With spending decreasing and doom and gloom reported in the news every day, it is human nature to prepare for the worst by cutting business expenditures, including marketing, in case you’ll need that money to assure your business survival.

I can tell you with great certainty that if you do not continue supporting your business with marketing of some kind, you won’t survive. Think of marketing expenditures as an investment in the future growth of your company, not as an expense.

The definition of insanity has been said to be: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This can be used to describe choosing to do the same old marketing in what is clearly a changed market. Continuing marketing expenditures does not mean that you continue marketing the way you always have. Instead, use this changed market climate to reevaluate your marketing and decide what you should be doing differently:

1.  Evaluate your product. Is the traditional use of your product not appropriate for today’s market conditions. Can you modify your product, produce a new complementary product or emphasize an ancillary product you always offered but now would have greater appeal as an enhancement to your customers who are not currently buying new?

2.  Evaluate your market. Has your target audience changed? For instance if you are in the travel business, at one time your visitor might have been someone who flew in from out of town or traveled long distances, now your audience might be the family traveler who is visiting from closer by.

3.  Evaluate your message. Make certain your marketing message reflects the current climate and appeals to what is important to your target audience. On-demand printing makes it possible to produce short runs of materials, with unique messages that you can use until the economy turns around. Who knows, you might even find your new approach works so well you may keep the strategy long-term.

4.  Take advantage. Decreased marketing by your competitor can give you an advantage. The less advertising your message competes with, the louder your message is heard.

5.  Non-traditional advertising. If appropriate, utilize non-traditional forms of advertising that might be less expensive such as e-mail, linked-in, facebook, or twitter.

6.  Evaluate your marketing. Evaluate your current marketing materials and make certain they accurately describe your business and services. Did you develop these materials before you added other services to your offering, have you started describing your services differently or are you still listing services you don’t offer anymore? This is especially true of on-line listings, directories, membership services, BBB listings, or other sources of information you may produce only once a year and may not have looked at in some time. You have already paid for these listings, make certain they are working for you as effectively as possible. When was the last time you looked at your website to make certain it is current, to evaluate the search engine optimization or to be certain referral sources are being maximized?

6.  Negotiate. Decreased advertising can be a financial advantage for you as you negotiate the cost of printing or ad space. Now more than ever, the provider of these services would rather make less money than none so you can benefit from this competitive marketplace.

7.  Promote. Make your marketing measurable through the use of special offers, response devices, coupons or other mechanisms that make it possible to determine where your dollars are best spent.

If you stop marketing altogether, you will be forgotten and when your customer has more discretionary income to spend, you will have to work much harder to reintroduce yourself.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade! Summer is coming … I can’t think of a better time for some lemonade!

Leigh Williams

Amaranth Designs, LLC.
615.822.7344

Does your business or doctor’s office have a blog? What is a blog and why should you care? For a quick video overview on blogging, I invite you to watch “Blogs in Plain English” from Common Craft.

Let Keystone Business Solutions help you pick a blog platform, decide on a design and get you started on branding yourself the expert in your particular field!

Jason Elkins
Keystone Business Solutions

Does your company or office utilize social networking sites? No? Ever heard of Twitter? Why on earth would a respectable business allow their employees to use a tool like Twitter, or Facebook? Well, the truth is that many businesses are now taking advantage of the power of social networking sites. If you are not familiar with Twitter here is an overview:

Caroline Middlebrook’s blog “What is Twitter (Twitter Guide Part #1)” states: “Twitter is many things to many people but what often goes unnoticed is that it can be an incredibly powerful marketing & community building tool with the ability to develop your brand, build relationships with your audience and provide a promotional medium that has the ability to go viral!”

What is Twitter:

According to the Twitter FAQ, “Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing.” That doesn’t really tell us very much. Wikipedia says, “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates via SMS, instant messaging, email, to the Twitter website, or any one of the multitude of Twitter applications now available”.

