Strategy vs tactics is an ongoing conversation with many business owners. I've blogged on strategy vs tactics in a few other posts simply because it's vital to a good growing business:

• strategy vs tactics (example and definition)
• The Art of War Definition

As a recent example of the importance of strategy:

I was coaching Will from Tokyo on Tuesday morning. He's a successful best-selling author and speaker and a 7th Dan in Akido and has done a huge amount of work consulting with many clients. Check his web site at Agili for an interesting site that mixes Mind Mapping, Akido and calligraphy.

Will was the second person to be trained as a Guerilla Marketing coach by Jay Conrad Levinson. Now the interesting thing about this is that Will is open to be coached himself.

The reason?

It's the same one that Gary Halbert used when he was discovered at a Copywriters Seminar For Beginners: If you just pick up one new idea that justifies the cost.

As I said Will has produced an enormous and diverse body of work.

During our coaching session one of the words Will used quite a bit was "focus". He felt he needed more focus in what he was doing.

In business terms to get focus you need strategies.

And as I pointed out to Will once you have an overall strategy you can see what you're doing and whether your tactics help or hinder your strategy.

What Does This Mean To Business Owners?

It means that any tactic (activity) not aimed at delivering the strategy needs to be looked at under a microscope.

If you still believe it's required as a tactic decide whether you can delegate it. Because if you do it yourself the time you spend on that tactic is time you no longer have for another tactic that does deliver your strategy.

One man bands often stay one man bands because they can do everything they need to do themselves. Yet this "doing" is not strategic and they become so busy with stuff that's not core to their business they have less time to improve the business and make it more attractive to customers.

If It's Not Strategic Delegate It

Yet there are a number of ways to get stuff done:

• Get a virtual PA
• Use a telesales company for leads and research
• Use web site developers
• Use ghost writers for books, articles, white papers and blogs

And of course if you want the least expensive way to do things the Internet can provide. So for example these sites can often deliver a project for you very inexpensively:

• www.guru.com
• www.freelance.com
• www.elance.com
• www.pajamanation.com

Projects seem limited only by your imagination. So you can get software, books, articles, web sites, white pages, case studies, advert - almost anything!

The task the apprentices faced this week was another selling one. Sir Alan asked them to go a six countries presentations on 3 of the products they want to export to Britain.

So What Are The Strategic Questions?
The strategic questions I would ask here over all the products before choosing which country's products to sell were:

1) Which are the highest profit making items?
2) Which of those items look to be saleable?
3) Are there any of the items I could use to cross-sell too?
4) Could I sell more than one item to the same buyer?

Which Products Did They Choose To Sell?

The 3 witches, AKA Katie, Naomi and Kristina, wisely picked the 3 Canadian products. Wisely, because they looked as thought they all stood a good chance of selling. Katie led the witches team and Tre "managed" the other team who chose 3 Swedish products.

The Canadian products that the Witches team chose were:

• colourful insoles
• A portable sunray lamp
• A make it yourself rug

The Swedish products that Tre's team chose were:

• an air filter
• organic wheat-filled rag dolls
• vacuum nozzles

The Witches Team Get Stirring

Katie Holmes split her team so that she worked with Naomi rather than Kristian. The Silent Assassin separating herself from her intended victim if things went pear shaped!

Kristina Grimes is used to pharmaceutical products so fastens on the light box as the obvious thing for her to sell. She also cleverly picks up market chemists to go and sell the product to.

Katie and Naomi get a big order for insoles, unsurprisingly as they all seemed convinced they'd buy the things themselves.

Katie spent what seemed like hours asking if people would like to see her rug. To be honest a rug that you pickup split up and reposition sounds like more trouble than it's worth and it's a testament to her perseverance that she sold any. Put it this way I'm not buying one.

Tre And Buddy Simon Get Closer

Tre and Simon really have got awfully close during The Apprentice. You could call them bosom buddies and not be far short of the truth.

One immediate problem Tre had was that he sent Lohit and Jadine back to the house to make calls to get appointments to call on people the following day.

