Interview with Bill Atkins, Red Bank Limo: The Little Things Make A Big Difference To Your Customers
Bill Atkins is the Owner of Red Bank Limo. In this interview Bill tells us how his attention to customer satisfaction has helped his company thrive and win the National Operator of the Year from the Limousine and Chauffeured Transportation Magazine. Bill keeps his customer-focused company motto very simple: we get you there safely, on-time, with a friendly local driver. Bill, I've Heard You Give Presentations Sharing Marketing Tips That A Business Of Any Size Can Find Useful. Can You Summarize Some Of Those Key Points? The key to being successful is differentiation. What makes you different? Maybe you deliver your product or service faster, friendlier, or in some other customer-focused manner. If you don't know what makes you different, … Read More
The No-BS Cliché-Free Guide To Creating Engaging Content For Your Social Media Marketing
How many times and in how many ways have you heard the experts, gurus, and even those who are neither expert nor guru tell you that the key/secret/trick to a winning marketing plan is to create engaging content? If “content” is king then “engaging content” is a full-fledged deity; but the thing that is usually missing from the content equation is the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. This is your guide to what it means to be engaging and how to create content that is.
Sabotaging Success Part 4: Why ‘Management’ Isn’t Just For Guys In Ties
Poor management can turn even successful businesses into heaps of smoldering ash. It may sound like a corporate, big-company concept, but management is what keeps the wheels of your business spinning. Whether you have a 50-person operation or you’re a one-woman show, poor management could be costing you business and ultimately success. Here’s how to recognize it and how to take action before it becomes a problem.
Listen To Your Mother! What Mom’s Timeless Words Of Wisdom Can Teach Us About Business And Marketing
In honor of Mother’s Day and mothers everywhere I wanted to do something a little bit fun that’s also a tribute to all those unappreciated lessons moms have to teach. My mother raised six of us – me plus five brothers – and somehow came out the other side still sane (though sometimes she may beg to differ). Here are some eternal momisms and the takeaways that can help us be successful in business – and in life.
You’ve Got Facebook’s Timeline For Business! Now What?
Now that the hoopla surrounding the timeline conversion has died down and marketing as we know it was not exterminated by the absence of a designated landing page, it’s time to wonder: now that we’ve all got timelines, what are we supposed to be doing with them? On the plus side, we’ve got best practices. On the down side, there are no marketing rules. Here’s a “what the heck should I do now” starting point if you’re wondering just how to use timeline effectively for your business.
5 Things I’ve Learned About Marketing From Bad Automotive Advertising
As a creative director in radio for about 12 years, I constantly railed against bad automotive advertising. As a marketing and advertising professional, I found it embarrassing. As a consumer, I found it insulting. As a regular guy, I found it annoying. One of my all-time favorite advertising quotes comes from Hugh MacLeod, who once said, “If you talked to people the way advertising talked to people, they’d punch you in the face.” But this ear poison has taught me some valuable lessons about marketing content and strategy, and motivated me to do better. Here are five of those lessons.
Sabotaging Success Part 3: How Jumping Into Business Without Knowing Where You’re Headed Is A Recipe For Failure (And What To Do About It)
Welcome back to the miserable failure series! This is where we get to dissect a few of the common reasons that we fail to achieve all we hope and set out to achieve. If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out reasons 1 and 2: fear of failure, and fear of success. We’ve covered the fears for now and are going to move onto the business itself. Join me as we smoke out a few more fail Monsters and figure out how to exterminate them.
Is Your Website Any Good? A 19-Point “Do It Right” Checklist For The DIY Crowd.
So you’ve built a website! Spent anywhere from a few hours happily dragging and dropping some content around to a few days yanking at the roots of your hair trying to get your pages to display correctly. And now your new site is up and running, ready for the world to see so you can start raking in those millions. But is it any good? That’s a tough question to ask after the fact, but it’s an important one if you want a successful website. Here are some ideas for how to improve yours if you’re repenting a little late.
Sabotaging Success Part 2: The Paradox Of Wanting Success But Avoiding It… Because You’re Not Really Sure What You’ll Do When You Get There
Here we are, still on the negativity track! If you read my last fear of failure post, you’ll know that there’s really a positive outcome to all this. But success is wily, and it has many ways to evade us. Today I want to talk about another little Monster that often gets in our way, the opposite of the one we talked about last time. Many of us are in touch with the more obvious fear of failing, the “what ifs” that keep us awake at night. But we don’t generally think about the other “what if”: what if I succeed? Subtly we sabotage ourselves, just shy of our goals, because we’re not really sure what we’ll do when we reach them. Here’s how to recognize the Monster and beat it down when it appears.
