Sun Tzu Intro and Small Business Strategy

This post marks the first post in several I'm planning on doing that relate to the book I mentioned yesterday entitled "Sun Tzu and the Art of Business" written by Mark McNeilly. Today I'm going to outline the 6 major strategies discussed in the book and how I plan to analyze them.

6 Strategic Principles for Management

1) Win all Without fighting
2) Avoid Strength and Attack Weakness
3) Deception and Foreknowledge
4) Speed and Preparation
5) Shape your Opponent
6) Character-based Leadership

The correlation between war and business strategies has long been slammed as being irrelevant by a variety of noted authors. My hope from this comparison is that some very basic elements of crafting strategy and potential methods for building strategy will become clear.

My hope is that as I present the information, it will be particularly valuable for small businesses, and for those looking to utilize the web for their business. As I go through the basics of the principles I'll do my best to match the principle with elements unique to starting/running a small business, as well as how the principle could be applied to building a web presence or utilizing the web.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) Road Map

Quick post today -

Below is a link to an article on developing a Social Media Marketing Road map and some SEO integration ideas.

social media seo


I also was lucky enough to be included in some phone interviews between Aaron Wall of SEO Book and Perry Marshall the PPC guru. If you'd like my EXTREMLY unrefined but somewhat detailed notes on the interviews I'll pass them along - Just leave me a comment with the best way to reach you.

Seth Godin, Aaron Wall, and Rand Fishkin Brawl!...Ok not really

I realize that I've strayed from my marketing research information over the last few posts, but I do plan to return to that topic soon. Today is not that day however, as I've been doing some reading that has got me thinking...For those of you who know me yes I DO read and even think sometimes.

First off - get some background for this one (read in order):

1)How to make money with seo
2)Theres more than two ways to make money with seo
3)Most SEO strategies are not focused hitting home runs

From this point on, I'm assuming you've dug through the previous three posts.

I'm not going to agree, disagree, rant, berate or any of that (as if I have any place to anyway) these three articles, but I wanted to make note of a key part of marketing that I think many small to medium sized businesses miss - making sure that offline and online marketing operations are cohesive.

Seth Godin (article 1) argues for building brand identity through a phrase, name, etc. that can be established online. The idea is than that you began to organically build your own following off of this term/brand/whatever you want to call it and gain web traffic as a result.

This makes perfect sense. Build the brand, create something unique, leverage it.

If this does not take place, or there is a lack of cohesiveness between your online marketing strategy/presence/seo efforts then you are in for a world of hurt. Not only will you end up double spending at times, you will suffer an opportunity cost loss from not taking advantage of a cohesive marketing strategy that takes potential customers from both channels (web, offline) and directs one to the other giving the customer a few simple options to satisfy their desire for what you've got. Sounds kind of sexy, and frankly, it is when utilized.

If you can creatively marry your offline and online strategies with your business operations and all the other nitty gritty you can find yourself in marketing heaven. You'll be effectively leveraging your brand both on and offline, and the power of social marketing, WOM, and all those other good things will really come to life for you as word spreads. Strength is gained as well in the longtail keyword, adwords, etc. development as you can began to pull strength from your established brand that people are hunting for into other words, phrases, pages, etc. that you want to fight for.

Marry the online and offline, have kids and reap the benefits of a cohesive strategy. I think that's part of what Seth was saying..or maybe I should just go back to not thinking.

SEO prioritization post by Aaron Wall at SEOBook

I rarely jump up and down in excitement over what I read on other blogs (not that mine is so great...). However, I am consistently impressed at the information given and the straightforward writing style of Aaron Wall of SEOBook.com. I just read a post titled "What Aspect Of SEO Should You Be Spending Most Of Your Time On?", that needed to be shared, as it is one of the better basic starting point lists for building an SEO campaign (and remembering what SEO is all about) that I have come across. Nice job Aaron and thanks for the references within the post as well!

Marketing Concept, Marketing Culture, SEO and Responsibility

As some of you may or may not know, I recently graduated (within the last few years) from Azusa Pacific University with an MBA degree. Throughout my course work, I was hit by an “I don’t give a...” feeling. I guess that’s the problem with going straight from undergrad work to masters. Lately I’ve been finding myself diving back into old textbooks revisiting concepts and theories that I had bothered to learn, but not remember any true useful details.

