Fortune magazine analyzed and ranked the Fortune 500. The Fortune 500 is an annual list compiled and published by Fortune magazine that ranks the top 500 American public corporations as measured by their gross revenue. Fortune Magazine categorizes these 500 businesses into 52 industries.

We took their 2007 data for revenue growth, profitability, return on assets and revenue per employee to create our own best industry list. For businesses selling B2B, these industries that are thriving are ideal targeted customers during tough economic times. The top 25 thriving industries are:

1. Network and Other Communications Equipment
2. Mining, Crude-Oil Production
3. Real Estate
4. Oil and Gas Equipment, Services
5. Pharmaceuticals
6. Medical Products and Equipment
7. Securities
8. Petroleum Refining
9. Household and Personal Products
10. Commercial Banks
11. Internet Services and Retailing
12. Wholesalers: Health Care
13. Engineering, Construction
14. Wholesalers: Diversified
15. Entertainment
16. Railroads
17. Food Services
18. Financial Data Services
19. Metals
20. Wholesalers: Electronics and Office Equipment
21. Aerospace and Defense
22. Industrial and Farm Equipment
23. Health Care: Insurance and Managed Care
24. Chemicals
25. Insurance: Life, Health (stock)

The 5 worst industries to be in are:

1. Homebuilders
2. Diversified Financials
3. Semiconductors and Other Electronic Components
4. Motor Vehicles and Parts
5. Home Equipment, Furnishings

Should you use long sales copy on your website? Should you break your web pages up into easy to read chunks of about 500 words? Long copy is one of those marketing methods that no one admits to liking, but seems to regularly outperform and outsell traditional short copy.

Most marketers break their web presentations into individual screens because studies show that web readers are impatient and scan rather then read. But some visitors stop and leave when they encounter a “next page” button. These individual pages interrupt the sales process and visitors tend to leave.

Traditional short copy is better when the product is simple and decisions are easy. If you are selling a product that sells itself such as office supplies, use the short copy approach.

To sell more complex and more expensive products, use the long copy approach. In these situations, buyers need more information and lots of it. It takes longer for a customer to commit to spending $500 than $20. With long copy, visitors have their questions answered and have less anxiety about ordering. Customer service phone calls will be reduced.

Long Copy Writing

1. Focus on content quality. High quality short copy will always out perform low quality long copy. Content must be compelling and emotionally engage the reader.
2. Format the content for fast reading or scanning using bold headlines, bullets, etc. This allows readers to quickly find the areas that most interest them.
3. Include testimonials because praise from your satisfied customers is much more effective than self-praise.
4. Include “Buy Now” buttons at regular intervals throughout the sales letter. If someone is ready to buy after a few paragraphs, they can.
5. Test the results. It is important to measure the results and keep revising your offer. There is no hard rule regarding the ideal length of a marketing message.

You can use your business website to increase sales at your bricks and mortar locations. 72% of the US population uses the Internet and they will use it to research a purchase even if the purchase will be made at a physical retail location. An effective business website acts to answer questions and help the pre-sales process.

Even if your business does 100% of its business at a physical retail location, sales can be increased using a business website. According to Nielsen Online 80% of consumer electronic purchasers bought at a store whose website they visited first. 44% of pet food consumers researched info such as nutritional specs online.

1. Product listings: even if you don’t sell online, list product details so interested buyers can research and compare products. This way they arrive to your store ready to buy.
2. Contact info: post store hours, store location and an interactive map with driving directions.
3. FAQ area: include common questions that are asked by customers in person at your store location. This way your website can help answer the same questions 24/7.
4. Use Blogging and Social Media: By using blog marketing and other social media, you reach a whole new audience than your website alone will. Consider a Facebook page or encourage customers to review your business on social review sites like Yelp.com.
5. Traditional Media: When advertising in newspaper, radio, TV or direct mail, always include your website URL where interested consumers can learn more about what you offer.

Your business website design should reflect your marketing goals. You should be making decisions about your website to improve your marketing results. This usually means improve usability and optimize for search.

