As 2012 ends and business leaders look to 2013, advertisers may want to keep an eye on the supposed newsletter trends industry insiders believe will arise. 
Have you ever spent a lot of money on marketing your business, but didn’t create a long-term plan to get people into your sales funnel? I recently came across a lot of small businesses that had done just that. I spent a day walking around an expo that was filled with fantastic businesses, many of which had amazing booths. I learned about their businesses and quietly assessed their marketing. I have been to numerous expos and one thing that I see over and over again is a lack of follow-up. The fishbowl is there for cards to be entered into a drawing, the email newsletter sign-up list is laying on the table – just give your email address in return for a promo freebie and wait for your inbox to be filled with e-newsletters. But something gets in the way because there is little to no follow-up after the event. Most often it’s a half-hearted attempt at communication. It sounds crazy that a business would invest time and money – often a lot of it, and not make the effort to extend the life of the asset and relationship that they created. It has been a couple of weeks now …
Do you ever think about what the person you are talking to is paying attention to when you speak? Maybe not, unless the person you are talking to is a cosmetic dentist and you have crooked teeth. A cosmetic dentist can’t help but look at your teeth as you talk, a writer looks at grammar errors amongst all the content they read, and a good web designer can tell you exactly how many pixels off alignment a graphic is. What most people don’t pay attention to can be a major attraction to others. I am highly attuned to mobile use and it attracts me everywhere I go. We’ve had Facebook for 6 years and the iPhone for five. When it comes to this new era in the digital age, it is apparent that a lot of small businesses are still struggling with how to do social media. It’s going to be a long time until the majority of small businesses are going to get a good handle on social, and that is mostly because it takes time – a very limited resource for many Mom and Pops across the country, and many small businesses aren’t sure if they are even …
Successful small business owners are the incubators for a lot of great ideas that eventually find their way into the mainstream of business practices around the globe. That’s part of the reason why it’s so interesting to be around entrepreneurs. A good idea isn’t filtered through a management hierarchy, budgeting process, implementation and design team, project managers, etc. If an idea is right for the business, it gets done. A small business owner can tell salespeople peddling something they don’t need that they aren’t interested with a quickness, but when a good idea comes along can say, just as fast, “Okay, when can you get started?” Successful small business owners can and do constantly improve their business practices. A great example of this is Larry, owner of a small town main street music store. Larry is a typical non-mobile optimized business owner. Not a smartphone user (yes, they still exist), but very aware that a lot of people coming into his store are holding smartphones as they browse. The point of mobile marketing is learning better ways to do things you thought you knew how to do perfectly well. I recently saw a blog post about the proper way to …
The fight for mobile Internet dominance is continuously happening in both the technological and legal ring. The latest round and victory is Apple’s case against Samsung in a civil suit alleging patent infringement, costing Samsung over $1 billion dollars. There is so much at stake that the mobile Goliaths are spending ginormous amounts of money to fight off the competition in device production. Apple and Samsung, as well as Google (Motorola), are fighting it out in this patent war because that is where the battle of the Internet will be won. There is little profitability and innovation in desktop and laptop manufacturing. Only Apple makes money consistently in these areas. There is little incentive for manufacturers to fight over patents for personal computers. Manufacturers will continue to innovate and compete primarily in the mobile sphere – lighter, faster devices to help us work and play harder. All of the innovation, all of the new product launches, all of your customers – they are going to be mobile. When I speak with small business owners, it is sometimes apparent that the thought of learning yet another way to market their business seems overwhelming. We have had Facebook since 2006 and still, …
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