Are you spooked by your marketing. If you're not getting results, its your marketing strategy which is playing a trick on you.
Should you sugar up your marketing and pass out treats to prospects? What's the answer, how can you make your small business marketing bring in a flood of new business?
Bill is a friend of mine who is smart, hard working and dedicated to his management consulting business. His clients love him, but his business is stagnating. He gets referrals occasionally, but considering how good he is at what he does, new clients should be lined up outside his door.
When business slows down and his client list shrinks, Bill blames it on a lack of interest in the marketplace. What's Bill missing?
He doesn't have good marketing habits. Actually, he doesn't have any marketing habits.
Marketing is like your health. If you want to see your business continue to increase its profits year after year you need to have healthy marketing habits.
If you eat three meals a day, get exercise, take some time to relax, brush your teeth and get 7-8 hours of sleep. You have reasonably good health habits. Maybe a few more vegetables instead of cookies, more exercise and some more sleep would help but basically you're doing the right things to keep yourself in decent shape.
Want to do the same with your marketing to get it in shape?
Ready to discover the simple marketing regimen that can make you rich? Use this link >>
Every day you do at least 4 to 7 tasks to keep your body fueled and functioning well. You eat more or less balanced meals, get a little exercise, brush your teeth, sleep. etc.
But are you doing the 4 to 7 things you need to do every day to keep your business fueled with a steady stream of new clients and profits? If not, don't panic, but don't shrug this advice off either. It's time to adopt healthy marketing habits.
The 3 Most Important Wealth-Building Marketing Habits
1. Take Responsibility for Your Marketing Strategy Puzzled by what to do to grow your business? You need a proven marketing strategy that's right for your business.
If you're serious about growth, it's time to find out what really works to generate more clients and sales. Use this link to get the details >>
Thinking of hiring a marketing firm to do it all for you? It doesn't quite work that way. I can't tell you how many business owners I've heard from who've hired marketing firms and seen little or no increase in sales. Even if you hire a firm to implement your marketing, you've still got to take responsibility for understanding what it takes to develop and maintain a winning marketing strategy.
You may have hired a personal trainer to guide your fitness routine and a full time cook to make delicious, nutritious meals (lucky you!); your health is still your responsibility. The same is true of your company's marketing.
2. Schedule Time For Marketing If they aren't locked into your schedule, you won't get to your marketing tasks and you won't ever see your marketing strategy kick into gear.
You eat regular meals to keep yourself thriving; likewise - establish regular times to nourish your business by focusing on your marketing. I schedule a morning a week to write newsletters and manage the various on- and off-line tasks that keep traffic coming to my website and convert prospects to clients.
If you haven't done so already, block out time each day or each week to spend on marketing - a minimum of five hours a week.
3. Use a Proven Marketing Strategy Most business owners and marketers make the following mistake. They spend money on advertising and then sit back and wait for results. Or they put up a web site and sit back and wonder why so few people are buying from it.
If you wanted to grow your favorite variety of tomatoes, you wouldn't just throw a handful of seeds onto a patch of soil and expect them to thrive. You'd water and weed and pinch them back and check their progress at least once a week.
In marketing as in gardening, a simple strategy will help those leads turn into clients and you'll have healthy profits. Without a proven marketing strategy you'll just end up wasting your time and money.
When my client Sarah called on Tuesday earlier this week I was a little surprised, since her normal time is on Wednesday. Then when she told me she'd just packed her children and a few belongings into her Toyota Prius, it started to make sense.
Sarah was forced to evacuate her home in San Diego on Tuesday morning because of the wildfires closing in on her neighborhood. She was calling because she wasn't going to be home for our scheduled call on Wednesday, much less she wasn't sure she'd even have a home.
Sarah runs her business out of her home - and while she was worried about losing her home, she was even more concerned about how she was going to keep her business going. She had wisely grabbed her computer on the way out the door and was now out of harms way at a friends who had Internet access.
Is your business disaster proof?
