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What's keeping your up at night? Send us your most pressing questions and our expert John Mansour, founder and CEO of ZIGZAG Marketing, will try to help.

Question: Our product can take up to three months to build. Our customer's anxiety during this process can be misleading. Because blogging can damage a reputation overnight, how do we protect our brand before we've had a chance to present the final product?

-- Vanz Steimle, California Pools, West Covina, CA

Vanz: Since your product is a custom build for each customer, it's imperative to set expectations up front in a way you can meet or exceed them. Predicting your own performance is probably the best way to mitigate your customers' anxiety, which prompts the negative blogging before the final product is presented.

Here are 3 tips to help your cause.

1. Once the sale is made or even before the sale, present each customer with a detailed project plan that he or she can use as a guide to track your performance. Break the project plan into the major phases of development and list the common tasks that occur in each phase. In addition to the tasks that occur in each phase, list some of the typical issues that arise in each phase and the actions you take to resolve them. This will give your buyers an element of comfort knowing what they can expect. The unknown and lack of communication are your worst enemies.
2. At the completion of each phase, have a review with your customer to go through the checklist and let them express any concerns or issues they feel could have been avoided. Get consensus before beginning the next phase. Attention to detail and communication go a long way in keeping a customer satisfied, especially in your line of work.
3. At the end of each project, give your customer some type of scorecard to rate your performance. Not only will this measurement give you instant feedback but it also gives you ammunition to join the blogs and communicate overall performance metrics when someone posts something negative. If customer feedback is positive, you can use the scorecards to help close future sales.

Question: With marketers increasingly adopting more and more refined market segmentation -- fueled by the Internet and other customization efforts -- some critics claim that mass marketing is dead, while others counter that there will always be room for large brands that employ marketing programs targeting the mass market. Is mass marketing dead? Or is it still a viable way to build a profitable brand?

-- Ekwunife Uche Juliet, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia

Ekwunife: Remember when the marketing experts predicted that the Internet would remove the middle man from the supply chain? It never happened. The same is true of mass marketing. It probably won't ever die, although we are seeing less and less of it. There are three primary drivers behind the decline in mass marketing.

The first reason mass marketing is losing popularity is directly related to the maturity of many markets. The more mature a market becomes and the more saturated it is, the greater the need for more granular segmentation. Athletic and recreational shoes are a prime example of a market that became further fragmented as it matured. Segments now include running, cross training, basketball, hiking, biking, and a slew of other shoe types. Over the counter pain relievers have largely followed the same path. Remember when aspirin was your only choice for minor aches and pains? Now the market is flooded with pain relievers that address every ailment imaginable.

The second reason mass marketing is on the decline is the demand from consumers for personalization. Compared with 25 years ago, there are more people today who want to be different, and in an effort to build market share faster manufacturers are creating more specialty products that cater to very narrow slices of the market, which leads to the third reason.

Advances in technology now let manufacturers create specialty products much more economically than they could 25 years ago, and because they can, the market for many products has become extremely competitive. So in order to compete, manufacturers continue to refine their segmentation to appeal to more slices of the market. It's a vicious circle.

The term "solutions marketing" has been around for a while but it's now becoming more popular due to the factors above. Take any product or service and determine its target customers. Define all the possible scenarios where this product or service addresses a problem and you'll start to get a clear picture of the market segments you should be targeting.

Question: I am starting up a concierge company. I am trying to come up an effective way to charge people. I thought about having a membership fee; however, since I a new at this, I don't think I will get the clients to pay the membership fees. How should I charge them?

-- Robbie Wilson, London

Robbie: Before you can create your pricing structure you must first determine the value of your service by further defining it. Here are the 4 W's of introducing a new product or service.

1. What is it? (A concierge service)
2. Who is the target customer?
3. Why do they need it/what situations or scenarios would prompt a need for this service?
4. Where is the best place to capture their attention with a compelling value proposition?

In order to accurately answer these questions, do some market research to analyze other concierge services. At a minimum, you'll get a good understanding of the niches being served (and not served) and what the market will bear in terms of fees for different types of concierge services.

Once you've chosen your niche, do some informal research by asking your target customers if they find enough value in the service to pay a fee. If the answer is yes, present three different pricing structures (annual subscription, pay as you go, etc.) to determine which is most desirable.

Lastly, determine the habits of your target customers to determine your marketing and promotion strategy. Where do they go? What do they read? Who they talk/listen to? This will give you good insight into how and where you need to market your services.

Question: After leaving the IT industry, I started up an upscale, confidential courier service to serve the legal industry and upper / upper - middle class (similar to the Transporter movie). Since this is a very niche market, what would be the best approach to take this to market, considering I don't have a large chunk of funding?

-Alani Kuye, The Transporter, Norwalk, CT

Alani: The first and most important decision is to choose a single target market since you have limited resources. You've identified two potential markets -- legal firms and upper middle class consumers. As a start-up, focus is extremely critical. You want to develop a core competency serving a single market then leverage that competency to expand into other markets. To help you choose the market segment that lends itself to a fast start for your company, here are three considerations:

1. What problems do you want to solve for either of these market segments? Think about unmet needs for each segment. FedEx found its niche in next day delivery. Do legal firms need a courier to get confidential documents to the courtroom? What do upper middle class consumers need in an emergency that involves confidential information?
   
   
2. What is the revenue potential for each of these segments? Do some simple math. Find out how many upper middle class consumers are in your local region. Do the same for legal firms. Use the Internet to do some free research to see what the average consumer or legal firm spends on courier services and multiply that number by the number of customers you can reasonably get in year 1, 2 and 3.
   
