Business Strategies
It seems lately that social coupon sites are all the rage. If I understand correctly, these sites offer discount coupons to popular businesses. Customers just have to get enough people to commit to buying a coupon in order for the coupons to be offered (ie. get 100 people to buy this 50% coupon to McDonalds, [...]
I think I’ve mentioned before that when you open a business the salesmen come out like sharks around a whaling boat. The trouble is while some of the things they try to sell are obviously ludicrous to everyone but them, there are some ideas that actually do make sense. Take some of our recent “opportunities”, [...]
My mother recently came to see us for a few days. That same weekend my daughter had a dance performance in another town, so the three of us took the trip together. It was not a short drive, and it gave me a chance to catch up with Mom a bit. My mother is, as [...]
Continue reading about Marketing ideas from unexpected places
I may have mentioned previously that when we first opened our store we paid for three months of radio advertising which, from what we could tell, didn’t accomplish much. We got some customers who mentioned they’d heard our ads, but largely it seemed as though we got more traffic from our sign out by the [...]
In a the previous entry, I discussed the Project Triangle and how it can be applied to building a business as well. With a business your three corners are Product, Marketing, and Delivery. You can expand your business at any of these three corners, but chances are you’re going to need to also devote resources [...]
Anyone who has been near the project management discipline has heard about the “Project Triangle“. That’s the rule of thumb that essentially says that when you’re building something you can have it good, fast, or cheap–pick any two. You can make a good product quickly, but it won’t be cheap. You can build it good [...]
Continue reading about Business constraints and resource allocation
One of the hardest tricks of social media is balancing the amount of time you spend on it. It’s addictive, as most people on Facebook will likely attest. It’s easy to keep logging in to see if anyone has commented, and before you know it you’ve spent all day just logging in and out. But [...]
Continue reading about Social Media requires vigilance, not obsession
Since I’m the one who loves to measure things, it’s become my role among my business partners to track our business metrics. I enjoy keeping data, analyzing it, and reporting on it, but time after time I am reminded of why I’m better off having a financial adviser taking care of my investments: I lack [...]
As I mentioned in my previous post, when my business partners and I first opened our store we purposely did not try to do everything our competitors did. As part of our beginning analysis we looked at each of our competitors and evaluated ourselves against them. There were some things at which we knew we [...]
At one point or another every business will try something new; a new product, a new service, a new process, a new marketing idea. If you don’t I suspect you’re not really growing as a business. And you’ve got your doors locked so no salesmen can come in. And you’re not listening to your customers, [...]