What would you do if a disaster wiped out your place of business? Would you be able to be up and running within a day or two at a remote location?
I hope you never have to pack up all your belongings in a suitcase and leave your home or your business, but it happens more often than you think.
California has it's share of wildfires, my daughter was forced to flee New Orleans half a dozen times during her four years of college at Tulane, my family was forced to evacuate our home here in coastal Connecticut in the bucket of a highway front loader when a December Northeaster flooded our neighborhood.
Making your business portable is a good idea whether you ever encounter a disaster or not. Last winter I set up my business so that I could spend every other week working from our ski home in Vermont. All I needed to do to pack up my business and run it from anywhere with a phone line and Internet access, was grab my laptop. Thanks to my marketing strategy, the Internet and two Virtual Assistants, (now three), my business is both disaster and vacation proof.
How can you make your business portable so you can run it from anywhere whether you fleeing a natural disaster or just going skiing like I do? Use this link to get the answer >>
No, this won't work for everyone but you'd be amazed at how many businesses can be run just with a phone line and the Internet if you know how.
How to make your business portable?
1. Have a website that generates leads and use your follow-up emails to pre-sell prospects.
2. Outsource your administration and operations to a small handful of trusted employees around the country. If one person in your virtual organization loses power due to a storm, another one will be able to take over. I've got staff in Toronto, Texas and I'm here in Connecticut.
3. Put your agenda, calendar, contact list, etc online so even if you lost your computer and had to borrow one, you'd still be able to keep your business running.
Want to know a secret?
Setting up your business so its portable can not only give you more freedom to live the life you want but doing so can help you make more money with less effort.
Most web sites don't successfully generate more than a small trickle of sales. Is yours one of them?
Let me guess. You have a web site and it may be attracting visitors, but it's only generating a couple of sales each week, if any. Is the volume of traffic the problem?
It's true that you need visitors in order to convert them to buyers, but even getting thousands of visitors a day won't guarantee a single sale. So you turn to your web designer for the answer to the problem. Your web designer should know what to do, right?
No!
Marcia called me from Chicago. Thanks to some top search engine positioning, her web design firm's site gets around four thousand visitors a day. Wow! Even I'm impressed by that number. With that kind of traffic, Marcia's firm should be generating between two and four hundred leads a day and have more business than they can handle.
When I asked Marcia what their conversion rate was - how many leads they generated from their site - she told me that it was only one lead per month. That's only one lead out of 120,000 visitors.
Ouch! With all the interested prospects that stop by their site but never contact them, Marcia's firm is losing millions of dollars of potential business a year, and their site was built by some great web designers.
Building a website is like building a house. Given enough time and lumber, you could throw up some kind of structure that you might call a house even without any blueprints. Of course, the plumbing might not work and the kitchen might end up on the third floor.
But you wouldn't hire a builder to put up your new home without a plan. You're smarter than that. The first thing you'd do is find an architect to draft a plan for your house. Once you'd worked out a plan that you liked, you'd find a builder to turn your plan into reality.
Did you ask your web designer to build your site without first giving them a marketing plan and the marketing copy they needed to create a winning site? Whoops, you and 97% of web site owners did the same thing and got the same results.
Web designers build sites, but they don't create your web marketing strategy or the master plan to start with. And without a master marketing plan to get prospect's to contact you and to convert them to buyers, no matter how much you spend on your site, it won't sell your products and services.
It's not your web designer's job to map your online selling plan, they just build sites. If you told your home contractor you wanted an all black granite kitchen, they'd build it whether it was a good idea or not.
Web designers and carpenters get paid to create what the owners want. And if you don't know how your site should be structured to generate sales, don't count on your web designer to tell you what to do.
With a web site marketing and sales strategy in hand, your web designer can do their job and help you build a web site that sells. Without it you'll waste your money.
If you've ever wanted to look for ideas you could use for marketing slogans, radio commercials or video ads - you've probably been frustrated. To find the good marketing ideas you have to search through all the trash that's out there.
