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July 3, 2011 By 1 Comment

What your business can learn from the Mormon Church

For those who may not be aware, I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Other less formal labels for this denomination include “LDS” and “Mormon.” My faith is a source of great happiness in my life and I am always happy to answer questions about it. However, this post is not about religion, so I would ask that if you have any religious questions about the LDS faith, please contact me directly and I will be happy to discuss.

The LDS Church is one of the largest religions in the world. It has over 14 million members and is the second-fastest growing church in the U.S., according to the National Council of Churches. Other statistics on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be found in the LDS Newsroom.

All spiritual debates aside, it’s easy to see that the LDS Church is doing something right. What are the Mormons doing that has lead to such dramatic and steady growth and how can it apply to your business?

Strong systems

The Mormon church is extremely systematic about everything from building churches and temples to teaching sunday school. If you go to a Mormon church anywhere in the world, you will find that they all follow the same meeting agendas, the same processes, and even teach the same lessons. If you attend a church meeting one Sunday in Indianapolis and then attend a meeting the following Sunday in California, it will be very familiar and you will be be able to stay on the same lesson plan. If the Mormon Church wants to form a new congregation, it follows a proven system for setting up the meetinghouse and can very quickly set in motion a process to get it up and running (complete with local clergy) very quickly and with very few issues. This saves time and money.

In a similar fashion, your business can benefit from strong systems that allow you to execute tasks and projects quickly and consistently. If you have proven systems for sales, marketing, product delivery, and customer service, your business will run much more efficiently and enjoy faster growth. If you’re unfamiliar with creating business systems, check out The E-Myth (affiliate link).

Member empowerment

The LDS Church makes it a high priority to encourage members to share their faith with others. In fact, one of the three main components of the mission of the church is “to proclaim the gospel.” Church members are encouraged to talk about their faith, share information with others, and speak openly about religion. This creates a culture that empowers all members to become “marketers” for the church. They are encouraged to follow their enthusiasm for their faith and make it a part of their everyday lives and communications. As a result, almost every member of the LDS church is prepared and eager to be a polite but ardent evangelist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Your business can also turn employees into evangelists. If you continuously encourage your employees to talk about your company with others, share your brand, and openly talk about their jobs, your company will enjoy greater name recognition and awareness. This will result in more leads and potential customers. Empower your team to use tools like social media to inform the public what your company is all about.

Training

The Mormon Church has a phenomenal training program for its 52,000+ missionaries around the world (who are volunteers, by the way). Before serving, a missionary must spend anywhere from three weeks to three months in a training program that helps them utilize systems, processes, and procedures for reaching prospective new members. Every missionary goes through the exact same proven training process. If some part of the process is improved, it is rolled out to every missionary in the world. The Mormon Church is very serious about proper training and equips its missionaries with the systems and support they need to be successful.

Does your business provide sales training? If not, it might be worth considering. Proper sales training gets all your sales people on the same page, gives them a system to follow, and provides ongoing coaching. My favorite sales system is the Sandler system. If you’re in the Indianapolis area, I recommend Trustpointe or Lushin.

Rapid embracing of technology

Technology evolves at an frenzied pace and it can sometimes be difficult to keep up. However, the Mormon Church sees almost every form of new technology as an opportunity to grow the church’s brand and message. You’ll find that the church has a presence on just about every major social network in use today and even organizes messaging among specific focus areas, including newsroom communications, and member training just to name a few. The church has an incredibly strong SEO strategy which brings lots of relevant traffic to its websites. Additionally, the Mormon Church facilitates messaging through the use of apps, blogs, video, mobile, podcasts, and email. The church even has web portals and apps that allow all members of a congregation to instantly download directories and leadership information directly to their phones in order to facilitate easy communication between members. Most church buildings also now have wireless Internet access in order to encourage members to make use of these technologies as learning aids.

Your business can also benefit by embracing new technologies. If you look at each new form of technology as an opportunity to share your message, your brand will travel faster and your business will grow. Just as the Mormon Church does, carefully study each new tool or technology that evolves, decide how it can strengthen your brand messaging, and then deliberately integrate it into your business.