1. Define Your Goals: Start with your business goals for your website redesign. What do you need to accomplish? This could be to attract new clients, generate leads or to help brand your company as the premier provider in your industry.
2. Keep the Best: What does your current website do well? This could be servicing existing customers or converting visitors into paying customers. Preserve what you are already doing right and improve from there.
3. Website Styles: Just like fashions, website design changes. For instance, Flash intro pages were popular until web designers realized that users didn’t like them and they caused search rankings to plummet.
4. Branding and Image: When people visit your site, they see it as a reflection of your company. It is important for your site to reflect the identity and ideals (brand) of your company. Your company can appear as an industry leader.
5. Website Traffic: Your goal should be to get more visitors and more leads. Design your site with organic search in mind. Select relevant keyword phrases that will be used in page names, body text and link text. Websites should be built in XHTML / CSS to be search engine friendly.
6. Customers Expectations: Look at your industry, what is expected? A website in the financial products industry is expected to be very business professional. A medical website has a clean design and uses cheerful colors.
7. Watch your competition: Look at what your competition offers and stay ahead of them. Look at the image your website gives your business. Is your information searchable? What features do your competitors offer?
8. Attract and Convert: This should be your central focus for your site. What action do you want from your visitors? Build this into your navigation. Each page should have its own call to action.

Relationship marketing involves building a trust relationship with potential customers. People prefer to buy from those businesses that they trust the most. Customers will start doing business with you if they like and respect you. They will also keep doing business and stay with your firm for the same reason. This is especially effective in B2B business services such as business consulting.

Typically businesses spend 80% of their marketing dollars going after new customers and clients rather than nurturing and retaining their current customers. With good relationship marketing, businesses can increase their repeat orders from existing customers by more than 50%.

You need to build a “relationship” with your customers and prospects. What are the basics of relationship marketing?

1. Get to know them: Keep records not only of what they purchase, but also personal information such as dates of birthdays, anniversaries and even family member names. What are their interests and hobbies? Take a genuine interest in them.
2. Show your appreciation: Do things to show you appreciate them as a customer. Send them a thank you card or token of appreciation. Sometimes it’s even as simple as just saying “thank you.”
3. Stay in touch: Find ways to stay in touch with your clients. Make regular telephone calls or send email. Send holiday cards or postcards.
4. Take an Interest: Ask questions. Find out what their challenges are and see if you can help them. Show them you understand their business or their issues and you’re interested in more than just their last purchase.

What is the benefit of building a relationship with a client after they have bought? Quite simply, not only repeat business but potentially more powerful and profitable - is the prospect of referral business.

“When times are tough, the tough get marketing!” - Doug Williams

Sure, tough economic times have major impact on buying habits. The focus shifts to results. People begin looking for value, on budgets and work to eliminate the unnecessary. You just need to make sure that your product or service is considered necessary. You need to market smarter during hard times.

1. Focus on what’s important: Get clear on what is important. What are your true objectives? Invest your time, energy and money on those things that will help you reach your business goals. Set your marketing strategies. This may mean getting rid of services and products that are not profitable or ones that consume large amounts of your time without a payoff.
2. Measure Everything: Your orientation has to be toward results. Don’t be afraid to try new things as long as they don’t require large investments and long term commitments. Your orientation has to be toward results. If something doesn’t work, then stop and try something else.
3. Communicate: In most businesses, 80% of the sales come from 20% of the customers. Stay in touch with your biggest customers on a regular basis. You aren’t trying to sell anything, you are just touching bases. You will be surprised on how much more business can come from this.
4. Start a Blog: Use a blog to strengthen your relationships, build your brand, develop a loyal readership and to get new customers. The key to effective blog marketing is to regularly write interesting original content that your targeted customer will be interested in. A major benefit of blogging is that it can dramatically improve your search engine ranking of your website.
5. Create a Niche Website: Target a new market niche and generate a new income stream. A niche website business is the great way to profit from a downturn because the cost of entry is lower and the upside is enormous.
6. Pricing: Keep your pricing up. You are trying to attract great long term clients. By lowering your prices, you shift the focus to price and you will attract price shoppers. They will generally have very little loyalty except to the next deal.

When you are a start-up company, you work with any customer you can find. You quickly learn that some customers are easy to work with and your business makes money. Others are very challenging and you find that they cost you much more than you receive. Getting excellent customers is very important to a business.

What makes an ideal customer? This may very from business to business, but I have found that there are very similar characteristics among companies that provide professional business services such as marketing, consulting, advertising, public relations, staffing services, accounting services, etc.. So what makes an ideal customer for me?

