5 Ways to Win Your Share of the Federal Government\'s Year End Budget

September 30th marks the end of the federal government's fiscal calendar, which means that the year-end buying season is upon as we continue through this fourth and final quarter. So, how can you make sure that your company is considered by government procurement officers and end users who use your product or service (and influence buying decisions)?

No matter what you sell ­â€" from janitorial services to agricultural supplies â€" these marketing tips can help you secure federal fiscal year-end business.

1. Plan Ahead

Hopefully, you haven't waited until now to think about how you can make the most of your federal year-end sales. It's important to have built relationships with those influential government folks by way of integrated marketing efforts and effective marketing throughout the year â€" and sometimes longer. A strategy with a component of developing relationships and a foundation with government users and buyers can result in a solid return on investment when September comes.

Nevertheless, a carefully crafted marketing plan can help you undertake those final critical months of the year and help keep your business top-of-mind. Strategic planning between sales and marketing should start in June or sooner, with campaign execution starting in mid to late July.

2. Understand and Target Your Top Customers

Make sure your team is aware of and understands the latest federal happenings and directives. Use your knowledge of these mandates to frame your year-end strategy about how exactly your product or service can help. Showing your awareness and intimate understanding of what's required of an agency can help you differentiate your small business â€" leading with specifics and a tailored approach versus a general marketing message.

Keep in mind that it's also best to keep your purview small by focusing on your top three agencies. This is not the time to be all things to all people or explore new business in new markets.

3. Offer a Year-End Special

Although offering discounts isn't always effective (particularly in a competitive market), you can distinguish your business in a few ways with a year-end special offer.

In general, ensure your specials align with your overarching year-end message. This could be as simple as offering a one-hour quote turnaround during the month of September.

4. Market Your Contracts

Having a GSA Schedule is great, but don't ignore the other contracts in the lineup. Not everyone buys off the GSA contract. If you have other federal contracts, include them on your marketing materials. And if you are a sub-contractor, don't forget to include information about your partner contracts, too.

5. Market to Procurement Officials

Keep in mind the procurement and contract officers. They're responsible for spending the money within the agencies; they're busy gathering quotes, processing paperwork and making sure the budget is used as efficiently and responsibly as possible.

If your budget allows, consider developing a sideline marketing campaign to specifically target contracting officers and procurement teams to help keep your business name and contact information top-of-mind.

Lead with a message that communicates how you can simplify the year-end buying process. Offer extended hours, one-hour quote turn-around or other value-adds to help ease the process of doing business with you. And be sure to update your website, email signature and other outbound marketing pieces with this information.

The fiscal year is coming to a close, but there's still a wealth of opportunity for your small business to get its share of those year-end government dollars. Have other questions about government contracting? Check out your local Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC), which provides local, in-person counseling and training services to businesses that want to sell products and services to federal, state and/or local governments.

Money Photo via Shutterstock

Big Business Tactics Small Businesses Can Use

I've always adhered to the idea of making my business look bigger than it is. I'm not trying to misrepresent my company, but I know the resources that will give my one-woman shop more gloss and make me appear more professional to potential clients.

Don't buy into the idea that as a small business, you're limited to your personal capabilities. Software is getting more affordable. And DIY is “in” right now in a major way. The lines blur between “big” and “small” business when it comes to tools and techniques like these.

Take advantage of what's available to you right now, and start living large.

Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM)

I'm guilty of thinking CRM just works for giant corporations with multiple people accessing the same customer data. I'm also guilty of thinking my small business couldn't afford it. But plenty of small business CRM programs (such as Insightly) are reasonably priced, and also cater to the needs of solopreneurs and boutique-sized businesses.

If you have customers, you need to track data about them. That's what CRM does. I, for example, keep notes when I have phone calls with clients (I'm terrible at remembering what we've talked about), and I like linking emails to those conversations, or assigning tasks.

Visual and Audio Marketing

Even if you don't quite have the budget for TV or radio ads, you can still get your face (or voice) out to the masses. Podcasts are easy to set up and record, and are hugely popular with the small business segment.

Video's another great option for the budget-conscious entrepreneur. You don't have to spend thousands of dollars to have a professional-grade video produced. Anything from your camera phone to a nice digital camera that shoots video can create commercials, video blogs, or customer interviews you can share on YouTube, your site, and social media.

Project Management Software

Again, I assumed I needed a bigger staff to really benefit from project management software. And while I'm pretty satisfied using Google Calendar to assign tasks for myself, it's so much easier to assign tasks to others on my team, as well as see the status of what everyone's working on with the right software.

Promotional Items

While I'm not a huge fan of pens with logos on them, you shouldn't overlook promotional items as a category. Small businesses typically won't need tens of thousands of a given item, so you can order smaller products that cost more per unit, but pack a better punch.

Legend has it that once upon a time, when Amazon pretty much sold just books, the company would send little freebies with orders, like branded bookmarks and travel mugs. Those are probably collectors' items by now. Find something your audience will value, and they'll actually use.

Email Marketing

I'm still surprised at how many small businesses don't use email marketing, or who are settling for sending text emails directly from their provider, rather than through email marketing software (such as MailChimp, InfusionSoft, Constant Contact, etc.)

With a cost ranging from $0 to under 50 bucks a month, there's really no excuse for your business not to be marketing through email.

Social Media Monitoring

Sure, your company's on social media, but are you actively monitoring what's being said about your brand or your industry?

Don't let the big social media monitoring brands like Radian6 scare you off. You don't have to spend a gajillion dollars to track activity on social media. A simple search on the social site of your choice, or a social media platform that lets you save searches for specific keywords, will help you connect to people who are interested in your brand, or who fit the demographic you want to connect with.

Whether your business is big or small, you want to instill confidence in your clients. When you choose to invest in smart marketing and operations tools, your customers will feel good about investing in you.

Big Small Concept Photo via Shutterstock

Social Media Tips for Being Socially Savvy on a Budget

[Click for full size infographic]

For small business owners, social media is a great way to connect with customers, potential customers, build brand awareness and spread news quickly. According to the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 86% of marketers report that social media is important to their businesses.

But the average small business owner has limited time and money to spend on social media. A recent survey by Zoomerang states that 59% of small businesses spend less than $100 on social media (42% spend nothing), and 74% don't employ anyone to manage their social media. And those who do employ social media for their business often don't know where to start.

You can easily capitalize on the marketing potential of social media even with limited resources. You just need to make sure you put your resources in the right places. Below are some tips on how to focus your social media efforts in a way that will resonate most with your customers.

Start with Facebook

With 9 million pages for small businesses, Facebook is the most popular platform among small business owners.  And for a good reason â€" Facebook is the place their customers are most likely to be. Not only is Facebook the most popular social media site, it is also the most addicting. According to the aforementioned industry report, 23% of Facebook's users check their account five or more times every day.

Facebook is very effective for generating business - according to Social Media Quickstarter, 51% of people who “like” brands are more likely to buy a product after becoming a fan:

Image: Social Media Quickstarter

Small business owners should spend the majority of time and money on designing a Facebook fan page. Make it visually dynamic with quality graphics and photos, which humanize your brand image by spotlighting the people in your business and giving customers a glimpse into your business's inner-workings.

A few tools that will make sure you get the most out of Facebook:

• Use Name Vine to check domain names, Facebook and Twitter extensions in a matter of seconds to see if your desired vanity URL is available.
• Facebook Social Media Plug-Ins let you see what your friends have liked, commented on or shared on sites across the Web.
• Use an app like Pagemodo to customize your page.

Limit Your Focus

Beyond Facebook, be smart about which social media sites you choose to invest in. If you try to maintain a presence on too many sites, you may find yourself overwhelmed and unable to keep up.  Outdated and abandoned social media accounts can hurt your brand image. When you fail to respond to customers' comments and inquiries on these sites, they will think that you don't care about their input.

To effectively narrow your social media focus, determine which social networks your customers frequent. One recent study found that the average social media user has accounts on only two social media sites and many users have narrowed their usage down to one site. You can determine which platforms your customers prefer by sending a quick survey.

Once this is figured out, maintain a consistent brand identity by matching your company's designs, graphics and logos across all platforms.

Post Effectively

After setting up your social media accounts, it's time to determine how to interact with your customers and how often to do so. Most small business owners don't have the time to spend hours posting on Twitter and scrolling through Facebook comments. Fortunately, you don't have to post constantly to reach a large audience; there are many ways to tailor your posts for optimal reach and engagement.

