Did you know that networking isn't everything?

Consider cold calling, buying e-mail lists as getting to know the 'wrong' kinds of people. The list often times provides a low end solution of finding the right customer for your product. The reason word of mouth is so good is very much due to the reasons such as trust, integrity, loyalty but equally common interest. 

At GY, we specialize in data collection and filtering against hypothesis (educated guesses) followed by plugging it into a proprietary algorithm called DCAL (Directed Combinatorial Algorithmic Library). This allows us to help you 'sort' the targeted customers against the nature of your business to optimize questions such as:

1. When should I launch my ad campaign (day of month, time of day etc)?

2. What kinds of discount programs should I use?

3. What kinds of products do my customers want and need?

4. How can I build a loyal customer base effectively and efficiently?

5. How can I get more vertical sales?

6. When should I increase my horizontal sales?

7. What are the low hanging fruits?

8. Should I run a discount/gift card program and when?

9. Is my customer base highly fragmented, partially fragmented or properly or improperly defragmented?

Notes: DCAL was further developed by GY for business systems to screen and optimize data against core business criteria. The basis of our mathematics algorithm is from a genius of the 19th & 20th century Dr. Vladmir Fock. The return on selecting out the wrong customers and keeping the right ones has always proven to add significant advantage to anyone's business profitability. The benefits towards inventory management and being able to please your customers are profound. The old adage of knowing your customers' needs is greatly enhanced and repeatable since DCAL allows you to understand your clients accurately and precisely by using advanced analytics.

Imagine as an owner of a computer shop, you knew that 90% of your existing clients would be users of blackberry, google search and were readers of the Wall Street Journal. This information combined with their spending habits would allow you to buffer your inventory if you also knew that there would be a collapse of Wall Street & banking. DCAL would allow you to know this significant business information months ahead of the curve, prepare, preserve and diversify.

As an owner of small, medium or large businesses, hindsight is always 20/20. If another crash were coming ... are you sure you are prepared? If your network hasn't been optimized and DCAL'd, you could be hit in more directions than one. 

DCAL data crunch on social networks & business conversions:

Imagine what the possibilities would be if you had powerful web-based platform that allowed you to categorize your customer base? Sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, MySpace, Servana all have an ability to upload your friends, colleagues and business partners. Did you know that LinkedIn, Plaxo & Servana offers a level 4-5 out of 6 in potential conversions vs. Facebook/MySpace's 2-3 out of 6 based on our DCAL analysis. This indicates that which site you promote your business matters. Just by migrating your network is free and can give your business a significant upside return.  

Almost one year ago, I was being evaluated to see if I could qualify as an Honorary Professor at Open University. One of the top reasons was the audience: the college students. They found the learning experience on the topic of combustion and energy conservation to be really exciting rather than boring. They also all did very well on their examinations in this topic because the science and mathematical concepts had been 'burned' into their memories. The students remember me as Professor Torch but this was because they had seen the movie Fantastic Four and there, I was branded by my own students. This was no accident because I knew my class would have an online component and it became viral real fast.

As time passes ... society changes. Your business must also change with it. During the 1980s, 90s and 00's, selling techniques did not embrace transparency in their films and movies. Lots of 'fake' effects that yielded an overloaded consumer. Additionally, consumer confidence would drop in 2008-2009 and spending would take a significant downturn. Nevertheless, we at GY believe that using the proper analysis tools (based on mathematics & science) the right messages delivered with transparency could make any down business thrive again.

In performing massive public surveys GY determined that the consumer 'expects' a higher level transparency from businesses. Consumers today expect to know why they should spend their hard earned dollars on YOUR service vs. a competitor vs. do it themselves?

Case Study:

One client approached me from the mold remediation industry and told me that business was slow. First, our company runs an assessment to determine if there is a target audience and a market size (this is a crucial step to determine macro vs. micro problems). Utilizing an algorithm developed @GY we completed an analysis of the landscape and realized this was a massive 5 Billion market. This business should definitely be able to have sales exceeding 200K/month even in this 2009 economy!!

Analytical Results (Los Angeles + Las Vegas):

Category: Mold Remediation Los Angeles Competition: 143

% National Fragmentation (0-100%): 100%

Diffential Videos on the Market: none

% Bank Foreclosed Properties Requiring Clean Up: 99%

% Bank Foreclosed Properties Requiring Mold Remediation: 60%

% Non-Foreclosed Properties Requesting Mold Remediation: 72% (after water loss)

National Data (USA):

# of homes requiring mold remediation: 5,000,000 units across USA

National avg. value of homes with mold: $100,000 USD/home (assumption)

Avg. costs for general remediation: $10,000 USD (10% of home value)

Conservative Estimate of Annual Market size:

Fn: 10% of homes (500,000) x $10,000 USD/home = 5,000,000,000 (5 Billion USD market)

Now that we know a sizable market exists, we find that the cause of their business downturn is due to expensive/ineffective marketing combined with poor outreach to the people who have mold problems. Take a look at the website: www.moldbusters.com This website was costly and requires maintenance but our analysis indicates that there is very little relevant traffic generated by this webpage. Weekly ValuePak's are also ineffective for customers in crisis mode. Rather than revamp the website, we added a video that enhances the concept of "mold busters" by playing off the movie blockbuster concept of GhostBusters.

While our client wasn't called "mold busters", this was not relevant since the branding of the company within the marketing could be individualized. In the differential videographing, we captured an actual live work day of the level of mold remediation jobs this company's team could handle. We then slated this for local and national broadcasting and set the business up for blockbuster performance. So while Facebook and MySpace sport >33% of traffic that doesn't mean you'll convert from them. Just because the local pizza shop uses a coupon on ValuePak doesn't mean this will work for your business. Every case is different but the methodology must be boiled down to a science.

