This week, I spoke to a lot of downtown redevelopment types at the National Main Streets Conference in Oklahoma City. We talked about how to tell your story in this modern world (whether community, business district or small business). Social media plays a big part in that. But it’s not the central element…

In my presentation, I pointed out that to tell your story well, you must play by four basic rules. Without repeating my speech here, I do want to share the first rule and most important rule with you, because strategically, everything else will crumble if this rule isn’t followed:

Rule #1: You Must Have a Strong Home Base for Your Business or Community

That home base should most likely be your web site. In nearly all marketing models, it works for the web site to be the epicenter of the marketing universe. (It doesn’t HAVE to be that way, and I’m more than open to creative thinking on this subject depending on goals and budgets. But in most cases, it works for it to be the web site.)

Is your web site working as the epicenter? Are all roads leading back to your domain name…to your web site?

How can you make your HOMEBASE stronger?

1. Make sure it’s easy and quick to update. If you can’t update your own web site, you’ve got a big problem in today’s fast paced world. We love the WordPress platform because it takes me moments to make major updates to my own web site. It’s as simple as sending an e-mail.

2. If it’s easy to update…are you updating it? Are you adding new and interesting photos, educational content, employee and owner profiles, product and vendor information, demonstration videos and how-to lists… Are you making your web site and interesting and valuable resource for your customers and prospects?

3. Is your domain name appearing everywhere, even if your logo can’t? This includes audio communications (like radio, word of mouth, etc.), store signage (yes, including the front door and front window of your store), shopping bags (you never can tell where those bags will go), t-shirts, postcards, advertisements of every sort and at every opportunity.

4. Are you actively seeking to create traffic TO your web site through interesting posts on social media, links from vendor or organizational web sites, etc.? Remember that valuable content you created? Now it’s time to tell folks about it through Facebook wall posts, encouraging folks to share that information on Facebook, Facebook advertising, Twitter posts, LinkedIn posts, e-mail marketing and many more new media traffic drivers.

5. How does your site appear on search engine results? Does it even appear at all? Keep an eye on this, and ask your web guy for help if necessary.

6. Do you have Google Analytics and other robust web site analytics packages installed on your web site that are set to send you daily or weekly reports? Are those reports summarizing how much web traffic you are getting and from where (both geographically and by keyword topics)? Do you know who and why your customers are visiting your web site (keywords, inbound links, etc.)? Are they finding what they’re looking for – and so much more (bounce rate, number of actions per visit, time per visit). You might be surprised at what you learn, but you certainly need to know. And you need to correct course with the web site if it’s not delivering the desired results.

P.S. Interestingly enough, on my trip home, I was catching up on some reading and found that Chris Brogan had an interesting post on this same subject. His post has cool screen shots demonstrating how confusing it can be to customers if you do NOT have a strong home base. I hope you’ll enjoy his post as well.

Also, if you’re also just home from the National Main Streets Conference, you might enjoy our conference wrap-up of conference tweeters to follow and other good resources.

What say you? What results is your home base providing for your business?

Last week on ResultsRevTV, our small business owner guest of the week was Luke Abney, owner of The Rogue, a men’s clothier, and Forty Four Fifty, a women’s clothing boutique. Luke bought The Rogue making him a second generation owner of a landmark local business, and he’s started Forty Four Fifty entirely from scratch, making him the owner of a successful start-up. He shared a wealth of experience with us including how to succeed in changing times, how to manage employees, how to manage inventory and the keys to customer service and suggestions.

Following are some of the topics we discussed with Luke with paraphrased excerpts of the interview posted below. You can watch the full interview (approx. 30 minutes) here. And, as always, please feel free to leave behind YOUR questions or comments to add to the discussion!

Marianna: What changes did you make – or NOT make – when you bought The Rogue, a Jackson establishment for more than 40 years?

Luke: We bought the store five years ago. I remember going in The Rogue with my father and grandfather. I have always been interested in the store and took the chance to purchase it. We remodeled the store when we bought it, added more windows.

