Ron Burgess presenting at the American Marketing Association Inland Empire on how small businesses need to find and create emplacement in their market crack.

(Inland Empire Marketing Association) – Ron Burgess presented his views on how small businesses should view their position in the market.  His presentation comes as a precursor to the release of his marketing book for small business “Finding your Crack in the Market.”  

Ron has three decades of marketing experience, is a Past-President of the AMA-IE, and has a passion for small business marketing.  His book is a capstone to a career working with businesses under 250 employees and sheds a unique light on the challenges and opportunities that small businesses experience.

Some key points you will learn from Finding your Crack in the Market?

- Learn how to determine if your company fills a market niche!

- Find out about how your company can create market leadership in your crack.

- Build defenses for your market niche with “Market Emplacement”

Finding Your Crack in the Market is scheduled for released in the first days of 2013. For more information, visit: www.findingyourcrack.com.

Below are the slides from his presentation.

Ronald Burgess

The conclusion may not please some consultants and marketing professionals. The answer is not stellar management skills or financial prowess or a knack for marketing promotion. It’s the market niche that the business plays in.  The common factors are really more about limiting competition and finding new small cracks in your market to exploit. With five years of research on the book, which is scheduled to be released January 1, 2013,  and thirty years as a successful consultant whose clients collectively, substantially beat their competition and the national economy’s growth, Ron’s ideas may just be worth listening to.

It is common knowledge that good brand management and product differentiation are part of the strategic mantra, but Burgess illustrates lots of successful businesses that thrive without either. Instead, many wealthy small business owners look for an open niche, or more likely fall into an empty crack in the economy, and figure out how to deliver what their customers want with laser like intent.

Once a company takes market leadership in their crack, their customers reward them with higher margins. In his book, Burgess reveals obscure but critical market information that proves this to be axiomatic. Those extra margins allow rapid growth, cover up mistakes, and provide the eventual wealth creation that the leadership position provides. Jack Welch former Chairman of GE knows this too. Now you can know what he and other Fortune 500 Companies know, because Burgess breaks it down for small business.

Ron Burgess presented his views on how small businesses should view their position in the market.  His presentation comes as a precursor to the release of his marketing book for small business“Finding your Crack in the Market.”  

American Marketing Association – Inland Empire

Victoria Country Club in Riverside

Thursday, October 18, 11:30AM to 1:30PM Luncheon

http://www.ama-ie.com/programs/

Finding Your Crack In The Market^©
By Ron Burgess
Available January 1, 2013

Inland Empire Advertising luncheon, Oct. 11th, 2012 in Corona. Panelist and advertising professionals talked about the current media market in the Inland Empire.

by Jon Burgess

The Inland Empire has always had challenges with its small media market, even though we have a large media population.  The Inland Empire would be in top 20 DMA’s in America, but it isn’t considered DMA (Designated Market Area ).  Inland Empire advertising has been primarily relegated to print, radio, outdoor, and cable.  The IE, and Orange County are the children of Los Angeles, and thus, we don’t even have our own local TV stations.

Yesterday, I attended the American Advertising Federations Inland Empire’s Media Buying Panel in Corona.  It was good to hear from some of the panel experts that sell Inland Empire advertising.

Scott Welsh, the Director of Sales for Clear Channel Media in the Inland Empire pointed out that while our market may be limited, “it still is a great advertising value, because our media coverage is still reaches the population.”  I think what he was alluding to, was that because of our small media market, we don’t have the competition among media outlets that you may see in other standalone DMAs, thus our media is consumed fairly well.

It was also interesting to hear from Matt Strohfus of Lamar Advertising in the Inland Empire about “Outdoor” and “Billboards”. We all know that with all the miles of roads, there is a lot of opportunity for Inland Empire advertising.  Matt reminded us about changes in billboard digital advertising.  He said, “We are finding that digital billboards are more viewed because the viewer does not want to miss the next ad.”  So, I tried it on the drive home, and he is right, I think people are focusing more on the digital billboards than printed billboards.

The other Inland Empire advertising growth area is online. You see growth coming from the downside of having a small media market, we don’t have enough public relations outlets.  We have seen a lot of new “hyper-local” websites popping up to provide the missing content.  Sites like InlandEmpire.US, where it will publish any Inland Empire content, or like IEShineOn.com, who has built a following around providing events and things to do with in the Inland Empire.  Advertising on the online channels is far less expensive, and with Google continuing to increase its search effectiveness, much more targeted advertising.

Why do you need a Google Account?

Well, it is the key to all things Google, it seamlessly ties your companies online resources to one handy login.

If you don’t already have an account with Google, first go to the Google home page here: http://www.google.com/

Creating a Google Account

On the Google Home page, click the “Sign In” button at the top, right of the page.

On the next page, you will see the login on the right side, and above that there is an orange “Sign Up”

On the “Create a new Google Account” page, enter the required fields on the right side.

You will be sent an email to verify and activate your Google account.  Now you will want to tie together all of your information, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Youtube, Google Drive (formerly Google Docs), etc.

