Good, Fast, Cheap


On the inside of one of our garage doors, in black permanent marker, the previous owner - a mechanic and race car driver - wrote:
good
fast
cheap
pick 2!

I know Mike was talking about cars but this trifecta has implications for other (small business type) things, like marketing, product development, project management, and problem solving.

Let's say you can get a good website built fast; you shouldn't expect it to be cheap. If it's fast and cheap, don't expect quality, and so on. If you think you're getting all three, beware! Economics - and people - don't work like that.

Click to Tweet this Article

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

OK, so you might need 34 letters to say "I feel good!" in some circumstances. But I can't ever imagine needing 340 words to say "expect glitches". A client of mine received this email below from an online service provider. No, you won't want to read it anymore than she did. Want to know the short version? Scroll down. Salesforce.com is committed to providing a highly available service to our customers. We are committed to continued investments to increase the overall uptime of our service, to deliver optimal value to our customers. With that, we are excited to announce a major advancement in this area for our major releases, effective with our Spring '12 release. W hat is the change? We are happy to inform you that we are improving our major release upgrade process. This improvement means that your organization will be generally available during our major release upgrade windows. Note: The term "Generally Available" means that we are...
Keep reading »

Crello is Not Just Another Pretty Graphics Tool

Image
screenshot of Crello home page Just when I thought I didn't need another graphics tool, along came Crello ... yesterday. It's brand new (and I haven't been able to break it yet). If you're frustrated with trying to use Canva , this might be the solution for you. The interface is very much like Canva, yet Crello has veered away in the right places. I've always found the way Canva handles images as backgrounds and layers to be awkward; Crello takes a more simplistic approach. Crello has 6,000+ free templates and 10,000+ free design elements! I know that's going to be exciting to many besides me. Crello lacks some of my favourite Canva features, especially magic resize. But its ease of use and more intuitive interface is winning me over. I know I'll be exploring those 6000+ templates for many many more hours to come. For more info about Crello's functionality, read this press release . Or pop over to Crello.com and jump right in. Have fun, it...
Keep reading »

Guest Post: 10 Ways to Figure out What to Write on Your Blog When You Don’t Know What to Write on Your Blog

Image
Frances Leary When I saw this blog post by Frances Leary, I immediately asked her if I could share it with you. Frances is owner of Wired Flare , specializing in SEO, Internet Marketing & Social Media for franchises and organizations in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. While she's blogging about blogging, all of these tips below work for newsletters as well... We've all been there. Complete brain freeze.  The only problem? You need, need, need to get this blog article out STAT. You've already pushed it to the last minute, and you’re down to the wire. It simply can’t wait.  So you’re in a predicament. What do you do?  Truth be told, we often find ourselves in this predicament, and when we’re in it, these are some of the things we do…hopefully they can be a starting place for you, too. Tell a success story – Think of moments big or small that have happened in your business recently that can be a celebration. Did a client give you a pat on the back? Can you gi...
Keep reading »

Graphic Solutions

Image
Copyright and graphics are topics that come up in our business all the time. When you are using images on your website, blog or in your newsletter, you need to ensure they are copyright free or you have paid the copyright owner for use. You should not search Google images and take any image that pops up. Google searches for all images and does not filter out any by copyright status. There are several free sites for images and several more that are reasonably priced under $10. I recommend that you take some time to search for images that are not overused on the internet. You will come to recognize those that are most popular. Some of the places you can find free images are: Morguefile - a lot of free images, some very artsy, some not great quality but lots of quality there for those who are willing to browse Microsoft Office clipart - images that come up in that search are copyright free Unprofound - created and run by designers, this site has the very cool feature of s...
Keep reading »

The Right Conditions for Success

Image
You don’t leave on a road trip in the middle of a snow storm. And you don’t go on vacation to the Caribbean in August. You wait for the right conditions. In fact, you don’t really wait for the right conditions, you plan around them. It’s easy to forget this in our excitement to launch new business initiatives. One day I spent a couple of hours on the phone coaching someone about newsletters, including how important the timing is . I was still working late that night when I received her first newsletter at 1am. (1am is not a good time to send a newsletter - unless your subscribers are on the other side of the world.) Set yourself up for success. If you've spent a lot of time, effort and money working on a project, make sure you also place the same importance on the details of your launch . Plan to take advantage of the best conditions: timing, availability of resources and people, weather, geography, etc. “Haste makes waste.” Someone I worked with used to say this and i...
Keep reading »

