The Business Battle Between Sales and Marketing

By Kyle Reyes

Whenever I offer advice or guidance for a business on how to design a marketing strategy, I often have to differentiate to business owners the difference between "marketing" and "advertising".  I try and explain it like this.
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Marketing is the message.

Advertising is the delivery method.

It occurred to me yesterday that there's a third component here that may be a fatal flaw to the marketing strategies of many businesses.

It's called sales.

We received a phone call from a big Massachusetts firm.  They'd heard about us through some of our satisfied customers.

We had a great meeting and they asked us to put together a proposal to run their marketing.

We did.  And the response we got after they reviewed our proposal threw me for a loop.

"We'll work out a sales commission for you guys for every sale we generate."

We explained that we aren't a sales team - we are a marketing firm.

"Isn't that the same thing?"

No.  Not even close.

But the fact is, they aren't alone.  For example, I know many of you reading this run car dealerships.  And I'm SURE you have at one point had "sales and marketing assistants" as a position within your dealership.

While you're at it, why don't you have your lube technician apply the final coat of paint to the front end of that rebuilt car in the body shop?  I mean, it has to do with cars, right?

Wrong.  Very, very wrong.

I get it.  Many businesses, facing fiscal challenges, are trying to shave up dollars where they can.  So they consolidate positions.  Again and again and again.

Suddenly your sales team is running your facespacepinbook+ thing that people are calling "social media".

It's no different than a restaurant asking an executive chef to run the closing numbers for the front of the house.  Or to seat diners.  Sound ridiculous?  Perhaps that's because it is!

Let's break this down simply.  Your marketing team should be driving traffic to your website or your establishment, pushing more people into the buying funnel for you.  Your sales team are the soldiers that should be closing deals.

Sometimes it just helps to get a third party perspective about your marketing, advertising and sales strategies.  That's where The Silent Partner Marketing comes in.

And sometimes it just makes more sense to hire us to manage all of your marketing.

Not your sales.

So stop asking the lube tech to paint the car.  Give us a buzz today and let us apply our "stroke" of genius.

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Written by Kyle Reyes

Kyle Reyes is the President and Creative Director of The Silent Partner Marketing, a boutique marketing firm focused on helping businesses grow in an age of exploding technology.  You can find him on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.  He's the Chuck Norris of marketing.  It's outrageous - we know.  That's kind of the point.

How Not To Respond To A Bad Review

By Kyle Reyes

There's not a single business owner out there who likes to see a bad review.

But in what is sure to become a classic lesson on how NOT to respond, a business owner in Midtown Manhattan has found himself...dialing back...his response.

Ron Gordon owns Watch Repair at 280 Madison Avenue in New York.  Matthew Brand says he saw the great reviews on Yelp for the store, so he brought his antique pocket watch in for repair.

Long story short, Brand wasn't pleased that they couldn't fix it...saying they'd have to send it back to the manufacturer.  Brand says after a competing store repaired his watch on site, he left Gordon's shop a two star review on Yelp.

That was in 2013.  Flash forward to last week.  Brand opens his mail...and finds a letter from Gordon's attorney, telling him to take down the review or face a defamation lawsuit.

According to the letter, Brand's review was "misleading and in certain respects false and defamatory of Ron Gordon in his profession, (and) has also appeared on Google and has detrimentally affected his business and sales."

Brand's response?  "That's bullying.  You know, that's saying: 'I have more money than you.  Take down your post.  It's being aggressive, and it's just not right."

Here's the irony.  Gordon is now getting BLASTED on Yelp.  Click here to check it out.  

Retail shops.  Professional services.  Restaurants.  Car dealerships.  Reviews are something each and every industry must deal with.  The question is HOW you respond.  And our team sees poor strategies all over the place.  Owners ignoring reviews...or almost worse - not even knowing about them.

It's one of the reasons why The Silent Partner Marketing helps small businesses deal with negative reviews.  Our reputation management services help you get more positive reviews for your small business and deal with the negative reviews in a way that can actually help your business.

Listen - we get it.  Getting a negative review stinks.  But you can't go around threatening to SUE people who you ticked off to begin with.  Yes, this is America.  Yes, we're filled with ridiculous lawsuits.  But sometimes America fights back.  And wins.  And leaves you yelping in pain.

(Above: The perfect response to a bad review.)

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Written by Kyle Reyes

Kyle Reyes is the President and Creative Director of The Silent Partner Marketing, a boutique marketing firm focused on helping businesses grow in an age of exploding technology.  You can find him on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.  He's the Chuck Norris of marketing.  It's outrageous - we know.  That's kind of the point.