However, when Jadine got back she seemed to spend all her time blubbering because she was missing her children. Get a grip woman, you've managed to be without them for 8 weeks! That's also know as two months where I come from.

That meant Lohit was left to try and book appointments by himself. I don't really think he had any clue at all which companies he should be selling to.

I shared that feeling. After all the organic dolls were a me-too product that actually didn't look very appealing and had no packaging to make it look any more attractive.

The air filter at first glance seemed like the air filter equivalent of The Emperor's New Clothes. That is until you realised that there was a small blue light shining half way up. To improve its sellability if you touched it you seemed to invariably get a shock - an electrostatic one I hope!

And as for vacuum nozzles, good idea but too low a price. Imagine how many they had to sell to make much money with them.

The Apprentices Wandering As Lonely As A Cloud

Because Lohit had made only one appointment Tre and his bud Simon spent the whole day wandering up and down the street trying to find a shop they thought might be interested in what they were selling.

They struggled manfully between shops carrying arm loads of cr** and not really selling much. In addition both Lohit and Jadine seemed completely clueless as to the specifications of the things they were selling. So the team was only firing on 3 out of 4 cylinders.

In the end Tres' team lost by quite a wide margin and because Jadine had ducked out of Tre's briefing and hadn't really contributed she was fired.

Was The Firing Deserved?

In reality Tre had made a complete pigs ear of everything. They all needed to be briefed about the products so that they could go out with confidence to sell. So they should all have gone to the Swedish Trade commission for the briefing. 

In addition my old favourite "strategy" - where was Tre's? Let me guess, on the back of his hand. His choice of products was really uninspired and because the products he chose didn't sell to make enough money to win I would normally have sacked him.

Also Tre had simply wandered up and down town trying to find buyers. He hadn't worked out the best shops to go for beforehand. He simply wasted enormous amounts of time.

That said Jadine was completely out of running on this project. Not being involved in the vital briefing was simply handing her team mates the get out clause if they failed to win.

Lohit and Tre jumped on it as soon as they were brought back into the boardroom for the firing. If Jadine had simply kept herself involved Tre might have gone.

Anyway, Jadine didn't deserve to stay for being surprised that her team mates knifed her in the back with her own dagger.

The sweetest bit was back at the house when they were all waiting to see who got fired. Simon was worried it would be his best mate - Tre. But glory be Tre was saved and Simon and Tre hugged and there was even some sitting on knees involved, but I think we'll now draw the curtain there.

I can't really say very much about this at the moment as I've been asked if I want to be involved with a new start offline business newspaper to write a chunk of the content and to act in an editorial capacity.

The newspaper will pilot in a particular UK region. It will go to selected businesses in that region.

The aim is to have interviews with interesting people: entrepreneurs and celeb business people so readers can see what makes people tick. There'll also be articles on a variety of subjects including...new media and the online world. And of course it will also highlight interesting news about the towns in the region.

I've already talked to one well known businessman (Robert Craven) about doing an interview with him. The Financial Times has called him  "the Entrepreneur Guru."

I'll keep you posted as to what happens as we go along. The first issue is currently planned for September.

I'm beginning to hope that Katie stays until the final 3. She's given so much vitriol to the watching masses and we're eating it up aren't we? 

Luckily this task is right up her street. Or is it?

Sir Alan told them he wanted them to design and sell a trainer. He'd organised a big ad agency to give them the facilities to create and a poster and also a video ad too.

 If you recall last week Ghazal promised Sir Alan that if he made her project manager this week he would see her perform. So he took her at her word and mad her manager of Stealth.

Jadine, who we've all noticed - including Sir Alan, was made manager of Eclipse.

Sir Alan told them that he didn't want Montreux winning adverts, he wanted ones that sold kit. This ties in with my own thoughts on how agencies and brand consultancies create emperor's clothes-type adverts that don't actually sell anything. See my article on whether Your Adverts Get You More Sales.

Before anyone mentions brand awareness...

Do you remember which battery the bunny that keeps on going is advertising? Research found that a large number of people recalled the advert and thought it was for a competing brand.