Partnerships

The Mormon Church does not see other religions as competition. Instead, church leaders throughout the world work with leaders of other faiths to serve and provide humanitarian relief. Some notable examples include Indian Ocean tsunami relief efforts in which the Mormon Church partnered with Islamic leaders and the church’s partnership with the Catholic Church to bring aid to Niger. Other less-dramatic events include interfaith concerts and other social events.

In a similar fashion, your business can also grow faster by leveraging partnerships. Instead of viewing other businesses in your space as competitors, try reaching out to them and looking for ways to work together. Not every prospect will choose to work with you and some may choose your competition (just as some people will choose another religion over Mormonism). However, if you have a positive working relationship with your competitors, you can create opportunities to refer to each other and network constructively, which raises the level of respect for everyone.

Conclusion

The Mormon Church continues to grow quickly and recruits new members very rapidly. With new churches and temples being built all the time, it’s obvious that the methods in and practices of the church lead to growth and success. So what can your business learn from the Mormon Church? By creating systems, embracing new technology, utilizing sales training, creating partnerships, and empowering your employees, you can have a business that enjoys similar growth and success.

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January 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Systematic Business Blogging

The benefits of business blogging are numerous. A great business blog can bring benefits in the form of SEO, authority, and increased trust. However, one of the most common complaints I hear when it comes to blogging is “I just don’t have time!”

Interested in overcoming this? Read more about it in my guest post for Rhoda Israelov called “Systematic Business Blogging“.

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April 22, 2010 By 1 Comment

Law firm marketing plans and how video can help

I was in Reach class (which is life-changing, by the way) yesterday engaged in a lively discussion with CJ McClanahan and the rest of the class about how to differentiate our businesses from the competition. One of our class members, James MacAbee, is an attorney and we were brainstorming some ways that attorneys can create a law firm marketing plan to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

One complaint we came up with about attorneys is that they have a reputation for not being the best communicators. Their clients can sometimes feel in the dark because of a lack of communication while they are working. Jim suggested that maybe he could make a guarantee to his clients that he would send a weekly update to all his clients on a consistent basis via email. This sounded pretty good but then I thought, why not take it a step further and use video? How can a law firm use video communication in a marketing plan?

The attorney-client relationship is a personal one and email may not always be the best way to stay in touch. In addition, it can take quite a bit of time to type up a bunch of email updates all of your clients. So here’s my suggestion: use video email as your weekly update tool.

As part of your strategy to differentiate yourself as an attorney, make a guarantee that you will send a weekly video message with a status report on the project to all your clients. Most laptops now have built-in web cams and it would only take a couple of minutes at most for each message. As an attorney, you save a ton of time because you don’t have to type a bunch of emails. Even more importantly, your clients get to see and hear your expressions, your personality, and your tone. It is an extremely personal way to communicate and really keeps the relationship warmer.

Delivering these messages is very inexpensive (or even free). Take a look at TokBox or talk to Jim Britt. Imagine how unique your law firm would be if you marketed your practice using this point of differentiation. Attorneys that send me video updates on my project? What great customer service! Additionally, this creates a buzz-worthy and memorable selling point that will cause others to refer you more often.

Law firm marketing is tricky because attorneys are not supposed to directly solicit business and so they must rely on a solid marketing plan to generate leads. In addition to a great website and SEO, law firms usually rely heavily on referrals to gain new clients. Unique service offerings like video status reports are likely to generate more referrals from existing clients because they will want to tell their friends how innovative their attorney is.

As a law firm, try marketing your practice with a unique service proposition like video status reports. It can save you a lot of time and may just turn your firm into a purple cow.

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December 2, 2009 By 5 Comments

Why consider ghost blogging?

You’ve probably heard all the buzz about blogging by now. As you may have heard, blogging can help build visibility for you and your company through improved search engine rankings and distributed content. Blogging also helps add an element of transparency to your business because it allows your customers to learn more about the people behind the services you offer. Finally, blogging gives you a strong content platform to distribute via multiple channels, including social networks.

Blogging sounds like a great idea, right? However, what if you don’t have time to blog or you are not inclined to be a writer? This is where ghost blogging may be a good fit.

