While downturns come and go, it can be hard to ignore a recession when the media puts in your face every day. So beyond living in complete denial, what’s a business owner to do? Why not recognize opportunities that recession can bring to your business?

Here are a few points to ponder:

• Despite everyone preaching to the contrary, demand for most products does not disappear or decline more than 10%. Demand simply morphs and transforms. Take a good look at what your customers are doing to cut back and recognize the choices they’re making and how you can exploit them.
  
  
• Identify what your customers want vs. what they need, as these change during a recession. Strangely, some wants actually grow during a recession as people compensate for sacrifice in the strangest ways.
  
  
• Fully understand the money vs. time paradigm. Your customers will always have more of one than the other, so figure out how you can exploit this.
  
  
• If business is slow, now’s the time to rebuild or extend your Best and Highest Use. It’s a great time to start initiatives and build for sunny days.
  
  
• Despite the credit crunch, money is much less expensive to borrow in a recession as the Federal Reserve Bank cuts interest rates. Hunt around, as money is there to borrow, and when you find it, it can be a bargain. Also negotiate aggressively with your service and resource providers. Many are much more flexible than you might expect.
  
  
• Find the underserved and neglected in your marketplace. There are many folks and businesses that are not being adequately provided because their suppliers have abandoned them for greener markets. How can you step in?
  
  
• Seek out and walk with winners. In any recession, there are many folks who actually do better. Find them, serve them and grow with them.
  
  

There is an old saying, “Things are never as good as you think they are or as bad as you think they are.” A recession is precisely so. Dont ignore it rather exploit it just as you would a growing economy. Doing so during a recession is a true test of your business mettle.

Rise up and seize it.

Has your small business been forced to tackle a “must-do” project like Y2K or ISO9000 where the only result was a big bill and lots of wasted time? After watching dozens of clients invest in search engine optimization (SEO) and reviewing my own experience, I am coming to believe much of SEO is electronic snake oil. Let me explain.

Defining SEO
Search engine optimization is supposed to elevate your website’s Google and Yahoo rankings by fooling their programs into believing your site is the best answer to key words. The pitch of SEO is that you can “beat the system” by adding special phrases, formats and styles to your website, so it will be “seen” by the web spiders and crawlers who will “tell” the search engines to rank it higher. Doesn’t this remind you of gambling in Las Vegas? Only in a casino would you spend your money trying to beat the odds against those who set the rules. And as soon as they catch someone “beating their system” like counting cards, they make up new rules that keep the odds in their favor.

But isn’t SEO the same thing? As business owners we bet our money on SEO firms to beat the Google “system” but we can’t even bluff Google since they see all our “cards” as soon as our SEO “expert” puts them on our site. So actually we are subsidizing Google’s R&D efforts every time we “bet” with our SEO secrets which Google immediately can and does learn from! But armed with fancy graphs and charts, SEO experts promise us “get noticed quick” schemes that will place our firm on the first page and ahead of all the other firms that aren’t smart enough to invest in SEO.

What’s a Business Owner to do?
Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.

1. Basic SEO is good business.
   Tell the truth. The key words that truly describe your firm’s Best and Highest Use should already and always be throughout your website. For example if you install home theatre, your company name, website name, and website content should of course contain the words home entertainment and listing some key words is sensible.
2. Buying your way onto page one is not a shortcut for success.
   Think how you feel when someone says, “I sell insurance, cars or legal services.” I immediately assume the worst as they have commoditized themselves by refusing to narrow their focus, sharpen their offer or state what they do in terms that are special to me. The internet is no different and to expect to own a generic category such as public relations services online is per se evidence of a lazy, sloppy and probably incompetent business. If a business takes the time to focus and understand its best and highest use, the needs of a specific target market and to resolve specific kinds of pain or opportunity your message sends to the marketplace and the compelling way in which it will be received will not only impress prospects and clients but SEO engines. Therefore, the very activities that a small business needs to undertake are the very ones that need to benefit its online marketing.
3. If a business has been carefully targeted and positioned as discussed, then what is the real role of SEO?
   I’m not sure there is one. Before spending thousands of dollars to optimize my site, Birol Growth Consulting was on page one of Google and Yahoo. Today it is there as well. Why? Because by staying focused on a given message based on a best and highest use and pointed out a specific target market, there is no doubt of what I do and whom I do it. The key to me is to add content continuously, examples and links that continually pay off on the narrow positioning and target marketing you defined in the first place.

