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Growing your Company in today's Chaotic Market!
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by
Lee Traupel
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I think we've all heard enough bad news to last us
several lifetimes! Our mantra for clients is "get over
it" - cut your losses when where you can and focus on
the basic building blocks to grow your business. Here
are some fundamentals we recommend to any company that
wants to survive and grow in this chaotic market:

1) Practice maniacal focus! Who is your customer, how do
you reach them with your advertising, partners, channels
and/or OEMs? If you can't readily identify these
benchmarks, then you may need to take a hard look at
look at your business structure, personnel, costs of
good/services, etc. and rework your model.

2) Outsource and build virtuosity into your company. We
tell clients to minimize fixed costs like the feudal
barons of old - they kept a core group of fighters to
man the garrison walls and hired (outsourced!)
conscripts when the baron from the next door came
calling at the castle gates with a legion of longbows
behind him to exact tribute. Marketing, finance, HR, IT
infrastructure, even product development or
manufacturing can be easily outsourced to specialists
who have levels of proficiency that you might not be
able to afford if you tried to hire them full time.

3) Flex and tier your pricing creatively to minimize
barriers to entry. If chaos is the order of the day (and
we think it is) then make sure your pricing is tiered or
structured so your clients can afford to try out your
products and services - and be flexible in your
negotiations and look for creative ways to bring new
customers aboard.

4) Make your suppliers real business partners! Fed Ex
and UPS are setting up shop in their customer's shipping
docks to save valuable time and money and become active
business partners. You may not have the clout of a
Fortune 1K company/behemoth to leverage Fed Ex but you
can ask your suppliers to extend terms, work with you on
just in time delivery schedules or get creative with
pricing, joint promotions, etc.

5) Ensure your marketing fundamentals are up to snuff!
We see so many sloppy web sites that do not address the
basic fundamentals of good site design, menus, UI, etc.,
brochures that are out of date, power point
presentations that are barely legible, etc. - basic
marketing principals should be addressed; i.e. integrate
your color scheme and logo across all marcom materials
(digital and traditional), reinforce your branding and
positioning with clearly worded value propositions ("we
save you X by doing Y") and ensure your logo and tagline
look professional and are used properly.

6) Create and deploy credible PR that isn't full of
fluff; i.e. "market or cost leadership, best of breed
technology, leading provider of ..., high-performance,
etc."; don't use terms any editor sees hundreds of times
a day! Create PR that is original and truthful - you
will stand out from the crowd much better.

7) It's truly a Global Market! Position your company so
you can work with customers all over the world - if you
don't have the resources or personnel (see two above)
then partner with a local reseller, dealer or
distributor who has an established presence in a country
or market which you can't serve via your corp/home
office.

8) Don't waste time chasing venture capital - fund your
company creatively! Venture capitalists are busy today
trying to save their existing portfolio of ".bombs" so
don't waste a lot of your time contacting them! Be
creative, talk to friends and family about investing or
look to your suppliers to give you extended terms in
exchange for a long-term contract, discounted parts,
etc.

9) Leverage technology to help you grow your business.
A good web site should answer questions for your
customers, not leave them frustrated and confused - make
sure you address fundamentals with an FAQ (Frequently
Asked Questions), or even setup instant messaging via
any number of chat technology providers so people can
anonymously ask your sales or c/support personnel
questions while they are on your web site.

10) Ignore marketing hype and concentrate on technology
that really works. Tried surfing the web via your cell
phone and finding a hot bistro in a new neighborhood
recently? I hate to pick on this technology du jour, but
it rates high on my "hypeometer" at this moment in time.
There is a reason why opt-in e-mail advertising is the
one of the best ways to reach a target market - it's
virtually instantaneous, is 24/7 in most cases, very
targeted, provides global reach, and ... drum roll ...
it really works!

This text may freely be republished or distributed in unmodified form provided the following resource box is included intact either at the beginning or the end of the article and a complimentary copy or notice (link) is sent to the author at the address specified below:

Ralph Tegtmeier is the co-founder and principal of fantomaster.com GmbH (Belgium), < http://fantomaster.com/ >, a company specializing in webmasters software development, industrial-strength cloaking and search engine positioning services.

He has been a web marketer since 1994 and is editor-in-chief of fantomNews, a free newsletter focusing on search engine optimization, available at: < http://fantomaster.com/fantomnews-sub.html > You can contact him at mailto:fneditor@fantomaster.com
(c) copyright 2002 by fantomaster.com
All rights reserved.
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