Name that year!

So we’re a few days into the New Year and there’s no consensus on how to say what year we’re in.

Are you saying “twenty ten”? Or are you calling it “two thousand ten”?

Back in my English elementary school days, we had to learn important dates by heart. My class could recite in unison that William the Conqueror reigned from ten-eighty six to ten-eighty seven, and that his son William II (or William Rufus for his red hair), ruled from ten-eighty seven to eleven hundred.

We didn’t say “one thousand eighty six,” nor did we say “one thousand one hundred.”

During the last century (weren’t we just there?), we called the years “nineteen eighty nine,” and “nineteen ninety seven,” not “one thousand nine hundred and eighty nine,” and “one thousand nine hundred and ninety seven.”

But we called the last ten years “two thousand one, two thousand two,” etc. Did we collectively blow it and make a ten-year grammatical boo-boo?

Jeff Rubin, founder of National Punctuation Day, says there are no rules on how to say it. “No one has the authority, so pick a style and stick to it,” he says. He continues, “Two thousand ten sounds like a classier way to say it – it’s a bigger number. I can picture an aristocrat in New York, on Park Avenue or in her suite at the Waldorf Astoria, looking down at you through her bifocals, telling you ‘two thousand ten!’ Twenty ten is easier to say, but two thousand ten sounds nicer.”

Defying Rubin’s dictum that no one has the authority to tell us how to say it, a self-appointed expert has let loose his opinion on the question.

What do you think we should call it? Cast your vote in the Make a Comment area below.

Roberta Guise works with experts, small business owners and professionals who want to be extraordinarily visible and sharpen their marketing edge. A small business marketing consultant and speaker, she is the founder of San Francisco-based Guise Marketing & PR. If you'd like to know how to apply these concepts to your situation, call for a free 1/2 hour consultation. 415-979-0611. www.guisemarketing.com

How to kick your competitors in the !@#$%*, nicely

There's a nifty marketing technique for telling the world who you are, what you do, how you're different, who you do it for, and why the heck they should care ("they" being your prospects).

I'm talking of course about positioning, and if you've been in business for more than five minutes you've crafted some kind of a positioning statement for your business.

In their classic book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout tell us that "positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect." Put another way, it's about getting the prospect to think differently about your company.

And it so happens that there's another nifty marketing technique for getting the prospect to think differently about you that's less well known. It's called de-positioning.

Whereas positioning is about getting prospects to trust that your company can make their lives better, de-positioning presents the competition in an unfavorable light while showing that yours is the company to buy from.

It's an advertising game that a few Fortune 500 companies have recently been playing (and having fun with) on TV. Take a look at Apple bashing Microsoft,  Verizon hitting on the iPhone, Apple returning the punches,

 Verizon bullying AT&T, and General Motors taking swipes at Honda .

You don't need to be a big firm to apply the de-positioning principles of big companies when marketing your small business, and it doesn't matter if you don't have bottomless pockets to advertise like them. Instead, you can integrate "us" versus "them" messages into your promotions.

Whether your customers are other businesses or consumers, whether you offer services or own a retail store, you can adapt my de-positioning example to knock the competition without specifically naming them.

To de-position: create a checklist of items that your company does and your competition doesn't. The example I created works for an accounting firm:

You can use this format to compare product features or, as I've shown here, for services.

So when you're ready to redo or create new marketing materials, remember that along with your regular positioning statement, de-positioning can be an effective technique to attract more people to buy from you. And when you do it, play nice.

Roberta Guise works with experts, small business owners and professionals who want to be extraordinarily visible and sharpen their marketing edge. A small business marketing consultant and speaker, she is the founder of San Francisco-based Guise Marketing & PR. If you'd like to know how to apply these concepts to your situation, call for a free 1/2 hour consultation. 415-979-0611. www.guisemarketing.com

Do your services pass the sniff test?

Sometimes it’s little things that trip up a business. Small business owners aren’t aware of seemingly inconsequential defects that affect a customer’s satisfaction, and therefore his/her resistance to buy more or even return.