Conclusion
My experience with SEO is the same as it is with Las Vegas. It’s okay to dabble and gamble a bit, if you do so for the entertainment and the short term thrill you may get. But banking on either in lieu of focusing on your day job of narrowing your focus and pointing it at exactly who needs it is irresponsible.

Focus on developing content and proof that your expertise helps your target market and leave SEO to the pretenders and who have more money than brains.

By now, there’s no question the U.S. economy is mired in an economic slowdown. While your specific industry may actually be strong, slowdowns are epidemic in nature and have a way of leaking into otherwise solid sectors.

The simple fact is that expectations drive consumer behavior. A mindset of limitations is replacing an attitude of abundance. As a result, people are hedging their own bets and risking less.

All of this has put business owners in a precarious situation that they haven’t witnessed during the roaring ’90s. But that doesn’t mean your business has to stop growing just because the masses are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

Here are 12 tactics to help ensure your business doesn’t follow the downward trends.

Warranty and maintenance contracts that extend the useful life of the status quo.

Programs/products and services that promise reduced costs and greater efficiency will be more attractive than those promising increased sales

.

Channel power will go to those with paying customers or the ability to retain their margins.

Loyalties and relationships of convenience/laziness will be broken. In times of stress, relationships either deepen or disappear. Pick and choose your partners on both the supplier and the customer side. You can’t be all things to all people.

The transition from having not enough people to having too many people may be sudden. “Bargain-price” human resources can help increase customer service or search for new customers.

The challenge of focusing on the PACER circles (best and highest use, target market and customer pain) becomes all the more imperative. As demand slows down, every purchasing decision will be questioned. The practice of finding the best suppliers may be replaced by finding the one lowest cost supplier.

As people become more risk-averse to selling on the basis of fear, uncertainty and doubt will be effective.

Capital goods will be harder to get approved by customer finance departments. If so, they will be prioritized in the following order:

Those that improve profits

Those that increase sales

Those that decrease production costs

Those that decrease administrative costs

Technology factors. When tech capability greater than the market’s capability to absorb it, then price falls when everyone beyond the early adopters stop buying it. The minute the technology isn’t used, the value drops. Technology starts being given away and revenue streams devalued. Inevitably, the technology is adopted and price goes up, or more likely the next great thing replaces it as the cycle repeats itself.

Outsourcing may or may not decrease but the need doesn’t.

Leverage goodwill if you already created it with your customers.

Rethink the time versus money tradeoff. People may have more time to spend on tasks they formerly might have paid others to perform.

While there is no surefire way to avoid a slowdown, if you’re proactive in your approach odds are you’ll be better off then your not-so-prepared competitors.

In comparing the candidates from least attractive to most attractive for small business owners, they are as follows: Hillary Clinton (least attractive), John McCain and Barack Obama (tied)

Clinton : Voters, namely small business owners, are terrified of her health care views, taxes and worker’s rights. She will hurt small businesses a lot more than help them. If she is elected there will be a dramatic decline in business confidence levels which will, in turn, force them outside of their comfort level.

McCain: He is very logical. A true republican, he believes in lowering taxes, balanced budget and less government intervention. McCain is very quirky, but doesn’t give small business owners any confidence because he has never been a business owner - which is a major concern for the small business owners who look for that been-there, done-that knowledge. He is a maverick. He is a POW. Business owners can identify with this side of him because of the hero, “I’m a survivor” aspect.