It is recommended that businesses post one to four times a day on Facebook and five to ten times a day on Twitter. These posts should occur during business hours (8 AM to 8 PM) as this is when most people visit social media sites. It may be difficult for small business owners to post this frequently, but fortunately, Facebook allows you to schedule posts to be published at a later date.

To further save yourself time, push content to all of your social channels at once by using a tool like HootSuite. Take your Facebook page, Twitter feed and any other social channel you have and publish to all of them at once from a single interface.

In addition to scheduled posts, make an effort to respond to customers' posts on your pages. Considering that the highest percentage of customers prefer to receive special offers and discounts (see infographic image, top of page), use social media as a platform for publicizing discounts. You can even offer exclusive special offers to your social media customers.

Social media might seem intimidating for the overworked and underfunded small business owner, but with the right tools and strategies, social media can be an easy and effective way to reach your customers.

Follow these tips and you'll be socially savvy in no time.

CNBC to Air “Twitter Revolution” Documentary

Small business owners know about Twitter's ability to spread a message. In fact, a recent survey by American Express Small Business found 19 percent of respondents use the platform regularly to boost their brands.

But an upcoming one hour CNBC documentary looks beyond marketing - to the entire Twitter phenomenon.

The one-hour documentary, called “Twitter Revolution,” premieres Wednesday, August 7th at 9pm  ET/PT on the CNBC cable TV network in the United States.  Of course, there's a hashtag to follow along on Twitter: #TwitterRevolution.

Twitter Revolution looks at how Twitter has changed the way journalists, activists and average people communicate.  It examines how breaking news events get tweeted out, with pictures snapped on mobile phones and shared by first-hand observers with the world.

The documentary kicks off with the day entrepreneur Janis Krums tweeted a photo of a downed U.S. Airways airplane in the Hudson River in 2009, to his 170 followers on Twitter. His followers shared the image, and then it was picked up by television news stations. Soon millions had seen the photo (pictured above).

An ordinary citizen had scooped the media.

The river landing came to be known as “The Miracle on the Hudson.”

CNBC correspondent Carl Quintanilla interviews co-founder Jack Dorsey about that moment. According to Dorsey, it “changed everything”  Suddenly, Dorsey said, the world viewed Twitter as a source of news.

We learn how celebrities from Justin Bieber to Lady Gaga also use Twitter to drive their brands.

Quintanilla looks at the potential negatives of the platform, too. Rumors, incorrect information and negative messages can be spread just as quickly as positive and accurate ones.  Then there's the fact that the platform still has relatively low penetration. Only about 16 percent of American adults online use it.

But entrepreneurs may also be interested by an interview with CEO Dick Costolo, that discusses growth and monetization. Twitter focused on being an indispensable utility first, not monetizing until later. It is an interesting business model for startups to consider.

Here's the documentary trailer:

Image credit: CNBC video still

Run It Past Legal First

“Run it past legal.”

That's one of those phrases you hear frequently and turning it around so that a runner-type person is actually running something past legal is a pretty logical cartoon to make.

Where this one tripped me up was the expression on the runner â€" specifically his mouth. When I sketched this he had a bit of a smile, but when I inked it, I thought maybe he shouldn't be so happy about it. Maybe he's asked to run things past people all the time and he's tired of it. So it changed to a frown.

But while I was shading it I thought, “No, he should be more nonchalant about this. It's a weird job, but it's a job and he's been doing it for a while. It's a typical day, literally running things past people.” So then I fiddled in Photoshop until it looked right to me.

Now all of that might seem like overkill for one tiny expression line that really doesn't impact the final joke, but it's the kind of thing you think about a lot as a cartoonist and it's a lot of fun.

Raghu Raghavan of Act-On: Now is the Time to Dive Into Marketing Automation

There has been a great deal of activity in the CRM (customer relationship management) industry of late when it comes to marketing automation. Just over the past couple months Salesfoce.com bought Exact Target (who had not long before acquired Pardot), Marketo had a very successful IPO and Adobe announced their intent to purchase Neolane. But most of these moves had the big enterprise in mind, so what does this mean to small businesses and their marketing automation needs?

Raghu Raghavan, CEO of marketing automation platform provider Act-On, joins Brent Leary for a discussion on what the impact of these moves means, if anything, to small businesses. He shares his take on how the proliferation of channels is impacting marketing for small businesses and how marketing automation can help improve their likelihood for marketing success at a time of rapid change.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can provide us with a little bit of your background?

Raghu Raghavan: My interest in this whole space probably started some 12 to 13 years ago. I was one of the two founders of Responsys, which back then was one of first SaaS companies before the word SaaS was even being used.

We built a very nice, multitalented platform for doing email marketing back in the day. One of the things that struck me all along was that email was always going to become a part of a much bigger picture with respect to marketers.

When I started Act-On, there was a lot of interest in a more robust view of marketing. I think Eloqua for ten years had been talking about marketing automation and what it would mean. I think they educated the market.

When Marketo came into the market they basically challenged a lot of the assumptions. Marketing automation always was along the lines of “SAP meets marketing.” It was like a big ERP implementation, nine months to set up, and Marketo came in and
challenged that. They came with a fantastic approach to the market and we wanted to do some of those things.

When we started Act-On, Salesforce was dominant. We were working on our platform to be used everywhere. Marketing automation was starting to be talked about more widely, so it was a fantastic time to enter into a new market that was barely penetrated. Act-On is a company that has the founding engineering from Responsys, it has a lot of deep knowledge about SaaS. We came in, we saw the all of the things that had not been done right in this space, and I think it allowed us to build a company in an whole new way to attack what we saw in the monsters market.

Small Business Trends: How has the proliferation of all of these different channels, formats and social networks brought on the need for marketing automation?

Raghu Raghavan: I think in a huge way. That is a great question. Because I think that is one of the driving factors for marketing automation that no one really talks much about. You know a little bit of history, it helps to be around this space for a long time. If you look at companies like Unica, part of the new Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) group at IBM, and Aprimo, old line companies â€" I shouldn't say old line, they are not that old, but they are now old line companies. They actually set out to solve a problem that big companies had, which was multiple channels.

For big companies the channels were email, the Web, dealer networks â€" it was all of their other physical touch points, re-sellers and “what-have-you.“ Well if you look at companies now, if you look at all of these channels it is sort of like that. So the technology for multi-channel behavior management had been done in a different domain.

What happens now is that there is a need to engineer all of this down to a format where a small company, with a relatively small number of employees in marketing can actually make sense of all of this. Every company we talk to tries everything. They try to tweet; they create a Facebook Page; they blog; they do things on the website. The interesting thing with marketing now is to say, ‘What should I be doing? Am I doing enough, because there is no universal answer of what is the best thing for anybody?'

Marketing automation has come along and created a forum where there is a lot of things you can do pretty quickly, lots of power tools. So now the real question is, ‘How do you use them wisely?”

The great thing about marketing automation is it takes the focus away from the individual tools and shifts the focus towards what the market is trying to achieve.

Small Business Trends: Are you seeing main stream traditional businesses starting to jump in here?

Raghu Raghavan: Yess. I think that you raised the question of affordability. It is interesting because the two companies that basically challenge the status quo on that were Pardot and us. Pardot and Act-On basically went and said, ‘Look, you can do sophisticated things without spending a lot of money.'

What is starting to happen here in terms of visiting the mainstream, is you know historically, if you look at Eloqua and if you looked at Marketo, guys who have been in this market for a while, the bulk of their customers were high tech companies, and high tech companies tend to be early adopters of technology. But in 2012 and certainly in 2013, this technology is widely adopted. We have customers in every imaginable industry, segment and nook that you can imagine. We have a customer that sells hazardous material, disposal equipment, gloves and drums and radioactive suits and what-have-you.

Now, you tend to not think of these as companies that traditionally adopt this technology. But with the advent of all of these channels, people used their Facebook at home, and started to see ways in which they could use Facebook for work. Or the way people tweet and how they can use this for work.

This technology has become completely consumerized. It is no longer in the domain of high tech users. It is consumerized in consumers.

Small Business Trends: Everybody has been talking about Salesforce acquiring ExactTarget. Then, just a couple of weeks after that, a company that hadn't been getting a lot of attention when it comes to marketing automation, was Adobe. They purchased a company called Neolane. With these things, is it going to even up the ante, in terms of everybody now knowing they need marketing automation?

Raghu Raghavan: I probably have a contrarian view to this and might even be controversial. What is happening here is the evolution of biology of companies that have run the gamut of what they can do, basically getting bought. I mean ExactTarget technology is not pushing the limit of anything, this is a done deal. It is old stuff. Salesforce buying them clears the field for newer companies to come in and do newer and more exciting things.

