I read an article this morning on Entrepreneur.com that reminded me that I’ve strayed from some important basics within my own company.

At Northstar we launch a lot of new marketing initiatives. Sometimes we forget to outline a clear, concise plan before we move forward. That’s marketing 101, but even experienced marketers fall into the trap of overlooking fundamentals.

When I look back, I can see that failing to follow some basic rules of planning has cost us an awful lot.

I thought this was a nice reminder of how you can utilize a simple exercise to make sure that your marketing plan is headed in the right direction.

As Al Lautenslager explains, “Here’s a simple process to creating a marketing plan using just seven sentences”:

Sentence 1: What is the purpose of your marketing?

Sentence 2: Who is your target market?

Sentence 3: What is your niche?

Sentence 4: What are the benefits and competitive advantage?

Sentence 5: What is your identity?

Sentence 6: What tactics, strategies and weapons will you use to carry out your marketing?

Sentence 7: How much money will you spend on your marketing; what’s your marketing budget?

I’d suggest you go and read Al’s entire article, and most importantly, make sure you implement this simple strategy before your next market launch.

Every business likes to boast of their awards and achievements. They should, it’s a good credibility-booster. It can also be a great PR vehicle.

But awards can grow stale and when they do it’s time to put them away forever.

I recently upgraded my life insurance policy and was instructed to visit a Port-O-Medic facility for my physical check-up. (Interesting that their name suggests a mobile service yet I had to go to them.)

After I checked in I sat in the lobby browsing through a 2001 edition of Family Circle waiting to be called in by the nurse. I looked up and noticed a prominently displayed arrangement of award plaques on the wall. As I am always interested in businesses that succeed, I got up and walked over to take a look. They all had a reference to, “Outstanding Branch of the Year”. I was mildly impressed.

But then I noticed the date of the awards: 1992. That’s was 15 years ago!

Immediately, I wondered what’s taken them so long to repeat that accomplishment. I had to wonder what the heck was going on in that branch. It got me a little nervous about what I would find behind the door. That stale award had an instantly negative impact on my view of their business.

So, go ahead and brag about your business accomplishments. But take a look at the dates. If your only accomplishments worth bragging about date back more than a couple years or so I suggest you to two things: First, stop bragging about them and put the plaques and certificates in storage, because now it’s old news. Second, go do something worth bragging about again. It’s about time.

Maybe you’ll create the next YouTube-Like phenomenon. Who knows? No doubt, that would be an incredible accomplishment that a small percentage of entrepreneurs will experience.

Now, for “the rest of us”…perhaps, creating the “next YouTube” doesn’t need to mean exactly that. What if you could duplicate the innovative thinking and methodology of the founders of world-renowned businesses like YouTube–and create your own YouTube-like success.

I’m guessing very few of us need a billion-dollar-hit to define our entrepreneurial success. I’m certain though, that one of the best ways for entrepreneurs to succeed on any level, is to study, observe, and mimic those great, well-known companies who are well documented and in full-view.

They provide great lessons in the way we should approach business. They teach us how to innovate. They teach us how to persevere. They teach us how to think creatively so we can uncover unique solutions to our own complex business challenges.

One of the members of our Northstar Thinktank team recently pointed me to an important article by Preston Gralla of PC World, “25 Websites to Watch”. This is an insightful article because it highlights the businesses who are jockeying to become the “next YouTube”. They’re forging ahead with innovation, usefulness, and fun as their inspiration for what works best in their quest for massive online success.

Can you create your own next YouTube? I don’t know. That depends on how well you learn to apply the lessons of those who are already there.

Check out this great post for more information about this topic:

Clone the Success Story and Make Your Own Success

Building a business is tough. It requires great determination and self-confidence. But there are unseen dangers lurking within both of those necessary ingredients.

Pride, arrogance, and stubbornness often become the siblings of determination and self-confidence.

In 1999 one of the founders of Webvan confidently faced reporters, answering questions about the company’s sweeping vision of home grocery delivery. The company had recently raised a staggering $375 million in an IPO and was valued at over $1 billion. He explained how they would continue to assemble a gigantic infrastructure spanning the U.S.

When reporters began to question “profitability” and “proof of concept”, asking pointed questions about exactly how they planned to ensure that the business would be a success, the founder chastised, “…what you have to understand, is that we are very, very smart…” This was a supreme example of pride, arrogance and stubbornness.

Webvan expanded from the San Francisco Bay area to eight U.S. cities and initiated a $1 billion network of high-tech warehouses. But considering the super-thin margins of the grocery industry, a lack of user adoption or demand, and rabid spending, the company failed to complete it’s proposed 26 city expansion. It closed in 2001, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, putting over 2,000 people out of work and dashing the hopes of thousands of shareholders.

As an entrepreneur, it is vital that you learn to balance determination and self-confidence with a healthy dose of humility and openness. Some of the best direction insight, you will uncover along the way will be the unexpected advice and feedback that will be provided from potential customers, investors, employees, vendors, or friends. Sometimes these are tough facts to face. It’s this advice that might force a change of plan or a painful course correction. But it’s that sort of insight that ultimately makes your business thrive.

Peter Drucker put it this way, “The greatest danger for the new venture is to “know better” than the customer what the product or service is or should be, how it should be bought, and what it should be used for…the new venture needs to be willing to see the unexpected as an opportunity rather than an affront to its expertise.”

Check out this great post for more information about this topic:

Success Starts With Humility

Have you visited Squidoo yet?

If not, you should.

Are you interested in finding a place where you can promote your business, your interest, your passion to a group of people who really want what you’ve got?

Then you’ve got to Squidoo.

By creating a “lens” on Squidoo you can cut through the confusion of search engines and bring interested users to your lens, and leverage the power of referrals and recommendations.

Squidoo replicates the word of mouth phenomenon that works so well in the real world.

So, if you think you’ve got something worth saying. Something that people will want to tell others about…then you need to create your own lens on Squidoo.

It takes about 5 minutes, it’s free, and it’s fun to put together. You’ll increase your profile, traffic, and generate income.

Here’s mine: www.squidoo.com/northstarthinktank/

If you’re serious about creating targeted traffic, this is something you need to do.

Check out these great posts for more information about this topic:

Seth Godin’s Squidoo vs. Google’s Knol: Information Platform Battle 2008
Squidoo Launches SquidBid for Ebay Addicts