Does Your Business Have an HOV Lane?

By Kyle Reyes

Friday morning,  I was driving into a meeting in Hartford.  Ok, perhaps driving is an exaggeration.  I was slowly inching my way through the parking lot that was I-91 during morning rush hour.

I found myself fist-pumping when I looked over and saw three state troopers in the divider between the main highway and the HOV lane, having pulled over a number of vehicles with drivers who felt that they deserved to drive in this lane despite being the only person in the vehicle.

For those of you who have never been on a highway before, HOV stands for High Occupancy Vehicle.  They are identified by signs along the highway and diamond symbols painted on the pavement.  They are usually separated from the other lanes by a solid white line.  The idea is to fight congestion and encourage carpooling.

But here in Connecticut, in our state's seemingly endless wisdom, we've separated the HOV lane not by a single line or a divider...but by an entire LANE.

(Above - the RIGHT way to have an HOV lane)

Let's think about this for a second.  We've decided to reduce congestion...by removing what could otherwise be an entire lane on the highway.

Whose genius freakin' idea was this?

Here's the thing.  Every business at some point has what we'll refer to as an HOV moment.  It's that idea that seems like it would make so much sense that we implement it immediately and don't think twice or look back.  It's frequently suggested at an entirely unnecessary meeting by a manager who stays employed at a ridiculously inflated salary simply by steamrolling people into agreeing with their ludicrous idea simply out of fear for their own job.

I know, I know - sort of sounds like Congress.  But it's not.  It's your business.

The idea is often rooted in an attempt to solve a problem or make the customer experience better.  But the real question is...DOES IT?

When you're implementing a marketing strategy, is it one that adequately targets your customers?  When you're running the social media for your small business, do you understand how your customers are REALLY interacting with you and what they're looking for?

It's a question that every business owner needs to ask themselves before they execute a marketing strategy.

The beauty of content marketing is that it allows you to speak to your customer.  But are you actually speaking to them?  Are the processes you put in place in your customer's best interest...or are they in yours?

Perhaps it's time to take a look at how you're marketing your business...and whether you have a smoothly flowing highway or a complete traffic jam.  Drop our team at The Silent Partner Marketing a line today and let us help you figure it out.

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Written by Kyle Reyes

Kyle Reyes is the President and Creative Director of The Silent Partner Marketing, a boutique marketing firm focused on helping businesses grow in an age of exploding technology.  You can find him on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.  He's the Chuck Norris of marketing.  It's outrageous - we know.  That's kind of the point.

Facebook for Business Changes

By Kyle Reyes

Facebook is at it again.

Over the next couple of weeks, Facebook will be rolling out a new streamlined look for business pages.  Sound like the social media giant is finally in your corner, business owners?  Welllllll.....not so much.

Here's the good news.  There ARE in fact a few changes that will help you manage your Facebook page.

1.  With the right side of your page featuring wall posts, and the left side featuring business information, this new streamlined look will make it easier for users to quickly find the information they need.

2.  There's a great new addition called Pages to Watch.  It allows you to monitor your competition and see what they are up to.

Of course actually monitoring the competition and engaging with users is required for a business to actually be able to appreciate these changes from a marketing perspective (something that The Silent Partner Marketing of course offers in our marketing services for business owners).

But here's what's NOT so hot about the direction Facebook is moving - the death of "organic reach" for businesses.

Many business owners understand the importance of organic search - users being able to find you based on, in part, your content marketing strategy (vs. paid advertising).

But new research published by Social@Ogilvy earlier this month shows a significant downward slop in the organic reach of posts on Facebook.  Brand reach with content in 2012 was approximately 16% of followers.  In February 2014, that number hit a new low of approximately 6%.  For large pages with more than 500,000 likes, that number is just 2% on average.

This should explain why some of your posts in past months seem to have fewer and fewer eyeballs.

In order to achieve the same amount of visibility now,  you have to score a large amount of "likes" on your posts to boost organic viewership.  It creates a sort of "chicken and the egg" game - you need more likes to get more eyeballs, but you need more eyeballs to score more "likes".

Sounds sort of dumb, doesn't it?  Not if you're in the business of monetizing Facebook.

Enter: Mark Zuckerberg.

The idea is that you'll be forced to kick-start the "liking" process...by paying for sponsored posts and advertisements.

Yup - the free ride is over.  Sort of.

