Are you using this well-known knowledge about your potential new customer or client to your advantage by ensuring your own website is adapting to these mobile devices? Think about your website, or better yet, pull your website up on your mobile device. How does it read? Is the content and images unreadable or undistinguisable unless you zoom in?  Does the content and images move around in a ways they aren’t supposed to? If so, you might want to consider making your website responsive.

What is responsive website design? According to Stanford University it’s “a website that responds to the device that accesses it and delivers the appropriate output for it uses responsive design. Rather than designing multiple sites for different-sized devices, this approach designs one site but specifies how it should appear on varied devices.”

The advantages to having a responsive website are great. With everything going mobile now, it’s only natural that your businesses should be following suit. A responsive website ensures that you don’t lose valuable content on your website when it opens on a phone or tablet. A responsive website will adapt and show the relevant information without sacrificing readability. The adaptive screen offers a much more user friendly space to work with. 

 Here is our website and how it works with an IPhone (click to view larger): 

Notice that the text isn’t small. It’s the same size as on a standard size monitor, so there is no need to zoom in. The images and text fit perfectly on the screen, which results in nothing being where it shouldn’t be. The menu is extremely user-friendly and easy to navigate between pages. You no longer have to try and lightly tap that tiny navigation like you would on a non-responsive websites.   You don’t miss out on any valuable information. Everything is there; it’s just adapting to the size of your viewing screen.

Is it absolutely 100% vital that you have a responsive website? No, absolutely not. But with everything going mobile, it would be a good thing to have at the beginning of your website development or as part of your marketing plan. It makes for a better user experience, shows that your company is innovative and on top of the latest technologies and targets those frequent mobile users who may disregard your website/business if they have a hard time navigating your site on their mobile device.

 It makes for a better user experience, which shows that your company is innovative and on top of the latest technologies. It also targets those frequent mobile users who may disregard your website/business if they have a hard time navigating your site on their mobile device.

If you need help with making your website responsive, contact BoldThink. We will help bring your company into the year 2012 with a responsive website of your own.

Why do you need an SEO strategy? If you are truly serious about growing your business, SEO is one of the best values and return on investment that you can make. SEO will allow your website to generate leads for you, turn prospects into paying customers and increase your sales revenue.  Using an organic SEO strategy will not only increase rankings, but it will also add value to your brand and credibility to your website. How? By creating unique content that educates, informs and inspires your prospect to take action.

What to look for in an SEO company. When you are in the market looking for the best SEO company to work with for your business, it’s best to make sure that you are getting a company that knows how to tailor SEO strategies to your individual business. No strategy will work the same for a business in the same industry.  A good SEO company will also research your industry landscape and create processes that are ever-changing to achieve top rankings for target keyword searches.

How does the SEO process work? Though many companies may have a different process, most of the common practices are quite similar. The very first step is a quick SEO audit of your company. Here are some typical things SEO companies will look at:

• what your business is trying to promote or sell
• what your target market is
• brand analysis
• how your current website structure is set up
• what the current content on your website is
• how you are currently ranking in search engines
• ease of updating content frequently
• resources for writing and updating content
• competitive landscape
• how you are currently utilizing social media

Once we get the basic SEO audit done, the next step is to determine what your goals and objectives are. Without measureable goals, your SEO strategy will not be useful.

Understanding keywords.  After determining goals and objectives, the SEO strategy begins and custom processes are written to your business goals. More in-depth research is performed on your website so we can get a better understanding of how we can use keywords for your business. Here are a few examples of what we look at next:

• the value of your current website and what keywords your website already ranks with
• what the most valuable pages of your website are
• what pages are already indexed with Google
• who is currently linking to your website
• what keywords your competitors are using

Measuring your SEO performance. Once your SEO strategy is in place, measuring SEO performance begins almost immediately. Because we monitor your website’s performance daily, this helps us catch what is working, what is not working, what is getting hits, where we need improvements, what is excelling, etc… These daily monitors will allow us to change and tweak our ever-changing strategies as needed to get the most success for your website.

Search engines are continuously changing their algorithms and are striving to improve how they rank websites. With this in mind, it’s important to not only invest in an SEO strategy, but to also invest in the company that will perform the service for you. Just remember, there is no singular service that will enhance your SEO dramatically enough to make a valuable difference. If a company tells you there is and you can achieve results fast, run for the hills. The best SEO practitioners know that SEO is like a healthy diet in that no results are instantaneous, but if you stick with it long enough, your company will reap the valuable benefits and turn prospects into paying customers.

