The Wax Blog

It’s January 9th and I’m having a hard time believing that it’s been over a month since I asked you to create your “best tactics” list.  CRA-ZEE how time flies during the holidays. So, did you do it? Have you trashed any old things that you really couldn’t tell were creating customers or revenue for you? Wondering why the hell I asked you to do that and never followed up?

It’s really hard to focus on strategy when you’re juggling a million things a day. But you have to. Sometimes it’s just easier to review the tactics that worked and build your strategy from the ground up, then pull strategies out of thin air. The purpose of this exercise is to look at the tactics that worked and decide on the overall strategy these tactics contribute to. THEN you can brainstorm more tactics that fit into that strategy. Thereby giving you a much more targeted approach that has a higher likelihood of success.  (more…)

One of the designers sent me this picture to show what the rest of the world thinks of marketers. HA!

If you’re not familiar with it, the Intuit Small Business Blog is a great resource for small business owners looking for pragmatic advice on marketing, cash flow, employee management and other topics. Rachel Hartman interviewed me for a piece on measurement. Here’s a quick blurb, you can follow the link at the bottom to see the full article.

5 Ways to Make Sure Your Marketing Efforts Pay Off

by Rachel Hartmann

You’ve put in hours upon hours spreading the word about your product, but has all your hard work been worth it? Small businesses often commit one of two marketing blunders: They jump from one tactic to another, or they stick way too long to the “tried and true” ads, says Bonnie Harris, principal of Wax Marketing in St. Paul, Minn. Fortunately, you can gauge your success and resolve any problems by accurately measuring the results of your marketing efforts.

Harris offers these five tips for figuring out what’s working, what’s not, and where improvements need to be made:

For the rest of the piece, jump to the Intuit blog here. 

I have noticed that a lot of us are pretty polarized when it comes to our marketing efforts. We are way too impatient to see results from new marketing tactics, and often don’t measure the old ones effectively to make sure they’re still working.  As I mentioned a couple weeks back, you have to look back objectively at the past year before you can accurately plan for the next. To help you do that, I’ve created some questions to ask yourself about the sales and marketing you’ve done in 2011. (more…)

We’re on the wind down to the end of the year, and so I’m going to write more about taking stock of your past year – successes and failures – to create a great marketing and pr plan for 2012.

A very smart marketing consultant once told me that it’s impossible to decide where you’re going, until you know where you’ve been. But as small business owners and entrepreneurs it can be painful to look back…because we’re so damn hard on ourselves. Yet if I don’t look back, how do I incorporate all the lessons I’ve learned, including the hard ones, into my plans for the coming year? (more…)