Ghost blogging is a service in which a company or individual writes blog entries on behalf of someone else. For example, let’s say Acme Corporation is interested in ranking better on search engines, as well as publishing industry articles that build credibility in the marketplace. Acme Corporation does not employ professional writers and no one on staff has time to become a great blogger. In this case, Acme Corporation might hire another company to write scheduled blogs on behalf of Acme. These blogs might be published as the CEO, Marketing Director, or a VP. The ghost blogger will do a brief phone interview with one of more Acme representatives in order to gather topics and outlines, and then write blog entries based on those notes.

This may seem inauthentic at first, but it’s actually quite the opposite. Rather than painstakingly trying to craft articles that communicate the proper message, Acme executives can now speak freely and comfortably during the ghost blog interview and know that their words will be crafted properly in the written form. Additionally, a good ghost blogger will structure content in such a way that important keywords and phrases are included in order to assist in better search rankings for Acme.

Most ghost bloggers will do a monthly or semi-monthly interview that produces about four blogs per month. Ghost blogging is a great way to build a content platform and improve search engine rankings. Additionally, it gives you great content to distribute on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. This helps strengthen your brand and authority.

So how do you know if ghost blogging is right for you? If you don’t have professional writers on staff, you want better visibility on search engines and social media, and you want to build a reputation of expertise in your industry, ghost blogging may be a great fit for you.

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July 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

7 Habits of Highly Effective Websites

All websites are not created equal. At SpinWeb, we know this and take great care in crafting association and corporate websites that provide clear benefits to site visitors and assist our clients in meeting their marketing and communications objectives. So what makes an effective website?

1. Design. Good design matters. When prospective customers or members visit your website, they are making a snap judgment about your organization. I have lost count of how many times I have heard my friends say (when talking about an organization) “Have you seen their website? It looks terrible!” People notice your image. It matters and it makes an impression.

2. Content. Along with good design, quality content contributes to the impression your website visitors have of your organization. Not only should your content be grammatically-correct and well-written, but it should be current. If you are posting news items, blog entries, or time-oriented items, be sure that these areas are kept up-to-date. Otherwise, your organization looks stale. Consider hiring a content writer to ensure that your organization is presenting itself professionally.

3. Usability. Resist the temptation to cram everything on the home page. Instead, craft a logical navigation structure that allows your site visitors to progress through information in a way that makes sense to them. This can be done through a simple card sorting exercise or by consulting with your website design agency (who may use card sorting as part of their process).

4. Transaction-ready tools. Today’s websites must be far beyond the days of the “online brochure”. Site visitors today demand interactive tools that allow them to purchase items, register for events, get answers, communicate with others, pay bills, and acquire content. In order to be competitive, your website must provide these tools and process data in real time. These tools must also make it easy to capture information and process it for later communication so that you don’t lose touch with visitors. Don’t make visitors call to register, fill out a paper form, or wait three days for an answer. These activities must happen in a matter of minutes via your website.

5. Structural quality. Most people don’t ever see the code “under the hood” that makes up a website, but how that code is structured makes a difference in the user experience. Clean, well-crafted code will result in a website that loads quickly, is search-engine friendly, and is accessible to users with disabilities.

6. Social media integration. Today’s websites must integrate seamlessly into social media in order to have an effective presence. Be sure your press releases, blogs, events, and other content items include a “Share This” button to allow site visitors to easily share your content. Your website should also automatically post content to other networks to automate the distribution process (done via Ping.fm). After this, be sure your employees are re-posting and participating in the resulting conversations.

7. Search engine marketing. Where do people go to find information? You guessed it: Google. If you are not targeting topical keywords and aligning your website with these terms, you are missing a huge opportunity. Creating a well-structured website is one prerequisite, but your organization must also invest in a systematic search engine marketing strategy that targets your audience correctly and collects leads from the resulting traffic. Organic search marketing is the most effective but AdWords are also effective.

While not a comprehensive list, these are the minimum requirements for an effective website. Whether your organization is an association or a corporation, these guidelines will help maximize the effectiveness of your website.

Are there other habits that you would like to add? I would love to hear your comments.