As a business owner, I know and understand the stress that unhappy clients can bring. In our industry, the “difficult client” is often the white elephant standing in the middle of the room that business owners don’t like to talk about in fear that they might offend someone.

But why not talk about it? We’ve all experienced it at some point in our business so why not share notes on what to do when you stumble across that particular type of client?

If you have a difficult client that you are willing to work things out with, here are my top three tips for making the best out of a difficult situation.

Assess the situation: Sit down with your client and get to the bottom of why they are unhappy. Ask them questions that might be otherwise difficult to ask in any other given situation. Are they not happy with whom they are working with in your office? Is it the quality of work? Is it the timeframe of getting things done? Really get to the heart of the problem by simply asking the right questions.

Ask them for the solution: This might be a shocker for some, but common sense for others. If you are truly in the business to do good work and have happy customers, ask them what they would like to see happen to solve the problem. If it’s doable, make it happen. If they simply say that they don’t know, offer different alternatives. Work together to come up with the solution.

Sweeten the deal: Once you have both come up with a doable solution, sweeten the deal by going the extra mile. It can be as simple as sending a handwritten note with a Starbucks gift card saying “have your next coffee on us”. It lets them know that you’re really are trying to make the best out of a difficult situation. It might also soften them a little bit.

However, no matter how hard we try, we need to face the fact that sometimes the relationship cannot simply be repaired. Regardless of your willingness to break your back by bending over backwards, it’s just not going to happen because of circumstances beyond your control. And that’s okay. If you’ve exhausted every avenue of trying to find solutions, but still can’t find one that suits both your needs, sometimes it’s just better to break ties and cut your losses.

Here are some exceptions to the above and when it might be best to let your client go:

Verbally abusive clients: If you have a client who is verbally abusive, rude or relentless in belittling what you do to you or your employees, it’s time to cut ties immediately. There are certain borders that just shouldn’t be crossed and such behavior shouldn’t be tolerated.

Expectations/Services mismatch: Typically when a client signs on with your business, these expectations and services should be discussed and agreed upon in the beginning. However, like all things in business and relationships, things can change and evolve over time. If they have unreasonable expectations, it’s time to re-evaluate if your services are best suited for them.

Frequent delayed payments: There are times when you need to give your client the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps they really did misplace that invoice or they truly did forget. It happens to all of us at some point or another. However, if you have a client who is consistently late on payments or says they mailed out a payment on more than one occasion and you never received it, go over your payment policy with them. You have bills and overhead that need paid just as much as they need your services delivered on time. No payment = no services.

Regardless of whether you decide to work things out with your client or to let them go, take action early. Don’t wait until things escalate and become more difficult to handle. The sooner you do, the sooner both parties can move on and get back to doing business. I suggest picking up the phone and having the conversation to make the transition easier. I know it’s not easy to do, but it’s all too easy to hide behind our computers and send an email detailing what went wrong. To me, that’s like breaking up with your significant other by text. You just don’t do it. Pick up the phone and remember that it’s nothing personal… it’s just business.

Having an emotional connection is vital to a business relationship. If it’s there, it means that trust has been established and it takes the business relationship to the next level of not only being able to connect with someone on a business level, but being able to be open and honest with each other, which results in better business all the way around. When you get to know someone, you begin to learn how they process information and what the best routes are to deliver that information.

For example: you are working with Bob at Company A. You don’t really know Bob because you never really met with him outside of the office, therefore you don’t always know the best way to approach him with information that isn’t always easy to hear. 

I think we’ve all been in that situation before. In my industry, it’s never easy to review a company marketing plan, logo design or website. It makes it really hard to deliver information that basically tells people what they are doing wrong and how they can improve what they are doing. Who really wants to hear that? No one likes negativity, so it’s even more important to have a connection with your client so it makes delivering business advice a tad bit easier.

My advice to my friend was to step out of her comfort zone and ask the client out to lunch. Get to know them outside of the business and learn about their hobbies, their family and things that you don’t get to generally talk about in a business meeting. Build a relationship with them.

Here are a few things to keep in mind if you do ask a client out for lunch (or coffee or drinks):

1. Pick up the tab. You asked them to lunch so you should definitely plan on paying.
2. Be mindful of business hours. Keep your coffee, lunch or drink outing within normal working hours of 8-5. It’s not polite to impose on after-hour plans.
3. Limit your drinks. It’s okay to have a cocktail or beer if it’s a casual thing, but don’t overdue it. Nothing screams unprofessional more than someone who can’t handle their alcohol. Also, play it safe. If you aren’t sure whether you should order that beer, don’t.

