Fernald Business Association

Archive for January, 2010

Conducting business through social media is a big departure from the traditional way of doing business, and in so many ways this departure is also a perfect opportunity for small businesses to carve their niche and grow their business in a revolutionary manner.

A paradigm shift of sorts, social media for small business is gaining slow yet steady acceptance. Many businesses are still skeptical, but many more are already reaping the rewards of fishing the untested waters of social media for small business.

Social media redefines the way businesses deal with their customers because social media has changed the customers itself. Social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook make it possible for users to conduct social activities online, such as posting and receiving social messages, establishing social networks, all the while transcending time zones and geographical locations. Users’ socialization behavior and expectations changed as a result.

Using social media for small business must therefore take into account this change in customers, in order for the business to adapt agilely to the change. Below are some ways that business should transform, in order to stay relevant.

Establishing two-way relationships with customers

Social media for small business discards the old school method of a top-down marketing deployment, wherein a handful of key business people plan a campaign, talk to the advertising people, and use traditional media channels to launch it. This kind of campaign is often one-way, and leaves little room for customer engagement.

Clients using social media expect communication to come from many directions and allow them the freedom to air their praises, complaints and questions about the company and its products.

Decide whether to tender or not.

Duplicate the required number of copies.

Produce a tender timescale diary.

Safely store two copies for the tender response.

Read the tender document and send off for any relevant reference documents stated in the document.

Log the date of request for this documentation and ensure its speedy receipt.

Decide what team of experts in required to complete the tender.

Circulate reference documentation on receipt.

Call an initial meeting of the tender team.

Formation of Tender Team

This may include input from your design, production, finance, legal, commercial and sales personnel. It is important to include any sales personnel who have knowledge of the client; they are likely to appreciate from their past contact, any requirements the client feels are important. These may not be obvious from, or even stated in, the tender document, but when addressed in your tender are likely to be positively considered. This sets your bid above those of your competitors.

First Tender Team Meeting

The initial meeting agenda:

Read through the tender documents.

Reconsider decision to tender.

Assign different aspects of the tender to appropriate personnel present.

Denote clearly on each copy who is responsible for each item.

Transforming Marketing Departments into Marketing Powerhouses

The role of marketing is constantly changing. As budgets shrink and demands grow, departments across the country are being carefully scrutinized for their effectiveness. Top executives are holding marketers more accountable, which effectuation they must not only deliver results, but also find structure to measure the actual bottom-line impact of their marketing initiatives.

Previously, the success of an initiative was primarily judged on the tangible deliverables the marketing team produced, such as media coverage at an event. However, those days are daylong gone. As the develop of marketing evolves, practitioners are becoming far more sophisticated in terms of their ability to deliver measurable results and a solid return on investment (ROI).In addition, advancements in technology also support elevate marketing to a more exact science by replacing campaign-by-campaign news with the ability to establish meaningful metrics at the beginning of a mar-comm program, at key points throughout its execution, and at the program’s conclusion. Such technology allows marketing teams to look at campaign performance in real-time, evaluate the success or failure of a particular initiative, and attain changes accordingly.

As the trend toward merging marketing \”creativity\” with \”science\” continues, more companies are expanding their marketing departments to include a marketing operations management (M.O.M.) function, which directly links its marketing programs to concrete business results. Adding marketing operations management to a company’s marketing mix enables it to run its marketing division as a viable, accountable business unit within the organization where people, processes and technology are fully leveraged to support attain marketing outcomes more predictable.

The Benefits of Marketing Operations Management (M.O.M)

Marketing operations management is an emerging develop that is growing both in popularity and in practice as more companies struggle with structure to optimally leverage their department’s shrinking resources. As more organizations are discovering, implementing mar-comm operations management into a company’s infrastructure can support transform a division into a powerhouse.

OK, so how many times has this occurred: someone asks you what you do for a living and you tell them that you are a Product Manager and they fire back at you “Oh, so you manage projects?” Grrr, it’s really no fair – the two disciplines really have nothing in common. Well wait a minute, maybe they do. No, no they really are different. Dang it. What’s the difference between the two?

A lot of the confusion comes from the simple fact that the two jobs do share a lot of things in common. However, never fear, they really are completely different no matter what your friends or your boss tell you. In a nutshell, the differences fall into three different categories: scope, execution, and results.

Scope: A project manager has the somewhat enviable benefit of having the hope of there existing clear cut boundaries that define what he/she is responsible for. They are responsible for a project that uses resources, has a schedule, and has a clear set of deliverables. A successful product manager on the other hand has a less defined job of creating a successful product. The product will be driven by no so much a set of requirements, but rather a customer need which may be fickle and change over time. A product manager has to be able to see through requirements and determine what the root cause of the customer’s issue is and create a product that solves that.

Execution: The project manager is responsible for basically reporting on the status of the project and he/she has a whole host of tools to do this with. However, the product manager is not responsible for designing the product. In fact the product manger does not have to be a subject matter expert – they can mange projects that they know nothing about the underlying technology. A Product Manger on the other hand desperately needs to know everything about how the product works. They need to know the motivation behind every design decision so that they can explain it in non-technical terms to a customer. A product manager is going to have to be able to sell (something a project manager never has to do) his/her product to others both internally and externally.

Results: How is a project manager judged? If a product follows a set schedule, delivers what was requested when it was promised and does not exceed its budget, then it is considered to have been a success. Basically, the less attention a project attracts, the more successful it is deemed to have been. The product manger on the other hand is expected to have created a product efficiently (similar to a project manager’s project), but has the additional burden of having to be successful no matter if it is delivered to an internal or external customer. If the product is a runaway success and gets lots of vocal praise from the customer than the product manager is deemed to have done a good job.