The thing that becomes interesting is people read the stuff in the press and they become even more desirous of trying these things. If they search ‘market automation' they will find lots of dynamic companies that have stuff they can use right away.

Yes definitely, we are seeing an uptake in interest. Certainly, the companies that want to acquire these technologies already are interested in all of the companies in this space. People like Marketo, Hubspot and us are all the topic of conversation. But every day business has less to do with this and more to do to with the fact that there are lots of companies out there that need this stuff, don't have the stuff and don't read the trade press. This 5% number that I quoted is actually very true. If you look at the companies that are ready for marketing automation in North America alone, the penetration is minuscule.

In every state of engagement with a customer, our technology is relevant. It is engaging with customers that you don't know yet; anonymous visitors to your website. Just because they are anonymous doesn't mean you can't start to track their behavior and give them interesting stuff to look at.

The application of marketing to help sales reps close the business faster, or the application of marketing to take an existing customer and grow them, and upsell them. The ability to use marketing to have your reference customers take action on your behalf by awarding them â€" this entire gamut of customer engagements is where we expect to be.

Small Business Trends: Where can people go to learn more?

Raghu Raghavan: Come to our website, Act-On.com.

This interview on marketing automation is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication.  

6 Keys To Developing A Successful Trade Show Display

More than any other element you prepare to attend a trade show, the display will make or break you. Attendees will decide with a quick glance at your trade show display whether they want to visit your booth or not. So, the design and wording the board displays directly affects whether anyone will hear your message.

1. Show and Tell Them Who You Are in a Single Glance

Indian Textiles Photo via Shutterstock

Displays can answer a question or pose one, but in order to attract attention you must give them some idea of what they stand to gain from visiting your booth.

Develop a clear, concise theme and allow this message to dictate the rest of the design.

2. Keep it Simple

Nikon Photo via Shutterstock

It's tempting to want to give everyone your entire message on the display. But people milling about a crowded room with lots to see and do won't take much time to read.

Instead, give them one or two key points that quickly and easily introduces your product, service, etc.

3. Boil Down Your Message to a Single Catch Phrase

Slovenia Tourism Photo via Shutterstock

Most new products and services are quite complex. It's hard to easily define a complicated concept, mobile app, product or software package in a single sentence. Instead, create a message that gives the viewer one good reason to give you a minute of their time.

Make it catchy. You want your phrase to be something easy to recognize or recall later when they're ready to make a purchase.

4. Don't Get Too Technical

Hamamatsu Photo via Shutterstock

Even if you're attending a tech trade show, never assume the people attending are interested or knowledgeable about highly technical things. Many companies send a manager or non-tech representative to attend these shows.

Craft your message so a layperson can understand and don't build a display that intimidates non-techies.

5. Use Color and Images Wisely

Windows Photo via Shutterstock

You want color and images to attract, not to distract. Use no more than two or three contrasting colors to create an eye-catching scheme that isn't too busy or dizzying. Any images you use must be clear and vivid.

It pays to have displays professionally printed, because you don't want to look homemade in the midst of your savvy competitors.

6. Use Quality Materials and Construction

St Engineering Photo via Shutterstock

The worst thing that could happen during your trade show is for your well-designed trade show display to topple or crumple. Don't use cheap materials to build the display. Select high quality, durable materials and make sure the display is assembled properly at the start of the show. Check the integrity of the display regularly.

The right trade show display means you're catching attention from across the room. A display that colorfully highlights the key point of your message lets attendees know it's worth their time to mosey over â€"  meaning you get what you paid for to attend the show.

Send your best people to work the booth. You don't want to spend all that time crafting the right trade show display just to have the speaker turn people away.

Executive Spotlight: Creating Goals and Mentoring Others Is What Drives Joe Cayero of Verizon Wireless

Joe Cayero wants to be remembered as a great leader and mentor in his work life, but also takes pride in making sure he is being “the world's bestest dad ever” to his two children, ages 5 and 8.  As the Executive Director of Sales and Marketing for Verizon Wireless, Cayero credits his family for giving him the foundation necessary to accomplish his many career goals.

“My parents moved to the USA without knowing how to speak English.  In fact, they came without even having a job lined up.  What they did have were strong moral values and an even stronger work ethic. It sounds hokey, but I too believe that if you treat people with dignity and respect, along with a strong conviction and committed to your beliefs, the odds are in your favor of meeting and realizing your goals with dreams can become a reality.” Cayero said.

Cayero said his dreams of working with technology probably began back when his parents first purchased a Tandy TRS 80 computer. Although they had very little money, his parents were committed to making sure Joe was exposed to innovation that could potentially become the basis of many future opportunities. They were right. Cayero's journey with Verizon began about 20 years ago with the shared vision that eventually, everything we do in life and business would be driven by a handset or a personal device. Today, he gets to see those dreams as his reality each day at Verizon.

“We are the market leader and shape the industry.  Our uncompromising standards are unparalleled within the wireless industry â€" and that's not lost on our customers.” Cayero said. “Our culture is second to none. I would challenge anyone to find a harder working, more customer -focused and innovative organization in any industry.  We have an internal CREDO which I have read literally hundreds of times.  Yet every time I read it, I can't help but feel proud of where and whom I work with.  It also reminds me of what is really important as it relates to our customers and our guiding principles here at Verizon Wireless.”

Cayero believes that Verizon has the right goals in mind for creating success as a company. One of the most important goals Cayero has is to make sure he is working to mentor and guide his fellow employees because they are the most “prized asset” at Verizon.

“To think that I inspired, mentored or coached someone and have positively impacted them either personally and/or professionally is a fulfilling experience.” Cayero said.

And whatever Cayero is doing at Verizon must be working, because the company recently reported double digit earnings growth in five of their last six quarters of business.

CRM Software: The Technology Behind the Tool

For those of us who use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications on a regular basis, they add immeasurable value to our productivity. We talk to so many people over the phone, email, text, Twitter and Facebook that it's impossible to remember who said what and when they said it, but CRM software helps us manage the communication. We take this modern software marvel for granted, but deep in the core of CRM, you can find some major innovation and stunning technology.

The Inner Core

At the core of a CRM system is a Database (DB). Think of a huge spreadsheet with items like name, address, city, state, zip, email and notes. Now take that concept and feed it steroids. Boom! You have a DB. The DB at the core of a CRM system stores information and connects data relationships.

When you know person A works for company B, and person C used to work for company B but now works at company D, the DB deep inside the CRM system keeps track of this information for you. However, a CRM solution's performance is only as good as the data it's given; you should always make sure you feed your system the best data possible.

Do you remember life without CRM systems? I do, but barely. I remember Rolodex card files with people's information written out and tiny handwritten notes covering the last thing you asked them. I remember people carrying around a “little black book.” I remember Franklin Covey®-branded PalmPilot™ devices helping to keep your contacts organized, and I remember very early incarnations of CRM systems that used one big text file instead of a DB. I can wax nostalgic about the way “things used to be,” but in reality, having a DB at the core of everything beats a paper Rolodex file any day of the week.

The Middle Layer

The DB is very good at its job, but not so smart when it comes to making decisions about the data entered. Another layer, the Business Logic Layer (BLL), handles this function. You can think of the BLL as a very smart butler, making decisions, running errands, and getting things done, all using the data in the DB.

As an example, let's say we have a business rule that says, “for every contact in my CRM system who has a birthday, send me an email reminding me to send them a birthday card when their birthday is a week away.”

First, you need to have the contact's email address in the CRM's DB, and the BLL needs to know what to do with that information. Luckily, you only have to tell the BLL to do something once, and it will do it over and over. So the BLL wakes up and says “Hey, John Smith's birthday is next week. I need to email my owner and tell him to send John Smith a card.”

A very simple example, yes, but it illustrates what the BLL does and how it works. You build business logic or business rules for your CRM system to follow, and it follows those rules. I have seen companies running almost completely on business rules, handling everything from bank drafts to commercial printing operations, so your BLL can get as complex as you want it to be.

The Top Layer

At the top layer of a CRM system lies the part you're most likely to recognize: the Presentation Layer (PL). The PL consists of the screens and fields you view and fill out. The PL is connected to the DB via the BLL. In this way, you can build in business rules for what needs to happen to the data before it makes it to the DB, and you can build in business rules for how the data is displayed as well.

