BLOG for small business owners and entrepreneurs

The Blue Ocean Strategy has a practical way of evaluating companies’ offerings using six utility levers for each of the six buyer experiences. In this article I am exploring the possibility of finding an alignment between these experiences while concentrating on services rather than products.

When the top management or ownership of the company changes, the culture of the company could change too. Sometimes the change is not for the better. In this article I talk about the personal experience and the shift in attitude towards a company that, as a customer, I used to be loyal to.

Oftentimes small business managers underestimate the importance of necessary planning and rush into paying for clicks. This usually results in disappointment. Under-budgeted digital marketing campaigns tend to perform poorly. In this article you will learn how to accurately estimate the funds required for your next CPC campaign.

Prudent business leaders of Professional services firms should be aware of brand development strategy and what it's capable of achieving for their companies. Learn what branding strategy is, what the benefits of brand building are, and what you can do to create a remarkable brand for your professional services firm.

If you want to figure out how much does it make sense to invest in your company logo, read this article. You will also learn how professional graphic designers estimate their costs and price their logo design services.

Getting a professional company logo might seem like a straightforward business at first. Most company leaders think: “We just need a logo — how hard can that be?” But then the rubber meets the road and things tend to get complicated. Sketches get rejected, deadlines aren’t met and frustration builds up.

Read this article to learn about the ...

For any business entity to thrive — continue to make money, attract best people for the job and have a steady stream of clients — a combination of multiple interconnected factors have to come into play. This article explores the necessity of aligning business objectives to company values to customer expectations.

Differentiation helps clients to distinguish companies within the same category. A zebra with yellow & purple stripes would definitely stand out from the rest of the herd. So why aren’t there a bunch of really different zebras; why would companies choose to copy the looks and behaviours of other companies from the same industry?

Entrepreneurs and small business owners are puzzled over whether or not to redesign their company websites, why and when to do it, and what might be the benefits of doing so, if any. This article explores the fundamental reasons in favor of a well-designed web application.

Decision makers tend to view the means associated with the attainment of business objectives as either costs or investments. The assignment to either of these two buckets occurs almost instantly. The Costs bucket is typically larger, holding most of the expenses. But what if it shouldn’t be the case?

We have observed so many entrepreneurs, small business owners and principals of companies go down the same path with brand naming. Heck — we have been down that road ourselves. This article is about the most common brand naming mistakes. It will help you steer away from obvious problems and navigate toward a better name for your brand.

A company without a vision is like a drifting raft. A crew without a mission is not a good idea either. However exciting the journey might seem, aimless navigation will only result in low morale, employee attrition and wrong ports of destination. Small businesses have to get their act together and develop a worthwhile mission and an inspiring vision for them...

There is a BIG issue with company websites today. It isn’t about not having a website – luckily, everyone seems to be in agreement that you must have one these days. It’s not so much about the quality of the web application either, although, more than half of business websites are dreadful. The biggest issue today is with not using the...

You can find a plethora of mission statements on the Internet. If you examine them closely however, you will notice that most of them are very alike. And if you dare to learn the subject you will inevitably notice something else too — most of the company and brand statements are meaningless, vague and pompous. This article provides examples of bad and grea...

Customer loyalty is a hot subject. Business leaders keep talking: “We want loyal customers”. Makes sense — it is by far more expensive and troublesome to acquire new clients rather than trying to keep the existing ones around. More often than not, however, companies forget a crucial element in the relationship — being loyal to their clients in the fi...

Well-established companies aren’t supposed to step on the tines of the same rake other companies had already stepped on. But they are. Despite the amount of critically acclaimed books on marketing available out there; despite the innumerable articles, talks, MBA programs, courses, lectures, seminars, discussions and blog posts — companies are still makin...

Running a company and managing business is a hard endeavor in and of itself. One has to master a multitude of disciplines to keep the company afloat. Prudent business leaders and managers hire people with the right skill set to tackle the areas in which they are supposed to be better than the person who had hired them in the first place. That way, key decisi...

Have you ever found yourself abandoning a website before it has finished loading and went on to do something else? This article proves that slow website load speed has a negative impact on company’s bottom line.

The point of having a business website is to guide visitors on the journey through a marketing funnel with the ultimate goal of conversion. The conversion is a transition or a transformation from one state into another. A visitor can become a follower, a follower can become a customer and a customer can become a tribesman. Our job as prudent decision makers ...

Brand strategy is often confused with marketing and business strategies. Business leaders and entrepreneurs are baffled. This article explores what a brand strategy is, what it consists of, how it can be helpful, who should get involved and when.

The answer might seem to be obvious, but let’s linger for a moment and contemplate about it. Despite the importunate ubiquity of ads claiming that you can create a professional website in minutes, it is never the case.

Even the "coolest" looking ads do not bother with warning business owners and managers that they would have to shoulder the respo...