After some time, the experimenters removed the glass partition separating the fish, but the pike still did not go after the minnows. It had been conditioned to think it could not reach its prey.

So what does any of this have to do with business? Well, people, like fish, often give up too soon. We condition ourselves to believe a goal is unobtainable because we’ve experienced setbacks in the past. We give up trying, even if the barriers that once held us back are no longer there.

So the next time someone (even that small voice inside yourself) tells you, "Oh, we’ve tried that before, and it doesn’t work," remember the story of the pike. Then give it one more try.

As Thomas Edison famously said: "If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward." Hopefully, you won’t need 10,000 attempts to find the solution you’re looking for, but many people give up after only a few tries.

Whether you own a new company, have been in business awhile, or are an employee with the desire to become successful, the next time you run into a problem, take the initiative to find a solution. Be persistent, and don’t give up at the first sign of resistance. Yes, that is easier said than done. There are many entrepreneurs, but not nearly as many successful ones. Those who succeed are champion problem solvers and have the will to not take no for an answer.

While going out of business is an unfortunate reality that happens in many industries (especially in a down cycle like we’ve been experiencing lately), it does NOT have to happen to your business.

So how can you keep from becoming part of the statistics in 2012? Make a real commitment to marketing your business.

Marketing does not have to be overly complicated or require a large budget. It might be as simple as figuring out the ideal prospects who would purchase what you sell, then targeting those prospects with relevant messages via as many marketing channels as your budget allows. If your budget is tight, focus on a niche group. Start small, and grow your business from there.

If you don’t have one already, start a marketing calendar today, and set up a plan for various marketing activities that you will do throughout the year. Be encouraged and proactive, so we can all look back at this time next year and chuckle about the latest doomsday predictions.

· Offer the best of both worlds with a coupon such as: "$15 off or 15% off, whichever is higher." This will also encourage customers to buy more to save more.

· Consider offering a bonus item to increase the value of your coupon. This will also let you compete with your competition without actually lowering prices.

· Offer incremental percentage-off amounts based on what the customer spends. An example of this would be "save 30% on $150 or more, 20% on $100 or more, or 10% on $10 or more."

· When using a dollar-off coupon, customers respond best to round dollar bill denominations whenever possible, such as $1, $5, $10, or $20 off. Not only are the amounts easy to calculate, but it easily translates to a bill in their pocket.

· Try a BOGO (buy one get one) campaign, such as buy one get one free or buy one get one half price.

· Use easy-to-remember codes like FEB20 rather than KTR10R44YZEX to make it easy to use during online checkouts.

Another great way to increase the value of a coupon campaign is to offer a follow-up survey for customers based on their purchase with your coupon. Offer another coupon as a thank you for completing the survey. Adding a survey will help you gain valuable input about what types of coupon promotions influence your customers.

Fortunately, effective marketing does not need to be complex in order to yield results. Follow these three steps to build a sustainable marketing program.

Step 1: Get Found

It’s simple. No matter how great your service or business is, it won’t matter much if your customers can’t find you. Just as important, they have to be the right kind of customers for your business and your products. Your company needs to be found in the places your customers frequent the most. Your customers don’t spend all of their time in one space, and neither should you. Get the word out about your business through effective multi-media campaigns.

Step 2: Convert

Capturing their attention is only the first step. In order to make it effective, you must get your prospect to engage with you somehow. Your content and sales information has to turn tire kickers into buyers. Get them to act by making a great offer. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a discount; it can be an offer for free information or anything that your prospect finds valuable in order to help them make a decision about what you sell. Engage them and offer them value before you ask for a sale, click, or call. But do ask for them to act.

Step 3: Analyze, Test, Improve, & Repeat

The only way you can improve your marketing is to constantly track, test, and tweak. Constantly work at improving the results. But above all remember that consistency is the key to any successful marketing. You must have an active marketing calendar that takes into account where, how, and what your customer wants to learn about your company.

Marketing your company is really not that hard. Successful marketing requires that you educate your prospects and provide value. Build trust and provide real information that truly helps them. Do that consistently, and you will realize that marketing is not as difficult as it seems.

With the new year just around the corner, this seems as good a time as any to get started.

Declutter your message. Are you sending a clear, consistent message with all of your marketing? You should. People will remember you more readily if you keep your message consistent and clean. "You’re in good hands." "A diamond is forever." "The breakfast of champions." "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" I could go on, but you get the point. A consistent, unified message helps to make your marketing more memorable and effective.

Declutter your design. Ever visited a website, seen a billboard, watched a commercial, or read a print piece that left you overwhelmed? Perhaps maybe even your own? One of Steve Jobs’ proudest legacies at Apple was simplicity (and elegance) of design. It carried through (and still does) not only in the products Apple makes but also in its packaging, its website, its print ads, its stores, and all of the various other marketing the company does. Simple, clean, elegant design provides visual clarity and eliminates the unnecessary clutter, confusion, and noise.

