Use the “fishbowl” method to collect an e-mail address from every single customer or prospect that you encounter in your local business this week. This simple method is something you can implement in your brick-and-mortar business by the end of the day today, and it will lead to the collection of pure gold (aka e-mail addresses) for your business – gold that can be leveraged to move the needle again and again for your small business! Here’s how it works:

1. Procure a large bowl that will fit in a prominent location either to the right (as one exits) of the front door of your store at eye level and/or at each your point of sale/cash-wrap stations.

2. Create a sign to affix to the bowl that has a big, bold headline that says something like “Join Our E-Mail List for a Chance to Win!”

3. Add subtext under the sign’s headline, create an irresistible offer that fits your business that follows this basic idea: “Once a month, one entry from that month will be awarded a $250 gift certificate to our store!”

4. Watch the e-mail addresses pile up.

5. Enter the e-mail addresses into your e-mail system at least monthly BEFORE the award notification is made.

6. On a monthly basis, choose an e-mail address and make the award. E-mail them the award notification with an inquiry for their mailing address, so that they’ll come into the store. Also include in that e-mail a suggestion such as the following: “We value you as a customer, and we’re thrilled that you’ve won this prize. You are definitely deserving! We’d love it if you’d share some ideas of what you’ll be buying with your gift certificate with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. You can connect with us there at facebook.com/business name and on Twitter @businessname. I hope you won’t mind that we’ll be letting everyone know who won this month in our e-mail newsletter and through our social media channels as a way to encourage folks to enter this month’s new contest! Thanks again for being such a fantastic customer! We really appreciate your business!”

7. Post who won and what they won and how folks can enter the next contest on Facebook. Tag the person who won if possible.

8. Post who won and what they won on Twitter and @ reply the winner, if possible.

9. Include the winner’s name and a call for new entries in your next e-mail newsletter.

Happy fishbowling! You’re going to love the results you get from this great marketing tip!

So, Mr. Local Small Business owner: You’ve set your course… You’ve got goals. You’re running towards the future – not away from the past. You’ve got your passion and your eye is on the ball, so to speak.

Then, things don’t go just as you planned. Maybe you planned wrong. Or maybe the unpredictable happened at life or in your small business or somewhere else.

A good friend of mine was talking to me about this idea of “sticking with it” yesterday afternoon. One year ago, she and Andy met in a coffeeshop where she showed him her cards. A few months ago, after some initial success with her small business e-commerce site, she hit The Dip (as Seth Godin would call it). She said to me, “What if I had just quit then?” It was really hard for her, and there were some discouragements when things didn’t go just as she’d planned. Life got hard – and so did selling stuff.

For Grace Bateman, if she’d quit then – she would have missed the opportunity to tell literally dozens of media outlets about the women of Peru Paper. She’s turned into a regular media darling of sorts in the past little while. She would have missed out on getting Peru Paper cards into nearly two dozen retail outlets (and that number is growing literally everyday) all across the U.S. (since her first market in May – and yes, in a recession). She would have missed watching retail outlets sell her cards like wildfire – and placing regular reorders because the story and the product resonate with consumers. She would have missed the e-commerce sales and custom corporate work that has showered her of late. She would have missed the fun of trying to figure out yesterday afternoon why her web traffic took an abrupt spike midday for no reason that she expected – only to have the mystery solved when a newly minted fan e-mailed her and explained that a prominent blogger had written exclusively about her product in an e-mail to her subscribers. Most of all, she would have robbed 17 underprivileged women in Peru of the opportunity to take care of their children – and provide for them financially – all at the same time. She would have robbed us of the privilege of enjoying their handiwork and participating in a social good. And so much more. And that’s a lot to leave on the table just because times got hard. But her hard work is paying off now…that she stayed the course.

Mary and Joseph Christmas Card by Peru Paper

When times get tough, most of us can’t see the forest for the trees. We can’t see that the opportunity of our lives is just around the bend.

