I don’t care for the “Blame Game.”  My dad used to drill into me “fix the problem, not the blame.”

That aside, the fact is that the struggles of small business are a major anchor around the neck of the economy.  A recent study from the Labor Department points out that more than 60% of all jobs cut in the private sector in the fourth quarter of last year occurred in businesses with less than 50 employees.

This underscores something we already know – America’s job market depends largely on the health of our small businesses. In fact, some estimates say that small businesses are responsible for providing 64% of the jobs in America.

Generating Positive Thinking

Last month 2,000 small business owners were surveyed by the National Federation of Independent Business.  They found these owners to be further losing confidence in our economy. Only 9% of those surveyed said they expected to hire more employees.  That ain’t gonna get the machine running.

Various versions of a small business bill would provide as much as $30 billion to community banks to boost lending to small businesses and would also add $12 billion on top of that in tax breaks for those businesses. Again, that’s not enough overall – but it’s a start and can provide us a psychic boost.  A better vibe.  And a better mindset must take hold for people to get hired.

The ranks of deficit hawks can count me amongst their ranks.  However, even with all the money pumped into the system by Tarp and Stimulus Packages – for the most part, that money remains locked up and out of the hands of small businesses.

Consider contacting your representatives in Congress to suggest they support job growth by directing incentives to small businesses.

This week, he received notice from his new contact that his services were up for bid and that he needed to respond to an RFP. He was given 3 days to respond!

He called the contact. No answer. Sent an email and received an out of office reply saying she’d be back the day after the RFP was due.

Our client also learned that several other firms had already responded and been reviewed, with one already chosen for a separate project. And our client, the incumbent, hadn’t even been notified that an RFP was issued to replace him.

Sounds like he’d done a bad job and wasn’t being renewed doesn’t it?

Well here’s the rub. The contact’s boss didn’t know our client hadn’t been properly included in the process. It seems as if she’s decided to railroad the project through with her own chosen vendor.

My client needed some way to fight for the business.  So not really knowing anything about this new contact, he went on LinkedIn to see if he could find out something about her mindset. Turns out one of his close friends was a 2nd level contact of hers, who also had a connection with a 1st degree contact of hers.

Turns out the 1st degree contact was her ex-boss. He did not give her a glowing reference.

With this information in hand and a printed record of how he’d been treated, our client now feels comfortable going over his contact’s head to her boss – someone he’s always had a good relationship with – to find out if he’d done something wrong to warrant such treatment.

The answer should be interesting. Especially for the new contact if her boss isn’t happy with how she’s handled this long-standing relationship.

I’ve protected the names for privacy here. But if you can connect the dots in this story – you’ll see even further proof of how powerful – and personal – social media sites can really be.

He’d traded up to a massive new bike from what he called his “learning bike.”  He wasn’t comfortable on it anymore as he was moving on to longer rides.  He needed comfort.  And didn’t want to continue to build confidence while gaining experience with his existing classic.

His friend’s wisdom – “yeah, learning is never comfortable.”

The story reminds me of what so many business owners must be feeling.  As technology influences customer mindsets and the ways they spend their time, owners and executives are forced to learn new behaviors. Learning means change – if only in the way you think.  And change is stressful.

Learning makes you venture into the unknown, pushing you out of your comfort zone.  But you know what can be even more uncomfortable?  Losing customers.  Missing opportunities.  Losing money.

A business that allocates a certain amount of its resources to testing new marketing methods and learning what works will lead the field when the economy ultimately recovers – and will maintain and extend its lead over time.

Got learning?

IMHO this word – Brand – is thrown around much too casually.  Every creative shop in town talks about “Branding” to their clients.  But, do they really know what branding is?

A complete Brand strategy will accomplish two important objectives.  Here they are along with a sentence to clarify:

1. Explain why anyone should do business with you
   • Defining who you are and the benefit(s) you deliver to a specific target audience over a long period of time.

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2. Aid in recognition and recall
   • Creating a recognizable logo and differentiable tag line along with supportive color schemes and consistency guidelines for how to use them.

Unfortunately, too often Brand is mistakenly thought of as only a visual thing.

A Brand strategy should help you generate business.  It must answer the “why” question to generate profitable action.  It’s more than just the pretty stuff.

