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With the hustle and bustle of holiday shopping this weekend, I am getting first hand experience as a customer and wanted to share with you my four beliefs in what it takes to grow a business.

My mission is to bring to you all the best practices, key insights and powerful strategies that have been used by successful business owners who have grown their business significantly. During my shopping experience, I met quite a few and wanted to share with you my insights.

So here it goes.. when growing your business, I have four core beliefs:

1)Knowledge is the key. Successful businesses have leaders who dedicate a good portion of their time to learning and then acting upon what they learn. One of the most important things a leader can contribute is ideas and strategies to grow the business and to achieve this, must be free from the day to day to learn new things that can be applied to your business.

2)Encourage Creativity. There is power in the collective so surround yourself with smart, talented people who can share ideas and thoughts. Encourage your teams to generate ideas, suggestions for improvement and solutions to problems. You will be surprised at how many creative ideas you will get and maybe one will be a million dollar idea.

3)Systematize your Business. Create processes, systems and routines for your business to follow. Believe it or not, routine will set you free. Successful businesses run in an orderly fashion… like a machine or like clockwork to call upon favorite sayings. Set standards, measurable metrics and monitoring systems to how you want your business to run. Train your staff and engage your management team to inspect what they expect and to create a culture that generates results.

4)Never stop marketing. You have all heard me.. marketing is your #1 activity. Always be communicating with your customers and those in your marketing funnel. Even if you are growing fast and are struggling keeping up with your demand, DO NOT STOP Marketing. It is the lifeline of your business and should be turned on and up to full throttle at all times.

That’s it.. 4 simple core beliefs to grow your business, all you need to do is to commit to “I.T.I” – Implementing These Ideas!

Until next week.. know this.. I am committed to your success and love to hear your feedback so please leave a comment in the section below and tell me your thoughts.

Now, let’s BLAST your business and get to work growing your profits!

According to the Small Business Success Index (SBSI), social media is now used by almost 31% of small business. Now, this is an explosion over years past and even though social media has been around for years, the adoption rate for small business owners was very low.
Here are some facts:

• 40% of the US population uses social media sites
• 47% of all people between ages 50-64 have a social networking profile
• 99% of ALL people ages 18-21 have a social networking profile

So, what does that tell you…. Your customers are using social media! Especially if your products and/or services appeal to the under 30 group.

If you are not using social media this holiday season, you are missing out on a proven marketing strategy to not only drive traffic into your stores, but to communicate with your customers and nurture your prospective customers who are looking to develop a relationship with you before they purchase.

Although many small businesses are exploring social media, of those that are early adopters, 63% feel that it has helped to make their customers more loyal.

Here are some tips to get started:

1) Just get started. The best way to get familiar with social media is to set up accounts for yourself first. Open a personal Facebook page to stay in touch with friends and family. That way you can see how easy it is to update and interact with your friends and family. Join some sites or pages of your favorite brands simply by searching for their brand name in the Facebook search function. Join those pages and watch how the larger brands handle their social media. Same with Twitter, open up a personal twitter account and follow some of your favorite brands and send out some updates just to get in the habit.

2) Set up your business accounts. Now that you are comfortable, set up your professional accounts in both Facebook and Twitter. Be sure that your company’s page reflects your brand, images and colors. You want to make sure you stand out but still represent your company. Your design should answer the “What’s next?” question for your customers. Don’t leave them guessing what you want them to do and be sure to think through the following items: Contact Information, call to action & Like us buttons.

3) Ready, Set, Go. And lastly, be sure to update frequently. Add new photos, new offers, recent testimonials etc… but make sure you are not always selling. Be sure to include content that adds value to your customers in the form of tips, links to interesting articles, tools and downloads. A good tip for newbies, follow your favorite brands and mimic what they are doing for your own business… For example, they send out a coupon, you send out a coupon. They post a client survey, you post a survey. Eventually you will get the hand of it!

Currently Facebook has over 600 million active monthly users. Twitter has over 100 million and using these sites is FREE. So why aren’t you using it! Social media marketing has become an important marketing tool that will connect you to your current and prospective customers. Use this holiday season to promote your holiday activity, offer special discounts and promote events you are hosting and remember…it is about being social so ask for everyone to pass along your message, like your page and retweet your posts!