The PL can make or break the usefulness of a CRM system. If it's too simple, the user won't get the most out of the system. If it's too complex, the user will go back to index cards (Don't laugh-I've seen it happen!). Software publishers have to strike a balance between functionality and simplicity, and a well-designed PL has two primary traits: One, the PL is not intimidating to first time users; and two, it doesn't get in the way of power users. Finance management specialist Mint.com offers an excellent example of a well-built presentation layer.

CRM systems follow classical three-tiered architecture. Data is stored in a database; the logic, rules, and alerts stay in the business logic layer; and the presentation layer faces the user. Developing an application this way means you can make changes to the individual layers without having to rewrite the complete system from scratch.

We may take effective CRM technology for granted, but taking some time to understand how the technology “under the hood” works can give us a new appreciation for the brainpower that goes into making it, as well as a deeper understanding of its power.

Tirrell Payton is a marketer and technologist with more than 15 years of experience in the digital world, and is the VP of Analytical Marketing at Egg Marketing and Communications. He is a former executive at Accenture, a global technology and consulting firm, where he helped companies transition from “industrial speed” to “web speed.” Prior to Accenture, he worked in the digital media division of Yahoo. Tirrell combines marketing sense with technology savvy with an unwavering eye on the bottom line. He is a regular contributor to ChamberofCommerce.com, Small Business Trends, and DIYMarketing as well as his own website, SEOTirrell. Follow him on Twitter @SEOTirrell.  

Twitter and Chase Team Up To Help Boost Small Business

Twitter has teamed up with Chase bank to offer one million free ad credits to small businesses in a bid to kick-start a new wave of small businesses utilizing social media and technology.

The partnership will see the four million small business customers of Chase in the US have a chance to access unique workshops that will show them how to better understand using Twitter to grow.

“About a year and a half ago, we launched @ChaseNews and @ChaseSupport, two handles that help us connect with customers and the public. We found that small business owners are very interested in information they can use to grow,” explains Donna Vieira, Senior Vice President, Head of Marketing and Product for Chase Business Banking. “We started talking to the Twitter folks and realized we share a priority in supporting small business.”

Meanwhile, the special advertising credits for Chase small business customers will be available in early Fall according to Twitter. “We're still fine tuning the program and will announce details via @ChaseSmallBiz as soon as they're ready. So following us is the best way to find out,” Donna says.

The advertising initiative is scheduled to be dealt in $100 at a time to each company, if they are to avail of the service.

The partners have held two workshops thus far for small businesses at Chase's headquarters in New York and California. “Attendees said they appreciated the informal interaction with Twitter and Chase leaders,” says Donna, as well as some entrepreneurs who shared real life stories about embracing social media as a key growth strategy. “Business owners come away with very actionable tips. We hope the ad credits will be an effective sweetener to help businesses.”

Chase has also launched the @ChaseSmallBiz account to offer companies an online portal to the latest information and engage with others, which has been well received.

“We've received great feedback, sometimes in the form of tweets and retweets and also from conversations with customers and prospects.  They like having many ways of interacting with Chase â€" in branches, with their relationship managers, on Chase Mobile and Chase.com,” Donna adds finally.

“Our goal is to help small businesses build better customer engagement,” explained Russ Laraway, Head of Small Business at Twitter, in a blog. “We'll be posting videos, infographics, white papers and a how-to guide developed by Chase and Twitter to help small businesses learn more about the value of Twitter.”

Twitter has launched many initiatives before to gather more small businesses together in using their social media power for marketing. In 2012, they opened up Twitter Ads for Small Business, which gave out $1 million in free ad credits to thousands of new companies.

8 Steps To Ensuring Your Customer Credit Card Transactions Are Secure and Compliant

Brought to you by AVG Technologies, the provider of Internet and mobile security, privacy and optimization to 150 million active users. There's nothing small about small business in our eyes. Get more information how AVG can help your small business stay protected â€" go to http://www.avg.com/us-en/internet-security-business .

 

Good businesses have good reputations. To ensure that you remain at the helm of a good business, you have to make sure that yours has the sterling reputation that keeps customers throwing cash at you. But what if they're not throwing cash? What if they're using plastic?

Credit card payments are a bit of a delicate matter, since not only is digital money being transferred, but there's also customer data that's going through those same wires. How can they be sure they trust you? As soon as a customer walks into the door, you're expected to provide services without nasty surprises. Because of the fact that so many businesses “do it right,” they don't bat an eyelash when they give you a debit or credit card. In reality, your customers probably don't even realize how much trust they really are putting into you by tossing a seemingly innocuous piece of plastic over the counter. So now it's up to you to keep their credit card transactions, and ultimately their personal information, secure.

In this day and age, you don't need to convince someone that a debit/credit card transaction is safe. This means that the only thing left to do is prevent giving customers any reason to believe their lives will be ruined. In fact, there are regulations in place that make sure you're doing  just that. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is such a regulation.

Here are a few ways you can ensure you remain compliant to financial transaction regulations:

• Minimize any handling and storing of customer data. Collect as little as possible and only what's necessary.
• Bank card information shouldn't be stored in your premises in the first place. Find a third-party payment processor and make sure that it is PCI DSS compliant. If it's not compliant, you cannot trust it to handle data correctly.
• When transferring customer information from your premises to an external server, use an encrypted connection. The encryption must run end-to-end. TLS or SSL (both used in “https://” addresses) will work fine.
• Keep all computers free of viruses and other malware. Get an anti-virus and keep it up to date. Run it at least once a day, ideally about half an hour before opening.

• Every application you use to process customer data must use encryption when storing it.
• Have a talk with your employees about the meaning of “need to know.” They must understand that all customer data is to be accessed and used only if there's no other way to complete a sale. All information is on a need-to-know basis, meaning that employees can only have access to relevant customer information if they must have it to complete their duties.
• Go to the PCI Security Standards Council's website and download fact sheets and quick reference material related to PCI DSS and PA-DSS. These are generally helpful and give you an idea of how you should maintain a pristine transaction infrastructure.

Would you bet your entire business' precious reputation that data thieves will not target it? I sincerely doubt that. If you don't feel confident about gambling, the above advice will lead you in the right direction to keeping your credit card transactions impeccably safe!

Employment Verification Systems: A Benefit to Employers and Immigration Reform OR A Violation of Privacy?

With the debate about illegal immigration raging on, people on both sides of the political spectrum are rushing to come up with solutions. While support for most ideas is divided on party lines, one solution that has seen bipartisan support is employment verification. In fact, 2012 presidential candidates Obama and Romney both support the use of an employment verification system, such as the government's E-Verify system.

E-Verify is a free government internet program. Employee information is compared to government records, and if there is a discrepancy, the employee must resolve the issue in order to be eligible for the job (or to continue working). E-Verify was originally created in 1997 and the website currently reports that over 409,000 employers have used the system.

Given the demand for employment verification, there has been a flood of other verification systems in recent years. While E-Verify is used solely to verify employment eligibility, these alternative employment verification systems can confirm hire and termination dates, title, detailed income information and more.

Leading the way in this category is Equifax, a company that offers employment verification services to employers through a program called The Work Number. Equifax holds a majority share of the verification industry, but smaller companies are also vying for a piece of the action. Some examples are Verify Job System, Pre Check, and EmpInfo.

EmpInfo is a cloud-based service that went live in May, 2013. Similar to Equifax, it offers services for both verifiers and employers.

• Employers can sign up for free, allowing EmpInfo to manage their verification requests. This means you don't have to waste time and money dealing with requests from banks, landlords, and other companies who need to verify employment information and wages for your current and past employees. Once you sign up, these requests are handled by EmpInfo.
• While Equifax charges a fee for this service, it is free for employers to sign up for EmpInfo. In fact, they have said that in the future they may even consider a revenue-sharing system.
• If you need to verify employment information for a new hire, you can pay a small fee to access this data on EmpInfo. You must be approved as a verifier first, and state your reason for needing the information. When you're approved, the data is available instantly, 24×7, even on mobile devices.

EmpInfo is a small business rival of Equifax, seeking to create a large employment verification database to make the verification process simple and fast. However, some argue that the Equifax and similar databases are a violation of privacy.

Critics say that detailed income information should remain private. Verification companies like Equifax have the power to sell your income history to any company that has a ‘valid' reason. Beyond future employers, landlords and banks who may offer you a loan, this includes a most loathed group â€" debt collectors.

What do you think? Are employment verification systems a good idea, one that will help with immigration and benefit small businesses? Or are they a threat to, or even a violation of, an individual's right to privacy?

We'd love to hear what you think. Add your comments below.

