Mike, Author at crowdspring Blog

Why Your Small Business Should Fire Bad Customers

Mike — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 12:05:28 +0000

Here are four things you should consider when your small business identifies and fires bad customers.

Small Business and Startups: The Elements of Good Advice

Mike — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 05:05:46 +0000

Not all advice is good advice. Here's now entrepreneurs should evaluate the advice they receive from others.

Small Business Tips: 5 More Great Online Tools (Have I Mentioned These Before?)

Mike — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 05:05:56 +0000

A few weeks ago, I offered up five online tools that I have tested or am currently using (which I have never written about before). I like to explore these new apps, tools, and services every so often with an eye toward sharing and possibly implementing in our own business. Some of the best tools and apps we use are available online for little or no money. The best of these reduce workloads, improve productivity, increase capacity, and (yes) can pay for themselves through reduced expenses in other parts of the budget. Plus, many of these are downright interesting to watch, and the results can be incredibly helpful, not just budgetary but also strategic. This will be the last list of this kind from me for 2014, so enjoy these five great online resources! 1. SpyFu. Do you manage your own keyword campaigns or work closely with the person who does? SpyFu is a great tool that allows you to compare your own SEO/SEM tactics against those of your competitors. The tool is simple to use, and the results are intuitively displayed for simple analysis. What’s the implication here? By allowing a peek at the competition’s most profitable keywords, you can tailor your own to match or exceed their efforts. 2. Balsamiq: Mockups here, mockups there, mockups everywhere. Anyone who has been involved with creating web interfaces or developing a/b tests for existing pages knows what a wireframe is and how it’s used. Balsamiq is an online tool that allows the simple and quick creation of wireframes for desktop apps, mobile apps, websites, and dialog windows. Even a non-techie like me can use this tool to effectively ideas and proposals. 3. Mixpanel: An advanced analytics platform, Mixpanel allows users to drill down and better understand how visitors engage with your site. The traditional page views metric simply does not provide the valuable information you need when analyzing page performance and making strategic decisions. By reporting users’ actions, and better understanding what they actually do on the page, this handy tool allows deeper understanding and can lead to higher conversion rates and lower abandonment. 4. Trello: A simple online collaboration tool, Trello organizes information into boards that can be shared for easy organization, tracking, and archiving. At crowdSPRING we use this tool to plan and track our own Dev Team sprints. Each task or item is presented as a card, and the cards can be updated, commented upon, and time-stamped for our own internal data purposes. The interface is clean and simple, and the features are just powerful enough that your team can use the tool for a variety of purposes. So stop it already with the 25-response email threads and the clunky spreadsheets! (Plus, it’s free!) 5. Square: Mobile payments are a dream come true for many businesses, from the kid’s lemonade stand on the corner to the artist selling their works at the local street fair. But wait – lot and lots of bricks & mortar retailers are taking advantage of mobile..

Small Business and Startups: 5 Marketing Myths

Mike — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 05:05:20 +0000

Marketing is simple right? For every dollar your company spends on it, you should see over a dollar in the sales generated in return. In other words as long as the ROI is positive any marketing effort can be considered a good effort and any effort that does not come with measurable, positive ROI should be discontinued as soon as possible. But what about efforts that are difficult or even impossible to to measure? What about marketing tactics that are designed to build awareness as opposed to sales? Should these tactics be executed even if the net cash received is less than the tactic costs? In part, it is this tension that supports the concept of the marketing mix. In other words, a solid marketing plan should include a variety of tactics some of which will drive convertible traffic to your store, your website, or your product display, as well as others those that serve simply to spread your company’s name along with the good word about who you are and what you sell. Marketing can be especially difficult for small business – budgets are small, capacity is strained, and customers can often have a difficult time perceiving the differences between your product and your competitor’s. The trick is to experiment to find what works for your business and to try lots of different things until the mix is working for you. So when you read about a famous marketer, and they insist that their way is the right way, remember to take it with a large grain of salt; what works for another company may not work for you, and vese-versa. So many of these truths about small business marketing are spouted every day and many of these ideas, some of which are commonly accepted, are downright dangerous for companies planning their own marketing strategy. Like so much in life, there is no one right way to accomplish something and every business is different and every market unique. I believe that there is only one meaningful rule in marketing: I think of it as Define, Measure, Evaluate. In other words, define specific goals for your marketing plans and for each individual marketing tactic; gather data to measure the results; and, finally, evaluate whether the plan or tactic helped to meet the overall goal. If a strategy or tactic is working, keep going. If not kill it, move on, and try something different. Here are 5 commonly held truths about marketing and why I believe you should ignore them all: 1. Some companies don’t need to market themselves. One of the most persistent myths around marketing is that it is a luxury that can be done without, especially when times are good. True, marketing budgets can and should be fungible – sometimes a product might not need as much support as others – but this does not mean that a company or product will survive long in the market with no support whatsoever. And while you may be flying high right now, that does not give you (or your competitors) permission not..