Twitter asks the question, “What are you doing?” and allows you to send a small update (limited to just 140 characters) to your followers. The concept is amazingly simple and that is perhaps one of the main reasons why it has caught on like wildfire. The restriction to 140 characters has resulted in Twitter being labeled “micro blogging”. A traditional blog is a log of what somebody is up to, but in a richer, more detailed format. One of the key benefits of Twitter is that you can send and receive updates (also called tweets) via your browser, email , instant messaging clients and SMS so you can keep in touch no matter where you are.”

Check it out, stick with it for a month or two and see if you achieve ‘increased productivity’!

Happy Tweeting.

Jason

If you are a Middle Tennessee doctor or run a doctor’s office in Middle Tennessee and you are wondering what you can do to grow your business, I would like to invite you to a free class this Friday morning (Nov. 7th) called “Internet Marketing 101”. It will be held at Latham’s Lighthouse Events Center, from 10:30 to 12:00. Keystone Business Solutions will be presenting this information in a fun and informative way, through their successful “Keystone University” program.

Click here for the Class Description.
Class here for the Class Schedule
Click here to Sign Up. Sign Up.

“I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for having the classes that you call Keystone University.

There are two things that impress me the most about the classes. One is that they are on my “level” which seems to be the same level as the others in the class. The instructors never use terms that aren’t explained, and more so if someone asks the definition of a term, never does anyone laugh, chuckle or otherwise make the person feel “less informed” by the answer. I’ve been around other instructors of other companies where the first thing is rolled eyes or some statement like “oh, I forgot, I have to go back to the simplest level.”

With your classes everyone is treated professionally, yet it is a very relaxed atmosphere with lots of fun information given in a fun and professional way.

The other item that really impresses me is that this could be a basic 2 hour “advertisement” for Keystone Business Solutions. However, never has it been that way. Of course it is pointed out that Keystone may be able to assist, but it’s not like you feel you were forced to sit through a 2 hour “infomercial” while taking the class.

Best wishes as you grow the University, and I’m looking forward to attending more classes!”

Mark S.

“E-Mail Newsletter Marketing, Do’s and Don’ts.” Do you know the legal aspects of sending a marketing e-mail?

“Social Networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.” Are they right for your business?

“Blogging and your business”. Find out how companies are taking advantage of blogs.

So answer this question: How many people are out there, in your target market, that need your service but are unable to find you online?

Hope to see you in class!

Jason Elkins
Keystone Business Solutions
jelkins@kbsweb.com
615-826-3500

So why on earth would doctors need support from a small band of forward thinking, customer driven, business folks?

The plight of the doctor is pretty well documented if you research that sort of thing. Some of the issues that are facing the medical community, and specifically doctors:

1) Doctors are making less money than ever (especially general practitioners) and working longer hours

2) Doctors have more federal and state regulation changes regarding insurance, contracts and accreditation.

3) Doctors are constantly working in crisis mode, whether they are dealing with a patient, or circumnavigating the latest treatment regimen, or arguing with an insurance provider.

4) ‘Patient Jumping’ (where patients move from one doctor to another) is a new phenomenon affecting doctors. Due to tighter schedules and higher copays, and the ever growing problem of prescription drug abuse, it is more difficult for doctors to develop long-term patients. Developing new patients is much more expensive on a medical practice than keeping existing patients.

All of this leads to a complicated job where doctors have to manage their patients problems, AND their business. That is where we come in.

The Tennessee Doctors Support Group’s members are currently helping several Tennessee based medical organizations in the areas of health insurance for their employees, banking, real estate, contract consulting, electronic patient records management (EMR), logo and image creation and website development.

We can show you how to save time and money in these and other areas. Let us help!

Contact us here.

The Tennessee Doctors Support Group provides services to doctors on a referral basis. We have a team of dedicated specialists with a variety of skills to meet the specific and unique needs of doctors in middle Tennessee. Some of the areas we serve include: Coding, Website Construction, EMR, Real Estate, Contract Support, Print/Electronic Media, Banking, Financial Asset Management, Insurance, and Hospital Relationship Consulting.