Finally there is a resource you can use to get marketing ideas and advertising ideas for your next marketing campaign. Use this link to check out the best business advertising ideas >>
I finally gave myself a promotion yesterday. Have you earned one as well?
No, I'm not just patting myself on the back for growing my business, I'm firing myself from all administrative tasks and promoting myself to focus on the few parts of my business no one else can do. Should you be doing the same?
Are you up to your eyeballs in work? Are you spending dawn to dusk doing marketing, administration and fulfillment? If you are, you're wearing too many hats and it's time to relinquish most of them.
When I first started my marketing business, I spent my time writing, building and improving my web site, boxing and shipping my marketing courses, providing one-one-one coaching and a host of other tasks that kept me busy six days a week. My hard work paid off and my business grew - up to a point.
When administrative and operational tasks started taking time away from writing and coaching, I fired myself from the web work and fulfillment. I hired a webmaster and a virtual assistant to get orders out on time. Are you in this position too?
Some small business owners have a hard time delegating substantial work after being in control of every aspect of the business, but take it from me; the assistants I hired were faster and better at doing the web work and fulfillment tasks than I was.
Delegating administrative tasks and web site maintenance freed me to focus on the core of my business, where my real passion is, and to pursue another passion. I was able to work from my ski home in Vermont for the first time last winter.
The result? I skied a (personal) record of 30 days last winter and achieved record sales.
Yesterday I reorganized again and virtually kicked myself upstairs to a corner office. I let go of all administrative and operational tasks and hired my new assistant, Ros, to manage email broadcasts, product delivery, customer service, project management, PR and new product development. I'm confident she'll do a better job than I've been doing.
Why would I fire myself from all administrative jobs?
With the 10 or more hours a week I've just given myself I can take on more coaching clients, finish the next book I've been writing and start a new service which could grow my business by another 100% next year.
Focus your time on your marketing strategy , developing new products and services and delivering the services that need your personal expertise.
How can you get relinquish all those time consuming administrative tasks?
Start by creating a job description of your next assistant. Look over your To Do list. Ask yourself, "Could someone else do this task or is this something only I can do?"
I spent two weeks doing this exercise. Every time I spied a task on my list that fell into the administrative or operational category, I added it to my job description for my new super assistant.
Once you've defined the job and the skills your business needs, how can you find good people? What do you do if you don't want employees? How much will it cost? Where can you find the answers?
"I've been told by my webmaster that SEO is a waste of time and I shouldn't bother. Is he right? Does search engine optimization still work?"
- Phil from Austin TX
It's a question I've been asked more than once. I've also had clients tell me that they've hired search engine firms to help them with their search engine optimization but after spending thousands of dollars and waiting for months, seen no appreciable change in traffic to their sites.
- Is it a worth spending the time and money to make your site search engine friendly?
- Will it make a difference in the number of people who visit your site?
- Or would you be better off spending your money on pay-per-click advertising? Should you bother with any of it?
Absolutely. Search engine optimization, that is, helping the search engines put your site at the top of their listings, is the single most effective way to build your business.
Put your site in the top ten listings or the top few spots for the keywords your prospects use to find your products and services, and you can make a lot more money. Of course once you have lots of traffic you'll need to know how to convert it into sales.
Sugar For Your Site? If you want a quick energy boost, you might grab a candy bar. You get a surge of energy, but when the sugar has burned through your body an hour or so later, you feel tired.
To build the stamina to get through the day feeling great, you eat a balanced snack of protein with some carbohydrates that will keep you going and build muscle.
Pay-per-click advertising is like sugar. It provides almost instantaneous results, but it's short-lived, and to reenergize your web site marketing you need to buy more and more. Each time you spend money on advertising you get a handful of visitors, but to keep them coming in you need to spend again.
Search engine optimization or helping the search engines give your site a top ranking is a better balanced diet. It's harder to put to use, but it has longer-term benefits. For example, each time you get another relevant site to link to yours, you help your search engine ranking for months, if not years to come.
