This is my second post of my Marketing Surfing Lessons series. If you didn’t catch the first one, you can get it here.

Once again, I’ll relate it to surfing. First let’s get a little background on the topic.  Surfing has become so popular in the last 50 years that its nearly impossible to find good surf without a crowd.  Its not uncommon to travel to some remote island in any of the vast oceans on this planet in search for uncrowded surf, only to pull up to 10 other boats and packed lineup up surfers.  So the modern-day surfer has been forced to learn the art of positioning.

3 Tips To Position Your Business to Catch a Huge Wave:

1. Position yourself in the lineup.
   Once you get out in the water, its important to know where the waves will be breaking.  If you line up too close to the beach you could get hammered by the incoming surf.  If you paddle too far out, you’ll miss everything that comes in.  If you lineup too far to the side of the peak, you’ll miss out.  If you lineup on the inside and try and catch a shoulder, you’ll sit and watch other people surf by you all day.  Click the image to the right to see how the lineup works.  You want to position yourself in exactly the right spot to catch a wave at the peak and ride it all the way into the beach.Positioning your small business works the same way.  The first step is to ignore the competition and figure out where the waves (your target market) is.  Find your target market and figure out how to position your product or service in the best way so that the market responds.
2. Next, you don’t surf (or do business) in a vacuum.
   So, you have to figure out how to position yourself correctly for your target market while also keeping a leg up on your competitors.  In the lineup, its an art to learn where to sit to increase your chances of scoring a wave.  There’s also an art to know when to sit and relax and when to paddle.  The key is to remember what you decided in step 1 and realize that the lineup doesn’t sit still.  Everyone is always moving.  Always jockeying for position.  Keep your position in the pack, but never lose site of where the waves are going to break.So, what does all this mean for you in your business?  Your competitors have their own goals and aspirations.  If they start heading off in an interesting direction don’t follow them unless they’re heading directly at your target market.  Never follow just because they’re a competitor.  Hold your ground and keep jockeying for position.  Knowledge of where the waves break and how they break (market research) is what will allow you to always be in the right place at the right time.  Don’t guess.  Learn what you need to learn to be prime for your market.
3. Play by the rules. In the surfing lineup, there are rules that must be lived by.  You don’t drop in on someone else’s wave.  You don’t ditch your board and risk hurting someone.  Click here check out the rules.  In business, play by the rules. It doesn’t pay to bash your competitors like a slimy politician.  It doesn’t pay to cheat your way to the top. When you play by the rules and you win, you gain respect.  I’ve often sat in the lineup watching in awe of others tearing up the waves even though I was missing out.  I watch and learn.  Then I go attack. (”Attack the game, not the players.”) Play by the rules.  Learn from people that are getting it right.  Then, get out there and drop in.
   

Here are some useful resources to help you position your business in your market:

• Wikipedia Article
• Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind (A great book!)
• Duct Tape Marketing (Another good book on marketing & positioning.)
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

Enjoy!

–Tyler

Here are some possibly related posts:

• Surfing Lesson 1 of 3: Its All About Timing
• A New Infusionsoft Department
• What’s Your (New) Publicity Plan?
• Three Tips to Launch a Great Campaign
• Marketing Strategies, Not Campaigns
• Twitter Lists & What Small Businesses Should Know

Green-lighting software releases for production is an honorable, yet audacious, responsibility. We have and will be continuing our efforts to push better and better releases for customers so they can trust our software every time they use it. We wanted to add another dimension to the voice of our peers and provide insights on what we’re doing to keep software releases smooth and enjoyable.

For our kick-off posting, I wanted to discuss an issue that I’m sure challenges QA departments around the world – finding dedicated time to actually test.

By nature of the role, software testers frequently find themselves as the company’s product experts.  While this is absolutely essential to success as a software tester it can also lead to activities that distract from the primary testing role.  Here at Infusionsoft, we struggled to balance software testing with supporting the company as a whole.  We finally arrived at a solution that has already started to pay dividends.

We designated the tester with the most customer service experience as our “company liaison” and funneled everything not testing-related through him. This has freed up the rest of the team to focus on testing the software while simultaneously improving our responsiveness to internal departments and customers. This setup has also allowed QA to keep its pulse on how the software is performing in the wild; which in turn, guides our testing focus to remain strong and on target. While this is not necessarily a solution that will work for all QA departments, it has certainly been working for us.

I invite your feedback, comments, suggestions and questions anytime. Just let me know in the comments. Until the next posting… I’m Aaron Barrett.