Now the next time you call Bob at Company A, you can ask him how his latest skydiving attempt went or how his dog Marbles is doing. Having that trust is going to make your business relationship much more comfortable in the long run, which will help achieve more desirable results.

I’ve brainstormed. A lot. I’ve also participated in my fair share of brainstorming sessions. If there is one thing I have learned while participating is that they don’t always work and can actually put a damper on creativity— the whole point of holding the session in the first place.

People who are often asked to come to a brainstorming session are often intimidated, and for good reason. How many times have you sat and listened to someone come up with some crazy idea that would never fly with a client just to hear another person shoot it down immediately? Or perhaps someone came up with an idea that wasn’t fully worked out just to have someone grill them and ask several questions as to how they can pull it off? Or how about the common reply of “No, that just won’t work”.

OUCH!

I’ve heard more criticism and negativity come from a brainstorming session than I have heard from Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmare! What ever happened to the concept of free flowing ideas? It’s no wonder people don’t want to speak up in those sessions. Who wants to start or end their day being criticized for just coming up with random ideas and thoughts that they didn’t really want to do in the first place?

In my experience, the best ideas are generally the most outrageous ideas thrown out there. It doesn’t matter if it’s not a fully thought out idea. What matters is that you HAVE an idea. The fun part is coming up with ways to create, polish and make it happen.

How can you turn that sour brainstorming session around and have some thriving ideas that will leave your employees amped up? I’ve put on several successful brainstorming sessions over the past few years by following a few simple guidelines that I have found helpful over time:

1. Have an agenda to hand out so people know what to expect and how long each section will last.
2. Bring a stopwatch and keep track of time so you don’t spend too much time on a single activity.
3. Have different brainstorming activities planned. If you need some suggestions, I recommend getting this book.
4. Have a parking lot that you can post ideas to that you’ll want to revisit at a later time. Those are especially helpful for the next brainstorming session.
5. Invite more then just the management team. Everyone has good ideas and the people who are at the heart of your business are your customers, assistants and cleaning staff along with many others.
6. No ouching.

What does “no ouching” mean? It means that you are not allowed to say anything negative or shut down any ideas at any time, regardless of how crazy they might seem. I would even encourage giving everyone an “ouch” sign to have so that if someone breaks the rule, they can hold up the sign to show they’ve been ouched and can call out the offender.

With some careful planning and some simple guidelines, your staff can really shine and come up with some brilliant ideas that even the most creative mind couldn’t have come up with. If you need any additional advice or tips, feel free to contact us. Good luck!

Getting a product out there is tough business. Competition is tough and consumers are becoming more and more demanding for higher quality with a lower price point. Though all specifics are different depending on the product, we thought we could offer a few insights to helping you with your launch.

Prior to launch (and if you are just testing the waters):

1. Idea: what’s your idea for your new product? Write it out and be thorough. What makes it unique and different?
2. Market research: who is your intended consumer? How will you reach them? What other products are out there that are similar? How will it be produced? What are the costs for developing it? What kind of pricing (both retail and wholesale) will you sell it at?
3. Prototyping: Once you’ve finalized the first two steps, it’s time to make the prototype. If you are partnering with another company to manufacture your product, research them first to make sure they are reputable. (tip: Be sure they sign a confidentiality agreement. We also suggest a lawyer at this point too to make sure your idea is protected.)
4. Testing and retesting: Once you’ve got your prototype, it’s time to test it out. Though it can always be exciting to share your new product with family, don’t limit it to just them to test it out. Families are generally loving and supportive and generally won’t offer you the critical feedback you’ll need for your product to succeed. Be sure you hit people that are your intended consumer. Gather your feedback and make adjustments as necessary. A good rule of thumb is that you’ll want about 70% to 80% of positive feedback before launching your product. Anything less than that will need more adjustments.
5. Launch: Once you’ve reached 70%-80% of positive market feedback, it’s time to launch your product. Keep in mind that even after your initial launch, there will still be some need for adjustments once it hits market. (think of Apple Iphone 3, 3G, 4 and 4GS as prime examples)

Launch time (now the fun begins! It’s time to market your product and get it into the hands of consumers.)