The Silent Partner Marketing is working with many of our clients right now to implement strategies to boost viewership and organic reach without having to pay for Facebook advertising.  Yup.  We're that good.

So it's entirely up to you.  You can continue to do things the same way you've been doing them...and you can get together with industry experts and complain about how much money Zuckerberg makes and how he's killing your business.  Or you can beat him at his own game.

It's up to you.  When you're ready to shine - get in touch with our team at The Silent Partner Marketing.

Let's do this thing.

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Written by Kyle Reyes

Kyle Reyes is the President and Creative Director of The Silent Partner Marketing, a boutique marketing firm focused on helping businesses grow in an age of exploding technology.  You can find him on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.  He's the Chuck Norris of marketing.  It's outrageous - we know.  That's kind of the point.

Video Killed The SEO Star

By Kyle Reyes

Search engine optimization.  It's a clever term that means lots of different things...to lots of different people.

To "black hatters"...it means gaming the system - using little tricks to (hopefully) stay ahead of Google's algorithm changes and beat the system.  The idea is to keep their clients in the number one position.

To many small business owners, it's an almost mythical beast that they throw money at to try and wrangle in.

I recently told a colleague I'd be writing this blog and giving away the secret to success.  He thought I was out of my mind.  "Why would you give away the secret recipe," he asked.

My answer?  Because not everyone likes to - or knows how to - cook.

Here it is.  Ready?

Video.  Blogging.

I know, I know.  I heard your sigh.  Everyone has been telling you how important BLOGGING is.  Now video as well?

Check out this stat.  Featuring quality video content on your website increases the likelihood by 53 times that you'll show up on page one of Google.

Researchers also found that people who viewed a product video were 400% more likely to convert than non-viewers.

Now combine that with a blog.

Imagine this - a chef doing a video cooking demo...supported by a properly optimized blog.  Bingo.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is gold.

No smoke and mirrors.  No black hat techniques.  A strong content marketing strategy.

The Silent Partner Marketing has helped implement similar strategies and processes for business leaders in industries ranging from restaurants to car dealerships...from spas to an indoor kids adventure course.  We roll our outrageous marketing techniques and social media prowess in with a strong public relations push...to make sure your content marketing strategy rocks the internet casbah.

So...what's your marketing team doing for you today?

Written by Kyle Reyes

Kyle Reyes is the President and Creative Director of The Silent Partner Marketing, a boutique marketing firm focused on helping businesses grow in an age of exploding technology.  You can find him on Google+, Facebook and Twitter.  He's the Chuck Norris of marketing.  It's outrageous - we know.  That's kind of the point.

Your Business as a Deer in Headlights

By Kyle Reyes

Every year, there are between three and five thousand accidents because of reindeer.

Note: this figure does NOT include Santa's fender-benders.  The man gets a pass.

It's a problem that's grown to epidemic proportions in Finland.  So what are they doing about it?

Glow-in-the-dark reindeer.

No - they're not radioactive.  These bad boys are sprayed with reflective sprays so the antlers can be more visible to drivers at night.

Down with the number of accidents...up with the number of drivers suffering heart attacks when they see one of these guys standing in the middle of the road.

Here's the thing.  Every business owner has reindeer run out in the road in front of them, metaphorically speaking.

I'm talking about the challenges that you didn't expect.  The new competing business that opened up across the street.  You inability to grasp the accounting principals you need to know to balance your books.  Your struggles in managing staff schedules.

A business colleague of mine owns a successful web production company.  He focuses his efforts on small businesses because he believes in helping them grow.

But because he focuses on predominately struggling small businesses, it means he has to take on a higher volume of them at a lower price in order to afford to pay his own bills.

His reindeer in the road?  Time management.

This colleague tells me that the biggest struggle he faces is his own time management and getting all of the competing projects done in a timely fashion.  Forget the struggles he faces balancing "home" time with "work" time.

Step one - he's acknowledged his struggle.  It's one that I'd imagine just about every business owner faces.  Let's call it "business A.D.D.".  We all seek to balance the needs of our clients with our own needs...and somewhere in there find time for our loved ones.

He's an incredibly talented man - that has taken some incredible steps to solve his own challenges.  His clients would never know he struggles with time management - which makes him one helluva business owner, from my perspective.

Our team at The Silent Partner Marketing understands the challenges that business owners face in terms of time management.  That's what we're here for.  We understand you can't possibly run a business, manage the social media for your business, write blogs, and film videos for your business.  That's where we come in.

The reindeer are out there.  Let The Silent Partner Marketing help spray the antlers to prevent you from crashing.