Saul Colt

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• Greetings and thank you for taking my question. I own a site where I provide the service of individual custom printed t-shirts. I am in an odd niche where there are very few commonly used words to describe the service I provide. Competition is fierce for these keywords and I find it is very difficult to be discovered online for this core service. Is there some bigger picture that I am missing in terms of my basic approach?

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    Buying Keywords are an important part of the marketing puzzle but shouldn’t be your only initiative. Look into events to exhibit or sponsor (or both) as well as the standards like Twitter, FaceBook, You tube, as well as email, and pr.

• We are a 5-person, service-based business that has grown quickly with moderate prices and good customer service. Half of the market feels we are well-priced, but many of the remaining half think we are too cheap, and "you get what you pay for". We produce commercial music for ads/events and have relatively low operating costs, so we pass on our savings. How can we continue to satisfy our current customers and gain the "prestige" customers at the same time without appearing greedy?

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    Focus on the half of the market who likes you and trusts you and work through that group to find your prestige customers. Spending time with the people how think you are cheap are probably going to take a longer sales cycle if you can convert them at all.

• What do you think is the best way to determine the potential market for a product or service?

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    Look into trade associations for whatever market you are looking into or find a publicly traded competitor/market leader and look into their public filings for insights.

• I have a startup that lists events and tweets about featured events as they happen. I do everything alone. I don't know where to start to gain advertisers for the site. I get a decent number of views and people seem to like it, but I'm not making any money yet, but more importantly I don't know how I could make money outside of ad revenue. How can I figure this out?! Thanks!

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    If you were interested you could sell ticked for the events on your site for a commission or if ads are where your head is at look into joining an ad network there someone else will do the ad sale work for you but the amount of money you’ll receive will be pretty low unless your numbers are very impressive.

• I firmly believe that the only reason my business is not succeeding is cash flow which ultimately leads to lack of good marketing. How can you resolve this issue?

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    fix your marketing? Ask for help from people who know more than you do.

• What is the best way to build a patient base for a acupuncture clinic. I want to invest in advertising. So far... I am not seeing a ROI

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    If you have happy clients currently than focus on referrals before going after a broad social media plan. 89% of word of mouth happens offline so ask your happy customers to help.

• In terms of core competency, do you think building connections is unique enough? Can it be a competitive advantage?

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    if done well, yes.

• How can an economic development entity use social media to attract young, startup companies?

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    Do your research (online and through social media) and target the startups directly.

• We are currently in our second year of business as a high-end custom cake design studio. Our market is saturated with price differentiation. How do you propose differentiating yourself in this type of market?

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    You call yourself high end so I assume that even though the market has price spectrums I imagine your studio doesn’t…and if I am right than that is your differentiator. Think of yourself as a luxury brand and speak to the quality of your work and never sell based on price. The fact that you call yourself a studio and not a shop is a good first step to creating the lux feel. If you want to read more about this look into the history of Grey Goose Vodka. They did a great job of manufacturing a luxury brand with a mid quality product. You (I assume) have a getter than mid quality product so learn from them and adapt to what you need.

• How do you best form an online community when you have two users. Companies paying to use the site to sell their service and people using the site to find those services. I am struggling with the two different groups as it seems like two completely different markets.

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    In this case you should set up two separate places for each group to “live”. Communities (online) should be a place there people can be themselves and surrounded by likeminded folks. If you serve two very different groups and if they dont mesh then make them both feel special in their own place.