This week on The Urban Business Roundtable, UBR Contributor Renita D. Young speaks with marketing maven Tina Wells, the founder and CEO of Voorhees, N.J.-based Buzz Marketing Group, a full-service marketing and research company specializing in helping companies to build lucrative relationships with youth markets. Wells creates marketing strategies for the beauty, entertainment, fashion and financial sectors, with clients including Proctor & Gamble, Sony BMG and PBS. She’s also author of Chasing Youth Culture and Getting It Right: How Your Business Can Profit By Tapping Today’s Most Powerful Trendsetters and Tastemakers (Wiley).
Wells, who launched her career as a 16-year-old more than 15 years ago, has established an extraordinary track record of accomplishments as marketer, including recently being recognized by the National Alliance of Market Developers with the Moss Kendrix Marketer Award. Wells is also among the business experts serving as instructors at Small Business University (SBU), a free online video course at BlackEnterprise.com offering expert advice to entrepreneurs looking to start and grow profitable small businesses. (Go to https://blackenterprise.com/sbu to register and learn more.) Among the SBU video sessions taught by Wells are “How to Boost the Visibility of Your Business,” “Connecting With Your Customer Organically,” and “Social Media and What It Means To Your Business.” Wells joins the Roundtable to share her path to success.
Also, UBR Contributor Samantha Pass talks with Tara Hunt, the co-founder and CEO of Buyosphere, a Montreal,
Quebec platform for shopping questions and answers. Prior to Buyosphere, she has worked with more than 30 start-ups, including Like.com, which has since been acquired by Google. Hunt is also the author of several books, including The Power of Social Networking: Using the Whuffie Factor to Build Your Business (Crown Business). She joins the Roundtable to what a website needs to keep consumers “clicking” back for more.In my “Alfred’s Notepad” segment, I share the three biggest reasons why entrepreneurs are rejected by potential investors in their business, according to Daymond John, Barbara Corcoran and Mark Cuban, stars of ABC-TV’s The Shark Tank: valuing your company for more than it’s worth, no sales to prove the viability
of the business and no exit strategy. For more advice from the “sharks” on how to attract angel investors to your business, check out the feature story, “Hooking Investors” by Carolyn M. Brown, in the June 2012 issue of Black Enterprise magazine.And finally, every week on UBR, you’ll get motivation and inspiration from author and entrepreneurial icon Farrah Gray, a weekly wrap-up of business news from USA Today business correspondent Charisse Jones, our Patient Investor Report from Khoa X. Ho of Ariel Investments and key economic intelligence for small business owners from our UBR economists Derrick Collins and Rasheed Carter.
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Alfred Edmond Jr. is the senior VP/editor-at-large of Black Enterprise and the host of the Urban Business Roundtable, a weekly radio show, sponsored by Ariel Investments, airing CST Wednesdays at 8:30 a.m., Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. on WVON-AM 1690, the Talk of Chicago. You can also listen live online at WVON.com. Check back each week for UBR Spotlight, which features additional resources, advice and information from and about the topics, entrepreneurs and experts featured on the show.