The question was how do you take the store and make it your own w/out hurting it? How do you evolve it from what it is to what it should be to keep up in the market? The challenge was to open up the store and make the display more interesting. There are a lot of people in the store who love it. The majority of our staff have been there at least 10, if not 25 years. In the store, we have at least 200 years of experience including the ladies doing the alterations. The people are as important as the products here.

Marianna: How do you manage your inventory and control your cash flow in this economy?

Luke: In our business, the most important metric to monitor our business health is “turn.” Men’s inventory needs “turn” between 2-3 times per year. Back in Mr. Neville’s time, it was once a year, so there would be stacks of clothing forever. He would sell it all down, and whatever didn’t sell, Mr. Neville would have his imfamous tent sale and sell it all. Back then, the banks were a little friendlier to the businesses too. Now, if you don’t sell it in 30 days, you don’t buy it to begin with. We have a faster turn over which allows us to always keep our inventory fresh and new. It’s also easier to order items quickly now than it used to be. We can order something for a customer if we don’t have it in the store.

Managing inventory as we do now has allowed us to open up cash flow, make our people the center of our business, and create a more customer friendly shopping environment. Now business owners need to turn inventory faster, but the advantage is that it keeps your guy coming back into the store. Before, if you bought all your clothes for the year in February, and you didn’t like what was in the store, you didn’t come back into the store until June or even September. Now, they can come in regularly and see something new. We can get back into things – basics – very quickly now, so we don’t have to hold those things in inventory at the same volume as in the past. But there are always some fashion pieces that we can’t get again. So, in those cases, we have to call our customers and invite them to come in because this is their one shot to get that particular item. And that’s a marketing advantage, too.

Marianna: How do your businesses execute customer service and maintain customer loyalty?

First of all, we want our people to be the center of store, who have the relationships in the community – they are the key to our success. At the end of the day, customer loyalty still comes down to that personal touch, to the handshake.

It helps to know the customer’s name; it helps to know what’s in the wardrobe. We pick up the phone and call them when alterations are ready or special orders have arrived. People want to wear nice things of good quality. We invite them to come see us for something that feels good and makes them feel better about themselves. We think we can make people feel better about their day, whether it’s a presentation, a meeting, a family reunion or a 20-year high school reunion.

Delivering those clothes but at the same time, they want to come see Amsey or David Cruse or Kevin or Warren or Mary or myself and get those clothes that they know will be with them for a long time.

If we dress a customer for an event we call them after the event to find out how it went. We write thank you notes for business. We do a lot of e-mails, phone calls, Facebook, anything we can do to stay in touch and in front of our customers to take care of them better.

Marianna: In a tightening economy, folks are spending less. How do you grow your bottom line even in an economy where men are wearing fewer suits and buying less expensive clothes? (Hint: the power of SUGGESTION)

There has been an evolution in the dress of a gentleman. We are selling more sportswear. To make up for the economic tightening, we are selling more ties, belts, pocket squares. We show customers what they can do, and suggest all options for them. If they say no, we find out why. Maybe if we listen to the “why,” we can suggest different colors and give them more options that they love and will buy.

With the staff, constant communication is key to sales. We look at what they sell and say, “Well, you sold shoes, but did you show them a belt?” What else could you have shown them?

Sometimes when you look at the big picture of sales it’s too overwhelming. You have to break it down day by day and do the backwards math and sometimes just a pair of socks with each sale is the difference in a bad month and a good month. That’s a much more doable vision for employees – and for me as an owner.

Marianna: How did you open a wildly successful, high-end women’s clothing boutique in the midst of the recession? (Forty Four Fifty has been open for 18 months, and is a wildly successful venture.)

We knew he had to get in touch with clients. We email our customers; we give them all of our contact info. Alison (Luke’s wife) puts her cell phone number on her card.

Marianna: How has technology like Facebook helped your business? What have been the barriers to using social media in your business?

There was a time when we were advertising in the paper every week. Now we are using Facebook and Twitter – anything to keep us in front of customers.

The biggest thing I can do to get more customers is show them new merchandise. When it comes in we take pictures and put them on Facebook and the website. If we put up pictures we will be selling it that day.

The more we can educate customers about clothing and our products, the better the chance that they are a customer for life.

