If he were a Bond villain, they’d probably call him “Perfecto,” the criminal so devious, he would never make a move until he had everything arranged just right. Unfortunately though, Perfecto could never make it into any of the films; he’s always too busy tinkering to make a real move.

Perfectionism is a REAL problem for entrepreneurs, especially first-timers. We all want our business launch to be absolutely spectacular, we want it to be — well — perfect. The problem is that we’re willing to keep our business in the workshop, hidden from the eyes of the public, until that magical moment of perfection has finally arrived.

But who are we achieving perfection for? Our customers? Sadly, no. The longer you keep a project to yourself, the more time that passes before a real customer sees anything and the more time that passes before you can gather any meaningful feedback as a business owner. The truth is that when you keep a business on the shelf while you wait for them to be perfect, the only person you’re trying to please is yourself.

There is absolutely no shame in putting something out there before it’s completely ready for prime time. Google does it all the time, which is why so many of their apps and services come with the “BETA” mark next to the logo… Google wants you to enjoy their product while managing your expectation that it may still be buggy. It works in service businesses too; at Zero-G we took on beta clients before we even had a logo. When we did launch, we had valuable feedback and some important insight into what our customers wanted (and frankly, what their objections were).

We had technology entrepreneur David Eckoff on Gravity Free Radio last week and he had some great insights into the “perfectionism” issue that a lot of startups face. Listen here.

We were talking to David Meerman Scott — author of World Wide Rave — on our radio show this morning and he has an unusual perspective on distributing content online. When offering an ebook or a white paper, most marketers would tell you to offer your content in exchange for an email address or other personal information. The rationale is, of course, that a business owner should be able to A) determine who is downloading their valuable content and B) have the ability to follow up with that individual afterward.

Scott didn’t think so. In his experience, he claimed that allowing site visitors to download the paper without providing any personal information would increase the interest and readership of the content several times over.

So what’s more valuable? The information you get from the people who download your content online or the much larger readership that you may be missing out on because you are asking for information?

We’ve decided to make ourselves guinea pigs in this experiment. For the first time, our white papers are available with no strings or required information to provide. You can find them here:

• 8 Common Small Business Web Design Pitfalls (+ how to avoid them!)
• 10 Steps Towards an Effective Small Business Marketing Plan
• What to Look for When You’re Hiring a Design Firm

For the next few months we’ll be openly reporting on how these papers do in terms of any increase in downloads and whether or not we see our online leads diminish as a result of this. Stay tuned, this should be interesting!

At our presentation last week at Roam Atlanta, one of my colleagues asked me to explain the difference between marketing and advertising. It was a fantastic question, as many business owners use the two terms almost interchangeably.

First, let’s address the terminology. If you ever have a question about what a marketing term means, make yourself look smart by visiting the extensive marketing dictionary available on the American Marketing Association’s web site. Here is how the AMA defines marketing:

“Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”

This, by contrast is the textbook definition of advertising:

“The placement of announcements and persuasive messages in time or space purchased in any of the mass media by business firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individuals who seek to inform and/ or persuade members of a particular target market or audience about their products, services, organizations, or ideas.”

So what does it mean? First off, marketing is BIGGER. It encompasses value and managing customer relationships. (By the way, if you have questions on managing customer experience, you should listen to our interview with experience guru Mike Wittenstein on Gravity Free Radio). Advertising is also tactical while marketing is strategic.

Most importantly though,especially from a small business perspective is that advertising is PASSIVE. You put your message in front of as many eyeballs as you can afford and wait for the customer to make the next move. Marketing, however is an ACTIVE process by which you determine how you are going to reach your customers, persuade them to purchase from you and, after the purchase, make them happy.

The passive, impersonal nature of advertising, along with the staggeringly poor ROI usually makes it a poor investment for small business owners (unless it is meant as a brand awareness-builder to support an existing and ongoing campaign). However, ALL entrepreneurs need to build winning marketing strategies in order to compete effectively during tough economic times.

Focusing on value, message, experience and brand are all great ideas that can positively influence your company’s sales… And you didn’t even need to advertise.

If you were to build a house from scratch, there are a LOT of people who are absolutely crucial to the process. You need an architect to draw up the master plan, you need a contractor to put everything together and plumbers, electricians and landscapers to help finish the project. I’m oversimplifying of course, but the point is that within the context of building a house, we all know what role all those people are supposed to play.

Not so for many small business owners with regard to their Marketing Communications efforts. Truth is that “Marketing” has become one of the most overused and generic terms in the business lexicon. A lot of people will tell you they are in “marketing.” In fact, they may be printers or sign makers, sellers of advertising, promotional products or direct mail. These are the marketing support “trades” and have a similar role in a marketing project as plumbers, electricians and landscapers would have in a home building project: vital to the success of the project and both strategically + tactically valuable, but only within their realm of expertise.