[Photo by oskay on Flickr]

Here are some possibly related posts:

• Tricks & Treats at Infusionsoft (Halloween)
• What Exactly is ‘Company Culture’?
• Giving Us Feedback is a Click Away
• Infusionsoft Makes Inc. 500 List, 3 Years in a Row!
• Want Your Feedback: Our Blog
• Progress on Our ‘09 Annual Priorities

• It’s not just hot here… it regularly hits 117 degrees and stays there.  Even at night, it’s still 105 degrees or more!
• We have monsoons!?  (I thought those only happened in India!)
• Scorpions are as common as bugs. (I quickly learned you can hunt scorpions using a black light.)

Despite the blistering heat, monsoons and scorpions, Infusionsoft has grown at an amazing pace and I’m honored to be a part of it.

Just recently, we decided as an executive team to form a new department called “Business Development.”

Why? Because partnerships are absolutely central to the success of Infusionsoft and our customers. (We have more info in our press release.)

When Clate approached me to consider heading up the new department, I had major hesitations as the acting VP of Marketing.  I had major initiatives underway around social media, brand building, demand generation, and PR.  But, my concerns disappeared when we promoted Tyler Garns, previously our Director of Marketing, to Vice President of Marketing. Those of you that know Tyler, have seen him present at many of our events (Revolution Tour, InfusionCon, Fix Your Follow-up Fiesta, Webinars, etc) know exactly what I’m talking about.  I’m extremely excited to pass the reigns to Tyler and watch him guide Infusionsoft’s marketing efforts.

I’m even more excited for what the new department means for our partners and customers.  I have a lot of passion around partnerships and finding ways to create quick, sustainable value.  The early days of Infusionsoft were filled with a lot of partnership building and business development.  It feels good to get back to our roots in working with partners.  As a new department, I’m sure we’ll run into a few “monsoons” and “scorpions” as we figure things out.  Fortunately, this time around we have an entire department dedicated to help make great things happen!

If you are an existing Infusionsoft partner, I look forward to enhancing our relationship.  If you’re interested in checking out partnership opportunities with us, here’s the place to start: http://www.infusionsoft.com/partner-programs.

–Dave
P.S. If you want to chat at a strategic level, shoot me an email or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Here are some possibly related posts:

• Surfing Lesson 2 of 3: Positioning Is Key
• Surfing Lesson 1 of 3: Its All About Timing
• What’s Your (New) Publicity Plan?
• Three Tips to Launch a Great Campaign
• Marketing Strategies, Not Campaigns
• Progress on Our ‘09 Annual Priorities

Keep an eye out for parts 2 and 3 of the series.

Back in high school (’94 & ‘95), I started using the National Weather Service website along with some weak surf forecasting sites to try and know when good swells were coming.  If you’re not familiar with how this works, good waves at any particular beach are created by large ocean storms hundreds, even thousands, of miles away.  Those storms stir up the water and send waves traveling across the ocean until they expend their energy at the beach (kind of like when you drop a pebble in a pond and the waves radiate outward in all directions).  More times than not, the water is fairly calm.  If you went surfing everyday of the year, you’d probably only get really good surf 5-10% of the time.  In addition to timing distant storms, you also have to time the local weather.  If there’s a storm on the coast, the wind could really mess up the surf that was sent from a storm far away.  And a lot of rain can pollute the beaches.

So, in the end, scoring good surf is all about timing. Nowadays, the forecasting tools and websites that broadcast that information are awesome and you can really increase your chances of hitting it big.

In the same way, marketing is all about timing. If you ask one of your prospects if they’re ready to buy everyday for an entire year, there’s a good chance on one of those days you might get a yes.  But, you’ll get skunked most of the time.  Back in the old days, you relied on that tactic of showing up everyday at the beach (e.g., telemarketing, or other evil tactics) to randomly be there at the precise moment when someone was ready to buy.

Nowadays, just like with surf forecasting technology, we have sweet marketing tools that can do the job for us.  Instead of you having to take a pulse every day to see if your prospects are ready, sales & marketing automation software solutions like Infusionsoft can allow your prospects to “raise their hand” when they’re ready, notifying you to “come to the rescue” and close the sale. There’s also innovated (free) ways to measure the results and activity such as with Google Analytics, social media engagements and the advent of multivariate testing.

If you’re not consistently scoring it big in your business, take a second look at how you’re using (or not using) intelligent marketing automation. It’s time for you to get out of the dark ages of showing up at the beach when its cold, rainy, and flat and start hitting the big surf every single time.

