There are a lot of advantages to being the biggest, baddest business around.  Big companies have big budgets, big teams, and big brands to help them achieve their big objectives.  All this “bigness” can leave a smaller biz feeling like they don’t stand much of a chance of capturing people’s attention. The wealth of advantages of being the big player does however bring about one distinct weakness: people perceive the biggest companies as being too big to provide the level of personal attention they desire.

Big Co., may very well provide a less expensive product or service in a prettier package.  But when the customer needs to ask a question or a slightly customized solution,  they are often paralyzed by their size and unable or unwilling to react in a meaningful manner.  Suddenly the decision to buy from Big Co. is costing the customer more in terms of lost time and increased stress.

In today’s high stress world, the old adage “Time is money” could be better stated as: “Time is even more valuable than money, and less stress is golden.”

Many small companies falter by trying to replicate Big Co.’s in areas which they cannot sustainably compete, such as price and flashy advertising.  A small biz won’t be able to advertise it’s products or services at the same level as it’s Big Co. competition.  But rest assured for all the glitz and glamour of mass advertising according to a recent global Nielsen Internet survey, titled Trust in Advertising (pdf file), “despite an ever-expanding array of advertising platforms and sources, consumers around the world still place their highest levels of trust in other consumers.”  A small biz that takes the time to build relationships with customers has a clear advantage over Big Co’s in relation to generating word of mouth buzz and referrals, and as the survey results clearly shows, these trusted marketing techniques really work.

The Personal Advantage
In a recent post titled, ‘There is Nothing Small About Everything,’ Brain Forth, owner of a web development firm in Tacoma, WA, describes the many ways his company serves clients, employees, and the community through its business, and the important role that all small businesses play in our economy.  SiteCrafting is a fast growing but relatively small firm; they make no effort to attract customers through flashy ads or discounted pricing.  They have and continue to build their business by delivering exceptional work for their customers and benefit immensely from the satisfaction those customers experience with their projects and people.

Obviously, any business that fails to deliver satisfaction will fail.  Many large businesses provide marginal satisfaction and rely heavily on advertising to keep a fresh stream of customers coming in the door to minimize the impact of the less than satisfied ones heading for the exits.  Small businesses do not have that luxury, but do have the distinct advantage of being in a position to build more personal and meaningful relationships with their customers.  This interdependent relationship between delivering satisfaction and growing through word of mouth and trust is what makes small businesses so exciting and valuable.  Without the little guy doing it better by being more personal, we would be left with fewer options and less satisfying customer experiences, and that is indeed a bleak proposition.  So go ahead and embrace your smallness in the face of your Big Co. competition; people crave the promise of personal attention and highly satisfying experiences that small businesses are uniquely positioned to fulfill.

Technorati Tags: small business, referral marketing, trust in advertising, competition, competitive advantage

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Creating compelling and motivating marketing messages can be one of the most difficult parts of getting a product or service company noticed in the crowded marketplace. Most marketers and business owners feel that whatever they are promoting is valuable and they just need the right message and medium to communicate the value effectively. Yet when it comes time to create the actual message, most people end up settling for either an over simplified (see meaningless) message and blasting it across what ever medium they can afford, or they create an over complicated message (see confusing) and distribute to a very narrow audience. Of course, they end disappointed and frustrated by the lack of response that either route produces. Then income the experts with many different reasons why the efforts failed and many hindsighted examples of marketing that produced stellar results. Case studies are all well and good, but unless they are translated into results they are educational and nothing more.

So why are some product and service companies so effortlessly successful in capturing the people’s attention and creating widespread buzz, admiration, and passionate users?

On the most basic level, their approach was the antithesis of traditional advertising and marketing. The starting point of the massive success of recent companies such as Google, Vitamin Water, eBay, and Crocs, was simply a product or service that solved a common and under-served need. Once they had established that their offering was perceived as a favorable solution, they pretty much got out of the way and let the forces of human nature take hold, where satisfied people went around and told others about their experiences. It’s important, albeit obvious, to note that the solution to creating great marketing messages is not to build the next Google/eBay/Vitamin Water/Crocs; that would be nice, but it’s just not happening.