Mention the DMV and instantly images of gargantuan lines pop into your head and your eye begins to twitch.  More recently however, the DMV had made some improvements by adopting common sense operational efficiencies and online tools.

Many locations will give the poor motorist an appointment window to respect their time.  Online renewals and payments further helped ease frustration.

But there’s a hole in the DMV donut – the locations don’t necessarily coordinate with the website.

This may sound familiar to those who’ve shopped at WalMart.com.  After finding a great price online, you run to the nearest store to snatch up your bargain – only to find the store price isn’t the same as the online price.

Reason?  They’re run as two separate business.  Frustrating and sometimes angering.  But many retailers have the same arrangement, confusing and inconveniencing their customers.

This morning I heard the DMV has a trap lying in wait.  If you should move during the time of your vehicle registration – and do the right thing by dutifully going down to DMV to file the forms – it won’t change a thing as far as DMV is concerned.

That’s right.  Go down to your DMV office, file the change of address, affix the stickers to your license and registration – and they never even update your file.

You have to CALL their customer service center to let them know or they don’t change your records.  Imagine how you’d feel when your renewed registration was sent to the wrong address and you got a ticket for an expired registration.

Then they charge you a fee to send a duplicate!

Check the forms and the website.  It’s itting right there amongst a sea of words.  In type so big that only those who’ve eaten 3 carrots a day can read is the instructions…you must call the customer service center to change your address.

So, DMV offices, online service, and the customer service call center don’t communicate on a simple, yet important function.  And you’re the loser.

Moral for business.  Embrace technology and efficiency.  Be thorough.  Be clear.  But be sure you’re actually helping those you want to help.

Did you know that Albany is the #1 test market in the United States.  Correct-a-mundo.

According to Acxiom’s  last published study in 2004, Albany, NY was the market that best represented the United States population as a whole.

In other words – we’re the most average market in America.

That holds some real advantages for you as a marketer – especially if you market to consumers.  Rolling out new mass-market products in Albany is an excellent place to start.  The test results could well translate to the national market, and “amped-up” ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment)

If that’s you – be thankful we’re so average.

My partner Dave recently had trouble with his iPhone.  As great a gadget as the iPhone is, neither Apple nor AT&T Wireless offer insurance on the iPhone.  Best Buy stepped in offering the only insurance available on the product – serviced by its Geek Squad.

Oh oh…dead cow!

After 2 years of paying $11+ per month, Dave needed service.  He dropped it off at the Geek Squad – “it’ll be ready and back here by Friday.”  Friday comes…and an hour of voicemail hell later…”sorry, maybe tomorrow.”  Saturday…no answer at the Geek Squad all day.  He left a message with the store’s customer service to please call him back.  Sunday…another hour of the run around, “sorry, there are no deliveries on Saturday or Sunday.  Maybe Monday?”

“I didn’t even get a call from you guys, isn’t there a message for you?”  “Truth is we’re really busy, and there’s a whole pile of messages sitting on this desk.  We don’t look at them.  We just wait for the customer to call back.”

Okay – get the picture?  Now ponder this:

Best Buy is in the electronics business.  Why can’t they put your order status online for you to check?  Or shipping status?  Especially when the Geek Squad desk is too busy to even look at the pile of messages on their desk!

Best Buy promised a service that made them unique – but the promise turns out to be pretty empty.  That’s a dead cow.  That’s utter brand destruction.

Google announced recently that after six months of negotiations by the FTC, they’ve purchased mobile advertising giant AdMob. In the same way that Google’s purchase of YouTube made them the De Facto owner of the huge majority of web video ‘eyeshare’, Their purchase of AdMob makes them the biggest player in the mobile phone marketing world. Their closest follower is Apple, whose recent purchase of Quattro Wireless has enabled them to develop the iAd, their own proprietary advertising platform that will power all the ads for iPhone, iPod and iPad applications.

What’s this mean for Albany? The potential for advertising innovation is right in the hands of savvy, forward thinking marketers.

Division of Attention

At Burst, we’ve noticed a drastic shift in attention share over the last 10 years. Suddenly, people aren’t as easy to catch. They’re not just sitting in front of the TV watching reruns. Now they’re checking facebook on their iPad while they ride the bus to work. If they’re like me, they’re using productivity apps to check their tasks for the day, and see what meetings they have scheduled for the day. Or they’re texting friends in between games of paper toss on their iPod (sounds dumb, but trust me – it’s super fun).