Lean Business: The Very Model of a Modern Spreadsheet

Mike — Tue, 28 May 2013 05:05:12 +0000

“Model” is a verb. It traditionally means to fashion or shapes a three-dimensional out of a material such as clay or wax. In business, the verb usually refers to tools created to make projections of sales or profits. Still, it can also predict anything from website traffic to manpower requirements to employee healthcare costs. Since the days of the abacus and slide rule, the tool most often used for this purpose is the (not so) humble spreadsheet. For many, “spreadsheet modeling” can be daunting and sometimes cause otherwise intrepid entrepreneurs to run screaming in terror. The term brings to mind hugely complex programming tasks, massive computer files, and nerdy MBA students huddled in dark rooms staring at a computer monitor. In reality, spreadsheet modeling can be as simple as creating a sales sheet for your product line or as elaborate as a dynamic pricing tool with thousands of lines of complex code. If you use a spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel, chances are that you are already involved in modeling; you just might be calling it something else. Like large enterprises, small businesses need tools to help them create sales and revenue projections, analyze customer data, maintain product lists, and graphically visualize this critical information. Every day small business managers use spreadsheets in ways simple and intricate to help run their business, and they do it with applications designed specifically for their unique circumstances. These spreadsheets represent a cost-effective and easy-to-use and learn alternative to the powerful and sophisticated enterprise software many larger companies use. Below I discuss four commonly used spreadsheet models (and links to downloadable templates where available) that many small businesses employ daily. Of course, an infinite number of spreadsheet models can be created, each specific to a business or a problem the user is attempting to solve, but master these four. You will be on your way to mastering modeling. 1. Project your sales. Many small businesses need a reliable, accurate tool to forecast sales and demand for their product or service. Restaurants use this data when ordering ingredients for their dishes and scheduling staff. Manufacturers use sales projections for inventory and supply-chain management. And at crowdspring, we use sales projections for tasks as diverse as planning customer service schedules to inform our decisions on capital expenditures and marketing budgets. For most businesses, a simple starting point is to divide your offerings into categories or groups, input last year’s (or last quarter’s) sales for each category, and then apply assumptions such as your best guess at a percentage increase for each category. For instance, if your “Widget #1” had total sales of $10,000 last year, and you believe sales will increase by 5% this year, you can input that assumption, set up a quick multiplication formula, and arrive at your projected sales of $10,500! Easy, right? Microsoft provides a nice template to get you started here. Want a free brand review?Answer 5 short questions and we will send a custom report with actionable insights and..