Anyway, the teams trot off to get their briefing on their trainer and the agency's creative director tell them they need to have a "big idea" to make a winner.

Stealth Gets Jammed

After some time going round in circles the girls decide "image is everything" should be their big idea. 

After more deliberations Kristina puts forward the brand name "JAM". Now please would someone tell me how JAM and "image is everything" tie in?

Katie didn't say a word, in the meeting, but was pretty articulate outside to the camera. She said "Kristina doesn't understand brands or brand strategy."  Hmm.

She made her displeasure at Kristina's choice but didn't point out that as a "global brand consultant" Katie herself would have romped home with this one.

The Gazelle, nominally the project manager, had allowed Kristina to decide what approach they were taking. "Quite clearly" (a common Katie phrase) she was worked on by Katie overnight and came up with "music is everything" just before everybody set off to do posters and video the following morning.

The poster wasn't bad. It needed better copy that tied into the artwork, but I've seen much worse in the real world. The video however was exactly what Sir Alan didn't want. A glossy, pretentious piece of work that didn't spell out the trainer name, why people should buy it or even have any representation of the big idea. Katie defended the video against Sir Alan in the boardroom. Even when he shot it in down in no uncertain terms she still said she liked it.

As the Sugarbabe himself said: He was the client they hadn't delivered what he asked for or needed. Still Katie liked her video.

Yes, you guessed in Stealth lost and the only reason Katie didn't go was because Gazelle was such an appalling project manager. As Sir Alan said he thought she was being "guided" by Katie. Too weak to stay Gazelle got the boot.

Global brand consultant who can't create an exciting brand for a product, even a me-too product? That strikes me as slightly odd. Isn't that exactly what a global brand consultant is used to doing? Creating,as  Sir Alan would say, "The Montreux Award for Tossers."

Eclipse Get The Easy Street

Full marks to Eclipse. They got an interesting concept in "reclaiming the street" and named their trainer "Street".

Of course if Simon is that hip with hip hop/techno he'd know that Klasse Kriminale had produced a song called "Reclaim The Street", it's lyrics are:

The "knight" has sold
The country to McDonalds
You asked how many hamburgers
Were needed for the deal
We don’t count at all
RECLAIM THE STREET
RECLAIM YOUR LIFE
RECLAIM
New shopping center
With a huge movie theater
They’re only new lagers
Come on, let’s have a party
RECLAIM THE STREET
RECLAIM YOUR LIFE
RECLAIM

And of course we all know about the Reclaim The Streets (RTS) organisation that began in the mid '90's and whose aim appears to be to reclaim roads for the pedestrian across the world.

Borrowing Klasse Kriminale's lyric and RTS's tagline reminded me of Tre's attempt to get the team named after one of the companies he worked for. The Street idea was a good idea, how big in the trainer context is debatable.

The graffiti-style lettering for the trainer was ok. But why didn't they go for colour and more instances of street-related words: Cred, Safe, Real and so on.

Simon kept urging them to let him dance. And to be fair the rap he wrote fitted fairly well with the idea so he must have had more chance than the hired actor/dancers. 

I checked out some of the unseen footage and was most impressed with Lohit when he said they were trying to wrap up the video and get it finished before Tre and Simon came back as Tre would try and take over. Which of course he tried to.

And of course Tre spent most of the time looking like he wanted to swear at someone.  Then when the dancing started he was taking flash photos and had to be told to stop several times. Margaret summed it up well by saying,  "he's been very irritating!"

The one thing that completely let them down was the idiot who booked the dancers. I mean none of them danced street, the whole point of getting them. I'm willing to bet the team were near schools who'd have been happy to have a few of their pupils dancing on The Apprentice.  

Was The Firing Deserved 

 Sir Alan summed it up when he said Ghazal was, "All talk and no do."

She proved that during the London Zoo project when she was getting the sweets made. Her team were pretty much acting independently of her.

At the moment it looks as though Ghazal has no obvious ability to get things done or even to understand what needs doing. So she certainly deserved to be fired.

Well here we are just finished week 8. So who do I think is going to be The Apprentice? I'm still looking at Kristina as the best of a bad bunch, although Lohit and Naomi both showed themselves to have more to them than we've seen or heard of them since the show started.

