Elizabeth, Author at Yellow Dog Consulting

5 Marketing Tips You Need this Week

02.03.2016 by Elizabeth // Leave a Comment

I’ve been talking to a lot of small business owners this week about what they need to do to have better marketing systems in place for the year. Here’s a few things I kept saying…

A CRM – YES, you need a database. NO Outlook isn’t a database. I use Zoho for my CRM – I love it because it integrates easily with MailChimp and I can assign tasks and follow up for people so I don’t have to remember to follow up, Zoho will tell me to. Everyone’s talking about Insightly this week too – I don’t care what CRM you use, I care that you have one AND use it.
Follow Up – why aren’t you getting new business? Because you never follow up with people. For every networking event you attend schedule a half hour the next day to do all the follow up you promised you’d do. I send the follow up notes, make the calls, add people to Zoho, and connect with them on LinkedIn. It’s not hard, it’s a little time consuming, but it totally pays off. I’ve had 4 calls this week that prove it.
Newsletter – I’m not really going to preach on this because I do too often, but once a month is great. Don’t over think it, just give me a tip or two or three, make it look clean/pretty/whatever and be easy to read. Tell you what – I’ll do a newsletter review of your current newsletter for FREE – just email it to me.
Networking – Oh your pipeline is empty? Yeah, mine wasn’t great either. Q4 sucked. But back up on the horse and away we go. Get out of your house and go physically network with other people. My goal this year? 1 event a week and 1 1:1 a week. My pipeline is filling up…
It Takes Time – Oh you’ve been going to that networking group for 3 months and haven’t gotten business yet? Yeah, that happens. Make sure you’re tweaking your message, maybe it’s not resonating. Give away a raffle item – especially if people choose what items they want to win, then you know you’re on to something by the amount of tickets for your item. Do your follow up. Make the coffee dates, make sure you’re maximizing the opportunities within the organization. It’s really yours to lose. But yeah, it takes time.

January Pop Culture Roundup!

01.29.2016 by Elizabeth // Leave a Comment

angie tribeca! The new year means new pop culture. But January usually means a quieter TV schedule to start so time to catch up and binge on pop culture. Here’s what I’ve been up to – make sure to share your latest pop culture obsessions in the comments!

Reading

If you caught my latest newsletter you know that I’ve recently inherited a bazillion comics. I also had a chance to get caught up on comics in the past couple of weeks…

The Walking Dead issue 150 arrived this month and it did NOT disappoint! The TV show this season hasn’t been great, but the comic is MORE than making up for it!

Lazarus – I also finally caught up on this comic and really like where the story is going. It’s such an interesting story and I’m bummed they’re taking a couple of months off before they start the next story arc.

Because I’m an Oregonian I’ve been reading a lot of Les Zaitz’s articles on the Oregon standoff stuff in Malheur National Wildlife Refugee. Obviously this is my favorite piece on the situation.

And this story from Dave Holmes told in Twitter form is so hilarious!

Watching

Making a Murderer – Yes, like the rest of America I spent my holidays watching this incredibly fascinating documentary series on Netflix. I want to say that “I can’t believe this happens in America” but I can. I’ll continue to follow this story for the next few years I’m sure…

Angie Tribeca – the new TBS series with Rashida Jones was marathoned a couple weeks ago so I recorded it. They are so weird and funny and quirky – I laugh way too much at stupid stuff but man it’s a fun show! Bill Murray showed up in an episode that was one of the more entertaining roles I’ve ever seen him in.

I’m happy to have New Girl back this season, and even though the first episode was a little slow that second and third episodes did NOT disappoint. Also my husband informing me that his office has a douchebag jar makes me like his co-workers a LOT more all of a sudden (not that I didn’t already of course…)

Is it okay that I didn’t like the Sherlock Christmas special at all? Maybe if I had more recently watched the previous season I would have liked it more (and remembered what had happened), but it was a lot to remember and it was odd. I wasn’t a fan sadly.

London Spy – luckily BBC America is here to save the winter blues – this new series I heard about from the Channel 33 podcast guys is AWESOME. I watched the pilot and can’t wait for the 2nd episode this week! It’s a great mystery and I have a feeling a lot of good twists and turns are coming.

I have the new season of X-Files on my DVR and I watched the pilot of Colony and really liked it so hoping to get caught up with that shortly! Top Chef is back and I am loving this season in California! It’s always great to see a northwest chef on the show, and there’s some good folks on this season!

Listening

I’ll continue to sing the praises of Bill Simmons Channel 33 podcast – The Watch is a can’t miss podcast for me and Andy Greenwald’s recent interview with Michael Schur (creator of my favorite show – Parks & Rec) was fantastic!

Serial is back! This season is slower than last and I’m really bummed they went to every other week, BUT I understand why – and the story is still nuts. This week’s episode about the woman in Oregon is kind of crazy. I loved it!

My guilty pleasure is Real Housewives in many of their forms, but currently it’s Beverly Hills (FYI – not loving Potomac) – and discovering Bitch Sesh has been a HUGE joy in my podcast listening life. Two comedians and a friend talk about the latest episode of RHOBH. They also buy products created by housewives of all the shows and try them on air. It’s really fantastic. In a super low brow kind of way…

What’s your current pop culture obsession? Anything new and great I should be checking out?