Obama: Last night’s endorsement of the teamsters did not help him because this scares small business owners. But on the other hand, small business owners are disillusioned by all of the empty promises a certain president has promised to make - but hasn’t delivered on. His promise of hope is appealing, but lacks implication. Small business owners like the idea of his promise for hope and change. They are attracted to renewal and change and growth - anything better than the status quo.

Summary: Small business owners should find McCain attractive followed closely by Obama.

…but, if there is another national economic threat, such as a terrorist attack or more war, the vote will become economically driven. And because Obama has displayed negative thoughts regarding NAFTA, things could get very interesting, very fast.

In the middle of winter, Valentines Day prompts us to reopen our hearts to those we love. While pledging our love can be easiest in a new relationship, rekindling the burning embers in an old relationship can be harder or even worse , ignored. It is no surprise that lack of passion and communication is the number one cause of divorce.

Beyond your spouse, children and parents, isn’t your business the next “love” in your life? You have built, managed and protected it, but are you as passionate about it as when you started? What should you do to express or restore your love?

Here are three great steps to show your business your “love”:

1. Interview your clients and customers and to confirm what you think they love about your business. This is your firm’s Best and Highest Use and you can read more of this here
2. Then invest in providing them with more of your BHU at higher margins
3. Refresh and refocus your message, positioning, sales and marketing to tell more customers and prospects why they should love your BHU

Here are three steps to fall back in love with your business

1. Ask yourself what is your Best and Highest Use and is it still aligned with that of your business’ and what your business needs, you can link here for some help
2. If your BHU is still aligned with your business’ BHU, then stay in your business and work on fixing it quickly. Here is some help to do this
3. If your BHU is not aligned with your business, it is time to reconsider your future in or without your business. Here is a process to help you “know when to hold them and know when to fold them”.

Love is said to be the more important emotion, connection and driver of behavior for the human race. To not be in love with your business is crippling to your well being as well as that of your customers, employees and vendors who take their cues from you. So, if you are in love with your business, use this Valentine’s Day to show it the same love you do for that special someone or make the commitment to fall back in love with your business or move on and find your passion building and running something else.

Recently, Kathryn Landers of Felber & Felber Marketing interviewed me on public relations and how knowledge businesses can best plan, use and profit from PR

Andy, how do you define public relations?

To me, PR is the promotion of one’s expertise and value through non-advertising traditional and electronic media and editorial outlets.  When your “smarts” are independently and objectively published by third parties, so your audiences can read and see your value endorsed by others; that is effective PR.  The best PR usually includes examples of how your clients have benefited from your value.

Andy, how do you look at PR?

I think of PR as falling into three categories: Reactive, Active and Proactive

• Reactive PR consists of responding to preexisting stories and inquiries from reporters who need experts.  Websites like www.prleads.com and responding to other’s blogs is a very low-commitment way to demonstrate your expertise
• Active PR is using the wire services like www.prnewswire.com or www.expertclick.com  to circulate press releases on your firm’s progress or value.  They work best when there is a direct “hook” between your news, a current trend/event and your unique spin on it.
• Proactive PR involves creating both the content and the venue to broadcast it.  Your own blog is a great way to start as I have on www.birolsblog.com. Traditional, Internet and satellite media tours, speaking at trade shows and press conferences and “dog and pony” all work if you have the right story to tell.

Andy, what advice would you give to a business owner just beginning to use PR??

• First determine your firm’s Best and Highest Use. 
• Second, define who is your target audience, and third what information they will value.
• Then determine which media and editorial resources they watch and read.

The final step is to continuously create valuable, unique information that provokes your target audience to contact you for more.  So you need to become disciplined and regularly:

• Develop content in the form of articles, write papers and ideas
• Create and use case studies, results statements, testimonials showing how others have benefited through content
• Any time you can involve your clients in the PR effort it is much better.  Reporters, and conferences just love it when a client stands beside you and talks about your value and how it helped them

What do you think of business owners hiring  PR firms?

Writing and self promotion doesn’t come naturally to many owners so there is a trade off of doing it yourself or hiring specialists like my firm of Felber & Felber Marketing.