Lean Business: Capacity Management, Overhead, and Your Business

Mike — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 05:05:40 +0000

Many smaller companies that provide creative services struggle daily to manage their capacity and overhead. Because business is cyclical, as in many other industries, these smaller agencies, design shops, and marketing firms tend to experience boom/bust cycles throughout the year. In the creative industries, this is an everyday fact of business: overhead is constant, but revenue ebbs and flows throughout the year. Some months, there are so many clients and so much business that these service providers are forced to hire contractors or freelancers to handle the extra workload. In other months, when business is slow, managers are left trying to keep their employees occupied and struggle to balance the books. The human capacity that a firm employs is an asset as well as a detriment to doing business. A solid and talented team allows a business to grow, develop core skills, and provide consistently high-quality client services. However, that same base of employees also represents expenses in the form of overhead: salaries and benefits, as well as capital expenditure in the form of computers, software, telephones, desks, and chairs for each worker. Plus, best practices for office space require around 200 square feet of rentable space for every person on your team. The trick is to find the right equilibrium for your company and to leverage HR automation when possible. First, do the math: if you assume that a full-time worker is making a modest $40,000 average salary and your office rent is $20/sf annually, a quick back-of-the-napkin calculation takes you to an annual cost of over $54,000, or around $4,500 per month per FTE. So a company with a team of 5 full-time employees would expect those 5 to represent a total monthly expense of around $22,500. Of course, if this were your company, that would be in addition to your meager salary and benefits, not to mention all of the myriad other fixed expenses your business incurs. Once you add these up, it is not a huge stretch to assume monthly overhead for a company of this size and shape at around $30,000 per month. That’s a big nut to cover for many small creative service firms, especially during the slower months of the year. So, how can that 5-employee company manage its human resources to maximize capacity while reducing overhead? By using a mix of FTEs, appropriate tools for internal communications, and strategically using freelancers and contractors, many firms can expand, contract, and manage team workload in sync with their needs. This is not a new or novel concept – for instance, many small companies contract with a part-time bookkeeper who might work 10-20 hours per month and is paid only for the hours she works, with no other expenses associated with her work for the company. Creative service companies are well-versed in hiring freelancers when the workload requires it. Many outsource work to specific vendors and contractors, particularly those whose expertise is not core to the services offered. With the help of contractor management software,..

Small Business and Startup Tips: 5 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Mike — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 05:03:04 +0000

Marketing your small business is simple, right? Just get your web page live, set up a Twitter account and a Facebook page, start building that email list and you’re on your way to endless riches! Well, unfortunately it is not quite that easy and many businesses end up making mistakes that they could have easily avoided. We have written often about lean marketing techniques, provided lots of ideas on tactics and strategies for marketing, discussed budgeting, offered pointers on testing, given advice on analysis, and suggested tools to use, but we have never really talked about what NOT to do with your marketing efforts. Until now that is. It has been pointed out that history repeats itself and the same can be said of the mistakes that managers make. The great philosopher, George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Or as that other great philosopher, Yogi Berra said, “This is like deja vu all over again.” Small business owners can an should learn from the mistakes of those who came before them, and should work hard to not repeat the mistakes that you will inevitably make. Learn from the experience of others and, more importunity, learn from your own experience. Here are 5 mistakes that many managers will fall prey to; avoiding these will (hopefully) help you to gracefully sidestep some of the obstacles in your path. 1. Trusting your instincts. Building your business is a complex undertaking and, for better our worse, every action you take will have an impact on its performance, profitability, and growth. Each and every one of us is a walking victim of our own biases and beliefs; from day 1 you should go to lengths to avoid letting your own bias get in the way of making good decisions. The ultimate antidote to instinct and “gut” is data. A maxim of business is “that which can not be measured can not be managed” is a good approach here; every marketing effort you design and every campaign you launch should be designed with measurement in mind and it’s success or failure should be based on how well it performs. In other words, if you can’t figure out how to collect data on a campaign, you probably shouldn’t do it, even if your “instinct” is telling you that you should. Want a free brand review?Answer 5 short questions and we will send a custom report with actionable insights and specific actions you can take to build a stronger brand. We just emailed the info to you. Email Address Tools abound for collecting and analyzing data, perhaps the simplest (not to mention free) tools for your website are available from Google, including Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer. These web-based tools allows you to track traffic, users, behaviors, page views, conversion, and demographics in order to measure the efficacy of your campaigns, and your messaging. 2. Not setting goals. Hand in hand with measurement is setting goals for your marketing..