Declutter your approach. Are you a dabbler? A jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none? That may serve you well in life, but it’s no way to handle your marketing. That’s not to say you shouldn’t market in multiple media (you should), but you need to start with a plan that spells out the reasons and goals for each medium you enter. Once that’s established, you can then work your plan, knowing that each marketing effort you start is part of a grander vision with clear expectations and tangible goals.

Schizophrenic, hit-and-miss marketing efforts, taken just for the sake of "doing something" or following the latest trend, will drain your budget and leave you with just as schizophrenic results. On the other hand, clear, consistent, clutter-free marketing will (over time) produce more consistent and satisfying results. And isn’t that the goal of marketing?

So, what are some other ways you can think of to declutter your marketing? Feel free to share them in the comments below.

Shelf Life

Will the piece need to be updated frequently, or will it remain as is indefinitely?

For some items, such as business cards, you might consider ordering preprinted "shells," which contain all of the static design elements common to all versions of that item, with space left open for more dynamic (variable) content. That way, when you need business cards for a specific employee, for example, it’s just a matter of dropping in the appropriate contact information and cutting the cards down to size.

Preprinted shells allow you to take advantage of bulk discounts, and many printers (including us) will even store them for you onsite and help you manage your inventory, so you don’t run out at inopportune times.

In addition to business cards, shells may also be useful for letterhead, manuals, and even certain brochures or other promotional pieces that have common designs but dynamic (variable) content.

The Aging Process

Paper ages, and it doesn’t always do so gracefully. Storing your printing in a cool, dry place helps, but it will only slow the process. As your printing gets older, it can fade, warp, and dry out. Carbonless paper, for example, will lose some of its transferability as it ages. If you have forms you use infrequently, consider ordering them in smaller quantities.

If you have any documents you know you’ll want to keep on hand indefinitely, consider acid-free paper. When properly stored, acid-free paper will resist fading, yellowing, and becoming brittle much better than ordinary stock.

Past Experience

If the item you’re printing is a reorder, look to the past to determine how much you’ll need to order this time around. If you can’t remember how much you ordered last time (or when that was), give us a call. We can check our records and help analyze your needs to determine your best strategy for future purchases.

I will not just live my life.

I will not just spend my life.

I will invest my life.

As you probably know, Helen Keller was an incredible woman who, despite being born both blind and deaf, became an accomplished author, speaker, and activist. She invested her life helping others, and the world was better for it. In her lifetime, she inspired many with her words and actions alike, even earning the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

I like the idea of life as an investment. Unfortunately, in our busy and hectic world, it can be easy sometimes to forget that time is our most precious commodity and that we must do more than spend it. We must invest it in the people we care about, the causes that inspire us, and the businesses we’re working to grow.

So how are you investing your life? And how do you plan to invest it in the year ahead?

Michelangelo once wrote, "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." Make sure you’re aiming high and investing your life wisely.

In the 1980 movie, The Blues Brothers, Jake and Elwood Blues are men on a mission. They experience a revelation and decide they must get their old band back together in order to earn enough money to save the Catholic boarding school where they were raised. Not quite as grand a mission as Gandhi’s, no doubt, but a mission just the same.

Chances are, your company has a mission, too, with an accompanying mission statement, carefully crafted and culled to provide optimal guidance in the decisions you make as an organization.

But what about you personally? What’s your mission? What drives your own personal decisions? Your career, aspirations, and dreams? What prism do you use to focus your thoughts and cast light on the choices you face at work, at home, and in the world?

Experts like Dr. Stephen Covey advocate the need for a personal mission statement to guide the decisions that affect your own life and career. Just as successful companies use mission statements to clarify and filter their organizational decisions, many successful individuals do the same on a personal level, as well.

FranklinCovey has put together an www.franklincovey.com/msb/ online Mission Statement Builder to help you create a personal mission statement for yourself, your family, and your team. I recommend checking it out and giving it a try.

As you begin filtering your day-to-day decisions through a personal mission statement, you may be surprised to find that reaching your goals becomes easier.

An elderly blind man was sitting on a busy street corner with a cardboard sign next to an empty tin cup. The sign read, "Blind — Please help." People would glance at the sign, but nobody gave the man any money.

Then a young copywriter saw the man with his sign and empty cup. He felt disappointed as he watched all the people walk past without an ounce of empathy, so he took a marker, flipped the sign over, and rewrote the blind man’s message.

Suddenly, people started putting money in his cup until it was overflowing. Surprised, the blind man asked a stranger to tell him what the sign said. He replied, "It’s a beautiful day. You can see it. I cannot."