Do I really need a creative strategy or can I just see what happens?

In my twenties, out of college, I had a philosophy.  "Take life as it comes, look for the positive, and go with your gut."  It seemed to work in business and I was able to make some traction adding clients, regions, and new revenue streams for companies.  I actually got a little bit of an ego as I became known as the door opener.  The problem was that I would open up just about any door that came my way regardless of whether or not I believed in their product or thought their company was strong and had merit.  I often found myself in precarious situations in business dealing with people and issues that weren't always the most positive and I would shake my head and wonder what I had done to deserve such clients. 

Flash forward ten years or so without giving up my exact age and I sit here smiling at my younger self.  If you sit down stream in any old spot in the river anything might pass you by.  You have choices and you can move from your spot at any given time. There are no rules as to how you make your choices and how you set your standards.  In my twenties if my boss asked me to pick up another trade show for a fellow employee I would automatically say yes even if I had just gotten home the day before, my pipeline was full of clients, and I was swamped with incoming/outgoing calls.  It never crossed my mind that I could actually say no to my boss.  So off I went packed and ready for another NACA show, sleep deprived, cranky, and stressed from not being caught up with clients. 

If amazing opportunities exist in times when you let "what may come your way" be your strategy imagine the possibilities and opportunities you will run into if you actually creative an effective strategy and position yourself and business where you want to be in a  global market.  What if you made the decision consciously that you were only going to work with clients and prospects who fit a certain criteria?  What if once you determined your targeted demographic you did some research and uncovered which region of the country most of those individuals or business resided in, and then imagine if once you had this incredibly valuable information you created a strategy that was tailored to their interests, needs, and decision making process.  Business no longer seems so much like a shot in the dark and you have just cleared away ten years of doing business with what happens to flow down the river into your lap.

As in life, synergy plays an important role in business.  If you try to shove a square peg in a round hole you may actually get it to fit and pass through but the results could be less than desirable and very messy.  If you take the time to search out the round pegs with the right diameter think of how much your level of productivity just increased.  It seems so simple and makes so much sense now as I sit here in my midland thirties nearing forty, but are you owning it?  I'm trying to and the more I create targeted strategies for TRG Northeast and also my clients the more I'm convinced that you can shorten your sales cycle, increase productivity, tighten up operations, and make yourself happy because you are working where and with who you most desire!

For me? I am exactly where I want to be, developing TRG Northeast for Tyler Ryan Group.

Free Press - it doesn't have to be painful.

Remember as a kid visiting your grandparents house and fooling around on their old fashioned typewriter? This is all relative depending on who is reading this blog but let me give you my visual.  I was the youngest of 26 grandchildren born into my mother's family.  So needless to say my grandparents were always old and had really cool things at their house.  For some reason I remember being mesmerized with two of their items: a very old typewriter like this one and their very old beagle dog.  For very long blocks of time I would hover over the keys and just look at them.  I don't think I was even old enough to type or form an entire written thought but more than anything I wanted to get my fingers on those keys.
My grandparents born in the late 19th century prescribed to the train of thought that children should be seen but never heard so visits were most often painful and terribly long.  Opportunity would present itself and they would leave the room to share this or that with my parents and I would be able to take a precious strike at the keys and more often than not I would skin my finger on the metal arm from trying to hit it so quick.  Now I can envision reporters and businessmen sitting at those keys and painstakingly typing out their message or story trying to get it perfect each and every time.

Today - writing and publishing your work is as simple as it gets and the opportunities for free press for your business or organization are endless.  Even if you're not a writer putting together a press release is nothing short of filling in a template with all of the information you are trying to share with the world about your product, service, or event.  Always send off your press releases on letterhead whether going through the mail or being sent out electronically.  Your logo should appear at the top of the release and  PRESS RELEASE in bold capital letters needs to jump out at you from the page.  Remember that your purpose is to share as many pertinent details with the publication you are contacting to give them the whole entire story and if you catch their interest they will already have the building blocks of their angle.  Put your most important data and facts in the beginning.  Give a quick summary of what you are announcing and then go into more details in the following paragraphs and finally end with a summary of what you have told them.  When you are happy with your release and ready to end it make sure you include ### on the next line centered. This is a visual clue to the editor that you are done and complete.