If you've allocated a thousand dollars a month to promoting your web site, I recommend that you spend half of that on optimizing your site and half on pay-per-click advertising. Site optimization can take months, in the meantime, use pay-per-click advertising to bring in prospects.
When to Shift Your Promotional Spend to SEO?
After the first 6 to 12 months, shift your efforts and your resources to concentrate on your search engine marketing efforts. I spend less than 10% of my promotional dollars on pay-per-click advertising and use it primarily to test sales headlines or book titles. I spend 90% of my web-marketing budget on making my site even more search engine-friendly and keeping it at the top of the search engine listings.
Yes, SEO still works! When people find your site in the top 10 or even top 20 listings on Google, they're much more likely to buy from you, link to your site and want to joint venture with you.
What should you know about SEO?
Before you hire an SEO firm or ask your webmaster to take over your online promotional efforts, find out what it is you should be paying them to do. Many SEO tasks could easily be done by a real or virtual assistant.
And don't assume your webmaster is an SEO expert, either. Only a few are. Web work is very specialized. Web programmers and web designers should know the basics of SEO to do their work well, but rarely are they SEO experts.
Step 1 - Understand the core SEO strategy that will put your site at the top of the search engines.
Step 2 - Give your webmaster and assistants a clear map of SEO tasks to do every month to help you generate more traffic, more leads and more sales.
Step 3 - Make sure your web site converts all the traffic you're getting into leads and sales.
I was in the bathroom shaving when my wife called up from the garage. She was running late and wasn't having any success starting the car. She'd put the key in the ignition but it wouldn't turn, and she wanted my help so she could get going with her day.
When she handed the key to me I knew right away what the problem was. It wasn't going to start the car no matter how many times I or she tried it. Why?
We own two cars, an Audi and a VW Passat. The keys look identical except one has the Audi logo on it and the other a VW symbol. My wife in her early morning semi-awake state had grabbed the wrong key. She was trying to start the VW with the Audi key. When I pointed out her mistake she switched keys and was on her way.
Your marketing is the same as a car. If it's not getting you where you want to go the first place to look is the key you are using to get things started.
Want to unlock your marketing and get sales rolling in? Use this marketing idea >>
Your business marketing message is the first thing your prospects see or hear when they read your materials or hear your ads. With the right one, you'll grab your prospects attention and interest and you can get a virtual or real conversation started.
If your marketing message isn't starting up marketing conversations then you're using the wrong one. No matter how hard you try, no matter how many times you use it or how much you spend on advertising or mailings it's never going to help you get where you want to go.
If you're frustrated with your sales, the first place to look is your business marketing message. Starting a flood of sales can be as simple as making a switch to a different marketing message, one that works.
Want more clients and customers? Find out how to get things started with this marketing idea >>
When I talked to Lisa from San Diego she was frustrated. She'd been out of town for a couple of days and when she returned, she found a handful of orders waiting. That was the good news, though if she'd been there to take calls, she could have had even more. The bad news was that the orders hadn't been processed or sent out.
When she'd returned from a few days away she had to pick up the pieces and get her business up and running again. As a small business owner she not only ran the business, she handled sales, and processed the orders. In other words she did almost everything!
Sound familiar?
Wish you could go away for a few days on business or take a vacation with your friends and family and still keep profits pouring in with your website marketing?
You can!
This week I've been in Vermont, watching the leaves turn, biking and hiking with my wife and friends.
I'm away on a week's vacation but that doesn't mean my business has slowed down. My web site continues to generate 30-40 new leads a day and my fufillment house ships out my marketing courses daily.
Even while I'm biking and enjoying the fall scenery, my website marketing keeps making money 24/7 and you could be doing the same with yours.
What's the key to making money even when you're on vacation?
