Popular Articles

Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

read more
by Beth Ewen
October – November 2012

Related Article

Real estate

Read more

How to Pick a Domain Name

Choose carefully when crafting domain name

WHAT TYPE OF CONTENT do you expect to find on www.therapistfinder.com? A site dedicated to finding rapists or therapists?

This example proves that choosing a poor Internet domain name can be disastrous to your business and its image. This article provides tips for choosing a good domain name and avoiding some of the common pitfalls for choosing a poor one.

People often confuse domain names with Web sites, which are two separate and distinct items. A domain name acts as an address for your company’s site, and your company’s site consists of the marketing content relating to your business. You need both a domain name and a Web site to effectively market your business on the Internet.

Domain names consist of a keyword, such as upsizemag, and an extension, such as dot-com. Your first task in picking a domain is to determine your keyword.

Generally, your keyword reflects your company’s name and the content you will display on your site. In some situations, your keyword may reflect your company’s slogan, trademark or the generic product or service your company provides.

If your company’s name is difficult to spell or is long, you may consider using an acronym or abbreviation. Also ensure your keyword does not have unwanted alternative meanings.

Are you infringing?
 One of the common pitfalls for small businesses is picking a domain name that infringes upon another company’s intellectual property rights, such as trademarks. Small businesses that operate only in a limited geographic area without an Internet presence usually do not incur scrutiny from other businesses that have identical or similar domain names. However, after expanding into the Internet, small businesses may attract legal challenges from larger, more established companies that have similar domain names or trademarks.

At a minimum, small businesses should be vigilant to minimize their exposure to unnecessary litigation. While it is recommended to obtain a legal opinion from an experienced trademark attorney regarding your choice of domain name, at a minimum, small businesses should perform rudimentary searches online for other businesses that may have similar domain names or trademarks.

Do homework before joining ‘green’ revolution

There are risks in implementing and publicizing green, or environmentally friendly, policies. A company should do its homework before rushing on the growing technological and marketing trend. The risks can be managed in many ways including:

  • Maintaining insurance and bonds to cover liabilities.
  • Reviewing agreements regarding green facilities or practices, including service contracts, leases, management policies and procedures for compliance.
  • Assessing public disclosures and advertisements for representations regarding green issues.
  • Reviewing a business’s carbon footprint.
  • Analyzing the terms used in corporate green policies to assure the policies are precise and not ambiguous, overbroad or vague.
  • Reviewing and critically examining how the company interprets its green policy and monitors its implementation.
  • Following the FTC’s green guides and similar standards for guidance about communicating claims about green products, services or facilities.
  • Implementing compliance programs and protocols to ensure company facilities, operations and communications comply with the organization’s green policies.
  • Keeping accurate records and establishing monitoring protocols to substantiate green claims, maintain the green efforts and ensure that green marketing claims are accurate.

Less may be more for investors seek patents

How can an inventor minimize the risks of a patent application that discloses too much? The inventor should ask questions about why the patent was drafted the way it was. Such a discussion can help focus the application and can lead to changes that will minimize the risk of too much disclosure.

Of course, there are limits to how little a patent application can and should say. And there can be good reasons why a patent drafter might say more than is required by statute. But the indicators below show that a patent has been drafted with an eye toward enforcement.

The patent is well-organized, clear, concise and focused on what the patentee considers to be new.
Patents that are ambiguous are not necessarily broader than patents with a more clearly defined scope (for example, a hot summer day is more ambiguous and may be narrower than 70 degrees to 125 degrees F). Ambiguity/ uncertainty in the scope of coverage can make the patent difficult to enforce as there will be many reasonable competing views regarding the scope of the patent.

Arguments about patentability are omitted. As a general rule, text and figures that go beyond the statutory requirements will do more harm than good. There is no legal requirement to include reasons why the invention is patentable in the patent itself. Eventually, the patent applicant will have to convince an examiner that the invention is patentable. But the prior art the examiner cites may be very different from the prior art presumed in the application.

Arguments in favor of patentability are best deferred until prosecution of the patent, when the arguments against patentability have been clearly set forth by the examiner. Arguing patentability in the application, before seeing the examiner’s rejection, is like shooting a gun in the dark.

Everything that is new and valuable as shown in the figures and described in the text is covered by the claims. As discussed above, variations on the invention shown and described in the specifications that are not claimed should raise a red flag, as they may wind up limiting claim scope.

There are exceptions to the general comments above. But savvy inventors should ask more questions, not fewer, when presented with a long draft application, and challenge the drafter to include less rather than more.

Choose consultants, and other advisers, with brand in mind

Distinguishing value in business-to-business relationships is difficult, but not impossible.
Your organization should be unique to your target market, and your professional services relationships should be unique to you. Accepting generic at any stage in your value chain will impact your whole product or service offering.

Business-to-business relationships, particularly those you rely on to build your business, must communicate similar value.
Generally there are three different value propositions. Determining if you are a thought leader, price follower or market follower can provide strategic focus to maintain or upgrade your value to partners, clients and prospects.

Rather than striving for a different value, leveraging who you are is critical to your success strategy and market confidence.

Out in front

Thought leaders include such firms as Apple and Target. They don’t follow trends or offer the lowest prices. They create the trends and build the buzz around their brand through proprietary product lines, shopping experiences and a clearly defined audience.

If you identify your organization as a thought leader you should seek professional services with similar values. Search out firms that consider knowledge their primary strength, ones that invest in specialized skills or offer a depth of service beyond the expected. These firms will work to create value beyond their role and suggest other significant relationships and opportunities for you.

These firms will ask questions you may not want to answer: succession planning, exit strategy, buy/sell agreements, business valuation, differentiation and diversification, disaster planning and so on.

If you are progressive in your market you should find advisers that are progressive in theirs.

Margin focus

If you are a price leader, look toward advisory services from the thought leaders. Price leaders analyze their processes to one-tenth of 1 percent and are well suited to make an upfront investment with accounting, banking, investment and legal relationships. Their margins are planned, and far too thin, to risk a reactive strategy.

If you are a price follower, your best-fit professional services will match your price strategy because your model is intent on cutting the fat. Potentially this space is filled by early stage, late-to-market businesses. They have some catching up to do, capital is at a premium and potentially they are not getting market value for their work. Or they are focused on cash exchange and not re-investment.