Let me start by wishing you all a very Happy New Year. I hope you have a fantastic, prosperous and enjoyable 2008, I certainly hope to be doing so!! (yep that’s correct, this was first drafted in the first week of January, but I’ve only just found the time to finish it off).

As per usual at this time of the year I’ve been bombarded with adverts for joining my local gym, losing a few pounds of weight, cheap credit cards and all sorts of offers for sorting out the physical, mental and financial hangover from Christmas. This is all well and good as after all, December in London is party season and it’s fair to say my wallet, liver and rapidly growing spare tyre all took an absolute hammering.

However for us small business owners, its also a time to think about your businesses health. So without further ado, here are 5 things you can do to get your work year off to a healthy flyer:

1. Plan some yearly goals

It’s always tempting on that first day back to carry on where you left off on Christmas eve - ploughing through emails, answering customer queries etc etc. However this is probably not the best way to get back into work, after all you now have a unique opportunity to plan ahead, think about what you want to achieve with your business and set up some SMART targets (specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time bound). Build in a marketing plan around your business targets, for example if you want to grow your business, what communications vehicles can you use to support this growth?

2. Reward your team

The first few weeks back after Christmas are notorious sickie hot spots, so do what you can to ease your staff back into the world of work. Last year I wrote about rewarding your employees to stave off the January blues and I stand by my suggestions - it doesn’t have to be an overly costly experience, just a small gesture. Check this out for some ideas. Remember, people are just as important in your marketing as products, or promotions or your place of work.

3. Call you 5 most valuable accounts

Take the time in the new year to catch up with your biggest clients. They may well be knee deep in planning themselves, but a quick call to catch-up and to ask ‘what’s important for you this year?’ will stand you in good stead to ensure you are both on top of their mind and that you understand their needs well. I heard the CEO of Xerox speak last year and her words still echo in my mind:

Success is based on the value you bring to customers - they have to be the centre of your universe

4. Call any problem creditors / debtors

January is often a time of financial difficulty. This can be bad for both debtors and creditors. If you have overdue invoices call those clients and find out what’s going on. It is better to know in advance what the likelihood of you getting paid is and by when - that way you can plan your cash flow more accurately.

If you are in debt and you can see trouble in your cash flow forecast, call your creditors early. They would all prefer to get paid late than not at all and it will do you no harm to foster a good relationship.

5. Try something new

As a small business owner, you probably don’t have huge budgets for marketing communications programmes. But it’s surprising what you can achieve for relatively little. if you haven’t already, consider trying some Payper click advertising, or holding a small sales promotion, or calling your local paper to tell a journalist about some news. The key is to try something you haven’t done before and to take a multilevel approach.

I heard a Dale Carnegie presentation not so long ago and these words still make me think regularly:

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get, what you’ve always got

Well there you go. Long overdue, but some ideas for how to move your small business ahead this year. Remember, even Richard Branson started out selling student magazines from a basement and look where he is know.

I found this video on YouTube recently and it caught my attention mostly because it’s a presentation by Hugh MacLeod (of Gapingvoid.com fame) about social objects.

Now before watching the video I wasn’t entirely sure what was meant by social objects or that they should be at the centre of your marketing universe. But afterwards it seemed fairly clear that the social element is what makes a lot of the recent Web 2.0 success stories - MySpace, Facebook, Flickr etc etc - so successful.

Anyway, check out the video and remember this quote:

From now on if your marketing doesn’t have any kind of social object within it, you don’t have marketing, you just have junk

Hugh MacLeod, 13th September 07

YouTube Direct

I first learned of the term ‘influencer marketing’ at a Social Tools for Business conference in London last year when I had a brief conversation with Duncan Brown of Influencer50. As a quick intro Influencer50 is a marketing agency working with tech companies to engage in influencer marketing programmes.

So what is influencer marketing?

At its most simple level, influencer marketing is the practice of targeting marketing activities at those people who most influence the sales decision buying process. But surely I hear you say, all sales and marketing activity is designed to reach those influencers. You know, the people who buy your goods and services.

Well yes, but in actual fact in influencer marketing, the influencer is defined by Duncan as:

Influencers are not your customers. Influencers have no budget. They are not your market. They influence your customers, influence budget, influence your market.

or on Wikipedia:

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orientates arketing activities around these influencers.

So you see, not only does your marketing have to target the guy with the credit card, but also those that ffect whether or not he uses that credit card. For example, if you’re selling stationery you not only need to communicate with the administrator who places the order, but all the other people in the compnay who influence the decision of what to buy, i.e. the product users and specifiers. In fact the list could be endless so it’s important to identify and target specific individuals who carry the most influence, those who Influencer50 say are the people responsible for sales cycle objections.

For a slightly different definition head to Influencer Marketing 101 and watch Marcus Colombo’s short video. He’s a practising influence marketer and effectively says his job is all about getting sample products into the ands of those that influence the market.

It’s clear then that influencer marketing is not just about communicating with potential buyers of your product, but other influencers and information gatekeepers in what marketers call the decision making unit (or DMU). There are two different approaches to influencer marketing as well:

1. Influencer50 suggest it is more about joining up your marketing and sales teams to identify the objectors (and objections) that most impact their sales figures and then devising a plan to communicate with these people, and

2. the second approach is to ensure product samples get to the right people at the right time, for example ournalists, analysts and more increasingly bloggers or other social commentators.

So why is it important?

Much has been written of late about how traditional marketing methods no longer have the same impact. It is probably fair to say that both consumers and businesses have become more resilient to traditional marketing methods such as advertising and direct marketing. However they have not actually become immune, yet. In reality these methods are still powerful tools for any marketer as long as they are well integrated.

That’s where influencer marketing seems to fit for me. Influencer marketing could well be the glue that brings together our existing marketing campaigns and ties them into your sales campaigns. In other words it is taking an integrated approach to your sales and marketing, which seems very sensible and key objective for many marketers in big companies these days.

So what can you do about it?

I’m no expert and I would suggest heading over to Duncan’s blog to learn more. But it would seem there are some simple steps that a small and medium business could take to introduce influencer marketing techniques into the sales cycle.

Have a look at the Influencer Marketing Wheel below:

Well, with that written I’m off to look at the biggest sales objections I receive and who they’re from. If the big boys like HP, Xerox, Microsoft and co are engaging in Influencer Marketing then there’s no reason why us small business shouldn’t try it out also.

Duncan, if you’re reading this, I hope I’ve done influencer marketing some justice. However it would be great to get your comments. Please fell free to drop me a line or post a comment..

Just a quick one today. I found this reasonable summary of Seth Godin’s permission based marketing system. It’s quite a straight forward and simple summary for those of you in a rush.

For those with even less time, here are the five steps to permission marketing:

1. Define the irresistible offer

2. Create a targeted business list

3. Create the opt-out message

4. Craft the perfect pitch

5. Reinforce the relationship

To define permission based marketing it’s all about building ongoing relationships with your customers and prospective customers, rather than focussing on transactional relationships. In other words, aiming to extract the maximum life time value of a customer, rather than a just one off purchases.