learn to get better leads for less

Your success depends on qualified leads. But if you had a choice, wouldn't you rather start further down the sales funnel, with prospects who are searching for what you offer (or would be, if they knew about you)? You can, if you know how to find them.

In this straightforward 2-hour seminar we'll share today's most effective techniques for generating high quality leads -- and show you how you can shave 20%, 30% or even more off your per-lead costs, too -- by showing you:

• How to learn what your prospects are searching for, and
• Where to look for them.

Understanding how to refine these critical steps will help ensure the right customers find you, and increase the odds that they'll choose you over your competitors. That's smarter lead generation! 

In addition to giving you clear, actionable ways to improve your approach, we'll be sure to answer your questions on the latest "buzz" strategies from paid search to social media for business. Plus, we'll give one lucky participant a live "makeover."

March 17, 10am-Noon, $25. Please register on Eventbrite, as seating is limited.

A sampling of client testimonials about your presenters

Read reviews of a recent presentation from Spotlight at Raleigh Entrepreneurs: http://www.meetup.com/RaleighEntrepreneur/events/15749928/

"Pugal Natesan is amazing with his professionalism that has helped 1st Choice Cabinetry in every aspect of doing business. His knowledge of google is outstanding, his ideas of giveaways, games and targeting a certain market of buyers is so on key to todays market. He is always available and guiding us in the right direction to grow 1st Choice's Business. He is a very valuable player." Nancy Latz, MIRM, Director of Sales & Marketing, 1st Choice Cabinetry

If you arrived at this website through a job posting on Monster.com please go back & flag the posting as fraudulent. There are no job openings & I did not post any ads on Monster. Someone is using my company name & website without permission and the ads are fraudulent. Thank you & sorry for the inconvienence.

Do you want to grow your business more profitably?  Break through the pack?

It takes more than a pretty website or masses of cold leads: You need to attract your IDEAL clients, one at a time, and set up systems that help make keeping them simple.  If that's what you want, then "step into the Spotlight!" 

Spotlight Creative Group is a nimble team of business and marketing consultants and online marketing specialists with a passion for helping companies grow by strengthening their customer relationships. We do it by integrating irresistible branding with measurably-effective marketing and simple systems designed to fit your business situation—all of which just happens to be the best way to squeeze the most out of your budget, too!

As a full-service branding and marketing agency, Spotlight Creative Group delivers the strategies, creativity and skill necessary to help you achieve business growth. (While we assemble a testimonial video, you can still check out some feedback on LinkedIn.)

But enough about us... we'd much rather hear about you -- shoot us an email, give us a call, or visit our Vibrant Thinking blog page and add to the conversations on business growth, marketing, and branding.

*  *  *  *

Click here to see our client list and links to some of our website work.

Your company is writing its living story every day. It’s as distinct as a fingerprint. Your branding is how it takes shape to the world. And, by accident or design, it’s very likely a major part of whatever level of success you’ve achieved to date. Is yours irresistible, or humdrum? 

Once you have a compelling look and feel, however, the real work begins.

To be most effective, the way your branding takes shape needs to extend beyond your logo, marketing materials or packaging.  It's important that your brand essence be integrated into every aspect of your business, from product development to customer service, and finance to sales. Why? For starters:

• Customers will connect with your company in myriad ways, and will be evaluating your authenticity at each intersection. Letting them down erodes trust, making them more vulnerable to competitive appeals.
• Integration is typically smart finance, as all your moving parts are supporting the same endeavors.
• You're in a stronger position for innovation when all your team is involved and on the same page in supporting your brand.

So as you're guiding your small business to its next breakthrough stage of growth, consider every customer "touchpoint," (any place that your customers come in contact with any part, product or person related to your company), look carefully at every story that can slip out from you, your employees, press or satisfied or dissatisfied customers... all of this relates to your brand. And do what you can to make the story unified, authentic and irresistible to your best customers. 

Next, read about the power of Customer-Focused Innovation...

