaching moments.

Does your company see failure as an option?  Do you foster a culture where blame isn’t assigned but rather lessons are learned? If you aren’t willing to fail, if you always wait to execute perfectly, you will miss opportunities.

Now, I’m not saying that failure always leads to success down the road.  But, I am saying that if you aren’t willing to take a chance, if you aren’t willing to fail…you won’t succeed.

Failure is an option.

I worked for MCI back in the day; the day when innovation and creativity were king.  1-800 Music Now was a very short-lived venture by MCI that allowed users to dial a toll-free number and listen to clips from an album before buying it.  It was one of the first ever serious attempts at an e-commerce music store.  We jokingly called it…you call, you listen, you listen, you hang up.  Not a whole lot of buying went on.  People liked the social aspect of going to a music store.  While it wasn’t a commercial success, no one was fired or demoted.  Instead, the creativity was lauded and the entrepreneurial attitude flourished.  Today, I would venture to say, the idea doesn’t seem so far-fetched.

But it isn’t just me who believes this.  Michael Jordan, arguably one of the best basketball players in the world, has said this “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”  Watch this Nike video called “Failure”, to hear him in his own words.

So, be like Mike, and celebrate the failures that make you successful.

Are you as envious as I of those people who know exactly what they want to do “when they grow up” and don’t let anything stand in their way of reaching their goal? I count those people as very fortunate and envy their tenacity and sacrifice. The rest of us find our way through trial and error, perseverance and a network of supporters. Or perhaps Lady Luck is on their side. The good news is that the end result is equally rewarding.

Finding your niche  (whether personally or in developing a business strategy) takes a lot of soul searching and requires taking risks. Once on course you need to have a steadfast commitment to your objectives. There have been so many companies who have failed to transform their business because they set unrealistic goals, weren’t willing to make the investment or didn’t get all of their employees on board marching toward a common goal. It’s not an easy road but when you reach the pinnacle, the rewards far outweigh the journey.

In today’s economy I daresay every individual and company needs to re-invent themselves. Gone are the days where you could avoid adopting technology as a cornerstone in advancing your market share. No longer can you rely on what worked 10 years ago to advance your business or career. Only the strong survive in such a competitive environment and that means developing a well thought out strategy, leveraging the new rules of marketing and executing flawlessly.

I have recently taken such a journey and am testament that you can transform yourself and end up in a much better place both personally and professionally. Being a part of Marsden & Associates afforded me the opportunity to work with companies both big and small and in a myriad of industries. We helped businesses evolve their digital presence and created measurable inbound marketing campaigns.  We developed marketing strategies and plans that will set up businesses to thrive. We implemented campaigns that grew revenue, improved sales effectiveness and enhanced brand images. Through this collective experience I was able to hone in on what was the best fit for me, and along the way I “lucked into” a consulting engagement for a company that has incredible assets, a talented leadership team, passionate employees and a focused strategy that will drive exponential growth.

That lucky opportunity allowed me to find my niche… at Foxwoods Resort Casino, where I am excited to begin my new role as their Chief Marketing Officer. The journey took a lot of hard work but the honor to lead marketing for such a diversified and fascinating business is my reward. Marsden & Associates is to thank for this introduction as they are sought out by businesses looking for marketing expertise that deliver real world results. If you’re looking to re-invigorate your marketing efforts, adopt the ‘new rules of marketing’ and more specifically, set up your business to thrive, then you need Marsden & Associates.

And, if you want to see if Lady Luck is on your side, please come visit me at Foxwoods Resort Casino.  www.foxwoods.com.

P.S. …. by Anne Marsden

It has been great having Becky as part of Marsden & Associates.  She brought new ideas and a fresh perspective that has benefited both our clients and our team.  We wish her the very best in this next part of her personal journey and look forward to seeing the ‘real marketing results’ that we know Becky will bring to Foxwoods.  And you can bet you’ll be seeing me around the Casino from time to time.  

I’ll post the results in a follow-up.  And if you’re interested on the the cute little widget that created this poll, it’s from Quipol, it’s free and you can get it here.

No matter what it is, how important or pressing, how successful it’ll be, how committed we are to it; it will never be as seductive as what’s about to come and is just on the periphery.

Why do we click over to our inbox in the middle of another project? It not only offers the comforting rationale that we need to stay connected… to boss, to co-workers, to clients…it offers an excusable reason to escape.  And we so want to escape…Green Grass and High Tides Forever….

