Marketing Profs Daily Fix:

Holly Suttmann, a former schoolteacher, started the Black & Light Candle company. Holly really understands word of mouth. She’s proof that every business can master these inexpensive techniques.

Lessons from Holly:

1. Cultivate key talkers. She’s sent me two personal notes and really built a relationship with me.
2. Use samples. People can’t talk about a product they haven’t seen.
3. Make it easy to spread the word. Holly sent me a stack of postcards to forward to friends.
4. Make your talkers look good. She gave me a discount code to share.
5. Add remarkable features. Sometimes you need a reason to talk that is more than the product itself.
6. Create a fantastic product.

The lesson: High-touch, high-quality word of mouth is effective and inexpensive. Are you spending more on cold sales letters and glossy flyers than it would take to get real word of mouth?

THE e-commerce bandwagon bypassed millions of carpenters, massage therapists, lawyers and other service providers, mostly because it is impossible to drop an appointment into a shopping cart without unleashing a scheduling nightmare.

“This is something that’s been needed for a while, but no one has been able to do it successfully,” said Greg Sterling, of Sterling Marketplace Intelligence, an online consultancy. “With these new services, there are a lot of circumstances where it can work quite well for both the business and the consumer.”

When Jennifer Brinn opened a practice in massage and Reiki (a Japanese stress-reduction technique) in San Francisco in 2003, she relied on a day planner and lots of “e-mail and phone tag” to book appointments. Last year, she began testing HourTown, an online booking service started by a former product designer for PayPal, Ryan Donahue.

HourTown, like its competitors, BookingAngel and Genbook, is an online calendar tool, with a twist. Users fill the calendar with personal and business appointments, but they can also transmit to the Web any blocks of time they would like to make available for business appointments. Customers can book a time directly from the service provider’s Web site, or, in the case of Ms. Brinn, they can reserve a slot and wait for her to confirm the appointment with an e-mail. Either way, it is free for customers.

Last year, Ms. Brinn started buying text advertising on Google around the same time she added the HourTown booking technology to her site (www.jbrinn.com), and since that time her client base has doubled to more than 200. HourTown, she said, helps her attract more impulse buyers.

After numerous prototypes and years of tinkering, Rick Chambers and Larry Kost believe they’ve invented the perfect apparatus to accomplish just that: The Bataround.

It doesn’t sound like much: an elongated stainless steel frame, connected to an aviation cable with a batting practice ball bolted to the end. But with one person swinging the device in a circular motion, a little wrist action and the resulting centrifugal force can provide a whole lot of practice cuts for a batter in a short period of time.

In the summer of 2006, five years and some $70,000 in research and development later, Chambers and Kost, the engineer behind the bataround, finally put their invention on the market.

Lodi News-Sentinel

Bob Parsons credits 16 rules for propelling him from humble youth to his role today as CEO and Founder of GoDaddy.com.

1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone.
2. Get and stay out of your comfort zone.
3. When you’re ready to quit, you’re closer than you think.
4. With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be.
5. Focus on what you want to have happen.
6. Take things a day at a time.
7. Always be moving forward.
8. Be quick to decide.
9. Measure everything of significance.
10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate.
11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you’re doing.
12. Never let anybody push you around.
13. Never expect life to be fair.
14. Solve your own problems.
15. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
16. There’s always a reason to smile.

bobparsons.com

New and exciting work options seem to pop up all the time in today’s fast-paced cyber-world. Even so, certain fields have emerged as the most popular — and successful — online choices. Explore our hot picks to see if there’s something that fits your skills, talents or interests.

1. Coaching and Teaching
2. Communications/Information
3. Direct Sales
4. E-tailing
5. Event Planning
6. Parenting Services/Products
7. Personal Services
8. Virtual Assistant
9. Website Consultant
10. Work-at-Home Support

Mompreneurs Online

Think retailers are the only ones that should offer gift certificates, think again.

Every business can find a way to extend some form of gift certificate to clients and prospects. Think about the marketing factors at play with this tool. You allow others to pass your marketing message or gain some additional benefit from the relationship they have with your firm - service and product businesses alike can benefit from that way of thinking.

No matter what your firm offers, you can create gift certificates, with real value, and offer them to your clients to buy and use as gifts.

What about as a referral tool?

Two or three times a year send a mailing to your clients and strategic partners and enclose several gift certificates for your products or services (don’t call them coupons, coupons are for yogurt.) Ask the recipients to pass these along to anyone they know who might want to take advantage of the value they offer. And, tell your client that for each one of these that comes back in the door, they will receive some amount off of their next purchase. There is a little tracking involved in this tactic, but the instant rush of new business will make it worth setting up a simple process to accomplish this.

This tool stimulates thinking about your brand and makes you easier to refer - both good marketing things.

ducttapemarketing.com

CNN Money

Whether a child is groomed to take over the family business or mistakenly pushed into it, problems often arise when family and authority mix.

“Being in an emotional relationship and a business relationship puts a different, more difficult kind of strain on relationships,” said Getzler, who inherited his consulting firm from his father.

Difficult-to-solve personality issues are almost inevitable in family companies, and without an exceptionally strong patriarch or matriarch leading the family business, problems can mushroom.

Despite whether a favored daughter was groomed for the business or a son was mistakenly pushed into a position of authority, a parent might not have the ability to select an appropriate heir.

“Once the patriarch or matriarch retires or dies, many businesses become a free-for-all - despite carefully laid plans,” Getzler said.

To that end, Getzler offers some tips to help business owners make rational decisions about their successors. These strategies can also help owners make other tough calls when family relationships are at stake.

1. Set up an advisory board.
2. Employ a family business counselor.
3. Manage egos and salary demands.
4. Stop the feeding frenzy.

“Everyone gets along generally when there is a lot of money to go around. The fights start when someone feels they are working hard and not making enough,” Getzler said.

In the end, he insisted, “there’s nothing magical,” to navigating through difficult family business issues. “It’s about getting people to focus on the end result.”