5 Ways to Lose Customer Data and Possibly Your Business

Most small businesses don't employ full-time I.T. staff, choosing instead to outsource technical support to outside firms and Cloud providers. This makes it even more crucial that business owners recognize and watch for leaks that could compromise customer financial information and private health data. Failing to do so could cost you the very business you've worked so hard to build.

Unitrends, a leader in backup solutions, recently revealed five common shortcuts I.T. departments take that can create customer data loss. As Unitrends points out, 94 percent of companies who suffer catastrophic data loss close their doors within two years. Forty-three percent never open their doors again. For those small businesses without full-time I.T. staff, it's imperative that small business owners learn how to protect themselves from business and customer data loss.

“Data protection is one area where you absolutely cannot cut corners,” Unitrends says. “Losing data â€" the lifeblood of an organization â€" can mean the death of a business.”

To safeguard customer data, Unitrends recognizes these common pitfalls and provides advice on how to avoid them.

• Don't ignore hardware failures. No backup method is foolproof. Unitrends points out that tapes or a NAS or SAN storage device have high failure rates. Make sure your systems are being backed up to a separate, secondary storage device. Unitrends recommends Disk-to-Disk (D2D) backup both because of its reliability and its location on a secondary storage set.
• Don't trust your workers to follow policies. All too often, security breaches are caused by employee carelessness, either through disregarding policies or simply making mistakes. Putting policies in place is only the first half of the battle. Unitrends tells businesses to use automation and retention to protect themselves against human error. Automation puts procedures in place to ensure policies are followed through, while retention makes sure data can be retrieved if data loss occurs.
• Don't underestimate cybercriminals. Firewalls and antivirus software are only a first step toward preventing surprise attacks. Chances are, everything you have in place, criminals have learned to hack. Unitrends advises using advanced security solutions, such as web monitoring software to ensure your employees are browsing safely, endpoint protection for employee-owned devices on the network, and a sandbox to fight targeted attacks.
• Don't play the odds on disasters. Surprisingly, even many large businesses still fail to keep an updated disaster recovery plan in place. Unitrends emphasizes the importance of a DR plan that is customized to your business, taking into account the people, systems, and infrastructure of your organization. A business should take even the most impossible disasters into consideration, as well as those that are more likely to happen.
• Do test DR plans. Implementing and regularly updating your DR plan is only part of the work. Your small business should regularly test your DR plan to ensure it remains relevant as your business grows. The more frequently a business's data changes, the more frequently that business's DR plan should be tested.

As your small business continues to shift operations to the Cloud, it's important to remember the business is ultimately responsible. By asking the right questions and carefully researching third party providers' offerings, a small business can protect itself without having an I.T. expert on site.

 

The Ten Step Checklist Every Business Needs For Better Security (Infographic)

In 2012, nearly 40% of small businesses fell victim to some sort of a security breach.  Even more staggering is the fact that nearly 60% of those will be forced to close their doors within six months of an attack. Fortunately small businesses can protect their business, customers, employees and assets for very little cost and without having to follow long, hard to understand processes.

Monica Hamilton, Director of Small Business Product and Solutions Marketing at McAfee, recently shared in their blog, a ten step checklist that all small businesses should have when it comes to keeping their business safe. It's ten simple steps, and they are outlined in the infographic below:

 

There you have it! Ten simple steps to follow, and revisit quarterly, to make sure you don't end up being one of the 40 percent who has a security breach in 2013 and beyond!

Tech Thursday (8/1): News from Infusionsoft, Newtek, Brother and Collaborate.com

It's Tech Thursday from Smallbiztechnology.com. Each week we take a quick look at business and technology news and updates for the small business community and share them with you in a quick and simple round-up. Enjoy!!

 

 

 

Infusionsoft Announces 2014 “Battle of the Apps” Contest

Developers Compete for “Kick Apps Champion” Title and $20,000 in Prizes

 

Infusionsoft, creator of the all-in-one sales and marketing software for small businesses, announces its 2014 Battle of the Apps contest. In its second year, the competition showcases Infusionsoft's growing community of developers and the apps or integrations they design to enhance the Infusionsoft user experience. The prizes include thousands of dollars in cash, free marketing to Infusionsoft's user base of 55,000 small businesses, stage time at Infusionsoft's annual user conference and other cool prizes. The deadline for submission is Jan. 17, 2014.

Applicants will be judged on: customer benefit, design, functionality, utility and innovation. Three finalists will be selected by a panel of Infusionsoft executives and outside industry experts to present their submissions at ICON14, one of the world's largest gatherings of small business owners and entrepreneurs. The attendees will then vote to help decide who will be named the Kick Apps Champion.

Learn more about the rules and submission deadlines here.

 

Small Businesses Underutilizing Social Media

 

The Small Business Authority Finds Independent Business Owners Are Lax About Security Concerns

 

NEW YORK,  â€" Newtek Business Services, NASDAQ: NEWT, The Small Business Authority ®, with a portfolio of over 100,000 business accounts, announced today the findings of its SB Authority Market Sentiment Survey, a monthly window into the concerns of independent business owners. Based on a poll of over 2,000 respondents, one of the key findings from the July survey is 57% of business have a Twitter or Facebook account.

The findings from last year compared to this year show 10% more business owners are using social media. Additionally, only 30% of those polled are concerned about Twitter or Facebook using their clients' data.

For more on the results of this survey, click here.

 

 

Brother Announces Å'Web Conferencing in a Box' for better SMB collaboration

 

OmniJoinTM Web Conferencing in a Box Combines High Quality Brother Hardware and Services at an Affordable Price

 

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. â€" Brother International Corporation, a leader in small business technology, has announced the launch of its OmniJoinTM Web
Conferencing in a Box (item #WCB400). The new offering bundles a HD webcam, compact USB speakerphone and four months of OmniJoin™ basic web conferencing service  in a comprehensive kit.

OmniJoin™ web conferencing has been available since June 2012 as a standalone service, facilitating meetings in the telehealth, education and general business markets. This new bundle marries this advanced cloud-based service with high quality Brother hardware, at an affordable price. The combination offers customers a powerful meeting experience:

• Feels like a ‘face-to-face' meeting with synched audio and video, HD image quality and high-fidelity sound
• Clearer communication with noise reduction, echo cancellation and multi-party VoIP
• Seamless post-meeting sharing through cloud recording and storage capabilities
• Peace of mind with secure, encrypted communication, to protect business assets whether meeting in the office or remotely

For more on this news release, click here.

 

Introducing Collaborate.com: The First Mobile Collaboration Platform for Distributed Business Teams

 

Mobile-First Approach Uniquely Addresses the Everyday Project Management Challenges Facing Today's Mobile Workforce

 

BOSTON, Mass. â€" Kibits Corp. has today introduced Collaborate.com, the first mobile collaboration platform to let distributed teams work together on the many fast-paced projects that dominate the workday. Available for iPhoneâ„¢, iPod Touchâ„¢, Androidâ„¢, and the Web, Collaborate.com provides a unified document sharing and task management environment for today's mobile workforce. With Collaborate.com business managers can acquire, configure, and deploy a complete team collaboration environment â€" including seamless integration with popular cloud services from Boxâ„¢, Dropboxâ„¢, Evernoteâ„¢, Google Driveâ„¢, and Apple iCloudâ„¢ â€" in just minutes.

Built for business teams that are not desk-bound, Collaborate.com has been adopted by a diverse range of businesses from automotive dealers to real-estate agents, from large animal veterinary clinics to personal security services, and by distributed teams within small businesses and large enterprises alike. Collaborate.com helps keep teams on the same page and accelerates decision making across many real-world use-cases, including field sales force management, field service issue resolution, warehouse inventory control, and more.

For more on this new product, click here.

 

 

Does Your Marketing Strategy Need Work? Try SMS.

Marketing has as much of a psychological component as it has a financial component. Throwing your money into marketing doesn't guarantee results, and I'm pretty sure you might have learned that the hard way by now. If you're reading this, you probably would like to know the latest tricks in the book on how to retain customers and get new ones.

Marketing is an ever-changing realm for businesses. It's a journey that doesn't end. That's one of the things that frustrates up-and-coming small businesses the most. Right now, one thing's certain: You have to get your customers' attention. What better way to do that than to use the most-used communication method of consumers in this day and age? I'm talking about SMS messages, of course! You'd be surprised how effective this method of marketing is.

According to a study done by Juniper Research, 97% of text messages are read by the owner of the receiving phone, and 90% of those messages are read within the first 4-6 minutes. This allows you to get the attention of your customers very quickly.

We had a chance to speak to Paul Hollowell, who runs LUX Tanning Salon in Dallas. He uses Mogreet to manage his marketing efforts. After starting with SMS marketing, he started diving into MMS.

