Marketing Archives – Page 11 of 13

1 Sep 2009

Gaining Competitive Advantage

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:24:29-06:00September 1st, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Sales|

Today I was thinking of what competitive advantage really means and came up with a few categories or methods of gaining competitive advantage. I think it is well worth looking at how you stack up against each category periodically (anything missing?).

Capability

Essentially you have something or can do something that is significantly better than your competitors. Even better if you are the only one or there is a barrier to entry.

Speed

How quick can you deliver on your promise and how fast can you respond to change.

Knowledge

What do you know that your competition doesn't. Knowing your customer fits here and so does intellectual property.

Location

Location, […]

31 Aug 2009

Who Are You (and your Business)?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:24:50-06:00August 31st, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Marketing, Sales|

Who are you? What matters? What do you stand for? What do you want to become?

At the core, the business and owners must be in synch for long-term success.

Sure you can buy a franchise for a proven business, say a muffler shop, but if you have absolutely no interest fixing cars it is going to be a long painful ride.

I've been running Sunwapta Solutions for over 9 years now and we never clearly defined this for ourselves… until now. Luckily strong ethics and doing good work were part of our core make up without thinking about it regularly.

If you just go with […]

19 Aug 2009

Those Pesky Customers

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:25:05-06:00August 19th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Mindset and Motivation, Sales|

Ever have one of those days where customers (internal or external) keep derailing something you want to get done?

If only they would go away, life would be simpler and you could accomplish all your projects.

Yup, no customers would be perfect.

No customers, no distractions… no revenue… no business.

POP!

The trick is not in making your customers go away. Unless you have no intention of growing you actually want more happy, satisfied customers receiving something they need. Your business depends on it.

So the trick, is setting up your business so you can do both; and I don't mean working 16 hours a day.

You need to […]

15 Aug 2009

Quick Update on Website – 2

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:24:38-06:00August 15th, 2009|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

In my last post on this subject I mentioned how fun it would be to do a parody of a normal website. Then I said I didn’t think I had the courage to be taking that kind of risk.

A few people have challenged me to not put out a standard (serious and boring) tech website.

Of course, they are not the ones that would be taking the risk so it is easy to say “Jump!”.

I am thinking that the parody version would not be right for me. Fun, but not really what I am about and certainly not what Sunwapta […]

11 Aug 2009

Quick Update on Website

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:25:33-06:00August 11th, 2009|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

We have our content management system configured now and our template 90% implemented. I haven't been blogging too much lately mainly because I am busy writing content for our website while simultaneously doing application design for a couple of other web applications.

While writing site content, I was thinking about how much fun it would be to do the entire site as a parody of the normally serious and deathly boring technical corporate website… and oh yeah, throw in some of the standards for differentiation marketing:

"Our developers have been extremely agile for years, long before agile became popular as […]

29 Jul 2009

Getting Marketing Feedback

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:25:46-06:00July 29th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|

If you want unbiased feedback on your marketing material or a new product where do you go? If your answer is:

Friends,
Family, or
Employees.

You should seriously reconsider.

While friends and family may try to give you honest feedback, generally they are naturally biased… they will generally tell you what you want to hear. Why? To show their support. After all, isn't that what family is all about and why you chose your friends?

Employees are influenced by balancing showing support, not making their boss annoyed, and trying to be honest.

Besides, none of these people are likely to be representative of your customers.

So valid […]

28 Jul 2009

Choosing a Content Management System

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:25:18-06:00July 28th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales, Technology|

Historically we have been a Microsoft .NET shop with some experience in Java. It is not that we are against other technologies, it is just that we don’t see a reason to jump all over if the tools you have do the trick.

In the case of choosing a content management system (CMS) for our corporate website, we looked at open source and low cost CMS products on the .NET platform and found them not as mature as we needed.

We have therefore chosen Joomla as our CMS. It is a well supported and widlely used CMS developed on the PHP platform […]

27 Jul 2009

About The Value of Blogging

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:26:04-06:00July 27th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Marketing|

Seth nails the value of blogging. I do it as much for the clarity as I do for the audience.

I often find that I start out with a blog topic, start writing and by the end, my own understanding has improved. Teaching some things is like that too. It really makes you think about what and how you are doing something; sometimes you even catch mistakes in your current thinking or abilities.

27 Jul 2009

Marketing Budget Allocation For Results

By Doug Wagner|2017-06-06T16:06:43-06:00July 27th, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Marketing, Sales|Tags: business advice, Clients, Cold Calling, Customers, Entrepreneurship, Lead Generation, marketing, Marketing Budget, Marketing Budget Allocation, Marketing Strategy, Networking, Prospecting, Referrals, sales, small business, SMB|

As per the last two posts (The Value of a New Customer and Marketing Budget 101) I talked about one way of determining your marketing/sales budget.

If you want a simpler method, allocate a percentage of total revenue.

Now the question is where to spend your money for maximum effect.

There are basically four sources of future sales:

Existing customers,
Referrals (word of mouth),
Prospecting, cold calling and networking, and
New leads from marketing.

You will want to allocate funding (or effort) to […]

23 Jul 2009

Marketing Budget 101

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:26:10-06:00July 23rd, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Marketing, Sales|

Now that you know how much you are willing to spend on acquiring a new customer the next part is easy… and very hard.

How many new customers do you want?

Infinity is a good long-term goal for the highly competitive but lets bound the question a bit.

How many new customers can you handle over the next year?

Consider your ability to:

Service or supply your customers,
Your ability to grow your capacity including capital costs and time to do so, and
How big you really want to be and other factors.

Don't forget to include any customers you might lose over time in the equation.

Now […]