relationship marketing | Fast Company

Small Businesses Connecting with Customers on Multiple Fronts

BY Eric GrovesWed May 18, 2011

Small business owners who say their number one concern is attracting new customers seem to be making the right moves to address that concern according to a new survey.READ»

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Open Rate: It's About The Content. Duh

BY Eric GrovesTue Apr 26, 2011

By providing great content to your email subscribers, you can improve your open rates and get people sharing with others, either by forwarding or through social media channels. And it doesn’t have to be a "deal"--just make sure the content is useful to the recipient.READ»

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New SCORE Site Helps Coach Small Businesses

BY Eric GrovesMon Apr 4, 2011

SCORE has now made it even easier for small businesses to get help through a new website called e-Business Now, which promotes workshops, how-to guides, events, and more. READ»

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GroupMe the Winner at SXSW

BY Eric GrovesFri Mar 18, 2011

After spending a couple days at SXSW, my theory that there's a social app for everything is confirmed. While 99% of these social apps seem to add to the chaos of online living, one stood out as simplifying things: GroupMe, a free service that facilitates group texting and allows users to maintain relationships in clusters as well as one-to-one communications.READ»

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What Barriers to Small Business Success Would You Knock Down?

BY Eric GrovesFri Mar 4, 2011

The U.S. Small Business Association (SBA) is putting on an eight-city tour dubbed "Startup America: Reducing Barriers Roundtables," featuring senior officials from the Obama Administration, to get the public's input on how government can reduce barriers and be more supportive of innovation and entrepreneurship.READ»

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Spurring Business on a Snow Day

BY Eric GrovesTue Feb 15, 2011

Here in the snow-bound New England, we've had so many weeks of consecutive storms that the only happy small-business folks are the snow plow operators and roof shovelers. But a few savvy marketers are turning to email, social media, and mobile marketing to lure in snow-weary customers.READ»

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2010: The Year Social Went Viral

BY Eric GrovesWed Dec 22, 2010

As the sun sets on 2010, it's amazing to look back and see how social media has impacted all areas of marketing. Marketers have finally figured out that yes, social media can help drive business--if you do it right.READ»

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Save Money and Roll Your Own Groupon-style Offer

BY Eric GrovesWed Dec 8, 2010

Groupon's benefits are many: It has a great system in place for promoting deals offered through its many local sites, the transactional systems to handle the influx of deal buyers, and such deals can drive hundreds of new customers to a business. But, what if you don't have the margins to pay 50% of the deal's revenue to Groupon on top of offering a steep discount on your products and services?READ»

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Allocating Resources to Help Small Business Grow

BY Eric GrovesMon Nov 15, 2010

Tthe issue of figuring out how to allocate resources (time and money) for most small business owners hinges on two questions: One, where is my revenue coming from next month? And two, what's the best source of new customers to keep my business growing?READ»

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The Power of Coaching

BY Eric GrovesThu Oct 28, 2010

With the World Series underway, the Texas Rangers' Cliff Lee is standing in the spotlight as one of the top pitchers in baseball. But it was only three years ago that he was sent down to the minor leagues for a refresher. And in 2008, he won the Cy Young Award as the best pitcher in the American League. Even the best of the best need a little coaching now and then. READ»

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Does Facebook's Like = Permission to Market to?

BY Eric GrovesThu Oct 14, 2010

You've set up a Facebook Page for your business and the number of Likes is growing steadily. This means you're free to market to these folks at will, right? Not so fast.READ»

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Looking for Signs of Intelligent Marketing Life - Part 3

BY Eric GrovesWed Sep 29, 2010

Businesses have enough to keep up with when it comes to their site, blog, email newsletters, Facebook Page, and Twitter feed. The barrage of new sites such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, or that yet-to-be-invented network is enough to send businesses ducking for cover. Fortunately, your customers will tell you what the next "big thing" is.READ»

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Looking for Signs of Intelligent Marketing Life - Part 2

BY Eric GrovesWed Sep 15, 2010

Radiant marketing is a simple metaphor with the sun representing a business and the planets the customers. Your job as a business owner is to keep the sun burning bright and not fade into a black hole, with marketing being key to that effort. So where does social media marketing fall in this planetary metaphor?READ»

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Looking for Signs of Intelligent Marketing Life - Part 1

BY Eric GrovesTue Aug 31, 2010

I once had an idea for a book that compares marketing to the solar system. That metaphor, which I call radiant marketing, is quite apt for describing how marketing efforts are being impacted by new technologies and new ways of connecting with customers and members. It's a simple metaphor, with the sun representing a business and the planets the customers. READ»

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Revving Up Your Social Media Marketing

BY Eric GrovesWed Aug 18, 2010

As more and more marketers jump on the social media marketing bandwagon, the inevitable questions about return on investment are cropping up. Of course social media marketing is worth it, even if that ROI cannot directly be measured in dollars. Need convincing? Here's my take.READ»

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Is Broadband Definition Too Narrow?

BY Eric GrovesMon Aug 2, 2010

Are you happy with your Internet connection? Chances are good that most of you reading this are quite satisfied with your connection. And yet, despite your personal satisfaction, there's been some debate among academic types over whether the U.S. is continuing to expand the reach and quality of broadband or falling behind in the bandwidth arms race.READ»

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Ratings and Reviews Are Key to Luring Tourists

BY Eric GrovesThu Jul 15, 2010

Having just returned from a family trip to Europe, I've come to value even more sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp that let users rate and review restaurants, tour guides, and more. Sites like these were particularly helpful in Europe where there seems to be two kinds of customer in every town: The locals who know everyone and the tourists who know no one. We fell into the latter group, so finding good restaurants and attractions required good recommendations and referrals.READ»

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Avoid Overloading Social Media Networks with Useless Noise

BY Eric GrovesThu Jun 24, 2010

With nearly 50 million tweets a day posted to Twitter and more than 400 million active users on Facebook, there can be a lot of noise in social media marketing that might obscure the message and value you as a business are trying to deliver. To rise above the noise, you have to make sure you're not contributing to it.READ»

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Are You Capturing Those Summer Tourists?

BY Eric GrovesWed Jun 9, 2010

It's June, which means we've now officially entered the Summer Tourist. Are you capturing information for those summer vacationers coming into your place of business? If not, you could be losing out on a year-round valuable business asset.READ»

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Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

BY Eric GrovesWed May 26, 2010

There's been some debate among economists over how exactly "small business" should be defined. At the heart of the issue is the government's definition of small business, which it says are companies of less than 500 employees. But a 499-employee business isn't exactly "small." This issue is even more important in light of a recent report that found credit card rates for small-business accounts have increased 13.7% over the past six months, costing small businesses $420 million in incremental finance charges. READ»