Guest post by Laura Girty “Get back to the basics.” How many times have you heard that? Sometimes the basics are the best place to start. In the late 1990’s under the helm of Executive Director Leo Presley, the Oklahoma Department of Commerce (ODOC) developed a model for community development that worked especially well for…
When asked about marketing, many small-business owners think of a one-word definition: selling. Selling is one part of marketing, and it is a crucial part because it brings in revenues to keep the doors open. But it is only one part. Paraphrasing from Jay Levinson’s classic book, “The Guerilla Marketer,” marketing is defined as “everything you do.” Simply put,…
If you live in the US, I’ll bet you have a Jiffy Mix in your kitchen cabinet right now. I have three. I counted. Even if you don’t, surely you recognize the iconic blue boxes with their simple branding, even though Chelsea Milling Company doesn’t spend a dime to advertise them. Chelsea, Michigan, is…
Market research focuses on understanding your customers. There are a variety of tools to help you do that. Yet one of the most overlooked tools that offers a great deal and costs very little, except for time, is conversation. Conversation is great in terms of getting to know your customers as individuals. What are their…
Some of you may remember the Ford slogan of the 1980’s, Quality is Job #1. That slogan was true then for businesses. And it remains true today. Yet, quality sometimes remains hard to find. For example in the last year, two households in my family had to purchase dishwashers. Two different brands were purchased but,…
Every small town faces the contradiction of young people saying “there are no jobs here” while business say “we can’t find good people.” My friend Kat Long from Ponca City, Oklahoma, sent this story of what they are doing to connect young people with the jobs that already exist in town and introducing girls to…
A lot has been written about how market research will help you achieve business success, and many of these claims are true. That connection, however, is not a simple, direct link. Collecting information about your potential market is useful only if you take the next step of analyzing the data. Data analysis yields clues about who…
There will be times in business when your income is zero. You might as well plan for that right now. For farmers, a wheat crop might be entirely hailed out, and they may lose the entire year’s income. They have to plan for that or it’s going to put them out of business. The…
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