As things wind down during the holidays, as you reflect on this year and next, check out John Jantsch’s 5 Trends that Will Shape Small Business in 2011 on the American Express OPEN Forum.

John does some of the best work ever on marketing for the small business. As he mentions in that post, his trends for 2010 were “spot on.” See what he says about next year. Hint: mobile, apps, and, well, read it.

I hadn’t heard the phrase “O2O” before. I caught it this morning in a John Jantsch post on the American Express OPEN, meaning online activities driving offline business:

For 2011 a new kind of strategy will emerge for the small business, and that is one of using the online space to drive people to the offline space. The in-person experience is the ultimate competitive advantage of the small business and how [it beats] the online and big-box competition.

Get them in the store, get them to a meeting, get them to an event, get them in a community, get them on using an app.

He finishes that with this intriguing conclusion:

Online 2 offline will be a strategic marketing approach employed by the most successful local businesses where conversion will be measured in hugs and handshakes.

That O2O idea, by the way, is one of five in John’s 5 Trends that Will Shape Small Business in 2011. That’s a really interesting post, and I think he’s right on all five.

True, good reviews are a very powerful marketing tool, and the new web makes them more accessible to entrepreneurs everywhere. Try any of the major search engines or any of the major mapping tools, search for a business–and watch the stars pop up. It’s cool, a great advantage to the user, customer and prospective customer, and potentially a nice marketing tool for all. But there are problems in that world, too. It’s not all fun and games.

For a good review of how to deal with reviews, I suggest three good posts on the subject by John Jantsch on his Duct Tape Marketing blog, in this order:

1. First, from last February: “5 Ways to Rock Customer Review Sites”
2. A follow-up post, from just a couple of weeks ago: “5 Ways to Get Rockin Reviews”
3. And this one, about dealing with bad reviews: “Your Pizza Sucks And …”

A good reminder about what not to do came up recently with news of a PR firm getting caught seeding Apple’s iTunes store with fake reviews. John has some good advice for you on how to influence reviews without crossing ethical lines. And I want to add that trying to fake things is very dangerous in the long run. Not just ethically dangerous, but business dangerous, too. If you do a good analysis of the risks and rewards, what you lose in reputation when you get caught faking reviews is much worse than what you gain by doing it.

It’s a new world. If you’re marketing to consumers, don’t ignore review sites and reviews. Do it right.

Yes, you could win good money and travel benefits, but you have to get your act together soon. Entries close August 20. Click here to enter.

This is the Marriott’s Fairfield Inn & Suites $20,000 Small Business Challenge, which is, apparently, exactly what the headline suggests: a chance to win some money, plus some travel benefits, for your business.

I’m impressed with the judges, featuring John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing, plus writers from Business Pundit and Inc Magazine, and an executive of Fairfield Suites.

It’s also an interesting competition. I like the way this goes:

We’ll select 10 small business finalists and follow them not only as they travel around the country, but also as they strive to meet their business goals. Finalists will publicly share their journey by blogging, tweeting and posting photos. Finalists will be notified by September 9, 2010 and the program kicks off on September 13, 2010.

About the Grand Prize

After three months of traveling the country and working through set business challenges, our judging panel, comprised of small business experts and Marriott International executives, will award one of the 10 finalists the grand prize of $20,000.

So good luck. I hope you do it. I hope you win.

I’m sorry I’m late on recommending John Jantsch’s “These Jobs Ain’t Coming Back” on his Duct Tape Marketing blog. Better late (he posted July 2) than never, though, because it’s important. John doesn’t talk about larger political issues very often, because he’s usually immersed in tools, techniques and practical ways to help real people in real small businesses get their marketing done. So when he does, it’s probably worth reading.

The key to this post is a bit of a reality check, perhaps mixed with a dose of cold water:

Many of 8 million jobs lost during the recession were falsely created by subprime lending and total lack of regard for reality. Many of the programs currently proposed mirror the policies of the past in attempts to spend our way to creating thousands of jobs in sectors that probably can’t sustain long-term job creation.

He follows with this:

Instead of creating thousands of jobs one time, create one job thousands of times.

Which means, he adds: “invest in small business.”

And, as he explains, that means local development agencies should be given the resources to promote what John and others call economic gardening: nurturing startups and small business. I’m glad he’s focusing on what I consider the front lines of small business, the local development agencies. Not that these aren’t also federally funded to some extent. The SBA funds valuable resources such as Small Business Development Centers, SCORE and Women’s Business Centers, etc.), but the focus isn’t large-scale political fighting between the innies (Democrats) and the outies (Republicans). It’s just getting things done. Nurturing small business: The government can’t really do it because it’s about the individuals, the entrepreneurs and existing small businesses–but the government can help.

After sifting through almost 40 submissions, reading business plans, listening to pitches, talking to entrepreneurs, their customers, their attorneys (in some cases), plus a lot of discussion and comment and review and revision, today my local angel investor group–The Willamette Angel Conference–meets at the McDonald’s theater in Eugene, Ore. (my hometown) to choose its winner.

The win means getting $165,000 in angel investment.

The competing companies are so good that we had to change the format to keep all six of our finalists. We were supposed to have five, but we couldn’t figure out which one to drop. So, after a great deal of discussion with the event organizing committee, we kept all six.

It still comes down to a single winner. By dinner time today, we will have our winner.