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March 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Verio Partner Summit Observations

I had the pleasure of attending the Verio Partner Summit in Reston, VA this week (Washington, D.C. area) and had a great time networking with other Verio partners and team members. I also had the pleasure of sitting on a panel during a breakout session focused on helping business owners grow their businesses.

I was also pleasantly surprised to receive the Innovation Award this year for SpinWeb’s work in utilizing the Verio and Accrisoft product line to deliver powerful and beautiful web sites to our clients in the member-driven, health care, business-to-consumers, education, and manufacturing industries.

Finally, I attended some excellent presentations, including one by Heather Lutze, who talked about Internet marketing and social media. She inspired me to re-write my own presentations and make some improvements. Nice work, Heather!

Every time I attend conferences like this, I am reminded of the need to get away and re-charge on a regular basis. It’s extremely important to network with other business owners and learn in a group space together because it’s at events like these that I develop some of my best ideas. Props to the Verio team for a great conference. I look forward to next year’s event!

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October 30, 2008 By 1 Comment

5 Marketing and Technology Tips for Thriving in an Uncertain Economy

Unless you have not seen a single piece of news in the past few months, you are probably aware that these are uncertain economic times. Though we all hope for a fast recovery and stronger economic times soon, it also pays to be pro-active and look for ways to become more efficient and re-evaluate how we are investing money into our businesses. Here are some ways to reduce costs while actually improving sales, service, and flexibility in your business.

Replace Your Office Software with Google Apps. Most businesses use Microsoft Office on PCs to allow employees to create documents and spreadsheets. However, did you know that Google also offers an office suite that happens to be free? Additionally, utilizing Google’s office suite (which includes Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations) allows your entire office to collaborate on documents and track changes in real time. This can reduce your expense for purchasing and upgrading office software to $0.

Replace Expensive Office Phone Systems with Cell Phones. Most businesses have a traditional phone system that consists of big, clunky phones that sit on desks. At the same time, many companies also provide cell phones for key employees. Why pay for both? Ditch the desk phones and go to a sleek, efficient, mobile-only system. Inbound calls can be handled by an auto-attendant such as Onebox, or by a live reception service like The Intelligent Office (be sure to ask for Matt!). These services will route inbound calls directly to the appropriate mobile phone and present a seamless experience to the caller. Not only can this reduce your costs, but it also facilitates better customer service since employees are no longer tied to a desk.

Re-invest your Yellow Pages Budget Into Online Search Marketing. Many businesses are beginning to understand that the Yellow Pages is a dying advertising medium and is producing fewer and fewers qualified leads as time goes on. At the same time, the online search market is booming (ever heard of Google?). Reduce your Yellow Pages budget down to $0 and re-invest that money into Search Marketing and I can almost guarantee that you will get a dramatically better return on investment. Search marketing reaches more people and allows you to generate targeted leads, unlike the Yellow Pages which has a higher percentage of people who are just price-shopping. Before you start your search marketing campaigns, be sure that your web site is current and professionally-designed.

Network, Network, Network!. As customers become more and more cautious, trust becomes even more important. Referral marketing and networking is a great way to build a network of trust that can lead to strong business relationships. Consider investing in memberships like BNI, Rainmakers, and other groups that are designed to facilitate referrals. While these groups include an initial investment in the form of membership fees, the rewards typically far outweigh the cost when done with full commitment and participation.

Reduce Travel and Communication Costs Through Videoconferencing and Web Meetings. With gas prices and travel expenses still high, it pays to consider holding meetings via Skype or other videoconferencing services. Skype is free and allows two people to talk and see each other from their computers over the Internet. Need to meet with a group and share visual aids? Hold meetings via GoToMeeting or DimDim (which is free). Both services even include a VoIP option which means no phone cost.

There are many ways to save money and keep sales strong in an uncertain economy. Interested in learning more about any of these ideas? Have some ideas of your own? Please comment.

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March 21, 2008 By 2 Comments

Marketing Spending is Shifting to Search

Hopefully we all know that marketing spending is moving more and more online but it was nice to see Douglas Karr’s entry on this issue in the Marketing Technology Blog:

Marketing Spending is Shifting to Search

I’ve been telling my clients for years that the Yellow Pages is dead and that marketing budgets should be spent online. These stats are interesting validation.

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