This isn’t meant as a negative, by the way… The people you’ve hired in these roles may have an outstanding knowledge within their specialty and may be savvy and creative. But that doesn’t mean you should trust them with your marketing strategy. You probably wouldn’t want your plumber to design an addition to your home, nor would you allow your dental hygienist to perform your brain surgery.

Be careful of you allow to advise you regarding your overall marketing strategy and do be sure that it isn’t someone who stands to profit from your continued patronage of one particular marketing tool over another. And trust me, it isn’t that their intentions are less than pure, they just CAN’T be an objective voice for obvious reasons. Look for your printer or sign folks to refer you to a marketing strategist or other trade when your needs are outside their expertise. Oh, and if they say they can build you a web site, just run.

And by the way, if your marketing strategist is the architect, who’s the contractor in all this? The person doing the bulk of the work and ensuring that all your rooms come together exactly as planned? In marketing, that role usually goes to the designer who is usually singularly responsible for maintaining visual continuity in your brand through every aspect of your marketing efforts from web to print to trade show to promotional items.

1. Stop worrying about the economy. From what I see working with business owners every day, unless you’re in real estate or somehow otherwise tied to the banking/housing crises, small businesses seem to be doing just fine. Keep a positive outlook and resolve NOT to participate in the recession. A down economy is a fantastic business opportunity to gain an advantage over competitiors who — unlike yourself — are feeling skiddish about the economy and are cutting spending, cutting marketing and basically going into “hibernation” mode until CNN says it’s over. Now is the time to put your best face forward.

2. Focus. Focus everything. Focus your offerings and marketing on products/services that reap the greatest profit. Focus your marketing/mailing lists and don’t be afraid to cut it down by 20 or 30% and reinvest the time and cash savings in hitting the remaining 80% harder. And don’t forget to schedule time with yourself every week to focus on your outbound sales and marketing efforts.

3. Out with the old. Make a list of every item in your sales or marketing toolkit that you haven’t overhauled in at least two years. And then start replacing them one by one. Make yourself a calendar and set deadlines to remind you when that old web site needs to be gone, when you’re going to work on replacing that circa 2006 trifold with something more relevant. This also goes back to my first resolution about turning the bad economy into an opportunity. A fresh look sends a strong implied message to your customers that you’re not only surviving but excelling. No one wants to do business with someone who looks like they’re circling the drain; your customers and prospects want to partner with firms that look strong and have that “smell of success” about them.

4. Do SOMETHING online. I’m assuming here that you already have an active email marketing strategy. If not, start on that immediately. But social media affords some fantastic opportunities to connect with and stay in front of clients, prospects, partners and vendors and you should be represented somewhere out there. There are many social media tools out there that are great for promoting business and business people (besides good old-fashioned traditional blogging) including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Squidoo to name just a handful. But don’t go and jump head first into all this stuff… Pick one and stick with it (we all know you don’t have time to devote to updating several social media tools every day so be realistic; after all, no one is impressed with a stale profile that never seems to have anything new or interesting). And stick with it for a few months at least before giving up.

My social media drug of choice is Twitter (though I’m also active on LinkedIn). I’ve been on Twitter a few months now, and even though it’s a big commitment to keep it current, it’s a lot of fun and I have definitely connected with people who will be valuable in my business this year. Really, it’s the easiest and most painless networking I’ve ever done.

5. Do something green. I think it should be crystal clear by now that “green” is the new color of money. Yes, it’s also the old color of money, but you all know what I mean. Being environmentally friendly is not only responsible, it’s profitable. And environmentally-friendly practices can be implemented MUCH more quickly and easily within nimble, streamlined small businesses than in our big, clunky large enterprise counterparts. Now is a great time to claim a point of differentiation for your business that is both socially responsible and relevant to your customers.

6. Give something back. Charity may not be directly tied to sales and marketing benefits but so what? No business is too small to care about philanthropy and supporting their community. Doing the right thing is its own reward and tends to bring other unexpected benefits as well.

Happy New Year! Here’s a to a fantastic 2009!

A lot of times it seems that we as small business owners look at our marketing to-do list from a tactical rather than strategic perspective. It’s a common pitfall that a lot of us fall into where we get so focused on getting things done that we forget why we’re doing them and what we expected to get out of them in the first place.

There’s no doubt that being tactical is easier; it’s certainly less work for us as business owners and we are likely to get things crossed off our list quicker than we would if we meticulously planned and strategized around everything we do… But we’re also more likely to come out the other end of that project with a “band-aid” type of solution that is not likely to get us the results we wanted long term… And soon we’ll end up with another item on that growing to do list: “re-do web site.”

It also goes without saying that most of us aren’t marketing, branding or web geniuses and can’t sit down and come up with a brilliant winning strategy in an afternoon. That’s why — and especially if anything I’ve written here scares you — the best recommendation I can make to someone who needs to start a new branding, web or marketing project (but doesn’t know where to start) is to contact an expert and ask for help.