Reverse Construction
While we cannot expect to achieve results on the scale of these great companies, we can use the simple elements of their approach to our marketing advantage by following a simple three step approach:

Step One: Ask - Listen - Record
As a starting point, it is important to find out what exactly your current group of customers like about your product or service. By asking questions you’re hoping to elicit an authentic response, so keeping your questions straight forward, open-ended, and delivered via an actual live conversation is very important. Surveys are good, but people reply to canned questions with canned responses, and canned is never as good as fresh. If you don’t pay close attention to the actual words customers used to describe their experience, you will miss the best part. Customers use common words and phrases in conversation, which are both authentic and easily understood, and therefore far more believable and relevant to others. As the marketer your job is not only to ask questions and listen intently, but to record the actual verbiage of the responses.

Step Two: Capture the Message
Recording the words customers use to describe their experience with your product or service eliminates the need for you to create anything. Whatever they say is going to be more powerful than anything you could have come up with. At this point what you need to do is capture the core message and preserve its authenticity. Don’t boil it down into three meaningless bullet points (i.e easy access, good price, and fast service), and don’t use one long winded testimonial to convey every benefit. Do identify the common benefits in people’s responses and use their words to describe them.

Step Three: Motivate Sharing
People love to share satisfying experiences with others; it makes them feel special and tickles their egos when they are perceived by their peers as being “in the know” and “a step ahead of the pack.” Again your job mostly is to get out of the way, but also to ensure that your customers realize the experience they crave in the process. Making this happen involves finding out what they need to spread the message (i.e filmed testimonials, rewards & recognition, early access to new products, etc.), and delivering the tools that allow them to spread the word.

Having candid conversations with real customers is a very powerful experience for a marketer. Moving away from the developer of messages to that of conduit is the first step in crossing the chasm between advertiser and relevant marketer. The next step in this journey is to further engage your current base of satisfied customers in becoming messengers of your brand. While it may appear that this is a coveted relationship only reserved for the few great companies that have created such remarkable products and services, that the whole process occurs organically, its actually quite simple and accessible.

Of course not everything you hear is going to be glowing but it will be authentic and nothing is more powerful in marketing than trust. The companies that have achieved this level of marketing success are never the ones you see plastered on billboards and on splashy commercials. Mass advertising is a channel reserved for companies whose growth has dwindled and are far farther along in their lifestyle.

For the rest of us, the path to viral, efficient, and authentic marketing communication starts with the consistent delivery of a satisfying customer experience, then the recycling and of the actual words and messages that those first customers use to describe their experience, and finally the act of real people using the many free and personal methods of communication to reach out to their social circles. Its far easier and effective to have others be the creators and messengers of marketing messages than to do it on your own.

Technorati Tags: customer satisfaction, customer experience, relationship marketing, marketing 2.0, referrals, voice of the customer, authentic marketing

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The process of turning an idea into a winning software product is a daunting challenge for any entrepreneur. The odds of success are increasingly slim when you’re bootstrapping your startup and you’re not an experienced developer, which is exactly the situation our team was faced with in creating Rephoria, which by the way is not quite done yet, but getting closer and closer each day. When you’re a business or marketing person building a software/web based application, your first order of business is translating the idea into a detailed product specification. A clear and concise explanation of the product and related features is a logical starting point, but until you’re working through use cases you really only have a glimpse of what you are actually going to build. Most likely those first iterations are mere stepping stones to the discovery of the product you will eventually build, launch, and hopefully grow into an amazing company.

Leading with U/I - U/X
One of the most influential design and development methodologies we have adopted at Rephoria is the 37 Signals approach to developing amazing products, described in their semi-recent book, Getting Real. The team at 37 Signals is very adamant about leading software projects with the creation and rapid iteration of the actual screens users will engage with. This way all the theoretical stuff gets boiled down to actual use cases and the aesthetics of the application are not left for the design team to piece together a few weeks before launch.

This approach can be difficult for both business and technical people, as both groups want to revert to their respective areas of expertise, be it business planning or database schema’s before worrying about how users will actually use the product.  After creating a tightly restricted version 1.0 feature list our team needed to translate these features into screens. We started looking around for a tool to help get this done fast….and inexpensively.

We stumbled upon iRise and found out about their “iRise for Entrepreneurs Program” for early stage technology startups. After a few emails, phone conversations, and a simple application, we got the green light to use iRise’s suite of tools. At Rephoria we used iRise’s software/web application simulation tool to define and simulate our web application before engaging with developers. We knew that if we were ever going to get our idea out to the market we would need to move quickly through the first few iterations, and we didn’t have the money to go through that process while paying a team of developers. While we all know the horrors of unending, ever changing software projects, many people may not know that there is actually a tool for building fast simulations to clearly and accurately define development needs.

