Small Business Marketing

I thought I'd share the output from the very first 5 minutes of a recent full-day Juiced!(tm) business creativity and innovation program that we did in early February. The first question that came up was, "How can I work LESS and earn MORE money?" We thought that was a great question, and worthy of cranking out about 30 ideas. So we did. Now, these are not necessarily 30 good, actionable ideas... but it's a pretty good start for tapping into 23 brains for a grand total of a 5-minute time investment. See if you find the germ of something useable here:

1. Hold interesting and valuable events for your clients - totally free.
   
2. Throw a party
   
3. Beat more $$$ out of existing clients
   
4. Get more clients and money by pressuring your family and friends to 'give it up'
   
5. Use interns from a college - they learn, you earn
   
6. Take a lesson from Alan Weiss - charge $5 million for 20 minutes of advice (Alan jokes that this is one of his ultimate goals for his career!)
   
7. Come up with better ideas for your clients
   
8. Charge more money - increase rates today by 15-30%
   
9. Love what you do - it won't seem like WORK!
   
10. Create new ways to make more money - create passive income streams
    
11. Build an online community for your clients and prospects and charge them money to access it
    
12. Accessorize - add bells and whistles that increase your value with minimal (or no) additional work required from you
    
13. Offshoring
    
14. Hire 10 employees and go on vacation
    
15. Apply for an award, and then become "the award-winning XYZ"
    
16. Create an award and build PR awareness around it as the with your company as the "presenting sponsor"
    
17. Grow while shrinking - close unprofitable lines of business or locations and beef up the hours, services, or reach of the remainder
    
18. Create a sense of exclusivity (a club) - be the Chanel No. 5 or the Rolex of your industry
    
19. Specialize - narrow your niche and become the go-to expert in your field
    
20. Offer different levels and depths of services - platinum, gold, silver, bronze, etc.
    
21. Fire low-maintenance "drive-by" clients that drain profits and take up more time than they're worth
    
22. Get in deeper and wider with your best clients (multiple departments, locations, business units, etc.)
    
23. Sell the same thing over and over again
    
24. Do research and sell the data
    
25. Increase operational efficiency
    
26. Use the 80/20 rule
    
27. Establish a frequent flyer (loyalty) program to encourage repeat business
    
28. Alliances and partnerships - leverage your friends and find 1+1=5 projects
    
29. Become a member of different trade organizations (the ones where your clients are, not the ones where all your competitors meet!)
    
30. Beef up your web presence - make it irresistable and easy to find on the search engines!
    
31. Teach courses on your area of expertise
    
32. Find a mentor
    
33. Write a book
    
34. Develop a killer 1-hour talk and charge big money to deliver it
    
35. Make a video and send it along to prospects
    
36. Re-evaluate your financial portfolio [outside of professional income]

Pretty good for 5 minutes, right?