Lean Marketing Tips: Hyperlocal Marketing Channels

Mike — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 05:04:23 +0000

We often write about marketing strategies and tactics for small businesses and startups. These companies typically have limited budgets, thin resources, and strained capacity, which create a challenge for managers and owners: how to develop an effective marketing campaign using tactics that will work for their business. The Lean Startup movement provides a wonderful template, and Ross wrote a great post in which he discussed how managers can use these principles in their own marketing campaigns. We have written about many tactics that have worked in our own marketing efforts, such as public relations, goal-setting, branding, etc. Today I want to focus on tactics with a local flavor. A phrase we hear a great deal is “hyperlocal,” which Wikipedia defines as being “synonymous with the combined use of mobile applications and gps technology.” I would enlarge that scope beyond mobile applications and GPS, and explain hyperlocal marketing as a strategy for reaching a specific, targeted audience in a very specific geographical location. In other words, hyperlocal is a way for marketers to deliver an effective marketing message to customers in a particular local community. This is nothing new for marketers; a great example of hyperlocal marketing with us for decades is the Yellow Pages. This still ubiquitous book of business listings, made of the cheapest paper stock available and found on shelves and in recycling bins everywhere, has historically been a great way for businesses to reach local customers – from “AAAA Auto Repair” all the way down to “ZZZZ Welding.” But the world of marketing has grown way more sophisticated, and in the age of local SEO, GPS and QR codes, small business can leverage some sophisticated tactics to reach local audiences, build awareness neighborhood by neighborhood, and make the most of a limited marketing budget. Here are 5 ideas for hyperlocal marketing that you can consider for your own business: 1. Yellow pages. If it still works and still fits your budget, why not experiment with this chestnut? For very small sums, a business can target a specific local audience (often right down to the zip code). If nothing else, using Yellow Page advertising guarantees that your business name is right there along with your competition’s and that you have an equally good chance of capturing the customer who is looking for you. Most Yellow Page publishers now include online listings along with the print version, which can also enhance a business’s web presence and SEO efforts. Want a free brand review?Answer 5 short questions and we will send a custom report with actionable insights and specific actions you can take to build a stronger brand. We just emailed the info to you. Email Address 2. Daily deals. Groupon, Living Social, Woot, and the like are available in virtually every city in the US and many more cities overseas. For lots of businesses, particularly brick and mortar, these services offer a way to reach a very large audience of potential customers and pay only for those that show up..

10 things entrepreneurs can learn from athletes

Mike — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 06:05:39 +0000

Discover your unique leadership style. Unlock your potential with our free quiz! Entrepreneurs can learn a great deal from the world of sports, and in particular, we can learn from the professional athletes themselves. In the past year, I have written several posts about ways we can learn from others and from the world around us; I wrote about how much we can learn from kids, what dogs can teach us, and what we can learn from musicians. This morning I was thinking about ways to improve my focus and productivity, and it occurred to me that athletes provide a great model for this; here is a group of professionals whose careers depend on their ability to focus and produce. A relatively small subset of workers within a more significant industry, athletes are not only there to entertain us. but to motivate and inspire us. In business, we are constantly bombarded with sports analogies and metaphors, and as a society, we tend to lionize athletes and their achievements. I believe this esteem is appropriate, especially in business contact. Professional athletes strive daily to perfect their skills, promote their teams, and win. Entrepreneurs stand to gain significantly by doing these things, too. 1. Athletes train. Athletes prepare themselves before and during their season through constant training and conditioning. Strengthening exercises, stretching, and endurance training; are all part of a regimen that top athletes carry out throughout their careers to ensure they are in top shape to perform their jobs. The best entrepreneurs enact their own version of this; we work out by constantly studying new business ideas and innovation, strategizing, analyzing, and planning. The best entrepreneurs ensure their minds are well-trained and properly conditioned to adjust to an ever-changing competitive and business environment. Discover your leadership style.Take our free quiz and find out what kind of leader you are. Get 15 actionable insights to make you a better leader and discover five iconic leaders who share your style.Start the quiz - completely confidential and free! 2. Athletes focus. When a batter is in their stance, standing at home plate, and closely watching the opposing pitcher, they show intense focus and concentration. In business, we rarely have someone throw an object toward our bodies at 100+ miles per hour (not that it doesn’t happen occasionally). The extraordinary focus required in sports is a quality that athletes develop over time, and that good coaching and training encourage and enable. Entrepreneurs can learn much from athletes about keeping their eye on the ball and concentrating on what’s most important at any given moment. 3. Athletes practice. Unlike the everyday conditioning that athletes do to keep their bodies strong, practice is repeating a motion or activity repeatedly. This starts when athletes are still kids playing in a youth sports program. Kicking, dribbling, swinging, and throwing are physical activities that, when repeated endlessly, allow the body to develop a ‘sense memory.’ This sense of memory is how athletes’ bodies can respond in fractions of a second to the fast-moving action..