Getting good help may cost you cash out of pocket in the short term, but it is certainly more efficient in both time and money than your eventual alternative of “redo web site” or logo or brochure… And that’s before we factor in the additional business that we won and opportunities we generated by doing the right thing up front.

And who wants “just” a web site anyway?

This is actually a common mistake, and something that I talk to our clients a lot about. The problem starts with the gap between the seller and purchaser of any given product. As the people selling or marketing an item, we know it inside and out. We understand what it does and the things that make it unique and incredible. We innately know why everyone should want one. The customer though is a stranger. They know little or nothing and often need to rely on us to help them make good purchase decisions. We, on the sales and marketing side are obsessed with features. They are often our differentiators and the things that we get excited about.

When I ran marketing communications for a global baby toy manufacturer, our company revolved around features. If we came up with a baby seat that played seven soothing songs while our competitor’s product played only four, that was a good day in the office. After all, we were fighting a war for shelf space against larger, more mature companies like Fisher-Price; anything that could give us extra ammunition when we went into battle was important. And seven songs is definitely more — and better — than four.

But what’s in it for the end customer? Do they care how many songs it plays? Our customers, regardless of the industry, are obsessed with benefits. They want to know how their lives or businesses will improve by making this purchase. To the business owner, the benefit seems obvious because their extensive knowledge on the subject prevents them from being objective.

There’s no doubt that features are important… But they usually aren’t meaningful unless connected with a benefit for your customers which you can easily express in both conversation and collateral. Before you do anything else, make sure you tell your customers what’s in it for them. It may be the most productive change you ever make to your sales and amrketing approach.

I have to shake my head every time someone says, “It’s just a business card.” That business card is probably the single most important piece of marketing material in your arsenal. Why? I can tell you in one word: longevity.

If you distribute brochures, most of them will likely end up in the trash within a couple of weeks and almost certainly within a year. Many direct mail pieces end up in the trash within five minutes of bringing in the mail. Promotional products can make a wonderful impression, but most of them will probably end up as a toy for someone’s kid. But the business card I give you today may stay with you for ten years and you will be reminded of the quality of that first impression every time you flip by it in your rolodex or business card portfolio.

Business people who carry a stack of cheap, templated business cards wherever they go are doing themselves a great disservice. Those cards are not likely to ignite or support a great first impression in any way… And the evidence of that failed opportunity may stick in your prospect’s files for years to come.

Don’t think it doesn’t matter or that people don’t notice… People will judge you on appearances, and your marketing materials play as much a role as your attire and demeanor. But your business cards will suffer the most scrutiny over time.

Remember also that no matter how much you spend on your business cards, they are probably STILL the cheapest piece of collateral that you will ever buy. There’s really no sense in trying to save a buck on business cards. Saving $50, $100 or even $250 on business cards just isn’t worth it when you consider what it could cost you in business in the long run.

This is a follow up to my post a few days ago about printing in small quantities. When my company hires printing on behalf of our clients, we’re usually doing one of the two things I described in that post… Hiring a “bulk” printer that prints many jobs at once on an offset press or using a digital printer. It is a rare occasion when will we even quote a custom job on an offset press. Most of our clients don’t see the value in this, especially if they are only willing to commit to printing small quantities and are running a simple job like business cards or a standard-sized brochure.

But at the same time, business owners need to understand that there are serious limitations to what we provide without going to a custom print job. One of the biggest is paper/finish selection. If you print bulk, you will get little or no paper selection (they may let you select weight if you’re lucky) and your pieces will likely HAVE to be finished with some type of varnish, whether it is matte or gloss. Why? Because applying the clear finishing coat allows the pieces to dry almost instantly, allowing the bulk printers to cut and package them faster and move the product out faster.

With digital printing, you will be able to select from a variety of paper stocks… But as of this writing, still a fairly small variety. If a job hinges on a custom paper stock, there is no guarantee that your digital printer will have access to it — or anything even close for that matter. As a rule, digital print stocks also do not run as thick as traditional stocks. My digital resource told me the other day that they are modifying their equipment so that it might be able to handle a 100 lb. uncoated sheet. The technology is catching up, but it’s still a long way away from being a true alternative to offset printing.

Our rule of thumb would be to tread carefully and manage customers’ expectations. A customer asked us recently if a particular type of paper might be available for his small quantity print job. We spoke to our vendor and found an acceptable digital alternative to the stock he requested. Halfway into the project though, he changed his mind and says that he wants a different type of specialty paper. This one looks like a no-go.

In the end, when it comes to printing in small quantities and on small budgets, tradeoffs need to be made somewhere. Although many of us would like to see the digital printers fill this niche someday, there still isn’t any “have your cake and eat it too” solution for small business printing.