A look at three small businesses that found ways to grow in trying times.

Note from Pat: Wish this story was longer and provided more details because I have seen plenty of companies fail when [ex] trying to use distributors in foriegn markets.  Would love to learn more about how markets and distributors were identified, selected, managed etc.

See on www.nytimes.com

Learn why you should never purchase an email list if you want to run a successful email marketing program.

Note from Pat: Never buy an email or direct mail list.  Rent.  Test.  But the primary objective is BUILD YOUR OWN via OPT-IN. 

Why? A purchased or rented list is COLD so you are going to have to spend time, money, manpower warming it up.  It’s a long-term investment and, typically, you can generate a better return in less time if you focused your resources on other things – like customer retention or lead management or up-selling.

See on blog.hubspot.com

“Entrepreneurs carry market segments around in the back of their minds, relying on gut-feel to determine whether customers they are seeing are the “right” customers. The problem is when you’re chasing revenue; any and all customers will seem like the right customer.”Brant and Patrick, The Lean Entrepreneur

Note from Pat: Though the post is a pitch for an upcoming book – which I haven’t read and can’t endorse – the excerpts from that book made me sit up and take notice.

Also, when it comes to innovation – have a plan that requires you to test with customers before rolling it out.  Listen – it’s wonderful you came up with the original concept all on your own.  Now let the market help you grow.

That 2-Year Plan that includes all the stuff you couldn’t get into Version 1 is a starting point for TESTING.

Don’t fool yourself and think, even for a moment, that that list is going to be close to what the market wants, needs, expects over time.  You wrote the list 2 years ago with a good understanding of the market – but blindly following the list without testing before incurring the cost to build and roll out is RISKY.

See this post on Scoop.it or, better yet, marketing 201
See the entire post on www.startuplessonslearned.com