10 Tips for small business: surveying your customers

Mike — Tue, 03 May 2011 20:00:40 +0000

One of the most important things a business can do is to invest time in understanding its customers. This can be accomplished in several ways: collecting and analyzing business data, observing customer behavior, or studying comparable companies. Or, you could always just take the simple approach and ask them. This simple, straightforward method can be done in a few different ways: by speaking to your customers one-on-one as they visit you or you visit them, by convening a small focus group of your customers and hiring an experienced moderator, or by creating an online survey and asking your customers to participate. Although the first is not particularly scientific, all three approaches can give you excellent results at varying costs and reliability. I’ve put together some tips and tools that will be useful to you as you plan the process of surveying your own customers and clients. Good luck! 1. Define a goal. The most important thing you can do when planning a survey is to decide what exactly you want to know. Is this about customer satisfaction? Behavior? Demographics (or “firmographics”)? Take the time to determine what you wish to understand and plan your survey accordingly – your goals should largely drive the design and execution of your survey. Want a free brand review?Answer 5 short questions and we will send a custom report with actionable insights and specific actions you can take to build a stronger brand. We just emailed the info to you. Email Address 2. Recruit the right participants. If you are fortunate enough to have a large user base, take the time to segment properly. For instance, if the survey aims to understand your customer’s attitudes toward medicare, you might want to only survey those over 55 years of age. Alternately if you want to know more about your customers’ tastes in indy rock, you may want to target the under-30 set. 3. Incentivize properly. Do you say you want participation? Tons of responses? Piles of data to analyze? Well, then you’ll need to offer something of value in return. Professional market researchers will tell you that you will receive a significantly higher response rate if you offer prizes (or compensation) for participation; even a token award or modest raffle will increase response rates meaningfully. 4. Craft your questions well. Remember that the quality of the responses you receive is primarily a measure of the quality of the questions you ask. First, keep them short and easy to understand; participants will have little patience with long or confusing questions. Next, start with the easy questions, then move on to the more complex ones – this will draw the respondent into your survey and lead to higher completion rates. Use various question types: multiple choice checkboxes, Likert scale, and yes/no; mixing these up will hold the participants’ interest and lead to greater engagement and more accurate responses. Finally, take care that your questions are not leading or biased; remember you want their answers, not just the ones..

I’m in Logo Love: the new Comedy Central logo

Mike — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 12:00:46 +0000

We look at the Comedy Central logo and evaluate why it's well designed and works for their brand.

