Marketing can be highly positive where it’s used as a tool to educate people about important issues, like back when we found out that eating a medium size bag of movie popcorn and a soda is equivalent to eating three McDonald’s Quarter Pounders and 12 pats of butter. That’s a good thing to know and educating the movie-popcorn-buying public resulted in immediate changes in how movie popcorn was made. Hurrah marketing.

Or the recent Method cleaning products commercial that educated while making us laugh and squirm, just a little.

Sometimes advertising — mistakenly equated with marketing — IS plain dumb, I’ll give you that. And dumb ads give all advertising, even the clever ads, a bad name.

But sometimes marketing and advertising go way beyond dumb. Take Dace, a local fashion label. Their new anorexic paper doll campaign is sure to be a winner. You can go to their website, download an anorexic paper doll, and then download a set of three fashion plates for your emaciated, famine-ravaged doll to wear.

I’d like a moment with the brilliant minds who ran with this idea and encourage them to give their collective heads a shake. In fact, I sent them an email:

“I’m appalled at your recent anorexic paper doll promotional campaign. Here’s something you may not have considered when you made that choice. Paper dolls are for little girls. Little girls are inundated with images telling them normal size is too big. Little girls grow up into young women who carry those beliefs with them. Are you hoping to reinforce the message?”

Dace blew a really great opportunity to showcase beauty, rather than an impossible beauty standard. I’m pretty disappointed that they haven’t moved beyond that whole illusion and taken a more enlightened stance. Instead, they are using advertising to perpetuate outdated views about beauty.

Two thumbs down for Dace.

If you want to give Dace two thumbs down too, you can email them at info@dace.ca, tell them on Twitter @daceclothing, or let them know via Facebook under “dace clothing.” Oh, and then there’s the old fashioned phone: 1.604.694.2442.

1. There are some things you’ll learn by trial and error and there are some things you can learn from other people’s mistakes. This is good, it saves you time and heartache.
2. Knowledge comes in many different learning formats and flavours. Fantastic, variety is the spice of life.
3. The more you know about your subject matter, the better decisions you’ll be able to make. Excellent, we want to make good decisions, see item 1 above.

Yes, you’ll need to learn stuff. But it may surprise you to know that it doesn’t have to be painful. Here’s how you can make your “lessons” a lot more fun than your high school English teacher ever thought possible:

1. Choose to have a positive attitude and embrace that you don’t know. If you can let go of your (completely illogical) need for perfection and immediate competence, you might be able to lighten up and actually enjoy the process. Take a lesson from the way kids naturally learn when adults don’t get in the way. They explore, immerse themselves, and absorb knowledge while they play.
2. Embrace your inner Curious George. Remember him? The monkey that got into trouble all the time? Well, note to self: he always managed just fine in the end. Take another lesson from kids and embrace your sense of wonder, no matter what the subject matter. Keep asking Why?, Why?, Why? and How come? and watch your innate sense of curiosity begin to wake up and embrace the joy of learning.
3. Embrace the world as your classroom. In fact, get out of the classroom, your office, and the coffee shop altogether. For me, trips to my local farmers markets, artisan craft fairs, and cultural festivals are a great way to learn about consumer trends and see things from a new angle. I am always amazed, delighted, and inspired by the unending creativity I find there. Plus, I get to shop at “school”.
4. Tap into new ideas and perspectives that challenge your usual way of thinking. It’s easy to get stuck doing the same old, same old. But there’s more than one way to do anything. Seek out alternatives that offer you a fresh outlook and a broader perspective. Find a website, a blog, or an alternative magazine and be open to acknowledging if not fully accepting others’ points of view. (TED Talks are a great place to start.)

You can ignore or fight the need to learn but it’s you and your business that will suffer. Instead, embrace learning but do it your way, in the kind of classroom that works for you.

I don’t like when people who’ve only just met me make presumptions. They learn something about me and decide they know all about me. Doesn’t that just bug you?

One of my favourite stories happened when I was in my early 20’s and at a new job. A few weeks in, the gal training me said (word for word), “Wow, you’re blonde and you’re not even dumb!” As it was a new job and I wasn’t past my probation period yet, I refrained from stating the obvious comeback.

The presumptions that woman made were way off the mark, though at least she had the decency to ‘fess up and adjust her views. I am sometimes reminded of that incident when I ask myself what presumptions I’m making about a situation or when I’m looking for a solution that is not immediately obvious.

Don’t make assumptions about your customers! Even if you used to know what they wanted, when was the last time you really nosed around to confirm what your customers need and want NOW? And how could knowing more, NOT help you in making better business and marketing decisions?

The more you know about your customer, the more you can meet their specific needs. And people are willing to pay for solutions.

Learning more might be learning more about your customers, what they like, why they buy, and where they buy. (This is also known as market research.)

Learning more might be brushing up on your marketing knowledge and skills. (See other posts here on the Market Navigators blog.)

Learning more might be connecting to a group of like-minded business people who are willing to meet on a regular basis and share knowledge, resources and ideas. Creating a strong network of people you trust enough to refer to your friends, family and colleagues is also valuable as a resource to learn from and share with.

Learning more might mean taking a yoga or meditation class that allows you to stay more focused and be more effective at the office. It’ll reduce your stress level too, so those little bumps in your day stay molehills rather than becoming mountains.

Learning more is NOT about sitting in a classroom and having flashbacks to high school math or physics class. News flash: Learning can be fun! Expand your definition and embrace ongoing learning as a way of life that will have positive ripples into your business.

I’ve always said I want to learn from my mistakes, but I also want to learn from those of others. It’s time consuming to make all the mistakes myself! Why should I take the long route?

Let go my ego (not Eggo), and get thee to a seminar, workshop or course. One that will make you a better person, a better boss and/or a better business person. Knowledge is money.

