Whether they are out-of-control cranks or out-of-the-blue evangelists, customers want to have their say.  And, if you won’t listen to them, the Internet is teeming with people who will.  This trend has bred a new crop of online tools that enable an easy back-and-forth between companies and their customers. 

Best for MONITORING YOUR REPUTATION:  Yelp.com   A directory of customer ratings and reviews of local businesses.  Yelp provides a good handle on your company’s word-of-mouth buzz.  Anyone can submit a review of a business, but the most credible reviews- or at least the ones receiving the most votes from fellow users- rise to the top.  PRICE:  about $150 per month for a sponsorship.

Best for ASKING FOR IDEAS:  SuggestionBox.com   A web-based service that collects customer suggestions.  The site allows customer to post ideas and rate the ideas of others.  Employees can rate the suggestions internally with a built-in scorecard and correspond privately with those making suggestions.  PRICE:  $49.95 per month for one user, plus $9.95 per month for each additional user.

Best for RESOLVING DISPUTES:   RatePoint.com   A suite of customer feedback tools, including reviews, satisfaction surveys, and e-mail marketing software.  RatePoint allows you to add to your online store customer-generated reviews like those found on Amazon.com, but with a difference- you can reach out to users to resolve an issue before a negative rating is made public.  PRICE:  $17.95 per month or $179 per year for up to 1,000 customers;  $99.95 per month or $995 per year for up to 25,000 customers.

Best for FOLLOWING BLOG CHATTER:   YackTrack.com/Chatter   A search engine for online conversations.  Thanks to blogs, tweets,a nd other posts, there’s an every growing flood of commentary online.  YackTrack brings all of those conversation threads to one place, where you can easily find recent references to your company or products.  PRICE:  Free

Best for FINDING SQUEAKY WHEELS:   GetSatisfaction.com   A website that allows customers to reprot problems and post complaints.  Get Satisfaction thrives on transparency.  Customers find a company or product, post their issue for all to see, and get answers to their questions from fellow users or company reps.  Get Satisfaction offers widgets and a programming interface that let you incorporate the service into your own website.  PRICE:  Free

Best for QUICK POLLS:   SurveyMonkey.com   An online survey tool.  You don’t have to learn about statistics, coding, or market research.  Simply plug a list of questions into one of SurveyMonkey.com’s templates- upload a logo if you like- that span eight survey categories, including service industries and marketing.  PRICE:  Free for up to 100 survey responses; $19.95 per month for 1,000 survey responses; and $200 per year for unlimited survey responses.

                     taken from December 2008 issue of INC. MAGAZINE

This week I’ve written about one of the most tech-advanced marketing tools, the widget, so now I’ll write about one of the most “archaic”… the postcard.  Did you know that postcards produce better results today than they did before the development of the Internet.  Why?

1.  Postcards use a modern communication style:  It delivers information the way people want to get it today.  It arrives open and ready to read.  The message is always brief because there’s not a lot of space for it.

2.  Postcards have high impact:  It’s hard to ignore a postcard… even if the reader is sorting their mail over a trashcan and discarding everything that looks like advertising.  An attractive postcard with an eye-catching benefit statement will be read by almost 100% of the people who get it… and anyone else who happens to see it. 

3.  Marketing with postcards saves money:  Postcards are small.  Therefore, it doesn’t cost much for printing.  You can even do the printing yourself with your own computer to reduce the cost to about a penny each.  Check out Overnight Prints for professional postcards at a fraction of a penny each.

4.  Marketing with postcards saves time:  Because postcards are small, it doesn’t take much time to develop a sales message for them, complete the printing and get them out in the mail.  It’s not unusual to see results from postcards within a week of deciding to use them.

5.  Postcards are versatile:  Postcards are easily adaptable to any business.  They work equally as well for selling either products or services.  They’re also adaptable to any kind of marketing activity.  You can use them to generate website traffic, develop sales leads, generate visits to a store, promote repeat sales or additional sales to current or previous customers, or… well, you get the idea.  Get to mailing.

Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success. –Napoleon Hill

                                                 POVERTY                   MIDDLE CLASS               WEALTHY

Taken from Chapter 3, “Hidden Rules Among the Classes” by Dr. Ruby Payne

From Jim Collins, Good to Great:

Assembling the right team is nothing new… however, you must first get the wrong people off the bus and the right people on the bus BEFORE you try to figure out where to drive it.  The key point is the degree of sheer rigor needed with regard to people decisions in order to take a company from good to great.

The good-to-great leaders understand three simple truths.  First, if you begin with “who,” rather than “what,” you can more easily adapt to a changing world.  If people join the bus primarily because of where it is going, what happens if you get ten miles down the road and you need to change direction?  You’ve got a problem.  But, if people are on the bus because of who else is on the bus, then it’s much easier to change course if necessary: “Hey, I got on this bus because of who else is on it; if we need to change direction to be more successful, fine with me.”  Second, if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away.  The right people don’t need to be tightly managed or fired up;  they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great.  Third, if you have the wrong people, if doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction or not.  You STILL won’t have a great company.  Great vision without great people is irrelevant.