Tips for small business: 7 biases that can effect your decision making

Mike — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 11:00:11 +0000

Discover your unique leadership style. Unlock your potential with our free quiz! Einstein once said, “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.” Common sense, Einstein was arguing, can often be the enemy of rationality, science, and fact-based decision-making. We are all guilty of this; every day, our decisions are tinged by favoritism, rules of thumb, partiality, heuristics, and predilection; call it what you will, but our biases come into play with every decision we make and every tactic we execute. The trick is to recognize our biases, question them every day, and be constantly aware of their often pernicious influence on our decision-making. Here are my 7 favorite cognitive biases, each of which can impact on your decision-making process, and some thoughts on how they can be leveraged, and ways to counteract their influence in your quest for wise determination. 1. Anchoring. Humans rely heavily on one specific piece of information in their decision-making. This can happen in everyday life decisions or important negotiations. For instance, when looking at a new house, a buyer may notice that the roof needs work and may be prone to focus on that alone while ignoring that the seller has recently installed a new HVAC system, upgraded the electricity, and refinished all of the hardwood floors. The same seller, during negotiations, may wisely make a low (but not ridiculously low) offer to the buyer in the hopes of “anchoring” the negotiation around that lower number. Studies (most famously Tversky and Kahneman) have shown that when asked to estimate a number or percentage if the researcher suggested a low number, the participant’s estimates would skew lower, and when a high number was suggested, the result would be the opposite. How can small business owners leverage this bias? Be aware of the “lock-in” effect, and assess all information critically. Remember that your counterpart in any negotiation may present self-serving information, so look skeptically at the particulars. Anchoring can also be used to your advantage – remember that your negotiating partner is equally susceptible to this bias. Discover your leadership style.Take our free quiz and find out what kind of leader you are. Get 15 actionable insights to make you a better leader and discover five iconic leaders who share your style.Start the quiz - completely confidential and free! 2. Bandwagon effect. We are prone to believe that if many others do something, we can or should do the same. We see this daily with people buying products, attending movies, and even joining political movements. Just because others do or believe something does not necessarily mean it is the best course of action or the most valuable philosophy. Herd behavior and conformity can hurt your business decisions and impact your ability to consider alternatives and define problems. How can small business owners leverage this bias? If everyone else is onboard with a plan or proposal, there may be good reason to question why. Seek alternatives and remember that groupthink can destroy a team’s effectiveness..

5 historic billboard campaigns (or everything old is new again)!

Mike — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:00:21 +0000

Learn from these historic old billboard ads that helped to define and revolutionize the outdoor advertising industry.

10 things entrepreneurs can learn from kids

Mike — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:00:55 +0000

Discover your unique leadership style. Unlock your potential with our free quiz! I have a couple of kids, and although they are getting older now and moving toward their adult lives, I learn from them daily. Watching them grow, learn, and develop into individuals has taught me many lessons, including how to be a better entrepreneur. It is valuable to step back and consider ways we can all do and be better and lessons we can draw from children and their unique approach to living, fresh attitudes about others, and ongoing joy in making their way through the world. 1. Kids have their own logic. Kids approach the world with their eyes open every day. They see new things and interpret those with a fresh, clean perspective. Entrepreneurs, too, should always try to look at their business, their competition, and their market in ways others have not envisioned. Truly revolutionary ideas come from new thinking; disruption comes from leveraging existing situations and tools to cause a shift in how business is done. What are you doing differently with your business that defies conventional thought and forces new logic? Discover your leadership style.Take our free quiz and find out what kind of leader you are. Get 15 actionable insights to make you a better leader and discover five iconic leaders who share your style.Start the quiz - completely confidential and free! 2. Kids are curious. Kids are curious about the world, how things work, and other people. They grow, change, and learn new things constantly and have an innate ability to absorb and process information quickly. Entrepreneurs can benefit from their example – be like a kid and move up the learning curve as quickly as possible: seek new information, gather new ideas, and grow new theories. Never stop looking at how others do things and extract the best practices for your own business. 3. Kids are creative. Kids are ever resourceful: they devise new ways to build, figure out different ways to do things, and constantly craft new solutions to challenges as they arise. They do not hesitate to make up their own answers and are not afraid of being wrong. Entrepreneurs should be fearless and inventive in their approach to business and work. 4. Kids make friends easily. When a kid goes to summer camp, participates in organized sports, or starts at a new school, the first order of business is typically to make new friends. As adults, we slowly lose that easy ability to develop new relationships, which serves us poorly, as relationships are at the core of most businesses. It is easy to see how your business profits through relationships. Entrepreneurs who are weak in this area need to re-discover their ability to make friends, appreciate people, and learn about others as they come into their lives. 5. Kids make do with what they have. When a kid approaches a new problem, they use the knowledge they have and the tools they possess to find a solution...