Repurpose Articles into Infographics

Image
I'm a big fan of repurposing content for two reasons: It can save me time . People have different ways of learning. Different formats for the same material will ensure a broader reach. Summing up a past article in a graphical format is a great way to appeal to a different audience. Pick an article that can be summed up into bullet points. Then turn those bullet points into a graphical format. With the proliferation of infographics, we now have lots of choices of apps to make it easy for us to create our own: infogr.am piktochart.com Hubspot’s templates canva.com Here are a few examples of our own infographics: Elements of eNewsletter Success  (used Hubspot's templates) 9 Ways to Personalize Your Newsletter  (used Canva) 4 Ways to Constantly Grow Your List  (used Canva) In her article Marketing with Infographics , Janet Slack suggested these other creative uses for infographics: Share testimonials Showcase your expertise Share customer statistics...
Keep reading »

The Speed of eMail

Image
When I sent out my last newsletter, almost 400 people opened it in the first 2 hours. If you need to reach a lot of people fast and at the same time, email is definitely the medium of choice. For one thing, sending an email is faster and easier than phoning 400 people. (My jaw just clenched in horror!) And broadcasting a tweet or Facebook post is not the same as putting a message in someone’s inbox; it’s hit or miss. Direct mail is costly and the results are minimal. Some say the ROI on email marketing is over $40 for every $1 spent. I haven’t gotten those results for myself (yet) but I have seen some very quantifiable successes . For example, it’s easy to calculate your ROI when selling event tickets. Let's say you spend $300 to sell $6000 worth of tickets, which is a pretty darn good return. More to the point, consider if - and how - you’ll sell all those tickets if not by email. One of the big benefits of email over other options - the phone, social media, snail ...
Keep reading »

What is Content?

Image
The simple answer is that content is everything you put out into the world. Your content represents you, your business and your brand to everyone that encounters it , both current and potential customers. Your content determines your online presence. It includes all the text and images on your website, your social media accounts and every email you send. So, why do you need a content strategy? to keep your message consistent across all platforms to ensure the clarity of your message to provide the most value you can offer to current clients to attract new clients to save you time! Yes, a content strategy can accomplish all of these things. It is well worth the time to develop your strategy, commit the time, and follow through. Originally published in  Work Better, Not Harder on January 22, 2014 Click to Tweet this Article
Keep reading »

Trying to Unsubscribe

Image
We often talk about the importance of making it easy to unsubscribe. I thought I would share with you my recent experience demonstrating the frustration that can occur when it is not. I decided to unsubscribe from Air Canada's onAir newsletter several issues ago. When my issue arrived, I clicked to unsubscribe and landed on a 'No Update' error page. No big deal, the internet can be glitchy, I would just do it the next issue. This went on for 4 or 5 issues at which point, I started to feel like they were sending me to the error page on purpose. I was getting a little hot under the collar. Last week, on a bad day for me, the current issue arrived and I landed on the same error page. I then went back to the newsletter and clicked the "contact us" link which took me to a form on their website called 'Let Us Know'. It was a lengthy form and the first section was my contact information in which I had to fill out my address, email, phone number and ...
Keep reading »

Resist the Impulse

Image
Every day I’m faced with opportunities to offer a deal. I receive calls asking me to invest in print ads. I can easily tweet a deal or insert it in our newsletter. I can offer an added bonus. I can low-ball requests for quotes. It would be like standing up and waving my arms and yelling, “Look over here. Have I got a deal for you!” It would be so easy to do. Every day I resist the impulse. Easy is not always better. A recent article by Bernadette Jiwa at The Story of Telling reminded me why. Take a minute to read it . It’s short, I promise. You need to remember why, too, and she’s a much better writer than I am. The ending is perfect: “…build your brand around being chosen on purpose.” Photo:  elvissa  / Flickr Click to Tweet this Article
Keep reading »