Well maybe not quite. But he's made it clear that he is not going to go on with The Apprentice (USA) with NBC.

Can he take it through his own production company like I suggested?

I think the format has got a little uninteresting for the American public.

This is something the BBC needs to address early on for their version of The Apprentice.

The USA version has the same format of:

• Team set-up
• project manager appointment
• Task allocation
• Task design and delivery
• Boardroom review
• Boardroom - "you're fired" scene
• Rinse and repeat

Here's some thoughts about format changes:

• Put in a one or two individual rounds where all the candidates are competing against each other
• Allow one round where the candidate to be fired is voted on by the public - needs to be early on
• The candidates interview applicants for a job at Amstrad (with their agreement of course!)
• business task simulation that candidates and public can do at the same time
• Review a business and suggest and justify improvements

But don't make losers sleep out in a tent or make them eat bread and water!

Tara Conlan at the Guardian reports that the BBC has agreed another two series of The Apprentice.

Apparently Sir Alan Sugar is also coming back for more. Although why he needs so many well paid staff I'm not too sure! Who cares though because he's been a consistent diamond in the shows so far.

If you're interested in taking part I'm sure the BBC will be more than pleased to hear from you.  Do you fancy yourself as better than the current series 3 crop? And let's face it who doesn't! Rightly or wrongly!

Crikey!

First we have Troubleshooter with Sir John Harvey-Jones and Gerry Robinson. Then we have a few years gap. Then suddenly The Apprentice goes on over in America, we take the format and shoehorn Sir Alan Sugar into The Donald role and voila a triumph.

This sudden apparent interest in business has led to Dragon's Den, Mind Your Business (initially with Duncan Bannatyne) and that awful Sky show with Ruth Badger - the Big Idea. Now there's Teen Tycoon and another Tycoon series (with Peter Jones) called ... Tycoon. And yet another show currently airing on Sky with Ruth badger - although I can't see it because of Virgin Media's stand against Sky's charges.

Anyway, Tycoon really does sound intriguing.

Peter Jones has picked 6 people and set them up in a flat in London where they're working on and in their businesses. Peter Jones has given them £10,000 start-up capital and is issuing further bonuses as they progress from £100,000. He will also close down businesses that he thinks are performing poorly.

It's a 6 week series and start in June and sounds as though it has potential. Competitors include:

• Tom Thurlow(17) - teenage newspaper magnate
• Elizabeth Hackford -  natural fruit and alcoholic drink for women
• Iain Morgan (29) - toy helicopter importer (from China of course!)
• Lauren Pope - clip in extensions made from real hair
• Justin Chieffo - Environmentally friendly carrier bag dispenser
• Helen James and Cathy Caudwell-Todd - gardening clothes

The businesses are currently running and an early leader is Iain Morgan who's already sold 250 of his toy helicopters.

Sabirock guy
Originally uploaded by Marketing Magician.

This is the Sabirock guy. He appears all over Manchester and simply stand there. Is it art? who knows.

There are a few Manchester people commenting about him on BBC Manchester's blog.

He does get a lot of stares though and I suspect more than a few people photograph him with mobiles - like I did.

Apparently his music isn't quite as impressive as his ability to get noticed!

Look to the right hand column and part way down you'll see an orange button that says "XML" on it.

That's the button that allows you to subscribe to get a feed from this blog and get the up to date content whenever I add a new post.

This feed is managed by Feedburner who through my subscribers provide a view of the most popular pages on the blog.

To give you a view of exactly where people are going I'm showing you the top 8 pages in the last 90 days.

The absolute top page viewed is obviously The Power Marketing For Business Growth home page. The number of views it gets is way, way ahead of any other page.

So onto the next 7 most popular pages

1.  The Apprentice - So Bad Sir Alan Fired Two
2.  Do You Make These Mistakes With Your Business Card Too?
3. The Apprentice To Look Out For Is...
4. The Rich Jerk: A Scam Or A Great Product?
5. Is There An Art To Selling Photos?
6. The Apprentice Without Ethics
7. 35 Tips For Marketing Your Blog

As you can see The Apprentice pages are high up in the pages views.

