BILL ZIPP'S SMALL BUSINESS BLOG
Jul27
The stretch of highway from my college town to the freeway is strewn with billboards. Officially designated as outdoor advertising, this traditional marketing tool is enjoyed by some and reviled by others. But there’s much that can be learned from billboard advertising.
Consider this billboard that greets everyone who’s driving into our fair city. It’s a perfect use of the medium. In just eleven words the advertiser—a local fair trade retail store—accomplishes these three critical objectives:
- Most importantly, they offer an attractive benefit in doing business with them: Discover the world.
- They tell me who they are: Many Hands Trading, with graphics that reinforce their hip, new-age brand.
- And then they tell me what my next step should be: To visit them at 3rd and Madison in Downtown Corvallis (which is only a few short miles from this billboard’s location).
Most billboards on this stretch of road do exactly the opposite. They cram their rented rectangle with words and pictures and phone numbers and addresses and anything else they can think of.
And no one pays attention. Why?
For one simple reason: when you’re traveling down the road at 60 miles-an-hour, you can’t read endless lines of text and process a confusing array of graphics. Billboard advertising is not the only place this is true. Most people are traveling through life at 60 miles-an-hour (or more!) and don’t have time for a complex description of what you do or a technical explanation of your business model.
When it comes to marketing today, less is more.
I’ve come to believe that crafting an effective marketing message is a lot like sculpting. There’s a block of content you have that describes your business, but it’s way too much for anyone to see what you’re really about. So you cut away at the block. And cut away. And cut away until the very core of what you do is left.
So here’s an exercise, or what I call the billboard challenge:
- In 100 words or less, describe your business to a total total stranger.
- Now edit that description to 50 words.
- Now edit it to 25 words.
- Now select the 10-12 words that are the most descriptive, most compelling summary of your business.
This exercise may take you days—or even weeks—but what you’ll have at the end is a message that’s clear, concise, and, most importantly, a message that will be heard. This now is your starting point: content that cuts through the clutter and initiates a conversation, content that will ultimately draw people into doing business with you.
I would love read your results from completing this exercise. Please post them here!
Jun23
Two weeks ago I reviewed the now best-selling business book, Delivering Happiness by Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh. In that review I referred to Zappos’ company culture and together we had a robust discussion on my Facebook fans page about about their ten core values listed here again:
- Deliver WOW Through Service
- Embrace and Drive Change
- Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
- Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
- Pursue Growth and Learning
- Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
- Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
- Do More With Less
- Be Passionate and Determined
- Be Humble
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Jun15
In a client consulting session a few weeks ago, we were discussing how this couple’s business had grown past their personal capacity to get everything done. They were putting in long hours with lots of late nights, working weekends and starting to get burned out.
It became obvious, it was time to hire.
The conversation then turned toward whether or not this couple should hire an independent contractor or an employee. Knowing the difference between the two is critically important. If you get it wrong, IRS penalties can be painful. Here’s some help distinguishing between the two and how to stay away from IRS trouble:
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Jun 7
Imagine going to the grocery store to buy a can of Mandarin oranges. You walk down the aisle that says Fruits and Vegetables, pick out a can with bright, juicy Mandarines on the label, buy it and drive home.
Then, opening the can to add its contents to a fruit salad you’ve been dreaming about eating, you look inside and find corn. Ugly, shriveled, pale yellow corn. You stare at the can in disbelief and see an asterisk with fine print on the label that reads, “Does not actually contain Mandarin oranges.”
You’ve been burned again by slick advertising!
According to Delivering Happiness by Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh, these days are fading fast. As a business blogger I was given a copy of Delivering Happiness by Tony’s team to honestly review it the day of its debut, which happens to be today.
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Jun 1
Here’s a post I wrote over a year ago that continues to have the FREE worksheet at the end downloaded by my readers. I thought it would be helpful to make it available again to newer followers of my blog.
A small business client of mine was thinking about moving to another location.
When you consider the fact that it can take almost two years for customers to find you after a move, this is an important decision. When you also consider the fact that—after people—facilities may be your biggest financial investment as a business, it is an even more important decision.
The problem was, my client had nothing more to go on that his gut. Should he stay where he was or relocate? He had no idea except for how he felt at the moment, and that feeling kept changing.
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