The finalists are (in alphabetical order):

• Arcimoto: an electrically powered vehicle
• Delta Point: software to better diagnose cancer from images
• Good Clean Love: all-natural, organic intimacy products
• InFuez: kitchen countertops from recycled materials
• ShopDragon: small-business e-commerce
• Vizme: a next-generation social application.

It should be an interesting day. There are 33 investors, one vote each. Obviously we have a lot of diverse weightings of different factors. Local development, job creation, quality of the investment, risk-return ratios and so on. But it all comes down to one vote per member, and one company winning.

And, by the way, if you noticed I’ve been posting less than usual on this blog over the past couple of weeks, this is one of the reasons.

Marketing expert John Jantsch, creator of Duct Tape Marketing, posted this list today on the American Express OPEN forum. He introduces it by recognizing that it’s not necessarily that big idea you’ve been waiting for that makes the startup successful. He offers these five factors:

1. The owner is the customer. Meaning that you make a product or service that you want to use. Jantsch says: “You can acquire some measure of knowledge from various research techniques, but nothing beats living, breathing and feeling the same things your prospects do.”
2. The market understands the offering. He mentions this problem: “If your innovation simply solves an incredible problem people don’t yet know they have, you may wind up burning through the money before they get it.”
3. The market already spends money here. John says: “If people are already spending money on a product or service, then two-thirds of your work is done.”
4. It’s an innovation that simplifies. Amen to that.
5. Nothing is precious. This is a tough one. “If you’re in love with your bright, shiny, baby startup and all that it offers, you may become blind to the reality the market suggests.” Keep an open mind, Jantsch says, “talk to your customers, talk to your competitors, talk to your employees and remember nothing is precious but what the numbers prove to be so.”

Here’s the link: 5 Attributes of a Sure Fire Startup: Marketing: Idea Hub: American Express OPEN Forum

The good news here is that this post–the actual title is 7 Steps to Creating a Winning Coaching, Consulting or Service Business–is done by a true master in the field, John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing. And he’s not recommending anything that he hasn’t actually done himself.

However, that’s also the bad news. John makes it seem easy with his step-by-step guide, but then he’s not just a master of this, he also started early in the blog world, he’s really smart and he really works hard, too. For every successful expert blogger, author and coach like John, there are about 10,000 other people trying to do it, but not getting there yet.

John’s seven suggested steps (very abbreviated here, by the way . . . John offers much more detail on his post):

1. Turn your service into a product. Selling services is a little like selling air.

2. Develop a suite of tools and systems. Making it up over and over again with each engagement, writing proposals and reacting to client demands is a very tiring business. When you can guide a client logically through the path to success with a professional process, your business will become more profitable with each new engagement.

3. Build a brand that’s easy to talk about. It’s crucial that you can tell a story worth repeating and make that a foundational marketing element.

4. Push out lots of expert content.

5. Lead generate from multiple outposts. To build a winning practice, you need to generate awareness and trust by appearing everywhere. This means speaking, writing, advertising, PR and referral generation.

6. Perfect your lead conversion close. I’ve found that writing proposals and reacting to what a client thinks they need can drive you nuts. When you take the tangible product approach married with the expert content approach, lead generation is more about getting in front of the right prospects and explaining “this is how we do it” in a way that addresses what you know they need.

7. Construct a killer network. A strong network is also a powerful business tool for the solo entrepreneur to use as a sounding board, sanity check and social outlet to replace the interaction that often comes with working with an internal team.

Going back to the bad news, as I read this, I’m very much afraid that John has skipped the first step: Know what you’re talking about. Get your credentials. Be a real expert. Without that, John’s recipe won’t work.

And perhaps I’ll finish by rocking back over to the good news side: If you do have that kind of expertise, John has packaged his steps exactly as he recommends you do, and you can buy that from him at Duct Tape Marketing to make it much easier to implement. And John isn’t the only one; several others are doing the same thing. For example, Pamela Slim, with her Escape From Cubicle Nation book and workshops, is also sharing huge volumes of good advice on how to do it.

That is, if you have expertise to share.

Do you know that many successful entrepreneurs are not risk-takers? I was taken aback by that in “7 Uncommon Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs” by John Jantsch on his Duct Tape Marketing blog. However, as I reflect on the 20-some years my wife and I built Palo Alto Software, I think he’s right. Here’s what he says, as the second item on his excellent seven-point list:

Risk Averse–This one throws people, but successful entrepreneurs are not any more wired to take risks than most, but they are wired to spot opportunities and possess the confidence that something, perhaps not what was originally envisioned, can be made of the opportunity. They are often better at letting something that’s clearly a bad idea go, limiting the ultimate risk.

I wouldn’t have thought of it this way, but you know, John has it right on that one.

And I liked this one a lot, too:

Planners–This goes hand-in-hand with risk. Successful entrepreneurs enjoy the planning process, not necessarily completing a plan, but this is what makes them averse to taking foolish risks. They often so value the plan for their life that they always hold a glimmer of the vision of the business that can serve that plan.

This is an excellent list. John does it again.

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I like the title: “Just Start,” as in start your business, shades of the now famous Nike “Just do it” campaign. Just start.

I’m pleased to be speaking along with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, Ken Yancey, CEO of SCORE, and Rich Sloan of StartupNation for this free webinar next Wednesday.

It’s a free webinar, but capacity is limited, so if you’re interested, please click here to register right now.