One of these said areas is Marketing. SURPRISE! As I've heavily invested time and effort into learning everything I can about web marketing and specifically the SEO/SMM fields, it's becoming clear that there are great advantages to diving back into the old materials, as marketing principles don't really change despite the medium. The next few posts (I'm not sure how many) will relate to marketing, marketing research, and specifically some thoughts on combining the old school thoughts with the "new" marketing medium (www). Much of my reading will come from the Marketing Research A Practical Approach for the New Millennium book written by Joseph Hair Jr., Robert Bush, and David Ortinau.

Marketing: Concept and Culture

According to the text, the common marketing concept for all businesses consists of three major elements:

1) consumer oriented

2) goal directed

3) system driven

The authors continue to discuss the concept that businesses normally produce what consumers want, not what the business believes they need. Let's stop right there.

The big question (or one of them) I have is this: Do B2B businesses need to follow the marketing theory stated in this last section?

As a B2B business, Forefront Consulting aims to of course give a business what it wants. However, I believe that part of truly serving a business is giving them what they "need" even if they don't want it. Whether they choose to accept what is offered, is of course, up to them.

The SEO and Web Marketing Link
This is a bit of a leap, but for those that choose to stay with me, I think it will make sense. In general, there are more and more businesses that are aware of some of the possibilities that exist for building their brand online, but don't really understand what they are playing with. Think of a 16 year old who knows that a Porsche can go really fast and handle well, but has never driven a car. 16 year old + porsche (often could) = disaster.

As a Web marketing consultant, I believe that we ( me and others like me) have a duty to "take the keys" at times and get control of a situation. Marketing, no matter what the medium needs to be holistic in nature, and if web marketing is not properly supported by other parts of the business (goals, people, processes, resources) then great waste and damage can occur. As was stated in the text, the general marketing concept for firms is an all inclusive one.

I believe a major key to developing a strong web marketing and SEO/SMM campaign, is tight coordination with all aspects of the business. If this does not exist, you are playing with fire and the job of a web marketer to be successful hinges on things often outside of his control. This takes honest, an ability to analyze a business fully, dig deep into what the process are, flow is, buy in for your project, and identification of potential problems. To get started I often use a SWOT analysis for the business. This brings things into focus and begins to clear the picture for what role the web marketing campaign needs to fill. It's more than keywords, link building, competitive analysis, etc. It will affect all parts of the business.

So here is the next big question:

As business owner, if you spot signs of danger (lack of offline business and marketing support) would you worn the business (even if you may lose the client) or would you continue with a plan that may make short term profits for the both of you, but may ultimately end in damage for the business?

Tell me more about how you've seen interplay between a businesses offline operations and it's web marketing support.

Google Reader makes you smarter!

I have to admit, I'm not the first person to jump for joy over new things. Not that I'm against them, but I have often found it beneficial to look before leaping into new things that may end up costing more then they are worth.

As a result, I was late to the Google scene when it came to turly utilizing some of their applications, but have recently been diving in head first to take advantage of some of the better ones (in my humble opinion) for business, particularly small or technology based businesses.

Thus, we land at Google Reader. My friend and the brain behind the rising social networking and college review website communiversity.com, Michael Sprague, recently informed me that I was behind the times by not capitalizing on this reader's potential.

Within minutes I had quickly added many of my favorite blogs and sites related to web marketing, consulting, technology, SMM, SEO, etc. (as well as a few I hadn't heard of before) to my subscriptions and was off reading in no time. This concept is nothing new, but what I found most enjoyable was how simple it was to get exactly what I wanted and to know that I only had one place to go to get all the latest information from my choice sources.

The main point I'd like to make as a small business owner is the time savings and knowledge base that is at our fingertips. Instead of hunting, googling, asking, requesting, paying or whatever for valuable information related to my industry and field, I was instantly given the information in a format I could digest at my pace, but truly improved my ability to quickly digest information as well.

Here is a screen shot for those unfamiliar with the layout:

From Drop Box