“When I started the LUX tanning spa, I knew that MMS would be the ideal marketing medium for both client retention and acquisition,” he said. “As a small business, every marketing dollar counts, and MMS marketing allows me to track effectiveness and ROI.”

He set up a strategy in which he can acquire people who are already clients: “We always include a call-to-action to text-in a customized keyword in our print advertisements, for instance, to receive a promotional offer. The response not only allows us to track the success of that print advertisement, but, after a double opt-in, means that we'll be able to remarket to that client until they become a member,” said Hollowell.

Remarketing may seem like an aggressive marketing tactic, but it's effective at converting non-clients to regular clientele. The whole print advertisement idea is basically a concept in which a customer messages your business' number with a particular string of text, like “Send an SMS to 1-888-xxx-xxxx with the word ‘CASH' and get 50% off your next pizza at Random Pizza Palace!”

As you may have gathered, SMS/MMS messaging is lucrative for many reasons:

• It's fast. Messages immediately arrive in the recipient's phone.
• It's responsive. SMS/MMS messages are read by 97% of recipients, usually within the first 5 minutes.
• It draws participation. Letting customers know of current promotions might reel them in. You'll also get participation if you use Paul Hollowell's strategy of inviting customers to message you through your print advertisements.

SMS marketing isn't meant to replace any other method you use, but it will certainly take an active role in your company's strategy as soon as you can make it work for you. You can even use the SMS method to track progress in other marketing campaigns. Hollowell said, “We also use mobile marketing to track the success of other marketing methods, especially event sponsorships and print advertisements.” It's a versatile tool and definitely one of those things you don't want to miss out on!

How Wireless Technology Is Changing Our Lives and Businesses

We talk all the time on Smallbiztechnology.com about new tech gadgets and new software that will help you grow your business. But there is one technology that we seem to take for granted and often forget to talk about â€" wireless technology.

Admit it, when you are in your office and you send a quick print job to your wireless printer, you think how great the printer is…not how awesome it is that it's wireless! Wireless technology has revolutionized the way we live and the way we work and we've been years without extra cables and wires holding us down and tripping us up. To try to show just how much wireless has changed our lives, Canon U.S.A  has created an infographic,  utilizing analyst data and results from an independent survey, that illustrates a variety of interesting trends and predictions, including:

• How much do we actually rely on wireless
• How wireless relates to creativity and productivity
• Expectations for the mobile worldwide workforce

Check out the infographic below:

 

 

 

 

 

Black Hat 2013: Experts urge elliptical curve cryptography adoption

Crypto experts speaking at the Black Hat USA 2013 conference yesterday said there's a real -- though perhaps not overwhelming -- possibility that much of the Internet's encryption will soon become completely unraveled. This grand unveiling of secrets, they contended, could arrive within a handful of years. To avoid what they jokingly called a "Cyber Pompei," they strongly encouraged a switch from algorithms based on the Diffie-Hellman and RSA systems to elliptical curve cryptography.

All of a sudden RSA and Diffie-Hellman fall immediately all over the world.

Alex Stamos,
chief technology officer, Artemis Internet Inc.

The Diffie-Hellman scheme, first published in 1976, allows for secure exchange of secret keys -- a step critical for broad use of symmetric-key cryptography -- and is based on the computational difficulty of solving the discrete logarithm problem (DLP). The RSA algorithm in turn derives its secrecy from the difficulty of factoring the products of very large prime numbers.

Noting that many "surprises" to the general security community where crypto is concerned are presaged by papers appearing in academic journals several years prior, Alex Stamos, chief technology officer of San Francisco-based Artemis Internet Inc., pointed out that there have been important breakthroughs in solving the DLP problem over the course of this year. These breakthroughs come following roughly thirty years of relative stagnation, and the sudden increase in the speed at which DLP solutions can be processed has galvanized the academic cryptography community.

Tom Ritter, a researcher with San Francisco-based iSEC partners, explained there are four basic steps to solving a discrete log equation, and improvements have been made in all four. While solving this sort of problem is not the same as factoring the product of two large primes, there are enough similarities that it's reasonable to suppose a significant further breakthrough in DLP would lead to corresponding breakthroughs in the factoring problem. "When we improve one," Ritter said, "we tend to improve the other in short order."

"We are not saying this is definite," Stamos said. "What we're saying is that if you look at things right now, this is kind of like we're at the movie and the general has just run up the stairs into the Oval Office and has given Morgan Freeman the picture of an asteroid that has a 10% chance of hitting the Earth. This is the crypto equivalent of the asteroid hitting the earth."

"Our conclusion is that there's a small, but definite chance that RSA [and similar cryptosystems] will not be useful for security purposes within the next two to five years."

And it could happen fast. "One of these guys could be sitting at a whiteboard, have a breakthrough, throw it out over the crypto mailing list … and all of a sudden RSA and Diffie-Hellman fall immediately all over the world. The moment that breakthrough happens, there's very little implementation work that needs to be done."

The solution, the team said, is to jump ship and move to elliptical curve cryptography (ECC) before the actual fall of RSA and Diffie-Hellman. This is doable: ECC is implemented on most desktop and mobile platforms, the speakers noted. But many of the implementations are quirky and not well exercised, because in almost every case where ECC might be used in normal scenarios, the software defaults to use RSA. Furthermore, there are some patent issues that might create licensing issues for some ECC adopters: Stamos made a direct call to BlackBerry to "do the right thing for the world" and issued a statement that they would not make patent infringement claims against ECC implementers and adopters.

The NSA has blessed a collection of encryption algorithms called "Suite B" that includes several standards based on ECC. Notably missing are RSA and Diffie-Hellman, suggesting that perhaps the NSA sees the writing on the wall where those two are concerned. "A very interesting data point," Stamos said, "is that when it was time to sign .RU, the Russian government refused to allow RSA to be used."

After the session, both Ritter and Stamos acknowledged that it was at least possible that either the NSA or Russia had already made the breakthroughs this talk predicted. And there's a precedent for that, too. Though this wasn't mentioned in the session presentation, the Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol, while published by Diffie and Hellman in 1976, had previously and independently been discovered by researchers at Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the NSA. One of the British researchers, Clifford Cocks, also discovered the RSA algorithm prior to the RSA crypto team. GCHQ kept it all under wraps.

How Wireless Technology Is Changing Our Lives and Businesses

We talk all the time on Smallbiztechnology.com about new tech gadgets and new software that will help you grow your business. But there is one technology that we seem to take for granted and often forget to talk about - wireless technology.

Admit it, when you are in your office and you send a quick print job to your wireless printer, you think how great the printer is…not how awesome it is that it’s wireless! Wireless technology has revolutionized the way we live and the way we work and we’ve been years without extra cables and wires holding us down and tripping us up. To try to show just how much wireless has changed our lives, Canon U.S.A  has created an infographic,  utilizing analyst data and results from an independent survey, that illustrates a variety of interesting trends and predictions, including:

• How much do we actually rely on wireless
• How wireless relates to creativity and productivity
• Expectations for the mobile worldwide workforce

Check out the infographic below:

6 Keys To Developing A Successful Trade Show Display

More than any other element you prepare to attend a trade show, the display will make or break you. Attendees will decide with a quick glance at your trade show display whether they want to visit your booth or not. So, the design and wording the board displays directly affects whether anyone will hear your message.

1. Show and Tell Them Who You Are in a Single Glance

Indian Textiles Photo via Shutterstock

Displays can answer a question or pose one, but in order to attract attention you must give them some idea of what they stand to gain from visiting your booth.

Develop a clear, concise theme and allow this message to dictate the rest of the design.

2. Keep it Simple

Nikon Photo via Shutterstock

It’s tempting to want to give everyone your entire message on the display. But people milling about a crowded room with lots to see and do won’t take much time to read.

Instead, give them one or two key points that quickly and easily introduces your product, service, etc.

3. Boil Down Your Message to a Single Catch Phrase

Slovenia Tourism Photo via Shutterstock

Most new products and services are quite complex. It’s hard to easily define a complicated concept, mobile app, product or software package in a single sentence. Instead, create a message that gives the viewer one good reason to give you a minute of their time.

Make it catchy. You want your phrase to be something easy to recognize or recall later when they’re ready to make a purchase.

4. Don’t Get Too Technical

Hamamatsu Photo via Shutterstock

Even if you’re attending a tech trade show, never assume the people attending are interested or knowledgeable about highly technical things. Many companies send a manager or non-tech representative to attend these shows.