• Email Wendy directly at wendyh@spotlightcreativegroup.com.
• Did you attend the meeting? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.
• Stay tuned by signing up for our e-mail newsletter, starting in Febuary.

At Spotlight Creative Group, one of our great joys is to throw the Spotlight on your story—perhaps a new chapter in your corporate life, or a new product or service launch—in ways that make you irresistible to your target audience. Naturally drawn to the investigative work that has us delving into the day-to-day life of your growing business and your market, we listen hard, do our homework and distill the truths (spoken and unspoken) into your clearest essence—then bring your story to life, helping focus it in ways that integrate throughout your business.

Who are our Business & Marketing Partners?

These local partners, leaders in their disciplines, share our approach to marketing, business growth and customer relationship-building, and we enjoy partnering with them to help our clients succeed faster, better, and with less waste of both time and money.

• Alex Ferguson, Epic Realm Productions: video and online video marketing
• Pugal Natesan, WSI: online marketing
• Jerry Piercy, The Growth Coach: strategic planning and sales training
• Mike Sink, Advi Coach: strategic planning and project management

or Brand Essence Articulation Method

What is BEAM?

The Spotlight Creative Group B.E.A.M. is a step-by-step process of investigation that helps uncover the essence of your brand, pinpoint what makes you irresistible to your best customers, identify key gaps, and provides the foundation for a branding, strategy and marketing program that supports sustainable business growth. 

What’s involved with BEAM?

BEAM requires that we: listen actively; gather knowledge from you, your team and your customers; distill the insights; and put the learning into action.

We pay attention to key areas including:

• Business & Team: We interview the owner/management team to clarify your business model and structure, what drives your team, your culture and values, and what gaps may need to be bridged. You’ll never find a generic survey to fill out, though we do have our own guide to ensure nothing gets forgotten.
• Customer: Examining your customer contact points, customer data (in some cases, this means first assembling the customer data), and looking at customer segmentation to understand audience dynamics. We’re frequently able to spot opportunities that you may be too close to see clearly;
• Competitive: While we’re not fans of reactive branding and marketing, understanding your take on your competitive situation, and adding our own take on it, helps minimize unpleasant surprises.

What is the result?

Overall, your company has tools to help it be more effective, efficient, sustainable and growing. You'll have a more compelling, distinctive look, tone, image and personality, combined with actionable steps you can take to ensure your branding and marketing are based on an integrated and authentic view of your company. Typically, innovative business strategies and tactics evolve from the process as well.  A powerful trio! 

Give us a call 919-817-8141 today to put the Spotlight BEAM to work for you.

Most of our clients are folks who have some business experience under their belts, and know a thing or two about launching a successful small business.  Many have worked at large companies too.  But regardless of background, moving from a small organization of 1-2 people to 5, 10, or 20 is a major shift for management, cash flow, manufacturing, marketing... and sometimes customers, too. Do you remember the 5 Ps? (Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance). Never truer than now.

We've learned that certain key principles, when woven into an expanding company's everyday business operations and strategies, help bridge the gap between small, often family-like ventures and larger, compartmentalized ones.  We've started out with two, Irresistible Brands and Customer-FOcused Innovation; watch for more... Our Vibrant Minds section is where we and other talented business minds will actively explore growth principes and highlight others' successes.

One theme you'll see repeated is finding ways to integrate the various arms of your operation. It's easy when you're small, but as you grow it gets more difficult unless you take special care to ensure the people, processes and systems all support that intention.  Integration supports irresistible branding, promotes customer-focused innovation... and helps you operate more effectively too.