There where so many technical and business issues that arose as we where actually designing the page by page flow of the product that we didn’t even foresee until we were smack dab in the middle of a user scenario. Without digging into the U/I these type of issues might have been glossed over and left for the developers to figure out, but they never go away, and a recently hired developer is certainly not going to have all the answers.

In the spirit of Getting Real, a tool like iRise places the spotlight on the holes and gaps, and forces the core team to solve them. Through the process of iteration and refinement we actually reached the point where we could hand the project off to the developers and with a reasonable degree of certainty knew that what would come back at the next meeting would look and act like what we had envisioned and designed. Additionally, the application we created is ours, instead of the developers interpretation of what they thought we wanted, so whether it totally rocks or really sucks, the credit/blame falls with squarely with us.

Tips for Simulation Success:
Don’t sweat the pixels: it can be very easy to spend hours aligning boxes and fonts - at version 1.0 this is wasted time - stay focused on accurately translating must have features intro real screens / scenarios

Start with a feature list: before anything goes into the simulation - create a “must have feature list” - if its not in the feature list its not important

Write lots of notes: even with screens much of the details are happening behind the scenes - make sure these back-end details are well documented

If your starting out on the rocky road of software/web entrepreneurship and need to tool to translate your amazing idea into an actual product, consider using iRise to build a simulation of your application. Get Real and get that idea from the depths of your imagination into a format others can see, use, and help you improve.

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by: Hasan Luongo, Founder + CEO @ Rephoria.com

Technorati Tags: irise, irise for entrepreneurs, web applications, get real, 37 Signals, startups, iteration, u/x, u/i

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News from Facebook’s big social advertising press conference is now breaking from New York, and Mark Zuckerberg has some very interesting comments:

“Once every hundred years media changes. The last hundred years have been defined by the mass media. The way to advertise was to get into the mass media and push out your content. That was the last hundred years. In the next hundred years information won’t be just pushed out to people, it will be shared among the millions of connections people have. Advertising will change. You will need to get into these connections.”

“People influence people. Nothing influences people more than are recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.”

(read the full story on TechCrunch)

Well Mark, all of us here at Rephoria couldn’t agree more, and look forward to participating in the next great shift in media and advertising.

Technorati Tags: facebook, social advertising, referral marketing, mark zuckerberg, social graph

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We been in a relatively quite mode over the last month and wanted to provide a quick update on some exciting recent developments.

In late September we kicked off our search for a third co-founder to lead / manage the development and programming responsibilities. This is a big job and we needed an individual that did more than throw around a lot of lingo, we needed someone that walked the walk and we all agree that we found our man (welcome aboard Steve).

The “stage” ahead is going to be extremely important for us. It comes down to this, if in the next 2.5 months we are not significantly further down field, and rapidly approaching the infamous 1st release – then there is a chance we may never cross that mark. Like a cold snap that hits Bordeaux mid-September, our little company might be dead on the vine.

On the flip side, we are like a team of cyclists approaching the mid way point of a mountain stage at the Tour de France. Our team has formed a strong position, and now its time to crouch down a bit lower, push from our guts, and make this opportunity count. At this stage, nothing matters except the mountain, not our competitors, not the VC’s, not even our target customers. For anyone to be our customer, competitor, or investor, we must emerge with a product / service that fulfills our customer’s minimum requirements. Until then it’s all vaporware and fresh mountain air.

Lets raise our water bottles to reaching the summit and catching a clean line down the mountain.

Technorati Tags: startup, rephoria, co-founder, team, entrepreneur

Do you want to work for a company that is built around giving back to the community? If so we are looking for you.

Position is open to seasoned web pros, talented recent grads, and those in between, a hacker mentality and passion for building things people want is required.

Company Overview:

We are building a web-based referral marketing application for service providers to grow their business through customer referrals, and for individuals to refer their friends to trusted service, and support a non-profit.

Service Providers create custom referral programs; invite their customers and partners to participate, and track and manage the referral activity.

Our truly unique Donation Rewards feature produces a cash donation to a worthy non-profit organization for each successful transaction.