It’s that time of year again…. The official holidays. For many including retailers, it starts right around Halloween and kicks off full steam on Thanksgiving Day, followed by Black Friday.

But with Thanksgiving this week, there is no time to waste! Your 2011 holiday planning should already be underway, however these last minute tips should help your holiday sales and put you in the holiday spirit.

1) Revisit past holidays. What worked and what didn’t’? If the season snuck up quickly and you were unable to plan out your marketing, think quickly about what was successful last year and shoot to get a promotion or coupon out to your list immediately. Also, take a look at your best selling items and package and position them for fast sales. Knowing your customers might be suffering an economic downturn, what about offering a deep discount on top selling items?

2) Bundle products. This is a fantastic strategy and one that I use with all of my customers. Bundle like products and offer them for a bundled price, offering them discounts for the bundled purchase. For example, if you are a bakery and sell holiday cakes, can you bundled a pack of 6 cupcakes for a price less than if purchased separately?

3) Reward your customers. Send out a secret Santa coupon for an additional 15% off to all of your past customers. Not only will this bring them back to your store, but will reinforce your commitment and appreciation to them as your customers. You can go one step further and send them another coupon for bringing in a friend… another 10%. Wow! What a deal!

4) Get your team ready to up sell. Your customers are in shopping mode. Train your counter staff, your customer service staff and your team to be in tune with your customers. Teach them how to up sell another item that makes sense for your customer. In our bakery example, the staff could offer candles, cake knife or custom decorating. Make sure you have items to up sell and you teach your team exactly what merchandise goes nicely with each other. Make it simple for them.

5) Ramp up your staff. This is the week for high volume , long lines and disgruntle and impatient customers. Nobody likes to wait in line so make sure you overstaff in anticipation of the increase in volume. And be sure to add your “A” team. Your top employees who are typically your most productive and most customer savvy.

This is a great time to not only offer discounts to your customers, but to attract new customers with you great deals, quality products and fantastic customer service. But remember, it doesn’t stop at December 25th… Take advantage of the last week of the year and to gain as many sales as you can for 2011!

Something remarkable is something worth talking about, something that is noticed. When you take a look at your products and services or take a look at your brand and customer experience, are people talking?

In Seth Godin’s book “Purple Cow,” he uses the analogy of cows to demonstrate the point of being remarkable. He states that if you were driving along a country road that was lined with cows, the first cow may get a reaction but after awhile the cows become boring. But in a crowd of cows, a purple cow would stand out and be something worth talking about.

How do you stand out or reinvent your brand to get the buzz going again?

When you have been in business a long time and competition in your space becomes fierce, you run the risk of your product becoming a commodity. When your product becomes a commodity, you find yourself either competing on price or brand loyalty. This is the time to do something different to stand out from the competition that makes people want to talk about it.

What is going to be your purple cow? Here are some tips to consider for transforming your product to be a purple cow.

1) Redefine your packaging
When Dutch Boy needed to stand out in a crowded paint market, they did something remarkable, they changed the paint can. Think about it, paint cans are heavy, hard to carry and difficult to pour so they created an easy to carry and easy to pour paint can with a handle. Remarkable!

2) Redefine your product
When Curad needed to gain market share against Band-aid, they did something remarkable…they put cartoon characters on their bandages and appealed to a niche market, little kids and their parents who wanted to make their child’s “boo boos” go away. When the kids went to school and the other kids saw them, a marketing frenzy happened. That’s remarkable.

3) Redefine your promotion

When Krispy Kreme donuts enter into a new market,they give away thousands of donuts to the local community to build a buzz and to get people talking about their donuts. Add a fantastic tasting donut and you created something remarkable.

So when you feel nobody is talking about your products and services or that you are blending in to a crowded marketplace, think about what small changes you can make to be remarkable.

According to Simon Sinek, the secret is in “The Why”. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

Where most marketers fail is in the message. They focus too much on the features and the “what” and not enough time on the benefits and the “why”.