mPower Consulting

I’ve been a member of Brian Clark’s “Teaching Sells” since its first release. I joined Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s Trust Agents online community on Facebook and bought their newly released book. I attended an event held for author Pamela Slim who writes on her blog Escape from Cubicle Nation and has a book of the same name.

All of these examples of people I am connected to, have paid money to, and religiously follow have one thing in common… they’re all engageous! Read more »

In terms of a buzzword, customer evangelists are nothing new. This phrase has been around since the early part of 2002 and was coined by well-known marketers Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba who authored the fantastic marketing book, Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force.

In my work with small businesses, the concept of customer evangelist is always at the forefront of any marketing strategy being contemplated. Why? Because word-of-mouth referrals is still the #1 way to convert prospects to customers. Not to mention, with these businesses oftentimes having a much smaller ad budget, the idea of something that can generate free advertising is very attractive! Read more »

I’ve spent the past 8 years of my life operating in the online world. Three of those years I was developing and managing the online strategies for the organization I worked for and three more of those years were at the helm of my current consulting practice teaching small business owners how to effectively develop and implement their own online strategies. In all my years of “living on the web” there are two things that completely frustrate me Read more »

Mark Hayward is a small business owner.  He lives in the Caribbean on Culebra Island and owns a charming bed & breakfast called the Palmetto Guesthouse.  As a declared advocate of using tools such as blogging and social media to promote small business, he is active in learning from so called “social media experts” how he can use tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and others to help drive eyes, ears, and feet to his doorstep.  Mark has something that I would say most other business owners do not when it comes to the world of social media. I’ll simply call it understanding. Read more »

I recently came across an article at Advertising Age titled, “Why Ad Industry Won’t Recover in Second Half.” In it, Judann Pollack – the author – quoted Laurence Boschetto, president-CEO, DraftFCB with saying,

“Clients are saying they want accountability for every dollar they spend, and they want cause and effect. Clients will continue to rally behind ideas that build business, and we as an industry have to accept that things will never revert back to the pre-recession mind-set that wasn’t totally focused on accountability.”

Wow! Now that’s a wake-up call if I ever heard one! Read more »

During tough economic times as these it’s important to know where all of your marketing dollars are being spent.  For many companies, this becomes a time when they pull back on their marketing budgets for no other need than to simply cut costs. For others, this is a time when they increase their expenditures in an area of their business that they realize can actually increase their revenue as it has the ability to gain new customers and market share.  For either of these situations, it’s important to take a look at where your marketing dollars are being spent, the effectiveness of the strategies employed, and a firm understanding of what you will need to do to improve your strategy’s overall performance for the future.

Here’s a quick 5 step way to mapping out your marketing: Read more »