Interestingly enough Feedburner gives the site the subscriber came from. In that analysis I've found that I've had loads come from the following:

1. www.Intuitive.com
2. www.BBC.co.UK
3. www.Toprankblog.com
4. www.blogexplosion.com
5. www.blogs.guardian.co.uk

And lastly, the most searches I've had coming to my blog are Apprentice-related. At the moment searches for Katie Hopkins that land on my blog have soared, whilst those for Tre Azam have dropped.

I was reading Lee Odden's blog comments on his post for 25 tips for marketing your blog and came across Stacy asking why they should pay vast sums to get blogs set up for them.

The simple answer is you don't need to. Having said that if you have the money you should delegate to experts whenever possible. That way you can get the maximum from the time used to make a blog. Rather than you learning by trial and error!

On Lee's most excellent blog I noted a few things that Stacy could do...

Here's my 10 step process to setting up and running your own blog:

10 Vital Steps For Blogging

1. Decide the keywords your audience are likely to search on
2. Vitally, get an offline blog editor because they're an enormous help with formatting, tagging and using offline
3. Schedule your post writing and editing time each week
4. Post regularly (I post 4-5 times per week) using the keywords you've chosen
5. Use relevant pictures
6. When posting don't advertise your company, links to interesting items yes. Requests to buy houses no ;o)
7. Add keywords from the post as tags at the end of the post
8. Use a Ping site to ping multiple blog search engines (including Technorati) to let them know you've a new post
9. Allow comments and respond to them quickly
10. Go and comment on other related blogs

The areas a good blog coach will help you with include the following:

• Whether to use Blogger, Wordpress or Moveable Type
• Whether to host your own blog or go with a free one such as Blogger or Wordpress
• Which widgets to implement, and why
• How Firefox helps bloggers
• How to tap into the Social Media side of the Internet through your blog
• Getting visitor information and analysis
• Which directories to register your blog with

And so on...

Anyway, that lot is going to help you get started. So don't wait to get it right. If you choose the wrong blog name, the wrong niche or even the wrong blog platform it can all be changed.

If you've another vital step to blog effectively let me know so we can share it with everyone.

Someone asked me what the copywriting process is ...

So I'm letting the secret of good copy out of the bag.

These are the vital parts that make up good copy.

1. Familiarise the copywriter with everything you've produced so far: brochures, business cards, web sites, video, adverts, yellow pages you name it
2. Agree the aims for the copy that's being written. Possibly you might want to collect the names and email addresses of everyone who lands on your site. Or maybe you want them to buy something, such as a report or perhaps to buy hosting. Maybe even buy something!
3. Agree which keywords you believe people would use to locate your site
4. Agree the subject and the main keyword(s) for each page that you want copy written for. It's usually best to produce a simple diagram agreeing how the pages might link together.
5. The copywriter goes away and writes the copy, with the occasional call to check a fact or to update on progress
6. Get the initial version of the copy (by this time it's not uncommon for copy to have gone through several drafts)
7. Go through the copy and ask questions. Your friendly copywriter answers them
8. The copywriter then goes away and amends the copy if required
9. You add the copy to your web site

That's it...

Well, actually no not quite.

Because you need to tinker with it to make it perform to its optimum. That is pull in sales or leads.

That means tracking how changing different bits of the site changes response. The most effective way to do this is to use method called the A/B split. The A/B split sends browsers to one or other of two pages that are almost identical and the only change is the bit of copy you're testing.

So as you see there's a bit to it. On the positive side it does mean your copy performs better in achieving its objectives.

The UK Apprentice and Sir Alan Sugar may be riding high on great viewing figures but Donald Trump's version seems to be facing an uncertain future.

NBC's 2007-2008 schedule does not include The Apprentice. A blog post over at absolutely.fa-bulous.us goes into more detail and quotes the NBC Entertainment President who says the Apprentice is not dead yet.

It seems they're waiting to see what the other networks do before deciding.