Our greatest barrier to using these new media tools has been the culture of the store. It has been around for years and a lot of the clientele is older and not into Facebook and Twitter. Because of that we phone them as well as tweet, and we talk to them in the store as well as just on Facebook.

Marianna: What do you do to keep employees on track and generally manage your retail employees?

Most of our staff have been there for a long time so they know what it takes. When I have to talk to them about business I have to find the positive way to talk to them – Am I doing everything to help them? How can I help them help themselves and the business?

The Rogue has a culture of its own. When I bought the business, I had to learn their culture, so I could understand how the business and the staff work. Sometimes I have to show them how to do things differently in order to get better results.

Recently, after spending the weekend talking to other business owners, social media folks and marketing leaders in different industries, I visited a client’s restaurant for a very late lunch on Monday. It was perfect timing. As it happened, we ran into the bakery manager who was testing out some new treats, and she let us taste a new chocolate concoction. The dessert she was letting the staff (and lucky bystanders and restaurant consultants) taste was great, and the experience of testing something as it was created and developed was amazing–especially something for the bakery case!

But even better than the dessert was the reminder of a concept businesses often forget to use. To be successful, we must LEVERAGE.

What does LEVERAGING mean?

One can be over-leveraged financially, and that’s not a good thing. But in this case, I’m referring to “leverage” as the ability to move faster or grow more quickly or make sales more efficiently by spending in the currency you have. In every business there is something – whether intellectual property, food, room nights, beverages, event tickets, etc. – that are worth more outside of your business than within.

Leveraging Food Costs in the Restaurant Biz

For a restaurant, that means spending in food whenever possible. Instead of spending $1400 for a magazine ad where ROI is difficult to measure, why not spend $100 in food costs to reach a specific target customer group? Not only do you spend less in overall dollars, but you may be simply using food costs that would have been wasted anyway since food waste is a very real portion of any restaurant’s overall budget.

With that in mind, what if you took excess cookie samples to the law office around the corner or gave away one free pastry tray a week to a deserving office in your neighborhood. What if you gave away a free appetizer through a daily drawing or simply offered dessert samples throughout the lunch and dinner hours to existing guests as leverage to make the upsell?

Recently, one of our restaurant clients ran a last-second Twitter promotion targeting college students. To help spread the word quickly, we offered a free pizza for the first person to re-tweet the message. It turned out that two tweets basically tied due to a technological blip, so we gave a way two free pizzas instead. Let’s assume that the pizzas hold about $4 in actual food costs (not counting wait staff, business overhead, etc. when considered as a menu item). In this case, the folks who won the free pizzas brought in groups of 6 and 12 respectively leading to a direct ROI of more than $200 in additional sales on our $8 in leveraged food costs. This doesn’t even count the other sales they helped generate through their social media participation.

Other Ways to Leverage In Business

Business owners can leverage any asset that is of more value outside the business than within. This means your time, expertise, food costs, employees time and skills, etc. are all fair game. I believe that, as business owners, one of the most critical things we can do is to leverage our time. As an example, I use social media to convert more clients and maintain a much larger network reach than I could have imagined five years ago before Facebook and Twitter.

Marianna and I leverage our time to create opportunity for you. An airplane ride like this one (I am currently flying back from Florida) is filled with getting blogs written, e-mails returned and photos cropped, edited and tagged – tasks that don’t require the Internet. It’s amazing the things we can do when we steal time from a wasted time category and turn it into profitable activity.

It’s great how the little moments that were formerly wasted, can be used profitably, but that also means that as business owners, we must make a real point to relax and turn off sometimes. Some of you know that I can’t seem to free myself from my cell phone at any given time, but we all know there’s a time for disconnecting and turning it all off.

I took a little vacation this month, where you weren’t able to get me by phone, email, Facebook, or Twitter…  I leveraged that time to recharge, stop thinking about old work, spend time with my family, clear my brain, eat some good food, and return–and turn back on!–ready to find opportunities for new work!

How can you use the concept of “leveraging” to improve your business today?

Photo Credit: shortlake

To paraphrase Mark Twain, “The rumor of [e-mail marketing's] death has been greatly exaggerated.” E-mail marketing is NOT dead.