Please. Don’t quit.

Instead be innovative, hardworking, passionate and focused. Do what you set out to do – and don’t change course just because it gets hard. Stay the course. The rewards might blow your mind.

A few weeks ago we took the kids on vacation and stopped overnight in Birmingham to visit our blogger friend, Eat Birmingham.

Before we left the next day, the kids and I went on a little shopping jaunt through the villages of Mountain Brook. (If you want to do the same, may I recommend that you get in touch with @shopmtnbrook for advice along your way?) There were lots of fun surprises (we shopped mostly kid-friendly places like the toy stores, kids clothing boutiques and…. Indie Candy in Crestline.

The candymaker in Indie Candy explained to the kids and me how his candy was a better candy: all natural with no high fructose corn syrup or any yucky preservatives of any type. My kids love gummy candy – but it’s TERRIBLE for their teeth. But in this case, I caved. A beautiful selection of fascinating shapes and stained glass colors mesmerized all of us, and as a mom, I loved the somewhat old fashioned look of the signage that announced things like “The Best Gummies EVER” and “Indie Candy: naturally gourmet sweets.” I was sold.

P.S. If your kids love lollipops over gummies, they have lots of those, too – in cool shapes and sizes. See photo.

Indie Candy has a humble shop in Crestline village with a more than friendly and informative candymaker in residence. They’ve made an enterprise by selling their candy through several online candy shops and reaching out to loyal customers through Facebook. What I truly love is that they do what they do well – and they connect well with a dual audience: kids who love candy and mom’s who want healthy choices for their kids. It’s a winning niche with an approachable, friendly attitude.

What niche can you fill in business? How can you connect better with your customers and make something that you can sell not just locally – but beyond? Are you connecting with your customers online and off-line.

Chatting with my BFF the other day about how best to convince small business owners and restaurateurs that online marketing was worth paying money for. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Well, I dunno… perhaps that over a year ago 63% of all American consumers across every demographic looked online first before making a brick and mortar buying decision. Most of the folks we’re talking to are targeting a higher end demographic, and it’s a year later, so that number has to be much higher………

BFF: I didn’t ask you why they should be online. I’m talking about how to convince them within their existing worldview why this is worth spending money on.

Me: The money is online.

BFF: But are they going to see value in spending money online?

Me: (insert scream of frustration)

It’s seriously this bad. In small businesses and restaurants and boutique hotels across America, folks have their heads stuck in the proverbial sand.

I hear things like the following:

“I know we’ve got to do it, but I just don’t have time.”

“I just don’t see the value in it.”

“Well, I just spent $90,000 on new merchandise, so that website upgrade to allow me to make my own frequent updates to my website…that sounds good, but it will have to wait until next year… I just don’t have the money for that right now.”

“Well, I’m in a contract with the local lifestyle magazine, and I’m running some cable advertisements and sales have been really down lately, so I just don’t have the money to invest in online. I know it would work, but I just can’t afford it right now.”

How about this, Mr. small business owner? What if you could spend half per month what you spend for an ad in the local lifestyle magazine, and you could track feedback, gain market intelligence – and oh yeah, sell more stuff and know that it was a direct result of this marketing effort? Would you do it?

Would you spend the same amount if you could get that kind of measurable results?

If you wouldn’t – then why are you in business? Because it seems like you’re only there to support the dinosaurs. As for me, I’m going to stay in business by selling more stuff. Online.

Photo Credit: blakeimeson

It’s a proven fact: Great retail and restaurant displays SELL MORE STUFF! We’ve talked about how to create great displays before and we always love window designer Amy Meadows ideas that she shares with us.

This week, we especially love the displays at Charlotte Skelton’s latest small business venture, CRAVE, in Cleveland, Mississippi. Talk about packing a punch of delicious color, enticing presentation and straightforward customer education and alluring sales messages… CRAVE’s great displays make you, well, crave their goodies.

