North Bay Business Journal

PETALUMA — Solar microinverters maker Enphase Energy is launching a 24-city North American roadshow tour to provide a sneak peek of its third generation microinverter system. The Enphase Sneak Preview Roadshow will begin with a kick off event in Petaluma on April 18, 2011, and the customized truck and trailer will then embark on a 60-day tour across the U.S. and Canada.

In conjunction with the story “Wineries increase use of smartphone, social media technologies,” the Business Journal is collecting ideas wine marketers submitted about how their experiences.

SANTA ROSA – Marketing in a down economy can seem like a waste of money, particularly for a startup or a struggling business, but letting consumers know a business is still around may prove to be just the thing to keep it going.

SANTA ROSA – The Engine is Red and Notion:Creative give tips to small business owners on startup and do-it-yourself marketing.

When I say “pizza” what words come to mind? What images come to mind? What tastes come to mind? What restaurants come to mind? What delivery service comes to mind? What toppings come to mind?

The “giant 47-pound rooster” will still strut its stuff on the HRM Rex Goliath label, but the new design for the top-selling popular-premium-tier wine brand is getting a makeover as part of a trend in wine packaging somewhat away from the fanciful and more toward the traditional.

Of all the business social media options, LinkedIn is the most valid and the most valuable. But it is not the only.

How are you using and profiting from social media? Here’s the probably answer: You’re using it but not profiting from it. That’s because your Facebook page has photos of Sunday’s picnic, 15 comments from close friends and relatives and nothing about business. That’s because you have a Twitter account that tells your audience of 75 [...]

When I have more money than I need (which these days seems farther away than it did a few years ago), I want to travel around the world and speak to high school freshmen and sophomores. Ninth and tenth graders.

Cold calling is over. The only people who don’t realize it are the people still making them. Or worse – their bosses.

NAPA — Long-standing efforts to establish a regional destination marketing fund in Napa Valley cleared yet another procedural milestone as the county Board of Supervisors voted unanimously last week to adopt a resolution supporting the Napa Valley Tourism Improvement District.

SONOMA COUNTY — A bid to make the Sonoma County name a standard descriptive feature on all wines made from grapes grown in its winegrowing regions, called conjunctive labeling, reached a significant stage today as grower and winery trade groups reached consensus to back state legislation this year to make it happen.

Leaders of Sonoma County Vintners,

NORTH BAY — Most companies today feel like they just have to have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn group and any other of the latest social networking sites out there.

NORTH BAY – The Engine is Red, a boutique marketing firm in Santa Rosa, recently moved out of a backyard and into a 1,600-square-foot office on Fifth Street in downtown Santa Rosa.

The term “marketing myopia” was coined because it is so easy for companies to be “nearsighted” about their marketing.

NAPA— The Napa County Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing Tuesday to consider changing elements of the Winery Definition Ordinance, the authoritative document that has governed which events wineries can hold and how they can market themselves since 1990.

At the corporate sales meetings where I give presentations, I am often asked to participate in giving out sales awards.

Here’s the challenge: How does a salesperson address the issue of the competition in these times? I wrote about it in “The Sales Bible” in 1994, revised it in 2002 and revised it again in 2008’s new edition. But that was before the bottom fell out of the economy.

SANTA ROSA – The Sonoma County Vintners trade group on Jan. 20 started a campaign to get state legislation that would require labels mentioning any viticultural area within the county to also include “Sonoma County.”

NORTH BAY — The industry has been looking to consumer product promotional know-how from outside the business for fresh ideas, particularly as producers of higher-end wine look to move slow-selling inventory in an economy with high unemployment and trimmed expense accounts.