Consider your toolbox. You know, the old fashioned handyman tools that you keep around in case a picture needs to be hung or the sink clogs or a drawer knob gets loose. The hammer, the screwdriver, the wrench. Tools. Tools that work, right?

Then, let’s assume that you somehow acquire a fancy new cordless drill. The drill is useful, and it produces tremendous results. But sometimes…don’t you find yourself just needing a good old fashioned flat-head screw driver?

So, sure, there are some fancy new tools that are useful and produce amazing results. Tools like Facebook and Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, ratings and review sites of all sorts. But sometimes, don’t you just need to communicate with your customers? Don’t you want to just know what they think or let them know what’s up with you? It’s like getting that weekly phone call from your sister in Boise… it’s that consistent, reliable tool that keeps you connected.

That’s e-mail for you. E-mail provides the following primary benefits for your restaurant, hotel, or downtown district – or for anyone else who wants to be a savvy business owner:

1. There is no gatekeeper with e-mail. Back in “the day” of traditional media and cold calls, the gatekeeper screened calls, sorted the mail, etc. In today’s world, all of this is true PLUS I know plenty of executives who don’t check their own Facebook 100% of the time. But most still check their e-mail in some form or fashion. This rang true to me last week when we were visiting with a hotel executive whose staff checks her personal Facebook a lot of the time – but she gets her e-mail directly.

2. E-mail is convenient.You can setup an e-mail campaign whenever you want – then set it to send at the time of your choosing. Once sent, your reader can choose to read the e-mail at his/her convenience, respond at his/her convenience, etc. Therefore, while e-mail is still deemed an “interruption” style of marketing because it is “pushed” into your Inbox – it is not nearly as disruptive as other traditional media because readers have opted into your list, may read at their convenience and always have the option to quit receiving your e-mails by opting OUT of your list.

3. E-mail has viral potential. Because having readers is a privilege, you should always respect their time and work very hard to create content that is in every way appealing, informative, captivating and motivating for your readers. But more than that, e-mail has one potential that direct mail never had. I never got a direct mail postcard from the mailbox with such glee and excitement that I ran to the quick copy shop, made 30 copies and mailed them to my best girlfriends. It just doesn’t happen. But e-mail is often shared via the forwarding button.

4. E-mail is measureable. Measurement is at its best in the e-mail marketing world. You can learn a LOT about your readers through the tools available in a good e-mail marketing system. Open rates, click rates, what clicks were most popular, open times, dates, who, what, when, where, why, how… The details are all there to be applied to your marketing goals for future improvement. I love that e-mail marketing allows us to market well now – and teaches us how to market better in the future.

5. E-mail can be targeted and/or triggered. Basically, because I clicked on the ad for the red ballet flats in last night’s Boden USA e-mail campaign, I gave them the right to e-mail me about ballet flats for the next couple of weeks – or until inventory runs dry.  Because I clicked on the link to the Art Opening next Tuesday, I gave them permission to remind me via e-mail until the event is past. That’s a TRIGGER. I was moved into a subset of customers who cared about ballet flats and an art opening which triggered ongoing communication to me about those things while the current offers were relevant. And in the future, because I showed a past interest, I should be the TARGET of special promotional messages about similar offers and events…

6. E-mail is very affordable. Compared to the time and expense of direct mail, traditional media – and the total lack of measureable return on investment, the penny per e-mail cost of e-mail marketing is a phenomenal marketing wonder.

7. With e-mail, the sender has control. I am a total advocate of the social web, and I really do believe that if you are one of those people with control issues that is still in denial about social media…you need to GET OVER IT. You lost control a long time ago. The only thing left for you to do is to DEAL WITH REALITY. Period. However, sometimes, its fun to have a little control for just a little while. C’mon, you know you want to. E-mail is the perfect solution for the recovering control freak in all of us. E-mail marketing plays well with the other New Media like web sites and with the social web, but you can control the message, the subject line, the graphics, the time/date of the send, and how your respond, segment, trigger and target. You can do a LOT or do a little with your e-mail marketing: it’s your campaign. Control it.

Aside from those primary benefits, I believe that e-mail provides a secondary opportunity not available anywhere else.