We focus on small businesses that are in growth mode. We help them succeed by clarifying and communicating the aspects of their products and services that attract customers the most -- and differentiating themselves from their competition. Client appreciate that we help them stay focused, and successful, as they add products, services, staff and customers. Our specific capabilities include:  

I. For Achieving Differentiation: Brand Positioning & Design, including

• Capturing your brand's essence in a simple clear statement to guide internal and outsourced resources
• Distinctive logo design
• Naming your Business, product and/or service
• Tagline development
• Business identity materials (business cards, letterhead, signage etc.)
• Comprehensive brand guide, to help ensure employees, vendors and partners all maintain brand harmony

II. For Successful Customer Attraction: Online & Offline Marketing, including:

• Corporate websites; E-tail store sites
• High impact landing pages
• Lead-generating web banners
• Email & newsletter marketing
• Search Engine Optimization -- in-site and off-site optimization, strategic link building, social media
• Search Engine Marketing -- pay-per-click, network media buys, local and mobile
• Print Advertising
• Brochures & Rack Cards
• Direct Mail
• Photography and videography of people, products and places

III. For Developing & Maintaining Relationships: Customer & Prospect Interactivity Tools, including:

• Database development & management, segmentation, analysis & CRM
• Social media & loyalty programs

Clients, past & present

Here is a sampling of the many clients we've been privileged to help in recent years. Of course we'd be proud to share our identity, print and online and offline advertising portfolio with you in person too, of course:

We primarily serve the greater Raleigh NC area with a focus on growing businesses.

Good enterprises solve customer needs and wants. Great enterprises reshape customers’ perceptions of what’s possible.

Think of companies like Amazon.com, Apple Computers, Starbucks, Zappos.com (or, for the matter, the good ole U.S. of A., on a larger scale). They have mastered customer focus and put innovation at the heart of their business. How about you?

There’s a pretty clear continuum regarding businesses and their customers:

• Phase 1: Just get me more of them!
• Phase 2: Wait… let’s focus on winning those customers who spend the most, comes back most often, and/or refer us to their associates (they pay off best in both the short- and long-term financials).
• Phase 3: Let’s develop compelling messaging strategies to address the needs and wants of our different customer groups --that will help improve customer acquisition.
• Phase 4: Now let’s develop products and services based on what we know about their behaviors--that's really going to help improve customer retention.  

• Expand and integrate your research approach so you acquire and share an in-depth understanding of your customer, how they connect to your business and other organizations they like and dislike, how you fit into their personal stories (and in what ways you don’t), and similar details.
• Integrate your brand internally by connecting your teams (marketing, research, product development, finance, sales) so they share knowledge and insight, not just data.
• Ask new questions and get new thinking, so your leaders are able to see the status quo in new ways.
• Make calculated risk taking a regular part of your business plan.

As a business person, you know that finding the secret to customer targeting, media selection, pricing, and messaging can feel like a mystery. At Spotlight we love to help businesses succeed by combining our “sleuthing” talents with the right “storytelling” to create an irresistible brand.

How? We start by asking the right questions (often in new ways), listening hard to what's said and what's not, and doing our homework .  It goes something like this:

#1: Question, observe, assess. We dig deep to understand what makes your business unique. Just as a fingerprint is unique to you, and you unconsciously leave it everywhere you go, your brand essence is already there and having an effect – but is it clear and compelling, or blurry? Our B.E.A.M. process provides a proven, step-by-step guide for the brand essence investigation.

#2: Develop a motivating “title” (or brand essence statement). Capturing each client’s brand essence in a single compelling phrase is critical. It’s who you are. Your brand essence statement encapsulates your story in a few effective words, guiding anyone supporting the company’s operations. It is distinct from the tagline, which connects businesses to customers.

#3: Create a compelling “cover” (a.k.a. a compelling brand identity). The old motto notwithstanding, customers will, in fact, judge you by your cover, because it's their first defense against the millions of messages they receive every day. Irresistible brands have a human dimension; our focus in branding your business is on creating an irresistible and authentic connection between you and your audience.

#4: Take action. Knowing the story, and even telling it well, isn’t enough to create results. You need to spread the word, engage your target customers, and reinforce who you are in every customer interaction -- and with every employee interaction as well. At Spotlight we help you build integrated marketing plans and put them into action in the right media so you get more of the right customers, at the right pace and price, and those customers STICK.

Are you preparing the next chapter in your story? Is it time for you to become irresistible?

If you’re ready to step boldly into the spotlight, we can help. Call us at 919-817-8141, today.