1. You need a killer website, one that grabs your prospect's attention gets them to contact you and buy from you.
2. You need online and offline systems to manage the flow of leads and orders.
3. You need to outsource delivery of your products.
Want your site to make more - even if you're out of town? Use this website marketing strategy >> Most small business owners and entrepreneurs start off doing every part of the business. The key to growing your business is to recognize that you have to stop doing every task and get help or you'll always be the business instead of be running the business.
How hard is it to change this self-limiting pattern of behavior?
I've heard people say:
- I don't know where to start,
- I can't afford to hire help,
- I don't have time to find someone,
- I don't know where to start looking.
Ever heard these excuses?
Most people put off the decision to get help and the result is their business gets stuck in the slow lane, sometimes forever. Are you one of them? Make today the day you get the advice and assistance you need to really grow your business.
I enjoy time away, hiking and biking in Vermont as most people would, but knowing my business is humming away making money while I play makes it all that much sweeter.
Could you get twice as many clients to pay twice as much for your products and services?
Yes, it's possible with the 4 marketing ideas detailed here. You could potentially double the fees you charge and more than double your annual revenue just by applying one marketing strategy.
Let me ask you a question; what makes a stock go up in price?
Say, for example, gold stocks. A few years ago, gold stocks were in the dumps; now they're headed for the heavens.
What's changed? Are the companies that mine gold doing anything different?
The answer in most cases is no. But perceptions have changed. In spite of past volatility, gold is now worth more because it's seen as a safer investment than the U.S. dollar, whose value is dropping like a stone.
What controls how much your clients will pay for your products or service?
It's your prospects' perception of the value you deliver that determines the price.
In the case of gold mining stocks, a bunch of domestic and global economic factors came into play and created a context where gold became a great investment, at least for the moment. You can't control the global economy, or wait for it to cycle around to create just the conditions you want, but...
You can leverage your marketing to influence your clients' perception of the value of your goods or services.
There are four key factors in influencing prospects' perception of value. The first is obvious but is the basis for everything you do.
1. Provide a Top Quality Service or Product
Last weekend my wife and I wanted to go out for nice dinner. She picked one of our favorite restaurants. It's got a great location on the water's edge and the chef really knows how to prepare fish and shellfish.
Oysters, salad, main course, desert, a glass or two of wine and the bill was over $130 for the two of us. We could have prepared the same meal at home for under $30, but I paid the bill happily. The excellent food, service and view made it all worth it.
Discover how to get more hungry buyers to pay top dollar with these marketing ideas >>>>
2. Market to People Who Are Hungry For What You Sell
You're going to pay a lot more for a hotdog at a ball game or for candy at the movie theatre. Even so, people line up to pay these high prices.
What prompts so many people to pay almost double the price they would at the grocery store?
They're hungry, and it's convenient. Instead of trying to market to everyone, target the people who are hungry and make it convenient for them to buy and you can charge a whole lot more.
3. Position Yourself as an Expert
Why are some doctors in such great demand? Top surgeons get patients who'll pay 50% more than the usual fee for a consultation or surgery, because those doctors are considered to be experts in their field.
If you want your clients to pay you more, become an expert in your field. Then share your expertise, so your prospects are aware of how much you know and how much you can help them. Honest advice has a high value. Position yourself as an expert and you'll be able to get more for your products and services.
4. Make Your Marketing About Your Prospects, Not About You
This is the most important part of hooking your prospects and influencing their perception of value. Typical sales copy about how long a company has been in business is boring and does nothing to boost value.
Describe your prospects' needs and wants in your marketing pieces and sales copy, so they see themselves in it. The more your prospects feel you understand what they want and need, the more likely they are to buy from you.
The fastest way for most businesses to increase sales and profits is by changing their marketing so prospects understand the great value they will get. When that happens they'll jump at the chance to buy from you.
Low perception of value by prospects = low dollar sales and low volume of sales.
High perception of value by prospects = high dollar sales and high volume of sales.
To change prospects' perceptions of the value of you products and services, and increase your sales and profits - use this marketing idea >>