E-mail allows you to TEST all sorts of ideas to an already loyal and willing customer and/or prospect group. A good e-mail marketing program will allow you to perform “split testing” on e-mail campaigns. A split test allows you to send any combination of headline and content (multiple headlines and/or multiple types of content or content layouts) to your customers. For instance, the program we use allows me to conduct SET (you choose who gets which message) or RANDOM (the program randomly sends the messages) split testing. This matters because if I test three different subject lines for the same basic information/e-mail content, I can test which SUBJECT LINE got the greatest OPEN RATE (that is, rate at which e-mail recipients actually opened the e-mail). Then, I can use that favored subject line as a headline on store signage, traditional media, social media postings, etc. and expect a similar response. You can do the same for content and layouts to learn what types of e-mail layouts or what type of content is most interesting to your customers. Basically, you are surveying your customers and they don’t even know it!

Why do YOU use e-mail marketing? What success stories do you have to tell?

Photo Credit: Djenen

At a conference back in the spring, I heard a presenter recommend Google Alerts like they were the latest, newest toy in the toy box. Exasperated and somewhat depressed to have endured such “old news” – I wondered to myself: “Have you been using the tools so long that because they are old news to you – you’ve forgotten to recommend them to others who might not know?” It’s like the basic principles of marketing that I teach – sure there are new tools and new uses for the new tools that come out every day. And it’s really fun for me to teach you how to achieve new levels of success with those new tricks and new tools. But the old principles still apply: target your market, know what experiences your customers desire, focus on customer retention, etc.

So, here’s a basic principle reviewed and updated for 2009 regarding Google Alerts.

Considering the on-line world in which we live, we basically have two choices: stick our heads in the sand and fail OR monitor our world so we can know what’s shakin’ out there, if you know what I mean.

There are a LOT of tools out there that allow us to monitor what’s being said about us, our businesses, our competition and our market (and pretty much anything else you would desire to monitor). And by monitor, I mean, eavesdrop and know what’s being said about these topics on web sites, blogs, public Facebook pages, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media. Trust me, you WANT to know. (I AM willing to explain why – just in another post).

The most basic and easy-to-use monitoring tool of them all, however, are Google Alerts. Google describes this service as follows (bolded areas are my edits):

Google Alerts basically monitors the latest, relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of search term. Some handy uses of Google Alerts include: monitoring a developing news story, keeping current on a competitor or industry, getting the latest on an event or conference, and, of course, monitoring what the world at large is saying about YOU and your business.

To get started, you’ll need a Google account. The easiest way is to sign up for Gmail, Google’s free e-mail service.

Then, go to the Google Alerts page to begin setting up your alerts. Basically, think of what goals you have for information. What data do you wish you had, or if you could eavesdrop on conversations, which ones would they be, etc. For an hunting/outdoor sports niche enterprise, we might suggest monitoring all major competitive brands by name and nickname, each of their own product/brands by name and nickname, industry trends by keyword or key phrase, as well as the names of the business’ owners and key employees (just to name a few).

However, for a small chain of shoe stores in Atlanta, we would recommend adding both niche terms and geographical terms to narrow your sphere in order to better understand your customer and market – and what others are saying about your business within that market.

Once you’ve decided on which alerts will be valuable for you to receive, choose how you want your alerts delivered. Google Alerts can be delivered to you via e-mail or through an RSS Feeder (like the good one Google provides aptly named: Google Reader). If delivered by e-mail, you’ll also choose if you want a daily digest of alerts or want them delivered AS they occur.

Then wait and watch for the alerts to show up.

The amount of data necessary – and the ability to digest it on a daily basis – will, should and must grow as the business grows. But your business will not grow in a sustainable way if you are out of touch with your customer. The web today provides many tools – Google Alerts being one of several. Others should at least include Twitter monitoring and advanced web site analytics. For the novice that has done business without ANY monitoring other than point of sale customer feedback and the occasional customer comment card, start simple by making a list of as many possible Google Alerts as you can comprehend, then narrowing it down to your most critical FIVE or TEN. No more. Edit yourself. Then, pay attention daily. Learn from what you see. Apply it to your business. Respond to blog posts, social media comments, etc. as appropriate (which is whenever they appear). Use the measurement to learn and use it to engage your customers and prospects in meaningful relationships. Build trust.