   
3. In which segment would it be easier and more economical to build awareness? Consider the cost of marketing and promotion in each of these segments and determine which one is more conducive to high exposure at a low cost. Generally speaking, you want to try to avoid direct mail and print advertising due to the high cost. E-mail and online marketing are much more economical, produce faster results, and are easier to measure.
   
   

Question: I've created a design concept, which can conceivably thwart or greatly reduce bank robberies, but it requires technology that I have little knowledge about. How can I obtain a prototype for my design concept?

-Lance Gardner, MonEBack, Assurance, Inc., Arlington

Lance: It sounds like a fabulous idea. The first order of business is to contractually protect your idea before sharing it with anyone. Consult an attorney who specializes in intellectual property rights and determine the level of contractual protection you need to safely share your idea with technology companies. Have the attorney draft a non-disclosure agreement that you will require technology providers to sign prior to discussing your idea.

Once you have a mechanism to protect your intellectual property you can begin searching for technology providers to prototype the idea. Google is a good place to start. If your idea requires software, find companies who are in the business of custom software development and have expertise working with security applications for financial institutions. If the idea requires a hardware appliance, find manufacturers who specialize in design and engineering of security appliances. Before you engage with any technology providers, be thorough and ask for customer references. The key metrics you're evaluating are project completion by the date promised, within the allotted budget, scope as planned and quality.

Once the prototype ball is rolling, do some market research to determine the banking segment that has the biggest need for this solution. While it sounds reasonable that all banks would want to thwart robberies, the reality is that some are more willing to pay for it than others. Is it the largest banks with the most branches or the small and medium size community banks that are most susceptible to robberies?

Many entrepreneurs fail to clearly define a target market before launching a new business and quickly drown because they're too small to satisfy the needs of very diverse customers. Start with a narrow slice of the market and use your successes as the stepping stone to widen your market reach.

Question: Is cold calling a "one-size-fits-all" approach to sales prospecting? Can it jade a relationship with a potential client?

- Glenn Moore, Freedom River LLC, Hudson, Wisconsin

Glenn: There are two techniques to successful prospecting, cold calling and marketing. Using a combination of both will result in a bigger sales pipeline as well as healthier prospect relationships.

If you do absolutely no marketing, then cold calling is your only option to find prospects. The key to successful cold calling is a pitch that strikes a nerve with your target customer. The lynchpin of any successful prospect relationship is to make the dialogue 90 percent about them. Think of it like this. Your paycheck is in their pocket. If you want their money you have to talk about them.

The reason many cold calling campaigns are unsuccessful is because marketing and sales people make the mistake of opening the dialogue with statements that have no relevance to the prospect such as, we're the leading provider of... we're the market leader in...we offer the highest quality products... our technology is superior to. This is affectionately known as "we-ing" on yourself and yields very poor results.

The better approach is to open the dialogue with something that's relevant to your prospect such as, "I've been speaking with a number of your counterparts at other legal firms and one of the top issues we routinely deal with is the excessive amount of time and effort spent on the phone with frustrated customers to correct invoices. If your firm is experiencing a similar issue please call me and I'd be happy to discuss how we've helped your counterparts solve this problem with our time tracking and billing solutions."

By taking this approach you're making the call all about them and it doesn't come across as a sales pitch. You portray yourself as more of a resource who can help solve a problem versus a product-hawking marketer or sales person.

If you dread cold calling as most sales people do, up the ante on your marketing efforts and be sure to have a call to action that offers something of value, such as a white paper or industry metrics. By collecting a minimal amount of contact information for people interested in the fulfillment material you now have a list of prospects who are more likely to entertain a warm call because they now know something about you.

Whether you're cold calling or marketing, remember one thing. It's not about you. It's about your prospective customers. Keep the conversation focused on them and you'll have greater success cold calling and your prospect relationships will begin with a more positive tone.

Question: My start-up is a website specializing in hosting a niche market of viewers' videos. As an original content site offering free information and video my only source of revenue will initially be through advertisement. How can I forecast earnings to my potential investors with a business model such as this?

- Gregory Smith, Where In the World LLC, Greenville, SC

Gregory: Revenue and earnings forecasts are an inexact science, so the most important thing you can do to earn credibility with investors is to demonstrate a logical thought process and a dose of reality to support your forecasts.

In your case there are three variables to consider, the number of potential advertisers, the average amount of annual revenue you could realistically expect from each based on current statistics of similar businesses, and the productivity of your sales engine in any given year. The formula is fairly simple. Follow these steps.

1. Calculate your total addressable market. This is the number of businesses that have a product or service relevant to your audience, multiplied by the average amount of annual advertising revenue you could expect from each.

   For example, if there are 10,000 potential businesses that would spend an average of $6000 per year advertising on your site, your total addressable market is $60 million.

   This number merely offers a big-picture perspective relative to the sales forecast you'll create. The reality is that not all 10,000 businesses will advertise with you, so you have to calculate how many of them will in any given year.

   So let's assume you want to create a first year forecast and you have five sales reps who can each sign up 50 advertisers per year using an average of $6,000 in revenue per advertiser.

2. Create your annual forecast by multiplying the number of advertisers you can sign on each year by $6,000. In this case it would be 250 x $6,000 for a total of $1.5 million. Be sure to annualize this forecast to account for the fact that not all advertisers will sign on at the same time.

In subsequent years the number of sales reps and average advertising revenue may change according to your growth objectives, but as long as you stick to these formulas as the basis of your forecast, your investors should buy it.

The only other variable to keep in mind is competition. How many other businesses are vying for the same advertisers? Is the number of advertisers you're forecasting each year realistic?

Keep your forecasts simple and logical with a high dose of reality and your investors should be content, especially if you're meeting or exceeding the forecast.