CRAVE is a small coffeeshop and café in a converted convenience store on the main drag in small town Cleveland, Mississippi. The owner is a veteran of the local food scene, but this time she’s pulled out a few new tricks…

Let’s analyze the visuals of this small biz:

1. Upon entry into the coffee shop, you are welcomed with a bold punch of name branding, brilliant colored candy jar displays as a focal point and a black board that gives you the must-know details of the day and some sales offers. Creative – but I’m guessing it wasn’t that expensive to create, making this display idea easily modified for your own purposes.

2. Point of sale. Well, let’s just say that having a mass display of amazing looking cupcakes, brilliantly elevated on multiple cake plates, creatively labeled with handwritten cards all behind a pristine glass case makes it difficult to resist taking 1 or a dozen of these goodies home for later enjoyment. The allure of this “bonus” item probably adds many dollars to her average ticket, an improvement that can pay big dividends on your small business’ annual bottom line.

What can we learn from CRAVE?

1. Educate your customers from the moment they walk in the front door. Never assume they know what to do with your products – even if your products are as simple as cupcakes and coffee!

2. Grab customers’ attention right from the start. Have a wow factor and focal point to your store displays, especially at the entry area.

3. Look for ways to use alluring visual elements to inspire the up-sell at the point of sale and increase your average sale / transaction amount.

4. Creative doesn’t mean expensive. Look for ways to repurpose ordinary objects and low-cost display elements like brightly colored candy, black boards, scrap fabric and ribbons, and old furniture to add new life to your displays.

P.S. We wish CRAVE had a web site and Facebook presence – but they don’t. We highly recommend that pack their bold punch online as well in the very near future!!

Amber Brockett, founder of Cowgirl Dirt has done an amazing job building her business using Facebook. Amber launched a Facebook Page for Cowgirl Dirt in early February 2010. Since then, Amber has grown the number of “likes” to well over 5,000. Amber testifies that nearly 90% of her sales come from Facebook. NINETY PERCENT!

Amber has a simple and straightforward trick for growing her business on Facebook: she offers limited time promotions like coupon codes or free shipping. She says, “These tactics definitely drive business because people love a deal.”

Here at the Results Revolution, we noticed right away that her fans were highly engaged and that her following has grown nearly 500 people since early May. That’s a pretty aggressive growth curve. A healthy Facebook Page has a LOT of customer interaction – comments and wall posts. This Page definitely has that – and it seems to be translating into a huge sales volume. We also love the “Shop Now” tab on their Page.

But we wonder… How much would sales increase if they used more photos and video on their Facebook Page?

What about you? What kind of results are you seeing from Facebook? What is working? What is NOT working? Post comments and let us know.

I just got done flipping through fashion “look” book produced by a local traditional media outlet. In my opinion, the tabloid is filled with mediocre photography, mediocre image advertising and absolutely no education, information or explanation as to what I’m looking at, what or where to wear the “looks” or how much said looks might cost me at the various stores. In short, the entire tabloid lured dozens of premium retailers into spending their hard-earned marketing dollars to advertise. I bet they said something like, “if you advertise, I’ll guarantee that your competition won’t be allowed to advertise” or “you have to be in this issue because your competition will all be there.” Then, each business fell into rank and file… paid their money and submitted to the “look” that a traditional media publisher suggested for their ads. So, they all look the same, no one stands out, there is NO message or value to the publication, and the only one smiling is the media outlet because they cashed out.

Now, that’s just my perception and opinion. But I just wonder what would happen if a great retail shop broke status quo and did something different…valuable…memorable with their advertising? Or what if a few retailers weren’t scared to be left out of the popularity contests that media run – and instead made decisions based on data and smart strategy?

What have you done lately that was truly different, valuable or memorable? What have you done lately that was based on data and/or smart strategy? We want to hear your story!

Photo credit: stevendepolo