Expert Marketing Blog - Page 65

I realized on the weekend that I have been fooling myself. In my mind, I have told myself that everything is fine and as it should be - but the reality is that it isn't. There are things that are not being done or are not going ahead at the rate I would like them to - and that's just my personal life. 

In business, its a huge mistake as a small business owner to not be on your game. I put things that pop up, to the way-side - and pretending that they never happened. Constantly, make other things priorities over things that should be at the top of the list and I still don't trust my gut instinct - because if I did, my life would be easy.

We are all in this game to win; whether it is creating a lifestyle business, building an international empire or making huge profits. 

Humbled by an employee discussion in our Atlanta office, I was pleasantly surprised that given the hypothetical situation of winning the lotto, all employees said that after a brief holiday, they would want to come back to work at Marketing Eye.

The engagement level on a day-to-day basis in our Atlanta office is very high – not to say, other offices are not the same. Company culture is everything and there are many reasons why it has a direct impact on bottom line.

There are a number of lessons learned from having a start-up in Atlanta that is inherently different from other offices we have.

The first being that all employees have chosen each other

Usually, a senior manager or myself makes the ultimate choice on who is going to join the team and in what capacity. Instead, in Atlanta, I have been over-ruled twice, and both times, I had to put my hand up and say that my choice would have been wrong for the team.

There is not a small business on the planet that hasn't heard of Twitter, yet many are still failing to execute a social media strategy that cleverly integrates Twitter as a social media platform designed to connect and communicate key messages.

Co-founder Jack Dorsey, a 36 year old tech titan, and now CEO of small business payment technology, Square, has built his billions on knowing what small businesses want and need. Square is the fastest growing small business payments technology in the world today, and through his small business meetings in Town Halls throughout the US, Canada and Japan, #letstalk, he is educating small business owners to talk and support each other, rather than work alone.

Five years ago, I was invited to play in a Pro-Am on the Gold Coast, and as a casual golfer, realized that I needed some coaching to ensure that I didn't embarrass myself.

Marketing automation has the fastest growth of any CRM-related segment in the last five (5) years and there is a reason why. Senior management have been desperate for years to have a clear picture of sales pipeline performance, which until marketing and sales automation came along, was unheard of - in a real sense. There were many inferior solutions in the market, but none that really hit the nail on the head quite like marketing automation.

Interestingly, after speaking with a number of marketing automation vendors in the past few weeks, it has become apparent that there is one clear contender for the top marketing automation spot - and that is Marketo.