6. Marketing: We recommend working with a marketing and design company as one of the first steps. It’s vital to have a great brand from the very beginning. Your team will help you with developing a strong brand and identity, website, marketing and social media strategy. Marketing and creative design companies generally have a great way of telling your story to make it more personable and desirable for consumers.
7. Create your campaign: Once the foundation is laid out for your new product and you know your brand, it’s time to create your campaign using these components. Your product should have a unique story and what marketers like to call a USP (unique selling proposition… though we don’t like to call it that… kind of boring for us). 
8. Tell your story: You can get the word out there by advertising through traditional outlets or by using more modern technologies like social media. YouTube has a great track record for getting products noticed and going viral. If you have the money, tradeshows are a proven way to get your product out there and right in front of buyers (assuming you are selling wholesale, not just retail).
9. Understand your product lifecycle: You will need to closely monitor your sales from the time your product launches. If you go for a long time period close to a flatline and sales decline, it’s time to either revamp your product and add new features. Be sure to gather your feedback about your product and take those suggestions and comments into consideration when deciding to change things up.
10. Reevaluate: There are times when a product just won’t spike in sales, regardless of how many upgrades or new features you add. If this happens to you, it’s time to reevaluate and consider either tweaking the product for a new target demographic or retiring the product. You’ll need to take the information you have about your product, analyze what worked and what didn’t work and come up with a new product to boost sales and get people excited again.

Since I was 14 and old enough to get a work permit, I’ve been working. I spent my summers working 50+ hours at a local greenhouse and catering on the weekends. It was great money, lots of fun and showed me the ropes of learning how to run a business.  Within a year, I had proven myself to my bosses who had put so much faith in me that they allowed me to manage certain aspects of their business— all before graduating high school.  I had so much drive and determination to succeed that before I knew it, I forgot to have a life and live life as a normal teenager. Not to say that my life as a teenager was not fun, but I worked… a lot. Instead of taking time off and going out on weekends, I was filling in shifts at work. In my mind, if I wasn’t working, I wasn’t succeeding.

Fast forward to today: Many of those early workaholic traits have showed up in my work habits today. I’m always working and if I’m not working, I’m thinking up the next big idea for a client or way to grow my business.  Unfortunately, I think that if my mind is resting, I’m not being productive. If I’m not on my feet, I’m not checking things off of my task list. Even in my personal life, if I take a minute or two to sit down and breathe, those dishes aren’t getting done. I’m quite sure many of you can relate to what I’m saying. Lately I’ve been on overload and my mind hasn’t shut down. I just feel so busy that I don’t have time to stop.

But I realized something the other day; I realized that while my intent was to have a productive day- I was actually being counter-productive. I spent most of my time trying to sort through the messes I made on my desk with my many sticky notes of ideas, while answering emails, phone calls and researching the next idea I had before the other one had a chance to succeed. I finally realized that I needed to just stop and walk away.  So I did. The rest of the afternoon was spent doing things that I wanted to do. I went and got coffee, read the paper and even managed to go to the art museum. I even came home after picking up the boys from school and decided not to cook. As for the dishes— well, one day in the sink won’t kill them… or me!

One of my favorite places to rejuvenate: Asheville, North Carolina

It’s important to take time away for yourself and remember that you need time away to unplug and decompress (hopefully you realize that before you get overwhelmed like me). You won’t be any good to yourself or your business if you are constantly on overload, easily distracted and moving on to the next thing before the previous thing had a chance to fully brew.  Not to mention, taking time away can actually SAVE you time. It’s like a buy one get one! You probably waste a day by being on overload and by not working efficiently.  So why not take a day off and get the day back that you are wasting by not taking a day off? Something to ponder….

 Here are some other reasons why it’s important to take time off:

 1. It’s crucial for your health: taking time off has been proven to greatly reduce stress and be good for your health. As we know, stress can take its toll on you and increase your chances of heart disease, high blood pressure and weight gain, among many other things.

2. It increases creativity: believe it or not, taking time away gives us a chance to reconnect with ourselves and help with the rediscovery of who we are and what our goals are.

3. Less likely to get burned out: Too much of something isn’t always a good thing. Taking time away helps us from getting burned out from the thing we love.

4. You’re less likely to get distracted: You know all of those shiny things that you are always distracted by? Spend a day and get distracted intentionally or have a day dedicated to working on new ideas so it doesn’t interfere with the days you are trying to be productive.

5. Increased job performance: having time off or taking a vacation leads to a better quality of life which can have a profound effect on your work life and increase your desire to work harder.