1. Need: This is someone who is in need of what I provide. They are having a real problem that my services will solve.
2. Budget: They have the budget and money to afford my services and properly buy what I provide. They are willing to pay for quality.
3. Decisions: This is someone who is ready to buy and not just browsing. My ideal customer makes quick and solid decisions and is not a shopper.
4. Communication: They know how to communicate what he/she wants. They have time and willingness to engage with me. They provide feedback to questions and will return calls and emails.
5. Change: They have the willingness to listen and make changes to their business. They are open to new ideas and willing to ask and answer questions with openness.
6. Realistic: They are realistic about what can be provided to them in terms of schedule, pricing and results.
7. Reliability: They show up for meetings, respond to emails and take scheduled phone calls. They are not too busy to discuss the project at hand.
8. Character: They are someone who has integrity and is honest about what they need. They are someone who I enjoy being with, doing business with and helping succeed.

I avoid customers who continually ask for help but are unwilling to implement even one suggestion. I avoid people who want a fool-proof guarantee. If there were one, they would be looking for an off the shelf, pre-packaged solution that could be purchased from anywhere.

Businesses need both managers and leaders. Businesses need leaders to chart the direction and set organizational goals. Managers get things done methodically and effectively. I use this as part of my business consulting and executive coaching.

You feel leadership. You do management. Leaders are the visionary influencers. They set the direction and are concerned with the outcomes, not necessarily the process. Managers create plans with specific goals, organize teams and then control and monitor the progress of the plan.

Leadership without management is like a sailboat without the sail. Management without leadership is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Leadership
Leadership is concerned with the outcomes, not necessarily the process used to achieve it. A leader has to be creative and willing to introduce innovation. Innovation is the essence of leadership. Leadership is the catalyst of motivation and inspiration in others.

Leaders have vision; they align people towards that vision and then inspire the people to march towards that vision. Leaders affect human behavior to accomplish the mission. They are forward thinking and solution oriented. They set organizational strategies and goals.

Management
A manager makes sure the job gets done. They organize and deploy resources to meet business strategies and goals. They have the learned skills, the operational knowledge and the ability to translate the vision into action. They are known to be organized, methodical, efficient and effective.

Management is the ability of getting people to act toward accomplishing a goal. It is the ability to deliver a process as close to perfection as possible.

In the end, a successful organization requires both leaders and managers to be successful. It is leadership combined with management that creates success.

The small business owner is always looking for low cost or no cost opportunities to promote their business. The press release is an excellent way to do this. This can be self prepared and released to local media for free; as well as to online newswire sites.

Successful press releases should be a legitimate story that will interest a journalist and your targeted audience. Your press release should cover trends, issues and concerns for your niche or area. Stay away from blatant self-promotion, such as highlighting a new client or talking about how great your product or service is. A good press release answers all of the “W” questions (who, what, where, when and why).

Get to know your local media and the types of stories that they cover. Many of their stories may be dominated by wire stories; but look at the local stories. Who does these stories and what merits coverage? Get to know the editor what sorts of press releases he or she will use.

You should send your press release to journalists that cover your industry. Create a list of journalists that write about your market by looking at other news stories. Then locate their contact information by Googling them. After you send a copy of your release, follow up with a phone call.

If you want to promote your business to a wider audience, consider using the free and low cost online services such as Free-Press-Release.com, PRweb.com or PRzoom.com. More costly services include businesswire.com and PRNewswire.

Consider adding a press room to your website. Include resource materials including photos, history and other background info. Include links to other articles that have been published. This will help journalists easily make changes or additions to your press release.

Price is one of those powerful influencers on our perception of quality. So what happens when a product is placed on sale?

Regular price $799; Now $499. We have all seen ads like this one. They are designed to attract buyers to take advantage of a great deal. But what happens to the consumers perception of that product? Does the cheap price translate into a lower value perception?

Perceived value by the consumer is based on the price vs. what the buyer thinks that price should be. The customer will judge whether prices are too high, too low, or on target. Research shows that major price reductions do cheapen consumers perception of the product or service.

Alternatives

1. Limit the sale time: “Sale! Saturday and Sunday Only.” Research suggests that including a time-limiting component to the promotion stops this perception of product cheapening.
2. Bundling: “Luxury packages” on cars never identify how much you are paying for specific items. Bundling can increase perceived value and minimizes consumer attention to prices. This tends to spur the “emotional buy”.
3. Super size: Giving a larger size or an added companion product at the same price is a good way to increase the perception of savings while maintaining value. Buy-one-get-one-free offers seem to have less of an impact on consumers.
4. Price Points: Pay attention to the psychological price barriers. What is the difference between a home sales price of $295,000 and $310,000? The $310,000 home will probably be shown to about half as many qualified buyers and it could take twice as long to sell.