We are seeking an outstanding individual that is local to the Bay Area, or would consider moving here in the next three months. With this in mind we are not seeking responses from web development companies or developers/freelancers that are not interested in joining the team as a co-founder. Telecommuting is an option in the first stage of the project.

Development Skills:

* Python and or PHP, MySQL, Linux, Apache

* Ruby on Rails

* Java, AJAX, and FLASH, HTML, CSS

* API’s such as Google Maps/Local

Project Stage:

We are currently in discussion with potential investors and would love to have a technical co-founder as part of our team.

You will be provided with a complete set of product specs at the outset as well as a rough initial design, which you can choose to use or discard

Over the last two months we have been consulting with various large web development companies and have received extremely positive feedback on the product.

Our product currently has over 100 beta customers without any marketing or PR activity.

Compensation:

Substantial equity is being offered with compensation levels to be commensurate with current founders. Investment by candidate is NOT required upon joining.

Key Personal Attributes:

• Self motivated

• Design conscious

• Iterates quickly

• Willing to take risks and try new ways of doing things

• Passionate about customer / user satisfaction

• Seeks simple solutions to problems

• Works well in a social environment and is team orientated

• Passion for collaborative Web 2.0 technologies

• Interest in flattening the playing field for small local businesses

Initial Development Timeline:

Prototype: 4-6 weeks

Version 1.0 / Beta: 3-4 weeks

Beta Version 1.5: 6-8 weeks

If you’re interested in learning more about this unique position, please send an introductory email (rephcorp AT rephoria DOT com) and your resume, and links to things you’ve built (if possible).

Thank you for taking the time to review this posting and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

Over the recent months, while developing my startup, I’ve spent a lot of time researching and talking with local service providers such as CPA’s, stationary designers, and landscape architects; and like all of us, I also spend a lot of time interacting with service workers at local restaurants, Starbucks, and credit card companies. Both service providers and service workers make essential contributions to an economic system. But the two types of service work produce dramatically different outcomes in terms of a nation’s economic security, and opportunities for personal wealth creation.

As the world economy’s powerbase shifts to accommodate the surging influence of China and India, the Unites States is at a precarious economic crossroad. The U.S is and will remain an economic powerhouse for years to come, primarily because American consumers and corporations are rich and consume a massive amount of products and services. But, with the globalization mega-trend continuing to advance and evolve, will the majority of future American workers fulfill the role of service providers or service workers?

High Value Fundamentals

A strong local economy is essential for service providers to thrive. The presence of local businesses and well paid workers to buy services creates a sustainable economic ecosystem for service providers to start and build businesses. Much like local and state governments, which rely on a growing tax base to provide services to citizens, service providers rely on a strong and growing demographic of businesses and consumers to create the demand for their services.

Without a solid local economy, customers have fewer and less differentiated products and services to choose from and lower paying job opportunities as service workers. Additionally, with most products and services coming into local markets from far off suppliers and the profits being shipped back to corporate HQ’s, the local economic ecosystem becomes stagnant.

The Globalization Tsunami

According to a recent survey by the Financial Services Forum on American’s attitudes towards globalization, “only 49% of respondents had a favorable view of globalization—a dip from the 54% who were favorable in 2006. Respondents also expressed some support for more protectionist responses to globalization. Most importantly, roughly two-thirds of those surveyed (67%) noted that they would have a more positive view and approach to globalization if Congress and the White House would support efforts to help workers, businesses, and communities respond and adjust to the challenges of the 21st century economy.”

To effectively compete in a flat world, America must locally produce and export high value services. Developing nations are benefiting immensely from their comparative strength as manufacturing and technology producers, but are facing huge challenges in supporting the changing needs of their citizens and infrastructure. The demand for knowledge and experience in servicing and managing these needs is a niche opportunity that America is uniquely positioned to serve. Closing the borders and raising tariffs is not a sustainable solution; neither is relying on low cost products and services to offset declining wages. America must ride the Globalization Tsunami by becoming the preferred provider of high value services.

As we commemorate the contribution of American workers and the labor movement this Labor Day, we should also look to the future and ask ourselves and the leaders of this country, from our current president, 2008 presidential candidates, senators, and congress, state governors, and local officials, whether America is moving in the right direction. “It’s the Economy, Stupid,” is a constant truism of American culture. As Americans we pride ourselves in leading the way forward, and without a strong local base of service businesses and good jobs to support these ventures, many of us may soon find ourselves asking our fellow Americans “did you want a grande or venti frappucino.”