• In my case, I develop the content myself. 
• Together we decide how much reactive, active, proactive PR I need to get my messages seen and heard. 
• Finally, I turn over the execution of proactive, active, reactive PR to Felber & Felber Marketing to efficiently deliver my message to the media. 
How each business owner should implement their PR is a function of their Best and Highest Use, time, budget and personal preferences

Conclusion
PR is the most efficient marketing any business can do.  When established third parties are publishing your expertise you earn a great payback on your investment of time and money. Start with your inherent value and figure out who needs learn about it and where they are.  Then go tell the world.  You will be glad you did!

I’m back from a twenty day cruise on the Holland America Line’s Rotterdam (HAL) where my family sailed by Antarctic glaciers, explorer’s outposts and penguin colonies. Besides the hazardous grandeurs deftly navigated by our ice pilot, I saw a fascinating contradiction. The crew and staff of HAL worked nonstop to create a consistent onboard experience while the Antarctic researchers we saw spent all their time adapting to survive as they studied how the climate, nature and animals themselves are adapting. In watching this, it occurred to me how often we entrepreneurs struggle with these same conflicting forces of the need for consistency vs. the need to adapt.

First let’s look at Antarctica versus our ship. Despite its inhospitable and dangerous climate, Antarctica has drawn explorers, heroes and fools to its shores for centuries. Ernest Shackleton, the most famous, survived over 130 days under a rowboat eating blubber ultimately only to earn a $20,000 fee for the film rights. After Shackleton, thousands of explorers have adapted their lives, dreams, and studies to explore and learn about Antarctica. Their success demonstrates the very human spirit to innovate and adapt as much to survive and learn.

Compare this to the centuries old tradition-bound Holland America Cruise Lines whose consistency and standardization are keys to their success. As the oldest premium brand, HAL appeals mostly to the 60+ market offering a consistent experience delivered over seventeen ships. From the centralization of decision and policy making to the tight allocation of human resources, HAL runs cost centers with legendary attention to detail and tradition. My only big beef is the lack of contemporary music or other progressive entertainment for the still-rocking crowd. Still it seemed bizarre to watch the ship’s Hotel Manager chastise our waiter for a crooked place setting while we passed the spot where another cruise ship sank last month!

So as an entrepreneur, how do you reconciling consistency with the need to adapt? Unlike the explorers or the cruise ships, you really don’t have the luxury of choosing one.

One of my close colleagues, and a national manufacturing expert, Becky Morgan, helped me with this.  She, along with Carmella Calta, CEO of multiple process-driven companies, pointed out that without first creating consistency in your business, progress cannot be made let alone innovation.

For both consistency and innovation to work, my colleagues recommended that autonomous employees must take responsibility for creating and embracing process. Only with clear standards in place, can innovation turn into practical results. The challenge of a company adapting to progressive innovation and demonstrating “out of the box thinking” relates more to business strategy. To create strategic change, leaders of organizations must define themselves as innovative by allowing “out of the box thinking”. Most companies don’t gamble on their proven successes despite indications that their marketplace is moving and changing. As Becky says, “If you don’t move with your customer base and change your business strategy your operations strategy and what you measure in the form of standardization won’t change either.”

In Shackleton’s case, his ability to adapt and survive led him on to be refinanced for future expeditions to both Antarctica and elsewhere in the world.

And Holland America has the choice of reinforcing its traditional appeal to its aging customer base or innovating more to appeal to its younger, non-retired clientele like me. Only time will tell which is the right bet as with increasing life spans and sellout cruise ships, Holland’s core market shows no signs of declining.

Here are some key guidelines for managing your way to consistency and adaptation.

1. Don’t use innovation or anything else as an excuse not to create consistency and standardization.
2. Empower your employees throughout your firm to create better ways to get work done and hold them responsible for results.
3. Don’t use standardization and consistency as an excuse for not creating a clear business strategy that recognizes shifts in your marketplace and their preferences.
What does this mean for your business?