A few years ago I signed up for Pilates classes to get in shape and to build my core.  I finally quit when my flaky instructor showed up on the first day and then missed a few classes.  She had a great core, but a bad planning system.

In a recent blog post, New Marketing Labs, LLC president Chris Brogan stresses the need to develop a strong core. In this case he’s referring to your database, your email marketing, and some kind of community of prospects. He describes his four core tools of marketing.

Database – Your client and prospect list, your database, is the base of everything. If you don’t know who your customers are, who your next customers will be, then that’s where you start. Brogan uses BatchBook by BatchBlue for his contact database.  Constant Contact is another database manager to consider but a product endorsement by Brogan carries a lot of weight. [Read more...]