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Octane Results: PR/MARKETING

Are You in the Right Market for Your Passion?

8 April, 2013

By: Catherine Clifford, a Special to Overdrive

Past performance is no guarantee of future results, as the old business truism says. But you also may have heard that you can’t know where you’re going without knowing where you have been. To get a sense of which industries small businesses are growing in, the analysts at Raleigh, N.C.-headquartered private-company financial-information company Sageworks ran some numbers for Entrepreneur.com. Here’s a look at the industries where U.S. companies with $10 million or less in annual sales have shown the highest and lowest percentage change from Jan. 1 to Dec 31, 2012. As a benchmark, the average growth rate across all U.S. small businesses in the time period was 8 percent, says Libby Bierman, an analyst at Sageworks.

Categories: FINANCES general Inspirational PR/MARKETING

Strong Branding, Check!

5 April, 2013

By: Adam Kleinberg, a Special to Overdrive

Entrepreneurs are hustlers. We wear many hats.

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We’re like the chameleons of the business world, adapting to whatever we need to be at any given moment in time. It is no wonder so many of us struggle when our ventures gain critical mass and it comes time to focus our brand. In the mind of the customer, you get to be one thing. One. That matters because the customer’s mind is where your brand lives. Not in your headquarters. Not on your website. Not in your PowerPoint deck. You don’t get to be five things. You don’t get to be three. If you say you are three things to your customer, you are saying you are nothing. If you say you are three things that your competitors already say they are, you are saying you are less than nothing. Your one thing is the unique value that your brand delivers. Volvo keeps you safe. IBM is building a smarter planet. 7-Up is the uncola.

Categories: EO News PR/MARKETING

Tags: best practices better business practices business entrepreneurs' organization lessons learned management social media technology

The Business of Exercise

2 April, 2013

By: Susan Locke, M.D., Healthnetwork Medical Director and Special to Overdrive

As an entrepreneur, your time is precious. There are only so many hours in the day, and most of them are spent working on or in your business. To be effective in this role, you need to maintain a healthy lifestyle and stay in the best shape possible. How can you do that when you’re busy running a company? Build exercise into your day.

Categories: EO News PR/MARKETING

Tags: best practices business entrepreneurs' organization health inspirational technology tips

How to Get Customers to Read Your Emails!

1 April, 2013

By: DJ Waldo, a Special to Overdrive

If you want to be a successful email marketer, it’s essential that subscribers open your messages. After all, if your audience isn’t opening your emails, it’s impossible for them to take action, such as clicking through to your website or making a purchase. But how do you keep them opening your emails on a regular basis? There are four primary ways: solve a problem, save them money, make them smarter or entertain them.

Here are some tips for crafting these types of successful marketing emails:

Tags: best practices business entrepreneur lessons learned management marketing social media technology tips

Grow Your Business and Get Back to the Basics

28 March, 2013

By: Brad Sugars, a Special to Overdrive

Even small business owners who don’t consider themselves innovative or creative can have great ideas and tremendous payoffs simply by being more observant — willing to test and measure what works and what doesn’t. In my experience, what really works when generating new ideas in business is sticking with basics, then combining or recombining existing “assets” or resources into new products, services or niches. Here are five suggestions to get you thinking, moving and looking in different directions for ideas you can apply to your own business:

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Categories: EO News PR/MARKETING

Radicals & Visionaries: Invention vs. Innovation

26 March, 2013

By: Jennifer Wang, a Special to Overdrive

Are successful entrepreneurial concepts the product of nature or of nurture? Do they spring unformed from the minds of inventors, or are they carefully cultivated adaptations of preexisting notions?

It’s not surprising that David Edwards, founder of experimental design lab Le Laboratoire, is a proponent of inventiveness: following through on crazy ideas that may or may not become profit generators. In his view, the potential to advance the human race is what should come first in any venture–and if one can do that, then a big payoff is likely not far behind.

Meanwhile, Krisztina “Z” Holly, creator of the first TEDx conference and an entrepreneur and engineer, preaches innovation: building and iterating on existing ideas so they can have as great an impact as possible–and are more likely to attract investors from the get-go.

We put the two head-to-head to determine which mindset is more valuable when it comes to entrepreneurship.

Categories: FINANCES Inspirational PR/MARKETING

Tags: best practices business entrepreneur lessons learned management marketing social media tips

5 Tips for Cheap Online Marketing

21 March, 2013

By: Lewis Howes, a Special to Overdrive

In a world where attention is currency, it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to attract the eyes and ears of your target market. Not only are you up against larger companies with nicely funded marketing departments, you’re also competing with social media and a multitude of other distractions for the attention of your prospects. But that doesn’t mean your marketing efforts have to cost a ton of money or be overly dramatic in order to stand out from the crowd. Here are five creative and inexpensive ways to market your business in a digital world:

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Categories: PR/MARKETING Technology

Tags: best practices business entrepreneur eo lessons learned small business social media tips

Essential Qualities of Strategic Leaders

19 March, 2013

By: Lisa Nirell, a Special to Overdrive

Being a marketing leader in today’s economy reminds me of my first solo cross country flight in 1988: even when I think I’m totally in control, bad things can happen. I prepared one week in advance for this adventure from Stratford, Connecticut to Concord, New Hampshire. I had all of my sectional charts clearly marked, and the forecast was clear blue skies and calm air. As I crossed the invisible aerial border from Connecticut to Massachusetts, something strange happened.

Categories: Best Practices PR/MARKETING

Tags: best practices business entrepreneur lessons learned management tips

5 Elements of a Great TED Talk

18 March, 2013

By: Daria Steigman, a Special to Overdrive

I was watching this amazing TED talk about turning food deserts into food oases. Ten minutes later I was ready to pick up a shovel and dig. And I don’t enjoy gardening. So what makes for a great speech?

Categories: Best Practices PR/MARKETING

Tags: best practices business entrepreneur lessons learned management marketing social media tips

How to Optimize Your Facebook

5 March, 2013

By: Jeff Bullas, a Special to Overdrive

Before the rise of the social media age obtaining feedback negative or positive was restricted to private abuse over the phone, compliments in a personal email or a glowing testimonial in a letter. Today by giving your fans or opponents access to a Facebook page, blog comment box or a Twitter account, you can be praised or heckled in a matter of seconds. This is what scares the CEO or CMO who has grown up in a previous traditional world with limited and more discrete feedback! The upside is that a Facebook Page, Twitter and a Blog can provide you with instant feedback and keep you highly relevant in a connected social web that far outweighs the negatives.

Categories: Best Practices PR/MARKETING

Tags: best practices better business business lessons learned social media tips

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