This all translates to less attention spent on each message, and a greater need for marketers to surround the customer with their message.

Mobile Advertising gives us an in. It allows us to get our message to the customer no matter where they go. By selectively targeting the right applications, and carefully crafting messages, marketers can “catch up” to their newly mobile audience. That’s only going to get more powerful as iPhone and Android (Google’s Mobile Phone Brand) sales keep moving up.

According to a recent web article in Britain’s Financial times;

“Sales of Android phones, which include Google’s own Nexus One and Motorola’s Droid, accounted for just under 10 per cent of all smartphones sold globally in the first quarter of 2010, up from just 1.6 per cent last year, according to figures from Gartner, the technology research group.”

The same article also had this to say:

“Android phone sales have also overtaken Apple’s iPhone in the North American market, accounting for 26.6 per cent of units sold, compared with 22.1 per cent for the iPhone.”

You read that right. Almost 50% of new phone sales are iPhones or Android Phones. With all that eyeshare being spent on only 2 phone platforms, expect mobile marketing to land on your doorstep soon. And if you want my advice, I’d say it’s a good idea to be ready.

The pursuit of perfection costs money…lots of money.  And the ROI on perfection is minuscule.

I was listening to an interview with a psychiatrist specializing in neurotic behaviors when she began discussing “pack rats.”  You know, people with an obsession to keep everything they’ve ever accumulated.  She described a case study wherein two brothers accumulated so much, and their surroundings became so cluttered – chokingly packed really – that they perished among the debris.

Pack rats are irrationally afraid that they might throw away something important.  They fear they might miss something.  It’s part of what the doctor called “the pathology of perfection.”

We often encounter clients with degrees of this pathology.

Usually it manifests in a such a microscopic attention to detail that they never actually do anything except proofread, wordsmith, scour lists, debate nuance, etc – even after a painstaking effort has already been completed.  They simply won’t sign off on a project to begin.

They believe that they are demanding perfection, when in actuality they are nearly guaranteeing failure.  Like any investment, marketing your business is a calculated endeavor.  It begins with a series of informed decisions, but no guarantees.  A program is begun, results observed, adjustments made.

Professional marketing management requires ongoing adjustments.  By definition, therefore, perfection is unachievable.  And the closer a program is to its inception – the farther away from perfection it will be.

Demanding perfection at the outset will only paralyze a launch.  Then, should a marketing adviser be able to convince a client to launch in spite of a client’s fears, the inevitable failures (that’s right, I said failures) of an early stage marketing plan may cause a client to get angry.  Deliver a series of “I told you so” and force a campaign shutdown.

This exactly at the moment that learning has first begun.

A mentor of mine often reminded me that failure is but one step closer to success.  Perhaps you’ve heard this old adage as well.  Being 50, 60, 70, or 80% correct at the start of a campaign is a fair beginning on the road to success.  The costs of trying to move too quickly from 50% to 80% are exponential.  It can create unending research, tension, delays, mistakes, loss of enthusiasm, paranoia and other negativity – often resulting in total loss.

Perfectionists will fail without ever knowing how close they may have come to reaching their goals.

Some business owners have reported an increase in productive conversations with potential new clients.  New business is being booked.  There is a small semblance of a smile forming at the corners of their mouths.

After many months (for some a couple of years) of absolutely no response to their marketing efforts there are signs of renewed life.  We’ve heard from one owner that has seen results from a small marketing effort – he seems to think that he can handle the new inquiries for now and then do a little more marketing, handle those new inquiries, and so on.

Our message to him…don’t get cocky.

Yes, customers are placing orders to catch up for those that have long been on hold.  The spending freeze over the past 18 – 24 months has led to some initial catch up business for those that have survived.

What happens when those purchases are finished?

Well, the normal marketing and sales cycle kicks back in, but with a longer time line.  We’re certainly nowhere near being out of the woods.

Marketing success cannot be achieved by turning the spigot on and off in spurts.  If you hooked your marketing effort up to a heart rate monitor, it should look something like a normal sinus rhythm.  Steady, steady, steady, pulse.  Steady, steady, steady, pulse.

This thaw is the signal that prospects are at least somewhat willing to listen.  And its your signal to warm up, approach the starting blocks and begin to jog.