Worldwide there's still an appetite for The Apprentice shows.

I think Trump and Mark Burnett (the producer) should get together and do their own show and sell it round the world if NBC don't want to do it. After all that's how New Baywatch was born!

Scott Fox has written a useful book for the Internet marketing newbie. If you know about the Internet, affiliates, pay per click, search engine optimisation and email newsletters you're more advanced and would be served better reading Dave Taylor's The Complete Idiot's Guide to Growing Your Business with Google

There is a lot of material both on and off-line in Internet Riches for the aspiring
Internet marketer. Having said that Fox's book is designed to help you learn what many have spent months,even years discovering from the Internet, ebooks and "normal" books.

Internet Riches splits easily into 6 parts:

1. The Unlimited Opportunity of The Internet
2. Developing Your Own e-Business Model
3. Building Your Internet Millionaire e-Business
4. Internet Marketing Secrets For Your e-Business
5. Legal Issues and Admin
6. Graduation - Starting Your Own Dream Business

At the beginning of the book Fox explains the currently almost unlimited potential of the Internet and he introduces three types of Internet-created millionaires:

1. The Efficiency Millionaire
2. The Product Millionaire
3. The Niche Millionaire

Usefully he gives examples of each type so they can be looked up on the Internet.

Efficiency millionaires are those that have made life easier for lots of people. Think of Yahoo and Google, eBay, Amazon & YouTube.

The Product millionaire provides cheaper products, or greater ranges of products and is able to simply dominate the market for their products. Think of Amazon again and Walmart.com

Finally the Niche millionaire is one that sells to a tightly defined niche. Think of weddingfavors.com or bathboats.com

Dotted strategically throughout the book are little "bits" called Internet Millionaire secrets where Fox explains an example in more detail, or gives an aside or explains how to  achieve something on the Internet.

The book continues through the next 4 parts explaining in quite a bit of helpful detail how to create and set-up your own internet business.

This is started with the identification of the best business model specifically for you using the ICICLE method. It leads into buying a domain name and web host service and continues into building a web site with shopping carts.

Fox explains about eBay, giving some of its pluses and minuses. A plus is you get sell cheaply. A minus your brand is swallowed up by the eBay selling machine.

He explains about using Craigslist to find people to do research ,or almost anything else for you.

Arriving at part 4 of the book Fox explains about the importance of search engine optimisation and how email newsletters are vital to your selling efforts.

He explains how pay per click advertising works and also how you can use this with affiliate marketing.
One part of Fox's book that will appeal to newbies are his appendices. They include some service  providers on the internet, how to research on the Internet and also a great glossary of terms.

The other star attraction of the book is that Fox uses a web site to keep the content up to date.

The book does give the grounding for newbies to begin to use the Internet to make money. Will it truly provide them with Internet riches? If they just rely on this book the answer is a simple no.

However, if they use the book as intended it can act as starting blocks in the Internet Millionaire marathon to get you going on raising cash the Internet way.

Today the Times Reports An "Apprentice storm in a tea cup"!

Apparently senior members of the BBC are worried that the Apprentice has become a plug fest. Where any brand used appears to be highlighted lovingly throughout the series.

So as examples we have the Chrysler Grand Voyagers that the Apprentices use as taxis, Moët & Chandon and the helicopter company Rotormotion.

Then of course we have all the firms that The Apprentice uses to either set the tasks in or to reward the winners.

Everyone, and I include the general public, knows that it helps business for them to appear on TV. If it didn't help do you think they would be so keen to assist with The Apprentice?

Maybe, maybe not.

However, I suspect it really helps the producers get interesting tasks because they can call on people in great businesses for their thoughts and their help.

In the end you have to decide whether the programme is a thinly veiled advert for Sugar's Amstrad e@Mailer machine and all the other products shown during the series or rather more interestingly a snapshot for all of us of a life of luxury that the candidates aspire to.

Me?

I hardly even notice the products displayed. In fact until the Times noted that Chrysler cars were used I'd actually thought of the cars as MPV's and that was it.

If others think like me there is no reason for the BBC to get its knickers in a twist.