How are you montoring what folks are saying about you on-line? We’d love to hear how you use monitoring methods to learn and to engage customers.

Too often businesses spend thousands starting a new business, sustaining a business, investing in new product development or new product lines or just marketing their product/business without any real market information.

Although the quality of the products and business experience
is critical, your development of the best product on the market will not necessarily
correlate with the most sales.

Up to 50 percent of a product’s price can be for marketing. The company who wins the marketing game generally will capture the larger share of the market.

How will you win the marketing game? And how do you know you will win? You can know – it’s called a market analysis. Make sure you have all of the information you need to create a doable plan for success – and measure its effectiveness over time.

Andy and I arrived in Chicago this morning to mix and mingle among the conference goers at the National Main Streets Conference happening now through Wednesday of next week. Notice, I didn't say that we came here to attend the conference. Because we really didn't.

Hopefully, that statement doesn't highly offend those of you reading this, but this is a key point to attending a conference, trade show, market, etc. where lots of folks you know or need to know are also attending. As we (Team HALO) live blog this event throughout the next few days, you'll hear us talk a bit about the content of the conference – mostly from interviews conducted from attendee viewpoints, some of our own application (it is our blog after all), and possibly some speaker interviews. However, most importantly – and of most value to you – our small business constituency – will be our play-by-play application of our success and failures as we seek to make the most of the opportunities that present themselves this week. It is our goal to do all we can to meet, greet, find follow-up opportunities, etc. so that we can most efficiently and effectively help you, the small businesses across America that call Main Street your home. Our live blogging will mostly consist of the steps we've taken to achieve our goals – and the steps you can also take to achieve yours in similar circumstances.

So, let's dive right in… what are our goals for this conference, after all? As with any business venture, great or small, we will never know if we've arrived or how best to get to our goals if we have no road map. Goals are specific and measurable and targeted – when accomplished, they add up to success. Let me put our strategic planning in perspective for you:

Context: For the first time in three years of attending this conference (I know, we're young tikes still at this Main Street stuff), we are not presenting. We originally had a scheduling conflict and were not planning to attend this year at all. Then, at the last minute, plans changed and opportunity availed itself. We had approximately two weeks to plan our trip and set our goals.

We could not set goals without admitting that for one year concluding about six months ago, our business suffered periods of inconsistency in service stemming from personal matters that are now resolved. Having taken steps to protect our business from these sorts of issues again, then restructuring our business entirely to meet the demands of a new economy and the budgets of small business owners, re-defining our mission with laser sharp precision and marking the past six months as evidence of the measurable results we provide (not to mention the other eight great years prior to the fumble), Andy and I confidently went about the business of setting goals and a budget for attending this conference. With no presentation to prepare and no scheduling limitations (I must admit this left me feeling quite liberated), we set a primary objective and five goals for our conference attendance.

Target objective (basically the same as our 2009 mission statement): Open doors that allow us to encourage and equip hundreds of Main Street businesses towards success and profitability in 2009-2010.

Here are a couple of our goals for achieving that outcome through conference attendance (we can't give away all our secrets, can we? Maybe later.):
1. Meet and secure follow-up opportunities for further discussion (relationships are all we are looking for – not business deals) with three targeted people of influence (we identified them and set a plan for meeting them).
2. Leverage our attendance at the conference to raise awareness for our work with Main Street businesses across social media networks and at the conference in general.

Small business tip: Both budget and goals should be well researched and
well defined prior to making any firm commitments like registration
fees, hotel reservations, etc. Wise business owners (and non-profit execs) test the waters as
much as possible PRIOR to spending any money. A target objective with 3-5 measurable goals sets the framework for success.

Stay Tuned: Next post will give you a sneak peak into our pre-conference planning.

P.S. For real live blogging of the actual conference sessions, etc. check out the official conference blog which is very well done so far at Main Street Live 09. You can get an insider's perspective as the staff of Michigan Main Street live blogs the conference on their blog (What can we say? They are our star student!). And you can follow the conference on Twitter at #MainStreet09.