Luke Brown Marketing Blog

Archive for the ‘Entrepreneurship’ Category

Mark Cuban probably won’t win a lot of popularity contests. He’s been described as brash, arrogant and testy. The NBA has fined him tens of thousands of dollars. Yep, sure sounds like he’s a boor. But… he’s a billionaire.

Set aside your personal feelings about Mark Cuban. Now. Go ahead, I can wait. You’ll be able to think better with a clear head. When it comes to business advice, Mark Cuban is on the ball. Take 5 minutes to read his advice regarding start up businesses. Read his friend Jason’s post, too.

Starting business has never been easy and that applies even more in today’s economic environment. What common themes ran through both of their posts? To simplify,both said to focus on what you do best and hire someone or outsource to other companies to do everything else.

Outsourcing Your Internet Marketing

Many business owners are comfortable doing their own marketing, whether online or offline. Some have tried, then decided to outsource it. How do you select an internet marketing company? Here are some basic guidelines:

* Ask for some type of certification. HubSpot, an internet marketing software company, promotes Inbound Marketing University. They started it because too many companies claimed to know internet marketing yet couldn’t deliver results. Full disclosure: We are Inbound Marketing University Certified Professionals.

The University of San Francisco and Full Sail University also offer certificate programs in internet marketing. A certification is a good sign that someone is serious about the industry and knows the basics of internet marketing.

* Ask for referrals. Just like hiring an employee, past results are a good – -though not perfect — indicator of future competence. Get a name, contact information and website address. Anything more than one year old may be useless as the pace of change is so furious. If the website has not been maintained, any improvements may have been nullified.

* See how their site performs. If you’re hiring a company for SEO, look at their website’s Alexa ranking, a basic indicator of traffic. If their company has an Alexa ranking of more than 500,000, how can they possibly drive traffic to your site?

If you’re hiring someone for social media marketing, but all their Twitter tweets and Facebook posts are quotes by famous people (no matter how inspiring), that does not show any thought, creativity or industry leadership. Again, why hire them?

Set Website Objectives

If an internet marketing company does not ask you the objective of your website in the first meeting, do not hire them!

There are three basic types of websites:

1. Informational. This type of website is used by many successful offline businesses as a way to build an online presence. Typical users are professionals in the legal, medical and finance/accounting/economic fields.

2. E-commerce. E-commerce websites sell items, have ’shopping carts’ and checkout systems, and accept payment online.

3. Lead Generation. A lead generation site is looking for people interested in a particular product or service. Website visitors typically give their name and email address in exchange for something of value. The website then tries to sell something to its ‘list’. Many information products and mortgage brokers use lead generation sites.

There is much more involved in internet marketing. Ignoring the basics is the quickest route to failure. Tomorrow’s post will cover website design and navigation.

Luke Brown Marketing is a Certified Professional from Inbound Marketing University. For answers to your internet marketing questions, call toll-free at (877) 877-1507.

Starting a business from scratch is a hell of an endeavor. Every entrepreneur and their family knows the opportunities, the challenges and the stress. Win or lose, many come back for a second, third or even fourth try. Why? What kind of mojo does one need to start a business?

Those ‘Are You An Entrepreneur?’ quizzes in many business publications don’t come close to helping somebody figure it out. Education doesn’t matter – there are billionaires who are high school dropouts (David Murdock). Age doesn’t seem to make a difference, either.

It could be that, in addition to tremendous drive, optimism, and hard work (which is the basis for the saying, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”), a little creative thinking and learning from others’ mistakes goes a long way.

Jason Calacanis wrote a tremendous blog post about how to save money running a startup. If an entrepreneur didn’t figure out how to save some money after reading Jason’s post, well, let’s just say they might be moving back home with Mom and Dad in less than a year.

Calacanis is also friends with Mark Cuban. Regardless of your personal view of Cuban, the guy knows how to make money. Cuban wrote a blog post that is perfect for piggybacking onto Calacanis’s. There’s some disagreement between the two, but it’s easy to see their mentality is similar.

A business development manager for an HR consultant would mention outsourcing HR to his potential clients. In the challenging economy of late 2008, he obliterated company sales records by targeting startups and saving them money. His commission only income last year? Over $800,000.

If you have a startup, you need to be open to ideas that aren’t yours. Some will work, some won’t. Not repeating others’ mistakes isn’t a guarantee of success, but it sure beats the alternative. It’s a lesson which will pay off as the economy recovers.