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When companies are small, the few people involved are responsible for nearly every task, to-do, and milestone that will or won’t get done. At the big co.’s, where many startupers come from, the realms of responsibility is not only well defined, but shared across a whole fleet of talented go-getters. In big co. land, what makes a person successful is their ability to positively impact that defined sphere and influence those with whom accountability is shared to follow their lead. Making the transition from managing defined spheres to managing everything under the sun is one of the many important litmus tests of an entrepreneurial leader. The difference is like transitioning from being a valve in a clogged engine to the ignition spark of a concept car.

Mediocre valve: engine pushes along vs. No spark: no go

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Having full control of designing and implementing a new product is a lot of fun, every feature is a reflection of your vision and each rounded corner is a testament to your style. Having full control of accounting, hiring, and the sales pipeline tends to be a bit less revered. What’s more, should any one of those critical elements get off track the responsibility to fix it now falls right on your lap.

An amazing part of taking on these new roles is the unexpected thrill you get when you positively influence something which you may have had no previous experience doing. For the business folks, it may be writing copy for the website, converting it to HTML, uploading a few images, and publishing the completed page to the web. For the technical folks it may be going to a sales meeting where you lead the presentation, instead of sitting around waiting for the VP of Marketing to say, “Let me have my technical guy answer that.” Stepping outside your defined sphere is exhilarating.

Mind The Gaps

Thinking back to life at big co’s, no matter how well each individual may perform in their defined sphere, related elements of the project which don’t fall within an employees specific sphere are left to whom ever owns that responsibility. Consequently, the overlaps, mis-communications, and shortcomings leave small gaps throughout the finished project. At a big co, these small gaps are big deals because customers and managers expect the world, in a startup these gaps are larger simply because the time and resources to make things perfect does not exist, but the implications of making a few enhancements post ship is much more acceptable…almost expected.

As a startup matures and resources expand, the dynamics of accountability change. Of course, quality control processes and more definition of roles and responsibilities are a natural progression, but staying rooted in the fluid transitions between seemingly disjointed tasks and a willingness to tackle issues outside traditional areas of expertise are part of the reason some startups reach success.

Keeping the barriers low for people to move freely between tasks and maintaining an overall culture of “We are All Accountable for Everything” is what enables a company to stay exciting. As leaders of very small companies, facing these issues may seem far off, but once the mojo has left the building it can be very, very difficult to get back. Leading the charge in stretching oneself beyond the traditional roles of Marketing, Business Development, Engineering, and Finance should top of mind for entrepreneurial leaders.

Technorati Tags: startup, entrepreneur, accountability, new skills, leadership

We are pleased to announce that PromoterForce, a pre-launch internet startup company, has been reborn as Rephoria.

re-pho-ri-a (ree-for-eeha)
n. A feeling of intense customer satisfaction, so great it has to be shared with others.

n. A web based application to share great customer experiences, find recommended service providers, create and manage referral programs, and attract new customers.

Best of all, each successful connection is rewarded by a donation to a non-profit organization.

Making The Switch

We decided to make this change preceding our September launch date to better reflect our branding focus on customer satisfaction, and to better align our messaging to our two main users groups:

• Service Providers: personal, small, and medium sized service businesses
• Satisfied Customers: individuals with first hand experienced with a service that recommend it to their friends, family, and colleagues, and earn donation Rewards to suport great non-profits organizations.

New Name - Bright Future

The Rephoria team is hard at work writing beautiful code to create a truly amazing product and is now accepting sign ups to our beta program. If you provide a service of any kind and want to grow your referrals, or if you are a satisfied customer of a great service provider, please sign up for the beta today. We will formally kick off the beta program in September, 2007 and look forward to having you as part of our early user community.

About Rephoria:

Rephoria is an amazingly easy to use application for providers of services of all kinds, for example wedding planning, financial planning, web design, or home remodeling to create and manage custom referral programs and their satisfied customers to refer friends and family members to these stellar services.

Rephoria’s unique Donation Rewards feature rewards successful referrals with a donation to a non-profit organization of the customer’s choice, providing a responsible and socially beneficial method of rewarding satisfied customers for spreading the word about the best services.

Technorati Tags: rephoria, promoterforce, branding, new name, web 2.0, referral marketing, customer satisfaction