We (the responsible ones) know that we can’t (won’t) abandon our deadlines or responsibilities of the immediate, but the siren of “What’s Next” is damn hard to resist.  And what price does our immediate work pay for that momentary break?  World class athletes swear that only by continuing through the break points – when your mind tries to steal you away, to get you to back off –  will you develop the strength and resolve and focus required to win.

The reason “What’s Next” is so alluring?  We haven’t yet experienced the “What’s Hard” about it.  As soon as we do, we’ll hear the siren again. But if you have pushed through, and refused to succumb, you will be stronger for the next time you hear the song.

by Anne Marsden

Ah, taglines – what a wonderful subject of debate.  Are they useful?  Do they really help build brand recognition?  Can they actually create connection between your brand and your market? Are they just for brands that can spend a gazillion dollar on advertising?

Well, the answer to each of these is the same – it depends.

Of course we all have our favorite taglines, and most of them are iconic B2C examples.

According to a 2010 Forbes article and as rated by a group of 10 CMO’s and advertising experts, here are the 10 best -loved taglines of our time. (I’ve included the year each one was introduced but intentionally left off the company names – if you don’t recognize a brand behind a tagline, shoot me a note and I’ll tell you):

1. The Ultimate Driving Machine (1971)
2. Just Do It (1988)
3. Don’t Leave Home Without It (1975)
4. We Try Harder – (1963)
5. Got (fill in the blank)? (1993)
6. There Are Some Things Money Can’t Buy.  For Everything Else, There’s (fill in the blank) (1997)
7. Think Different (1997)
8. The Few, The Proud, The (fill in the blank) (1976)
9. You Deserve A Break Today (1971)
10. A Diamond is Forever (1944)

So what makes a great tagline?  And beyond that – when can a tagline make a difference to your brand when you don’t have tons of money to spend on advertising?

Here are the 3 essential components of taglines that will work for your brand — even without the big ad budget:

1. Reinforce WHAT you do. If you have a company name that says what business you’re in – you’re lucky.  Most company names don’t have anything to do with the actual products or services provided.  So your tagline is your first opportunity to communicate to the world what business you’re in.   Here’s an example: Kinetix is in the business of Recruitment Process Outsourcing.  Their name doesn’t tell you that, but their tagline does: We Can Hire Great People Faster Than You. 
2. Define something about your brand that sets you apart. Not only should your tagline help communicate the what, it should also tell the WHY – why should a prospect consider you for that type of product or service?  The why should highlight your key strength and competitive differentiation. In the case of Kinetix – it highlights two of their core strengths – speed and quality  – and then pits them against their greatest perceived competitor – the prospect’s internal HR organization.
3. Create an emotional reaction. If your tagline is going to stick – if it is going to help cement your brand in a prospect’s mind – then it needs to connect emotionally. Again, looking at Kinetix, they create an emotional connection that also communicates their brand style and voice – young, confident, and a tad sassy. When you read We Can Hire Great People Faster Than You, don’t you just feel like you’re being challenged? A challenge is personal – and therefore bound to cause an emotional reaction – to either argue or go find out what makes them think they’re better than you. In any case, it’s personal.  And when it’s personal, it’s going to stick with you far longer than some generalized “aren’t we great” statement.  

Using a challenge as your tagline is one of many ways to create an emotional response. Make it funny. Make it warm and caring.  Make it provocative. Make it sound like your brand, what ever that is. Think about your brand – its persona and its voice. Does it have a specific voice?  If not, then start there and build your tagline to reflect and support how you want to be perceived in your marketplace. And do it in a way that involves, engages, or otherwise emotionally connects your brand to your target audience.

Go ahead – you can do it – can’t you? Of course you can!

But before you go off and launch a new campaign around your great, new, compelling tagline – be sure to check that you haven’t violated these two rules:

1. Don’t Talk Down. You want an emotional reaction, but you don’t want to alienate your prospects.  Being flippant, condescending or rude will get you noticed, but unless you’re a shock-jock, it won’t help your brand.
2. Don’t Self-Anoint.  You may think you’re the greatest in your industry.  Your customers may have told you you’re the best, but unless a credible 3rd party has bestowed a title on you, be careful. Take a look at the #1 tagline in the list above:  The Ultimate Driving Machine.  BMW didn’t declare that they were the best car in the world, they defined what class of car they build, they carved out the niche at which they excel, and made it visceral.

Taglines can make a real difference, providing memorable shorthand for a brand, but they aren’t easy.  As Pascal once wrote, “I would have written you a short letter, but I didn’t have the time”.  Seems like it would be a breeze to come up with a 3-5-word phrase for a brand; it’s actually really hard. But get it right and you’ll reap the benefits for years to come.

Stay thirsty my friends….