Small Biz Triage – Weekly Recap, Sept 9th – 15th, 2012.

Another busy, busy week.

Highlights

• (Finally) launched a new joint venture with friend and colleague Marti Bering – Flathead Daily.  After a TON of research, realized that nearly all of Montana was not served by any active daily deals sites (i.e. Groupon, LivingSocial, Amazon Local).  So, we launched one starting in Flathead County / Kalispell, MT.  Will keep you posted as it’s very new territory.
• Kicked off a 5HR Freebie project with the awesome filmmaker Mark Lundsten from Fidalgo Films.
• Successfully muscled through building a custom quiz on creative coach Lisa Loop‘s WordPress site.  Tricky implementation, but it’s working great now.
• My client Andrew Chapman‘s novel The Ascendant was picked up by Simon & Schuster.
• Pro-bono client Qpon Lady was recently featured this week by KAJ News, Kalispell, MT.  Congrats to Jennifer and Marti!  Check out the video here.

Lessons Learned

Fell short on an enrollment goal for TheFilmSchool.  After running through a post-mortem report with the Executive Director, we found some small (but important) flaws in operations AND marketing.   You can drive traffic, and clicks and interactions all day long, but without conversion it means nothing.  In the case of TheFilmSchool, we increased our metrics 25-125% over the past five-weeks but suffered a drop in conversion.  

Why?  

The people we were engaging with were no longer the target market.  The bulls-eye had shifted just enough, and by the time we realized, there wasn’t enough time.

Lesson Learned:  Markets Change … all of the time. Get you marketing as close as you can to your sales efforts so you can “feel” the shift in time to adapt.

What’s Next?

• Kicking off a SEM / Community Outreach project with the whizzes behind BudgetDoc.com.  Those cats are ‘ridiculous smart’ and keeping me on my toes for sure. 
• Starting sales and marketing training with Jerry (via Skype) from sign and graphics company Chazzzam.  I’ve hired these guys quite a few times and they’ve taken excellent care of me and my clients.  Looking forward to returning the favor.
• Launching a blog & social media outreach campaign for Fright Institute, the largest haunted house in California.
• Managing the After-Party for BB Imaging at the SDMS Conference in Seattle on Friday, September 21st.
• Finally starting to reach out to local business owners and non-profit executive directors in my new homestead in Chico, CA.