More on Google?

• What is a Google PageRank?
• Google: How does it work?

Updated 10/8/12 – originally posted 4/16/08.

Attendees can expect to learn:

• Learn why owning the micro niche is the most important marketing goal
• Finding your crack in the marketing landscape is essential
• See the evidence from a practically unknown (except to Fortune 500 Companies) database that confirms where strong profits come from
• Begin to think completely differently about how to grow your company or clients business

Ron Burgess has been a marketing consultant for more than three decades, having worked with clients that dominate their market niches. With broad experience across the marketing landscape, he has spent most of his time as a CMO for hire. Ron holds business and art degrees from the University of Colorado. He has founded three businesses (including RedFusion Media in 1998) and was division head for a national consulting firm where he trained 120 field consultants on small business tools and profitability. His book “Finding Your Crack In The Market” will be available this fall and has published a hundreds of marketing articles.

When: Thursday, October 18, 2012, from 11:30-1:30 p.m. at the Victoria Country Club, 2521 Arroyo Drive, Riverside,CA 92506.

Register online at:    http://www.ama-ie.com/programs/

The American Marketing Association-Inland Empire (AMA-IE), the marketing authority in the region, is offering this final event of the luncheon series — Big Ideas for Small Business: Marketing Strategies & Tactics for the New Economy. The AMA-IE’s goal is to help Inland Empire businesses understand the most effective marketing and communications strategies to be successful in this volatile economy.

Ron has been a long time member of the American Marketing Association-Inland Empire (AMA-IE), and is currently the clubs “Past President”. The AMA-IE is part of the American Marketing Association, the largest marketing association in North America.  The AMA-IE mission is to help our members develop professionally through educational programs and networking events, as well as providing opportunities to businesses to grow their businesses through educational programs and obtaining highly qualified marketing professionals for their staffs.  For more information please visit www.ama-ie.com.

301 Redirect – Redirecting old pages to new pages with an “.htaccess” file

Google wants to see quality content on your pages, so when you are changing your site and are forced to move pages and change their name, you’ll need to use a 301 redirect.  A 301 redirect is the preferred practice to preserve your search engine rankings and page rank.

What is a 301 redirect?

The 301 redirect is way to tell the search engine spiders that you have presently moved a file.  There are a number of ways to create a 301 redirect; I prefer using the .htaccess file, because it is nice and tidy.  You can write the redirect in PHP, ASP, JSP, or ColdFusion, but you’ll end up with all the files still needing to be hosted on your server.

The .htaccess File

• The htaccess file only works on Linux servers that use the Apache Mod-Rewrite.
• The file is really a .txt file, so you can edit it in notepad if needed.
• You must save it with the (.) period in the file.
• Writing the code is simple:

redirect 301 /old/old-page.htm http://www.newsite.com/new-page.htm

*Note, the spacing needs to be exact, and as long as you are in the same site, you can use the relative path of your folders.

• Each additional page that needs to be moved can be added to the next line.

Posting the .htaccess File

The .htaccess file needs to be posted to the main (root) html folder of your site.  Sometimes the file may be hidden from view, so if you are using cloaking, make sure you un-cloak your settings.

Testing

Immediately test the file.  Simply type in all of your old pages URLs into the browser, and make sure they re-direct to the new page.  If you see a major error, like the site has blown up, take the .htaccess folder down!  Check you syntax for errors.

PHP Redirecting

<?
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.newsite.com/new-page.php” );
?>

Extra help? Search http://www.google.com/search?aq=1&oq=301+re&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=301+redirect+htaccess

While in Denver

Last week in Denver, I (Jon Burgess) had the opportunity to hear and see work from David Droga (pictured above), founder of Droga 5 (www.draga5.com), one of the hottest agencies in the U.S.

Cool thing about their work; while creative, they keep it honest and simple…. a good lesson in not being over creative for creativity’s sake.

They have had some great work, from Jay Z to Puma to New Castle, and you can check it out here, http://www.droga5.com/#/work.

AAF-Inland Empire

We also have some great educational programming coming up in the next few weeks with AAF.  The first event is a “Media Buying Panel” with traditional media vendors; Radio, TV, Print and Outdoor.  You can find tickets here http://aaf-inlandempire.com/.

Next month, we’re having a social media panel, details to come.

Jon made a longer presentation based on the same slide in June, if you’d like to look at presentation, you can find them here.

Jon Burgess will be speaking Friday August 24th, at the Riverside Chamber. Jon will be speaking on Integrated Marketing, and how you can take advantage those principles even if you are “Marketing on a Shoestring Budget.”

This seminar provides business owners with information they need in targeting potential customers/clients and increasing business exposure. Read more at the Inland Empire press release.

The seminar costs $35.00 for Chamber members and $75.00 for non-members and includes a complimentary light breakfast and parking.  Contact the chamber today to register at 951-683-7100 or go to www.riverside-chamber.com.  The Chamber is located at 3985 University Avenue, Riverside, CA, 92501.