Making a small business as well-respected as a larger business has a lot to do with how you think. Thinking big, instead of thinking small gets you in the right mindset to achieve big things.

How seriously you take your business is exactly how seriously others will take your business.

It starts with how you think, which translates into how you behave. And, how you think very subtly affects your body language, which others pick up and are influenced by, even if they aren’t consciously aware of it.

Ever see a small dog send a much larger dog running? Quit wasting time thinking small. BE big.

If you are running a small business you may not have an in-house team, but you can certainly create one.

Operations Team

Finding quality service providers to do work you aren’t good at — or simply don’t enjoy doing — is one way to become bigger than you are. Bookkeepers, tech support, and marketing specialists are all potential members of your business operations team. This makes you more efficient and able to do what you do best, service clients.

Business Development Team

Another way to build a team, one that makes your external reach greater, is to find colleagues you can work hand in hand with, to service larger projects and clients. It might be a wholesale food producer who partners with a delivery company, or a web developer who partners with a graphic designer, or a tech trainer who partners with a software reseller.

In each case, together these partners are able to provide a wider offering of services than each one can on their own. And, working together makes it easier for larger companies to do business with you. Rather then wrangling several suppliers to look after several facets of a project, they have only one point person to deal with.

Looking for ways to build your business development team to present a larger service offering allows you to grow the business, without having to grow the operations side of your business.

One of the fastest ways to undermine your credibility and look like a yahoo (and at the same time turn off prospective clients) is using your home phone for business.

It’s such a rookie mistake! The only argument for this gaffe is that it saves money. But that isn’t actually true. It’ll cost you money if people expected to call a business and get, “Hi, you’ve reached Bob, Beth and Fluffy. We’re probably out walking Fluffy, but leave a message and we’ll call you back. Meow!”

Okay, that’s a bit extreme. But even a basic personal greeting that doesn’t reference the business says, (a) the caller got a wrong number; or (b) “I work from home in my pajamas, when I’m not out walking the dog.”

Either way it makes the “business” sound like a sham, hobby, or other half-assed venture — and that means I’d not to risk my money on it.

Here’s what you can do to improve people’s first impression when you’re connecting on the phone:

1. Get a second phone line. Enough said. They are relatively inexpensive and with a different ring tone for the business line, you won’t accidentally answer after hours.
2. Use a mobile phone for business. You probably have one anyway, why not make a business expense? You can redirect your calls to a land line during the day and screen calls after hours. There are lots of plans and options, find one that works for you.
3. Answer the phone in a professional manner. That means identifying yourself, not saying something inane like “Yeah?” or “What’s up?” both of which scream “unprofessional!”
4. Have a proper voicemail message. Let people know whether they’ve reached the right number, and when they can expect to hear back from you. I don’t leave a message if I’m not sure the right person will get it, and that can mean lost sales.

Many small business owners believe they don’t get bigger contracts because they are small. Not true. In fact, they often don’t land the business because they don’t look professional enough to do the job.

If you want buyers to have confidence in you, ensure your image projects your commitment to doing a professional, quality job.

A great place to start is with email. Here’s the quick list:

1. Use a proper email address. That means creating an email address that aligns with your website URL, not using GMail, Yahoo or your local cable provider’s email account. My motto: If you use a Yahoo email account for business, you ARE a yahoo!
2. Use a proper email signature. Include your name, title, company name, and a phone number where you can be reached. After a couple of replies, it’s okay to shorten things but anyone you email should only have to go back to your latest email to find your phone number, not search through countless emails and/or their contact list.
3. Have a consistent email signature. Everyone in your company should be using the same email signature template, it’s part of your brand. Anything less indicates you may be haphazard in other areas of your business. Is that the impression you want to leave?
4. Be concise in your communications. We’re all busy people, so no one has time to read to the bottom of the page to find out what you want. Spit it out! And keep it brief — there’s way less room for misunderstanding. If you need action, say so up front and if you need more than one action, use a numbered or bullet list.
5. Leave the drama at home. We should all know this, but it bears repeating: if you are fussed about something, think twice before sending a heated memo. Nasty emails leave a very long-lasting bitter taste that’s hard to get over, not to mention they are very easily forwarded far beyond the reach intended.
6. Keep it professional and friendly. But not too friendly. Email IS professional communications these days and it has a less formal, less rigid structure than traditional written correspondence, which is a good thing. Keep in mind, that doesn’t mean that courtesy and decorum are no longer necessary.

Often the next (unnecessary) step is to get all worked up about how to lead and worry about doing it “right”, thereby stopping yourself from ever getting out the gate. I mean, you can’t actually lead if you aren’t moving.

Lighten up!

I see it all the time. People are so worried about unrealistic standards of perfection, they never make it past the back gate. Note to self: all that worry is wasted energy!

First, if you actually believe you’ve created The Perfect Master Plan, it’s obsolete about 37.3 seconds after you launch it because you don’t control the forces that affect your world.

Second, I hate to break it to you but there is no such thing as The Perfect Master Plan. That’s because it is simply not possible to know everything you need to know before you start. Not ever.

Here’s a motto to live by instead: Perfection is the enemy of done.

I had a wise mentor years ago whose sage advice has guided me since I was in my early 20’s: “You make the best decision you can, based on the information you have. When you get new information, you can make new decisions.”

It’s far more important to trust your intuition, creativity and smarts to handle unseen challenges as they come up than it is to try for the perfect plan before you start moving.

Life is messy and the road is bumpy. Embrace your strengths, acknowledge your gaps, and trust yourself – believe that you’ll make the best decision at every turn, with the info you have on hand. Then don’t be afraid to adjust your course when you hit a snag.

THAT is something a top notch leader would do.