–Tyler

P.S. If you’re not convinced of the power of intelligent marketing automation, check out what these guys had to say:

From: Colin Receveur
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 10:41 AM
To: Derek Solomon
Subject: Infusionsoft

Derek,

As of end of September, I’m 24% above my total year end sales for 08.  And I’m looking to have another record month in November if/when I close on some opportunities.

I started Infusionsoft end of July, really about Mid August after I got back from vacation.  Being able to take a half dozen accounts, some home-grown apps, and merge it all into one interface has been a huge timesaver and a lot cheaper than paying my employee’s to do this administrative type work!!

I thought the advertising you all did promoting “double your business in 12 months” was BS – I’ve done it in less than 6.

Thanks,
Colin

Here’s another one:

From: Mark Bowden
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 5:55 AM
To: Cory
Subject: Re: Infusionsoft Enrollment
Hey Cory

Here is a good story for you, been live with infusion for just under 1 week & just launched my first campaign. I have just put more money in the bank in the last 24 hours than I did in all of last month.

Cheers Bud

All the best,
Mark Bowden

Here are some possibly related posts:

• Surfing Lesson 2 of 3: Positioning Is Key
• A New Infusionsoft Department
• What’s Your (New) Publicity Plan?
• Three Tips to Launch a Great Campaign
• Marketing Strategies, Not Campaigns
• Twitter Lists & What Small Businesses Should Know

This has some amazing benefits for small businesses in how they can organize or otherwise endorse people they follow. There isn’t (and likely, shouldn’t) be best practices for using Twitter Lists; however, I’ll share a few suggestions to spark your imagination.

The reason for Twitter Lists is here is because of the missing ability to group followers together. This is akin to “Buddy Lists” that AOL Instant Messenger popularized in the nineties. One difference though, Twitter Lists can be private or public and people can follow each other’s lists without resulting in an influx of people they follow.

This is an illustrated example of a Twitter List. (Credit: Twitter)

Many have speculated this is now the next metric on how to measure ‘success’ on Twitter. There are folks who support the innovation and there are those who feel it’s a step back for the once-simple information network. Either way, it will be a new way we find relevant groups or communities on Twitter. It’s like #FollowFriday, but organized.

There is one group, especially, that should pay close attention to the Lists they are on:
Small Business.

In the world of becoming noticed and noticing others, Twitter has become a very equitable platform — everyone has a chance to connect to their desired audience and engage. A noisy platform that has casts on the numbers of followers one has. Instead of becoming obsessed with the number of followers you’ve amassed (or not); pay attention to the lists you’re enrolled on and see which associates you’ve attracted.

Now would be a great segway to let you know that you can see which Twitter Lists we found ourselves on. It’s pretty interesting to see how people categorize us. You can add us to your lists and let us know how we help you.

This unfiltered feedback is how people view you and your brand. It’s often a reflection on how your contributions are being received. Take that feedback and do what you will. I’ve yet to see anything truly shocking with it other than it’s a good way to validate branding effectiveness. Of course, it could just be another means for gaming Twitter fame with an audience.

Here are suggestions for how a small business could leverage Twitter Lists:

1. Highlight Employee Accounts – We know some companies encourage employees to Tweet. This would be a healthy why to highlight and endorse one’s relationship with the company.
2. VIP’s – Does your business make use of VIPs or similar rockstars that could be a street team for your brand? Highlight them and they highlight you.
3. Industry Peers – Do you associate yourself with industry associations or peers? On Twitter, it’s not about competition but collaboration. Share it!
4. Relevant People – There has to be someone in your industry who is great on Twitter. Showing humility and embracing talent on Twitter is a great service for your audience to help grow your audience.

There are probably more ways on how your small business could benefit from Twitter Lists. If you need help, Mashable has pretty straightforward guide explaining Twitter Lists. But the point here is to think how you could benefit others through your lists. Putting yourself second to your customers, prospects and peers in turn puts you ahead in the game.

What are you using Twitter Lists for? Share it in the comments!

[Photo credit, made via Twitlogo]

Here are some possibly related posts:

• Social Media is Not (Just) Twitter & Facebook
• 4-Step Action Plan for Social Media Marketing
• Please RT & Why You Shouldn’t Do It
• How We Use Social Media
• Entrepreneur Independence Month: Twitter Contest
• Marketing Your Small Business in Social Media