You don't have to be a brilliant writer to get your press releases in the news just make sure that when you send out a copy that it is actually interesting and newsworthy.  You can be creative with your headline to make it stand out in the pile of other releases hot off the press.

Don't be intimidated by the process if you've never done it before.  Don't let fear hold you back from taking advantage of  one of the best way to get your word out there to your foot soldiers.  Remember that people like to be "in the know" and you are doing the general public a service by letting them know about your product and service! It's a good thing that you are doing!

If you have any questions or need any help, give me a call!

Jennifer Houghton
TRG Northeast
www.tylerryangroup.com
207-450-8441
jennifer@tylerryangroup.com
Marketing! It's what we do.

How strong is your logo?

Ideally you want your customers to be able to identify your company and product by a symbol.  That its your end goal when building your brand and creating your marketing strategy.  Most kids today can identify 1000's of brands by image alone without the company name anywhere in sight.

It's not going to happen overnight and it requires a lot of forethought and vision on your part. The best piece of advice is to keep it simple and go with your gut.  Most of us won't be able to come up with and create the graphic on our own so we'll need to bring in an outside talent to translate our ideas and what we are trying to achieve.  You will however in an instant know whether or not the graphic created to represent your entire brand and line of products and services is the right fit for you and your business.  Trust that intuition and know that you are going to need to commit to the basic  premise of the logo.

There's no doubt that your new logo will need to evolve over time as both your company grows and changes along with the market but you still want to make sure that the foundation you lay will be strong enough to carry you way into the future.

It's all about to change - are you ready?

It's Monday morning just shy of 9:00am on the East coast and in the day it's the time that just about everyone commuting to an office is getting ready to pull up there chair to the desk and say, "OK, let's do this."

Well okay, I've been there, done that and I'm not sure I always approached Morning with the excitement knowing it was the day I was going to make business magic happen. There was always a little bit of resentment that my relaxing weekend of doing housework, yard work, birthday parties, and family BBQ's had come to an end.

Many of us have left that way of life and are now integrating our offices into our homes, our cars, our methods of transportation, and even poolside. With the invention of the internet, smart phones, and ISDN lines basically any type of business can be conducted outside of the office. Is this a good thing? I'll leave that one up to you. However it is a catalyst for major change in how we are doing business and exactly who we are doing business with and I'm proposing the question, "Are you ready?"

Remember fifteen years back, relatively, when the buzz was the dot com movement? The first question out of everybody's lips was "do you have a website?". People were buying up urls like they were collectible Pez dispensers hoping to snag the right one and soon find themselves on easy street. The funny thing is that happened to a large group of intuitive buyers. I found myself smack dab in the middle of the dot come revolution and remember the swirling of misinformation and projections of the future of business that clouded everyone's way of looking at doing business. Some of the crazier notions were that newspaper, radio, and tv were on their way to becoming obsolete, it was actually possible to buy up all of the online inventory to block your competition from having any advertising real estate on the internet, and my personal favorite the great debate of whether an individual should log in or log on to the web.

Well buckle your seat belts and get ready for the next big advancement in virtual business. Most of you are already aware its happening many thanks to You Tube. The new question on the street is "do you have a video I can take a look at?". Think about it as a commercial for your business, product, service, or project. Companies are making it their entire focus and building their business plan around the creation and marketing of videos for commercial and non profit groups. Why? Because as one who prides herself on creating a story and then spinning it to build a brand or market niche it is one of the easiest ways to help give your story personality, reputability, credibility, and two very fast legs to help it spread out all over the globe. I love the possibilities it brings to the individual artist, small business, non profit and large corporation. The possibilities are endless and it doesn't have to cost an arm or a leg. We have a number of professionals in our town of 7,000 already servicing customers in this medium. TRG, our parent company, has been creating videos for clients for almost ten years. It is something that you as an individual can do by yourself.

Think about it, write it down, and let your creativity run wild.
If you would like help putting together your video, call me!

Jennifer Houghton
TRG Northeast
207-450-8441
www.tylerryangroup.com
Marketing! It's what we do.

Jennifer@tylerryangroup.com