Craft your message so a layperson can understand and don’t build a display that intimidates non-techies.

5. Use Color and Images Wisely

Windows Photo via Shutterstock

You want color and images to attract, not to distract. Use no more than two or three contrasting colors to create an eye-catching scheme that isn’t too busy or dizzying. Any images you use must be clear and vivid.

It pays to have displays professionally printed, because you don’t want to look homemade in the midst of your savvy competitors.

6. Use Quality Materials and Construction

St Engineering Photo via Shutterstock

The worst thing that could happen during your trade show is for your well-designed trade show display to topple or crumple. Don’t use cheap materials to build the display. Select high quality, durable materials and make sure the display is assembled properly at the start of the show. Check the integrity of the display regularly.

The right trade show display means you’re catching attention from across the room. A display that colorfully highlights the key point of your message lets attendees know it’s worth their time to mosey over -  meaning you get what you paid for to attend the show.

Send your best people to work the booth. You don’t want to spend all that time crafting the right trade show display just to have the speaker turn people away.

How Wireless Technology Is Changing Our Lives and Businesses

We talk all the time on Smallbiztechnology.com about new tech gadgets and new software that will help you grow your business. But there is one technology that we seem to take for granted and often forget to talk about - wireless technology.

Admit it, when you are in your office and you send a quick print job to your wireless printer, you think how great the printer is…not how awesome it is that it’s wireless! Wireless technology has revolutionized the way we live and the way we work and we’ve been years without extra cables and wires holding us down and tripping us up. To try to show just how much wireless has changed our lives, Canon U.S.A  has created an infographic,  utilizing analyst data and results from an independent survey, that illustrates a variety of interesting trends and predictions, including:

• How much do we actually rely on wireless
• How wireless relates to creativity and productivity
• Expectations for the mobile worldwide workforce

Check out the infographic below:

Raghu Raghavan of Act-On: Now is the Time to Dive Into Marketing Automation

There has been a great deal of activity in the CRM (customer relationship management) industry of late when it comes to marketing automation. Just over the past couple months Salesfoce.com bought Exact Target (who had not long before acquired Pardot), Marketo had a very successful IPO and Adobe announced their intent to purchase Neolane. But most of these moves had the big enterprise in mind, so what does this mean to small businesses and their marketing automation needs?

Raghu Raghavan, CEO of marketing automation platform provider Act-On, joins Brent Leary for a discussion on what the impact of these moves means, if anything, to small businesses. He shares his take on how the proliferation of channels is impacting marketing for small businesses and how marketing automation can help improve their likelihood for marketing success at a time of rapid change.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can provide us with a little bit of your background?

Raghu Raghavan: My interest in this whole space probably started some 12 to 13 years ago. I was one of the two founders of Responsys, which back then was one of first SaaS companies before the word SaaS was even being used.

We built a very nice, multitalented platform for doing email marketing back in the day. One of the things that struck me all along was that email was always going to become a part of a much bigger picture with respect to marketers.

When I started Act-On, there was a lot of interest in a more robust view of marketing. I think Eloqua for ten years had been talking about marketing automation and what it would mean. I think they educated the market.

When Marketo came into the market they basically challenged a lot of the assumptions. Marketing automation always was along the lines of “SAP meets marketing.” It was like a big ERP implementation, nine months to set up, and Marketo came in and
challenged that. They came with a fantastic approach to the market and we wanted to do some of those things.

When we started Act-On, Salesforce was dominant. We were working on our platform to be used everywhere. Marketing automation was starting to be talked about more widely, so it was a fantastic time to enter into a new market that was barely penetrated. Act-On is a company that has the founding engineering from Responsys, it has a lot of deep knowledge about SaaS. We came in, we saw the all of the things that had not been done right in this space, and I think it allowed us to build a company in an whole new way to attack what we saw in the monsters market.

Small Business Trends: How has the proliferation of all of these different channels, formats and social networks brought on the need for marketing automation?

Raghu Raghavan: I think in a huge way. That is a great question. Because I think that is one of the driving factors for marketing automation that no one really talks much about. You know a little bit of history, it helps to be around this space for a long time. If you look at companies like Unica, part of the new Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) group at IBM, and Aprimo, old line companies - I shouldn’t say old line, they are not that old, but they are now old line companies. They actually set out to solve a problem that big companies had, which was multiple channels.

For big companies the channels were email, the Web, dealer networks - it was all of their other physical touch points, re-sellers and “what-have-you.“ Well if you look at companies now, if you look at all of these channels it is sort of like that. So the technology for multi-channel behavior management had been done in a different domain.

What happens now is that there is a need to engineer all of this down to a format where a small company, with a relatively small number of employees in marketing can actually make sense of all of this. Every company we talk to tries everything. They try to tweet; they create a Facebook Page; they blog; they do things on the website. The interesting thing with marketing now is to say, ‘What should I be doing? Am I doing enough, because there is no universal answer of what is the best thing for anybody?’

Marketing automation has come along and created a forum where there is a lot of things you can do pretty quickly, lots of power tools. So now the real question is, ‘How do you use them wisely?”

The great thing about marketing automation is it takes the focus away from the individual tools and shifts the focus towards what the market is trying to achieve.

Small Business Trends: Are you seeing main stream traditional businesses starting to jump in here?

Raghu Raghavan: Yess. I think that you raised the question of affordability. It is interesting because the two companies that basically challenge the status quo on that were Pardot and us. Pardot and Act-On basically went and said, ‘Look, you can do sophisticated things without spending a lot of money.’

What is starting to happen here in terms of visiting the mainstream, is you know historically, if you look at Eloqua and if you looked at Marketo, guys who have been in this market for a while, the bulk of their customers were high tech companies, and high tech companies tend to be early adopters of technology. But in 2012 and certainly in 2013, this technology is widely adopted. We have customers in every imaginable industry, segment and nook that you can imagine. We have a customer that sells hazardous material, disposal equipment, gloves and drums and radioactive suits and what-have-you.

Now, you tend to not think of these as companies that traditionally adopt this technology. But with the advent of all of these channels, people used their Facebook at home, and started to see ways in which they could use Facebook for work. Or the way people tweet and how they can use this for work.

This technology has become completely consumerized. It is no longer in the domain of high tech users. It is consumerized in consumers.

Small Business Trends: Everybody has been talking about Salesforce acquiring ExactTarget. Then, just a couple of weeks after that, a company that hadn’t been getting a lot of attention when it comes to marketing automation, was Adobe. They purchased a company called Neolane. With these things, is it going to even up the ante, in terms of everybody now knowing they need marketing automation?

Raghu Raghavan: I probably have a contrarian view to this and might even be controversial. What is happening here is the evolution of biology of companies that have run the gamut of what they can do, basically getting bought. I mean ExactTarget technology is not pushing the limit of anything, this is a done deal. It is old stuff. Salesforce buying them clears the field for newer companies to come in and do newer and more exciting things.

The thing that becomes interesting is people read the stuff in the press and they become even more desirous of trying these things. If they search ‘market automation’ they will find lots of dynamic companies that have stuff they can use right away.

Yes definitely, we are seeing an uptake in interest. Certainly, the companies that want to acquire these technologies already are interested in all of the companies in this space. People like Marketo, Hubspot and us are all the topic of conversation. But every day business has less to do with this and more to do to with the fact that there are lots of companies out there that need this stuff, don’t have the stuff and don’t read the trade press. This 5% number that I quoted is actually very true. If you look at the companies that are ready for marketing automation in North America alone, the penetration is minuscule.

In every state of engagement with a customer, our technology is relevant. It is engaging with customers that you don’t know yet; anonymous visitors to your website. Just because they are anonymous doesn’t mean you can’t start to track their behavior and give them interesting stuff to look at.

The application of marketing to help sales reps close the business faster, or the application of marketing to take an existing customer and grow them, and upsell them. The ability to use marketing to have your reference customers take action on your behalf by awarding them - this entire gamut of customer engagements is where we expect to be.

Small Business Trends: Where can people go to learn more?

Raghu Raghavan: Come to our website, Act-On.com.

This interview on marketing automation is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication.  

Does Your Marketing Strategy Need Work? Try SMS.

Marketing has as much of a psychological component as it has a financial component. Throwing your money into marketing doesn’t guarantee results, and I’m pretty sure you might have learned that the hard way by now. If you’re reading this, you probably would like to know the latest tricks in the book on how to retain customers and get new ones.