Video Production (sample in the making):

Summary:

1. Identify the target market, target audience. (Owners work too long in their own business to be unbiased and critical).

2. Old slogan: The customer is always right. Today's slogan: Businesses in order to be profitable need to find the 'right' customer.

3. Differentiate using tools that suite YOUR business (don't use me-too strategies).

4. Reach a desired audience by generating true content that identifies your business as 'the talk of the town'.

5. Sample size cannot be small and the advertising spend cannot be to an overmarketed/defensive crowd (the same people won't spend in FaceBook but will spend under the right setting). 

6. Think combination solutions: ROO (Return on Objective) & ROI (Return on Investment).

Four (4) Most Important Things to Know for Small-Medium Sized Business Owners

1. Give good/free advice & generate a focused network
2. Unify and build a focused & supportive community that has a need for your services.
3. Utilize effective traffic interfacing tools for your blog
4. Communicate with Experts to Understand Changes/Trends

Give good/free advice ...

More often than not, first we take rather first we give. The greater the hardship, the more we are inclined to be like animals. Constantly we are reminded to pay those bills and we've soon forgotten that our business is even less inviting. If we have a restaurant, the portions or the quality may even suffer. 
Employees understand when the supervisor cracks the sell, sell, sell whip. And you just want to respond, "hey boss, the product that sold the best -we're out of" As the boss, you scream, "well make the ones the people don't want ... sell too!!" Effective approaches require you to do the opposite of this. You reap what you sow. Therefore, spend time sowing seeds of relationships, give, provide service, useful information and this will yield a plentiful harvest because customers and your employees prefer this attribute.

Unify and build a focused & supportive community ...

Not everyone will listen to you (friends and family included). Internet blogging is a wonderful way to unify those who like to hear what you have to say. It is necessary to bring these people together and develop a channel. Your topics and discussions are critical. You may serve many roles as a living breathing human being but when go to work you have specific tasks and roles. The very same thing applies to blogging. If you're billing as a certain service provider -blog in your category and make strong connections. Put time into your blogging and ensure that the content is genuine. Customers can really see this in your presentations.

Utilize effective traffic interfacing tools ...

When I do my radio broadcast channel, we allow listeners to call in and ask questions. Answers are provided and when they're helped they tell their friends. The listener base grew to over 1 million. But it did very little to improve or capture the same listener base onto the magazine and print media. This is because the broadcasting channel and the print channels did not have an interface. To really top things off, the S.E.E.K. (Safe, Effective, Earth Friendly, Kind) Health Generations franchise stores on FaceBook would have very few sign-ups. If this was reflective of actual business, the establishment would be out of business. Clearly, the conversions dwindle and my point is coming to FaceBook doesn't have anything to do with conversions and visitors can easily get distracted. As a health and wellness service provider, FaceBook is a platform but it is not effective.

Ultimately, when you spend time on the building your business, you need to choose the right platform. It is like choosing a good piece of real estate. If the services and people are too generalized, it is like having a store at a large mall or flea market and you have lots of the wrong customers. The interface must be friendly, engaging and allow for relevant monetization. You could have the most popular blogging station (i.e. Google's Blogspot or Yahoo's MyBlogLog) but if the only monetization is advertisement clicks you can imagine how frustrating it would be for building a focused network for your business. In fact, you and the customer ends up feeling used by the service provider which will only pay pennies on the dollar. So while an occasional non-relevant advertisement can be overlooked, in the end high relevancy is crucial.

There has been so much media hype on the consumer that this has taken on a negative consumer behavior. Trying to sell someone something on FaceBook is ineffective and driving web traffic to another site after they are on FaceBook doesn't work. Just imagine if your lawyer only looked at you from the perspective that win-or-lose s/he is still a paying client. Then imagine, you know this. Then they say "We'll kill 'em in court". You already know they are saying this only to upsell your emotions and once they've leeched out enough funds, they're entire approach changes to "We don't think it looks so good anymore". For attorneys, this consensus amongst consumers has developed overtime.

To summarize, as a business owner you can't have your own site because you can't get the traffic. Yet if you're on the wrong platform, you'll be maintaining lots of blogging with poor results.

My thoughts on this matter has led me to working on Social Media Monetization problems for business owners and disgruntled consumers. The engine Servana was created to solve this critical issue and provide a free learning platform of information to help small business owners develop their niche and solve tactical problems in basic client generation irrelevant of your location.

Communicate with Experts ...

Sounds easier said than done. But sharing solid advice amongst people who have succeeded and been successful is the fastest way to learn how to do things right. If you wanted to learn how to play golf and beat Tiger Woods, your chances would be improved by being taught from Tiger as well as all his competitors.

Clearly networking is important. We all know that. But effective networking is often not utilized. If you're looking for a job and you go to one of those conferences that is hiring people and most of the attendees are applicants, what are your chances in a "poor labor market" of finding something? Same thing applies to business owners who attend tradeshows and expos -rarely will you develop a network of gurus and experts to help your business.

Going fishing and being able to catch the right fish requires:

A. Knowing what you really want (this means getting to know yourself)

B. Knowing your market and managing reasonable expectations

C. Always be able to identify and have a pulse on macro/micro economic situations/trends from experts who base their analysis on academia and on the field informatics.

Practice: Take the example Minyanville. An interesting financial site with animated experts. Look for their methods of monetization. Ask yourself is this effective for every crowd? Would type-A personalities like/dislike it? What is the target age groups? On a bull vs. bear market, how would their business do. If you owned this site, how would you build-up your crowd and scale the traffic for this business?