I am swamped. Requests from colleagues, friends and family leave me with no time to do any actual work. I can’t ignore any of the aforementioned things and it’s impossible to cram them all into an eight-hour day.
But time management isn’t about taking shortcuts in your thinking time, it’s about finding shortcuts for the mundane, administrative and repetitive, in order to make way for the creative, strategic and dare I say… fun? As a busy carpooling mom of three boys (two of them teens!), a CEO of a company that grows 500 percent year over year and a happily married lady with lots of extended family, here are the time savers that allow me to make the most of every hour of every day.
The Issue: Email is a hu...
You could be a video marketing rockstar. Just imagine it. Using a combination of animated brand overview videos, live-action vlog posts, high-quality screencast tutorials—and much more—you regularly deliver visual content that educates and entertains your potential customers and keeps them coming back for more.
Doesn’t sound half bad, does it?
But let’s be realistic. You’re more likely the “one hit wonder” equivalent of video marketing. Maybe you’ve got that sweet animated explainer video on your landing page, or perhaps you’ve got a handful of live-action client interviews collecting dust on your testimonials page. And that’s it. You stopped there.
Don’t get me wrong – these are good things, and even if you did stop with just one killer la...
In today’s world, you’re likely going to pitch far more investors through an initial email than you will in person. A great email pitch won’t necessarily get you a meeting but a bad one will definitely prevent one. Therefore creating the perfect email pitch is essential.
The perfect email pitch is a little longer than a commercial, but not anywhere near as long as an infomercial. Your goal is to pique the investors’ interest by tapping into each of the key areas they are interested in.
Investors hear hundreds of pitches per month, but in each case they are looking for a few key ingredients that make them lean in and ask for more.
The key ingredients for an email pitch can best be described by what the investor is trying to a...
If you want to compete in the world of high growth startups, you better know how to play the marketing game. Marketing has become a big stakes game where companies are betting fortunes on the success of their products. Nowadays, if you can’t play the big marketing game you may not even get the attention of the customers you need to grow your business.
So how do you compete if you don’t have the cash to run with the big dogs? The answer lies in growing your marketing budget by doubling up on your marketing investments quickly. Chances are the capital you need to compete in this game is right under your nose, you just need to know where to look for it.
Make marketing an investment
The first step to growing your marketing budget is thinking ab...
Whether you’re a freelancer or small business owner, invoicing is essential. After all, if you aren’t getting paid, how can you expect to keep your business afloat or keep up with your bills? However, if you’re new to invoicing, you may feel a bit overwhelmed because there’s a lot more to it than just sending out an email that says “You Owe Me $1,000.”
To help you better understand the invoicing process, here are some useful tips you should implement the next time you send out an invoice.
Before sending out an invoice, you’ll want to make sure you have the following key elements covered:
We were lucky to have Retail Growth Strategist Vanessa Ting share her tips for attracting major retailers for your startup project. Now with Buyerly.com and Retail Path, she helps product companies strengthen their appeal to major retail buyers nationwide. Below are our 10 big takeaways.
Always collect sales data. Make sure to note your sell-through numbers and not just what is being shipped out. You can get creative with how you illustrate this to retailers, noting any increases in orders over time or PR that led to a spike in sales.
It is important to make sure you have the marketing support to create a brand identity both in the store and out of it. Without this, your product will just coll...
Stuart MacDonald is a digital business guy who loves making customers happy and building great teams. A mentor, investor, consultant and frequent speaker on things digital and entrepreneurial, Stuart is the veteran of several startups including starting Expedia.ca in Toronto. Stuart went on from there to become CMO and SVP Packages of Expedia.com in Seattle. He also co-founded mesh, Canada’s web conference discussing how the Internet is impacting how we live and work, and meshmarketing, Canada’s one day digital marketing power conference. Most recently, Stuart joined FreshBooks as the CMO, responsible for marketing, sales, support and revenue.
Q: You founded Expedia.ca and changed the way Canadians book travel. How were you able to change t...
Ben is currently VP Product at GoInstant, a venture-backed startup focused on changing how we share and experience the web with co-browsing technology. GoInstant was recently acquired by Salesforce.com. He is also a Founding Partner at Year One Labs, which is an early stage accelerator in Montreal. They’ve invested in five startups: Localmind, Massive Damage, HighScore House, qidiq and Happy Stuff. Three of those companies have gone on to raise follow on capital.
Prior to that Ben was the CEO and co-founder of Standout Jobs, which sold in 2010. He’s been an entrepreneur in the web space for 15+ years. Ben is also involved in a number of different projects as an advisor, consultant and mentor. His main interests include: Web/mobile startups...
Next we're going to analyze our financial statements and operating expenses to see if they accurately reflect all of the financial transactions we just inputted. If you're using your own accounting software to update your company's income statement that works too.
The nice thing about our handy Income Statement is that once we plug in all the values, the story from there is essentially told. All of our columns add up and ultimately tell us the honest truth – “did we make any money?”
How we use this information is key. The Analysis step here is about getting all the troops rallied (assuming we have troops to rally) and ask:
“What did we just learn, and what changes do we need to make?”
Unlike a Profit and Loss Statement, ou...
I’ve been a part of many brand launches over the years. Some have gone smoothly and some haven’t. Looking back, the most successful ones in my mind kept it simple. In doing so, they really focused on three basic areas and how they interact with one another.
When developing an image, I advise people to focus on a few key areas to start with. If you try to tackle everything that a big agency would tackle, you quickly find yourself knee-deep in templates, acronyms, and exercises that are time-consuming and confusing. The tips below are the natural conclusions you’d reach wading through that confusion — keep reading to save yourself some time and suffering.