For example, as a diehard tea drinker I’m often left out in the cold. This is a nation of coffee drinkers, and when I’m at hotels and coffee shops I frequently find a hidden message: leave your tea-loving habit at home.

These places provide a good selection of teas — no issue with that. The problem is with the water.

Too frequently it smells and tastes of coffee. Tea bags — especially herbal — are humble affairs, and I’ve not found one strong enough to overpower coffee-tainted water.

I’m guessing that the water gets run through the same system that filters coffee and you end up with coffee-smelling tea water. I’ve asked for “clean” hot water, but the kitchen is rarely set up to provide it.

The problem is so common that I bring a thermos filled with my favorite tea to meetings. But while that lets me enjoy my tea, it doesn’t fix the underlying problem: the hotel or restaurant is selling a defective service.

Think about the services your customers buy. When was the last time you did a quality check? Are you continuing to deliver on the promise, or has a problem or two crept in? How do you know if quality has inched down? If customers don’t give you unsolicited feedback, I suggest that now and then you ask them how you’re doing. They’ll let you know if you’re lagging.

The best way to get honest feedback is to hire a small business marketing consultant to do your survey. Once you’ve settled on your researcher, let your customers know that you want to ask them a few questions about your services and the value they’re getting. Tell them that they can be completely honest, and that they should expect a call from your interviewer.

When you get the results, look for patterns in the responses. Obvious as this may seem, the response that repeats could be tripping up your business: it could be causing your customers to leave or to buy less from you.

In one customer survey I provided for a client the refrain was: doesn’t communicate well; hard to reach. After getting over the shock that something was seriously wrong, my client quickly set about repairing the two broken issues.

So don’t assume that if you don’t hear about a problem with your services that a problem doesn’t exist. Do the sniff test: if it doesn’t smell right, get out and fix it.

Roberta Guise works with experts, small business owners and professionals who want to be extraordinarily visible and sharpen their marketing edge. A small business marketing consultant and speaker, she is the founder of San Francisco-based Guise Marketing & PR. If you'd like to know how to apply these concepts to your situation, call for a free 1/2 hour consultation. 415-979-0611. www.guisemarketing.com

Make Them Jump

I was mesmerized by a recent performance of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, The Pathétique.

This brilliant piece of work - Tchaikovsky's last, and befitting the title - has a lot of subtle texture to it, with long periods of string instruments that are smooth, brooding and dark.

Except for a few sections: periodically, the music erupts with the loud, crashing of cymbals.

At the performance I attended, when the cymbals explodedthe woman sitting next to me jumped in her seat.

It got her attention.

In marketing, it's your job to get the attention of your prospects and customers.

So take a long hard look at how you "show up" - do you see how people see you?

Could you be lulling people into a trance, or do they pay attention and want to know more (and become more interested in buying from you)?

A few tips for getting more attention:

Look at your logo, Web site, blog, business card, print materials, and other media.

Make sure that your company's personality shines through. Do this through careful selection of colors, images, layout, audio/video, and the written "messages" about you or your company.

Make your writing pop:

• Use the active voice; don't say "the active voice should be used" (which is the passive voice).
• Vary the length of your sentences. Short is strong. It's attention-getting. Balance the short with slightly longer sentences. When a sentence gets much longer, it has a tendency to get more complex, and complexity leads to confusion, which can lead to reader apathy, and you know what that leads to, which is something none of us wants to happen.
• Write one-sentence paragraphs.
• Or keep your paragraphs short. Reading on computer monitors, the eye can scan and read more easily with small text blocks.
• Use words with few syllables. Words with more syllables, or parts, slow the reader down. Fewer parts, faster read.

For a more exhaustive list of ideas for making your identity, brand and messages get anyone's attention, read my article, "How to create knockout marketing materials that get you noticed every time."

Roberta Guise works with experts, small business owners and professionals who want to be extraordinarily visible and sharpen their marketing edge. A marketing consultant and speaker, she's the founder of San Francisco-based Guise Marketing & PR. If you'd like to know how to apply these concepts to your situation, call for a free 1/2 hour consultation. 415-979-0611. www.guisemarketing.com