Marketing is an ever-changing realm for businesses. It’s a journey that doesn’t end. That’s one of the things that frustrates up-and-coming small businesses the most. Right now, one thing’s certain: You have to get your customers’ attention. What better way to do that than to use the most-used communication method of consumers in this day and age? I’m talking about SMS messages, of course! You’d be surprised how effective this method of marketing is.

According to a study done by Juniper Research, 97% of text messages are read by the owner of the receiving phone, and 90% of those messages are read within the first 4-6 minutes. This allows you to get the attention of your customers very quickly.

We had a chance to speak to Paul Hollowell, who runs LUX Tanning Salon in Dallas. He uses Mogreet to manage his marketing efforts. After starting with SMS marketing, he started diving into MMS.

“When I started the LUX tanning spa, I knew that MMS would be the ideal marketing medium for both client retention and acquisition,” he said. “As a small business, every marketing dollar counts, and MMS marketing allows me to track effectiveness and ROI.”

He set up a strategy in which he can acquire people who are already clients: “We always include a call-to-action to text-in a customized keyword in our print advertisements, for instance, to receive a promotional offer. The response not only allows us to track the success of that print advertisement, but, after a double opt-in, means that we’ll be able to remarket to that client until they become a member,” said Hollowell.

Remarketing may seem like an aggressive marketing tactic, but it’s effective at converting non-clients to regular clientele. The whole print advertisement idea is basically a concept in which a customer messages your business’ number with a particular string of text, like “Send an SMS to 1-888-xxx-xxxx with the word ‘CASH’ and get 50% off your next pizza at Random Pizza Palace!”

As you may have gathered, SMS/MMS messaging is lucrative for many reasons:

• It’s fast. Messages immediately arrive in the recipient’s phone.
• It’s responsive. SMS/MMS messages are read by 97% of recipients, usually within the first 5 minutes.
• It draws participation. Letting customers know of current promotions might reel them in. You’ll also get participation if you use Paul Hollowell’s strategy of inviting customers to message you through your print advertisements.

SMS marketing isn’t meant to replace any other method you use, but it will certainly take an active role in your company’s strategy as soon as you can make it work for you. You can even use the SMS method to track progress in other marketing campaigns. Hallowell said, “We also use mobile marketing to track the success of other marketing methods, especially event sponsorships and print advertisements.” It’s a versatile tool and definitely one of those things you don’t want to miss out on!

Raghu Raghavan of Act-On: Now is the Time to Dive Into Marketing Automation

There has been a great deal of activity in the CRM (customer relationship management) industry of late when it comes to marketing automation. Just over the past couple months Salesfoce.com bought Exact Target (who had not long before acquired Pardot), Marketo had a very successful IPO and Adobe announced their intent to purchase Neolane. But most of these moves had the big enterprise in mind, so what does this mean to small businesses and their marketing automation needs?

Raghu Raghavan, CEO of marketing automation platform provider Act-On, joins Brent Leary for a discussion on what the impact of these moves means, if anything, to small businesses. He shares his take on how the proliferation of channels is impacting marketing for small businesses and how marketing automation can help improve their likelihood for marketing success at a time of rapid change.

* * * * *

Small Business Trends: Can provide us with a little bit of your background?

Raghu Raghavan: My interest in this whole space probably started some 12 to 13 years ago. I was one of the two founders of Responsys, which back then was one of first SaaS companies before the word SaaS was even being used.

We built a very nice, multitalented platform for doing email marketing back in the day. One of the things that struck me all along was that email was always going to become a part of a much bigger picture with respect to marketers.

When I started Act-On, there was a lot of interest in a more robust view of marketing. I think Eloqua for ten years had been talking about marketing automation and what it would mean. I think they educated the market.

When Marketo came into the market they basically challenged a lot of the assumptions. Marketing automation always was along the lines of “SAP meets marketing.” It was like a big ERP implementation, nine months to set up, and Marketo came in and
challenged that. They came with a fantastic approach to the market and we wanted to do some of those things.

When we started Act-On, Salesforce was dominant. We were working on our platform to be used everywhere. Marketing automation was starting to be talked about more widely, so it was a fantastic time to enter into a new market that was barely penetrated. Act-On is a company that has the founding engineering from Responsys, it has a lot of deep knowledge about SaaS. We came in, we saw the all of the things that had not been done right in this space, and I think it allowed us to build a company in an whole new way to attack what we saw in the monsters market.

Small Business Trends: How has the proliferation of all of these different channels, formats and social networks brought on the need for marketing automation?

Raghu Raghavan: I think in a huge way. That is a great question. Because I think that is one of the driving factors for marketing automation that no one really talks much about. You know a little bit of history, it helps to be around this space for a long time. If you look at companies like Unica, part of the new Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) group at IBM, and Aprimo, old line companies - I shouldn’t say old line, they are not that old, but they are now old line companies. They actually set out to solve a problem that big companies had, which was multiple channels.

For big companies the channels were email, the Web, dealer networks - it was all of their other physical touch points, re-sellers and “what-have-you.“ Well if you look at companies now, if you look at all of these channels it is sort of like that. So the technology for multi-channel behavior management had been done in a different domain.

What happens now is that there is a need to engineer all of this down to a format where a small company, with a relatively small number of employees in marketing can actually make sense of all of this. Every company we talk to tries everything. They try to tweet; they create a Facebook Page; they blog; they do things on the website. The interesting thing with marketing now is to say, ‘What should I be doing? Am I doing enough, because there is no universal answer of what is the best thing for anybody?’

Marketing automation has come along and created a forum where there is a lot of things you can do pretty quickly, lots of power tools. So now the real question is, ‘How do you use them wisely?”

The great thing about marketing automation is it takes the focus away from the individual tools and shifts the focus towards what the market is trying to achieve.

Small Business Trends: Are you seeing main stream traditional businesses starting to jump in here?

Raghu Raghavan: Yess. I think that you raised the question of affordability. It is interesting because the two companies that basically challenge the status quo on that were Pardot and us. Pardot and Act-On basically went and said, ‘Look, you can do sophisticated things without spending a lot of money.’

What is starting to happen here in terms of visiting the mainstream, is you know historically, if you look at Eloqua and if you looked at Marketo, guys who have been in this market for a while, the bulk of their customers were high tech companies, and high tech companies tend to be early adopters of technology. But in 2012 and certainly in 2013, this technology is widely adopted. We have customers in every imaginable industry, segment and nook that you can imagine. We have a customer that sells hazardous material, disposal equipment, gloves and drums and radioactive suits and what-have-you.

Now, you tend to not think of these as companies that traditionally adopt this technology. But with the advent of all of these channels, people used their Facebook at home, and started to see ways in which they could use Facebook for work. Or the way people tweet and how they can use this for work.

This technology has become completely consumerized. It is no longer in the domain of high tech users. It is consumerized in consumers.

Small Business Trends: Everybody has been talking about Salesforce acquiring ExactTarget. Then, just a couple of weeks after that, a company that hadn’t been getting a lot of attention when it comes to marketing automation, was Adobe. They purchased a company called Neolane. With these things, is it going to even up the ante, in terms of everybody now knowing they need marketing automation?

Raghu Raghavan: I probably have a contrarian view to this and might even be controversial. What is happening here is the evolution of biology of companies that have run the gamut of what they can do, basically getting bought. I mean ExactTarget technology is not pushing the limit of anything, this is a done deal. It is old stuff. Salesforce buying them clears the field for newer companies to come in and do newer and more exciting things.

The thing that becomes interesting is people read the stuff in the press and they become even more desirous of trying these things. If they search ‘market automation’ they will find lots of dynamic companies that have stuff they can use right away.

Yes definitely, we are seeing an uptake in interest. Certainly, the companies that want to acquire these technologies already are interested in all of the companies in this space. People like Marketo, Hubspot and us are all the topic of conversation. But every day business has less to do with this and more to do to with the fact that there are lots of companies out there that need this stuff, don’t have the stuff and don’t read the trade press. This 5% number that I quoted is actually very true. If you look at the companies that are ready for marketing automation in North America alone, the penetration is minuscule.

In every state of engagement with a customer, our technology is relevant. It is engaging with customers that you don’t know yet; anonymous visitors to your website. Just because they are anonymous doesn’t mean you can’t start to track their behavior and give them interesting stuff to look at.

The application of marketing to help sales reps close the business faster, or the application of marketing to take an existing customer and grow them, and upsell them. The ability to use marketing to have your reference customers take action on your behalf by awarding them - this entire gamut of customer engagements is where we expect to be.

Small Business Trends: Where can people go to learn more?

Raghu Raghavan: Come to our website, Act-On.com.

This interview on marketing automation is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication.